singlerose.com - a good example of market giving seller a lesson

[Clinton]

The site earned on average $5K per year (claimed).

He listed it originally with a starting price of $40K and a reserve of $500K six months ago and shows the usual "my baby" arrogance in the comments.

Then got greedy and reslisted with starting bid of $90K (I'm sure there's a story behind that jump up ) Nobody bites. Nobody even comments.

So he starts a new listing with starting bid of $29K. Still not a single bite.

The next listing tries a starting price of $20K. C'mon, somebody, bid!

No bids?!

He finally drops to another listing with a $1 starting price and bidding finally gets going (though the reserve is probably still high)

By the time he's done he'll have paid Flippa more than he gets for his site!

[tke71709]

The next listing tries a starting price of $20K. C'mon, somebody, bid!

Ahh the old chestnut...

All the old girl needs is a little work, add some social media software, like phpsocial or jomsocial and she'll be raking in the money.

And yet she didn't do it and rake in the money herself even though it would be so simple. Her forums are already dead to say the least, so what is trying to make the site more social going to accomplish?

[Clinton]

Going social is the new "If you do a bit of marketing for this site...."

[eddiebooth]

A reserve price of 100 x earnings! Even Burberry are only valued at 26 times and Tiffiny at 18 times. Must be one hell of a website, I'd better get in and snap this up before someone beats me to it

[DomainMagnate]

Nice, I see this quite frequently sellers slowly realize their expectations are out of touch with reality and reduce the price. Unfortunately it usually takes too long to be able to follow up. 7 months and 5 listings is quite a timeframe! But I have a feeling it won't hit the reserve this time either. It's a good site though, so that's a shame.

[Clinton]

Just an update, it ended up on a (new!) Confidential Listing here.

I say "confidential", but everything about the listing screams singlerose.com and, in case you missed all the signals, he provides the URL more than half a dozen times.

[grynge]

Just an update, it ended up on a (new!) Confidential Listing here.

Looks like your account will be suspended again for giving away the confidential listings url lol
Seriously what is the point of making it a confidential listing and paying extra if you give the url away?

[Thomas]

Seriously what is the point of making it a confidential listing and paying extra if you give the url away?

So she doesn't have to answer more public comments and look like more of an idiot?

[Sally]

Just an update, it ended up on a (new!) Confidential Listing here.

I say "confidential", but everything about the listing screams singlerose.com and, in case you missed all the signals, he provides the URL more than half a dozen times.

This website is owned by Tammy Jones, a woman. I tried to negotiate a deal through a broker and was told that she was expecting to get $60K for her site! My broker thought it was a typo! It seems her $1 auction was only to see where the bidding will go up to and had a very high reserve price. Now it's been put up again as you pointed out.

Her claim of 60,000 visitors a month is not true. She gets about 65 visitors every day or 2000 a month.

See this, the visitor stats are publicly available

http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s31singlerose

[Clinton]

That Flippa suspension thread didn't quite turn out like I expected, but anyway, they aren't going to suspend me for disclosing URLs I figure out. The understanding is that what they'll suspend me for is giving the seller any prior warning of an impending discussion.

It's an upside down world we live in!

But then, based where you are, you know that!