A website that aggregates listings from various marketplaces?

[Clinton]

If you go to Flippa you get just Flippa's selection of sites. Same with bizbuysell.com, businessesforsale.com or broker sites such as flippingenterprises.com, latonas.com etc.

Wouldn't it make sense to have a location that calls listings from all these sites and organises them in a single location that allows a better search facility across multiple marketplaces, the ability to compare listings and, more than anything, a big time saving for site buyers?

In the past there have been websites that attempted this. Many of you may not know about itsect.com. It was owned by an EP member and later sold to another EP member, but has since gone dead. Unfortunately, archive.org doesn't have a snapshot from when it was operational. When it was running, it did a pretty good job of pulling listings from all the main sources.

Then there is http://bizmp.com/ - an automated site that scrapes listings from forums and dumps them in a list. It used to aggregate listings from various forums including DigitalPoint, NamePros, DNForum etc., but it seems to have been blocked from all of them with the exception of the V7n.com forum. Now the only listings on bizmp are from v7n.

And that's it to my knowledge. They all closed or ceased being developed because the owners couldn't make the ventures profitable.

Putting aside the profit issue, what would an aggregation service need to provide to buyers to make it really useful? And how best could it be done?

[Bryan]

Isn't Justin (flipfilter) already doing exactly what you're describing?

Sure, FlipFilter is a paid service and its search capabilities aren't great but it's being improved constantly.

Even though it would be nice to have a free service similar to this on the market and it would definitely have an audience, something like this (or anything that involves having to communicate with third party APIs) is a lot of (ongoing) work and therefore it has to generate substantial income to make it worthwhile. And with the number of decent marketplaces / brokerages being <10 the only option is to charge the end-user.

[JJMcClure]

Wouldn't it make sense to have a location that calls listings from all these sites and organises them in a single location that allows a better search facility across multiple marketplaces, the ability to compare listings and, more than anything, a big time saving for site buyers?

I have to ask this because I'm genuinely confused about why it's different but would that not be stealing their content?

Since I know how strongly you feel about that sort of thing, and you panned a site just a few days ago for scraping Flippa, I'm assuming that there's something different about this, what is it? If someone else posted this and I had to imagine your answer, I would have sworn it would be something along the lines of 'don't steal other people's content, instead try to create a better marketplace'.

[Clinton]

Good point. I believe Justin draws data from Flippa, one marketplace, one broker and one webmaster forum.

The bulk of the listings is from Flippa and while he does a brilliant job of it, I would prefer if he expanded his sources to include the various business listing sites such as businessesforsale, bizquest, daltons etc., the numerous brokers like yourselves, WSYSBroker, Latonas, iAcquire, QuietLight etc etc., various forums that have decent quantities of listings - domain forums like NamePros and DNForums that do both premium domains and established websites to other forums like V7N (and about 10-15 others that I know about) - and elsewhere. Even eBay (which does get the odd worthwhile listing). But, obviously, that would make his service too expensive for most users so I don't blame him for not including them.

However, the bulk of the best properties are outside of Flippa and DP! And there's a huge bank of human vetted listings at the broker sites!

Ignore the cost and profitability issue for now. If a service existed that could draw from most of those locations and present consolidated listings with an advanced search engine ... what would such a service need to do to serve buyers and how best could such a website be executed?

I have to ask this because I'm genuinely confused about why it's different but would that not be stealing their content?

Bryan provides a good example - Justin's site.

This thread is about a hypothetical situation of a clearing house with feeds from various marketplaces. The marketplaces would stand to gain from sharing their data as the site would be sending them buyers.

[Bryan]

Good point. I believe Justin draws data from Flippa, one marketplace, one broker and one webmaster forum.

The bulk of the listings is from Flippa and while he does a brilliant job of it, I would prefer if he expanded his sources to include the various business listing sites such as businessesforsale, bizquest, daltons etc., the numerous brokers like yourselves, WSYSBroker, Latonas, iAcquire, QuietLight etc etc., various forums that have decent quantities of listings - domain forums like NamePros and DNForums that do both premium domains and established websites to other forums like V7N (and about 10-15 others that I know about) - and elsewhere. Even eBay (which does get the odd worthwhile listing). But, obviously, that would make his service too expensive for most users so I don't blame him for not including them.

However, the bulk of the best properties are outside of Flippa and DP! And there's a huge bank of human vetted listings at the broker sites!

Ignore the cost and profitability issue for now. If a service existed that could draw from most of those locations and present consolidated listings with an advanced search engine ... what would such a service need to do to serve buyers and how best could such a website be executed?

Actually he's already started including other brokers' (such as ourselves) listings as of lately. I'm not 100% sure if our listings are included yet as I'm not in charge of this deal but we did already provide him with everything required for integration.

As for other places, such as the ones you've mentioned:

Brokers - easy, and I bet Justin is working on it actively.

Business listing sites, ebay - extremely difficult, due to the fact that it's virtually impossible (if not impossible) to tell the difference between an online business and a brick&mortar business on many of these markerplaces, as well as filter out cr*p listings as the trend is to list turnkey sites claiming $500k etc. in yearly revenue. Obviously including listings like this would make the whole database extremely messy and searches inaccurate.

The only solution there would be (heavy) human interaction but there is no way on earth this would ever be financially feasible. (I know you told me to ignore the cost and profitability issue but I don't think it can be ignored as I can literally see no way for a heavily human-moderated aggregator site to ever become profitable.)

All that said, if it can indeed be somehow made profitable then there would definitely be market for this. And a pretty large market if the service is free for the end-user.

[Thomas]

I personally don't think there are enough serious buyers to get anything like this profitable. Justin has enough trouble getting people to sign up for a few dollars a month and he's had tons of exposure and a well coded system.

To make it profitable, I think you would have to charge the broker/marketplace to get listed/for extra exposure instead and keep it free for consumers. Most brokers and marketplaces have cash, and are always looking for exposure, so I think it would be easier to get money out of them than it would your average buyer with the budget to buy 1-2 decent sites.

[Clinton]

Thanks for your inputs. Yes, such a aggregation centre/clearing house (it's not a marketplace) could monetise via charging brokers, providing add-on accounting, legal, escrow and other services etc. So, moving away from the financial viability ....

The only solution there would be (heavy) human interaction...

Maybe. But there are very clever things automation can do nowadays to reduce the requirement for human filtering. Anyway, we're putting this financial feasibility aside for the moment.

Given that the bulk of the best properties - established and profitable businesses - are outside of Flippa and DP, what are your suggestions for a destination that would be a dream solution for those looking to buy these businesses? One suggestion that's emerged from the above is that it should be free to buyers. Any others?

I'm looking to get good input from people like both of you and others to make this thread like our VIP Lounge thread on what a broker should include in his listing.

[JJMcClure]

No problem if you need to delete this post. I'd have PM'd it but I'm sure your inbox is full of more important things.

The marketplaces would stand to gain from sharing their data as the site would be sending them buyers.

I see. And that's totally different to what Google do, of course. Sounds exactly the same to me.

such a aggregation centre/clearing house (it's not a marketplace) could monetise via charging brokers, providing add-on accounting, legal, escrow and other services etc. So, moving away from the financial viability ....

Monetising using other people's content. Hmmm.... and then pretty soon you'd be accused of cluttering up your interface with your monitising features and biasing which auctions you showed to make more money and god forbid the market places came to rely on your traffic and then you decided you could build a better market place and not use them anymore. Then you'd be accused of monoplising your power and forcing out the small guy.

That's all I'm going say publicly because I can see how this aspect, whilst technically on topic, is not what you're looking for in this thread, but if you can't see how what you're proposing is exactly the behaviour you hate about Google and how you're using the same arguments to support it that are used to support Google's behaviour, then someone needed to point out the apparent contradiction (I won't use the word 'hypocrisy' because that's a bit strong and I might be missing something that does actually make this different).

Since I wouldn't have an issue with this and I'm only trying to understand how you taking other people's content and monitising it is different from Google doing that, I actually wish you the best of luck!

[Clinton]

Just to be clear, Rich. I'm not "proposing" anything, I have no intention of creating what you describe and this isn't a work in progress. Your post seems to lack an understanding of this despite the example I provided and the explanation I added about "feeds". Flipfilter pulling data via Flippa's API, and subject to a detailed contract with Flippa on use of that data, is a bit different to what Google does.

I'm seeking discussion, from a buyer viewpoint, on what services and features from such a site would be most useful to them. It would be great if we could stay on topic.

[mikeb]

An interesting analogy is the "offervault" model that aggregates CPA offers from many sources, and they seem to work in harmony with the CPA sites. Don't know how the business model works. One big difference is that a worthwhile CPA offer can be $6,7 figures or upwards so there is more money to go around. Flipping small sites is just not lucrative enough.

There is a model I think MAY work, but it is fundamentally different to scraping or aggregating, but it would serve the stakeholders better than either.. Reluctant to put it on open forum, since it is something I may actually do...