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).

I think it is a pretty cool site, but I obviously would like to ween it from relying on RSS content so much. I’ve started writing fresh new beginner PHP tutorials, putting together more open source references, and putting together more PHP security related PHP content — but I still have a ways to go.

If you have an original PHP tutorial that you’d like to have added to the site, pass it on to me here, and I’ll see about posting it (with full attribution and appropriate links).