While I’ve not been a wildly active member of SitePoint in a while, I was pleased to see their marketplace for websites taking a much larger profile this spring with the creation of Flippa.  Flippa bills itself as a place to buy and sell websites. And while that is surely possible, after my first post beta auction experience with Flippa, I can just say that I will likely not be back. Sure… I’ll probably swing by and browse, but that’s it.

I just participated in an auction there (you can surely find my username there to find out which auction). Found a domain that was listed as a PR2 (really a PR1 — although it could have been PR2 when the auction started).  Not an expired domain, but a real domain that someone owned. After a little research of the domain, I placed a bid at the minimum bid amount ($50). At that point I thought I would see my bid show up. Wrong.

On Flippa, your bid has to be accepted.  I can dig that I guess (dig with one ‘g’ not two). Ok, so I can just wait for the seller to accept it (I mean, he did set the min bid at $50 right?).  Wrong.

Evidently on Flippa there is no notification of the auction creator that there has been a bid.  At least that is the opinion I formed. Well, either the seller did not like my bid and chose to ignore it instead of just rejecting it, or he had no idea that a bid was placed.  The auction expired — no acceptance or rejection of my bid — no communication at all. Gee, this site must be well traffic’d!

To be fair and to not sound like a newb, I realize that there may have been a reserve price in mind by the seller.  That’s cool.  Take the 30 seconds to reject my bid then.  Oh… there is the rub.  It did get rejected, today.  2 days after the auction ended.

Sour grapes… no.  It’s a weasily little PR1 (not PR2) domain in a generally non money making niche. I will surely buy far more valuable domains this month.

It’s just a little disappointing to see what was one of the better website/domain auction places (SitePoint) replace their forum based site with what I thought would be a great site, only to see a general lack of traffic on it (at least based on looking at the lack of bids on the site).  Oh well, I guess it’s back to eBay to find great website auction deal! (sarcasm).

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