flip.uk - .UK Domain Auctions and Marketplace

[lazarus]

I have set it back to 5 minutes

 

[Hay]

@lazarus - I've not used flip yet but just looked at the homepage for the first time and i felt lost with all the domains listed, i know each card/section has a header but you really have to look through the page to identify which is which.

For example on DL they have showcases on the homepage then gems on another tab, maybe you could add a colored section for showcases perhaps even on its own row so nothing else is shown on that row.

I think if you were to help some auctions stand out better than others then you would attract more bids because with this being the first visit i honestly couldn't tell you which domains are bids and which are not and which are auctions and which are not... obviously after spending several minutes on the site you would know what's what but i assume on my 2nd visit i would forget and have to check through them all again.

I think if i recall, most websites have no more than 2-3 seconds to grab the visitor's attention before they hit back or go to the next website, i think you could make it much more attractive to bidders if you could highlight areas better.

great job so far though, i know how time consuming it is

 

[lazarus]

Hi Ben

Thanks for that.
You are spot on. the first 2-3 is very important and I will be working on some of your ideas to improve this.
Yes very consuming but input from users is gold dust and I do plan to spend more time on the user experience.

Cheers!

 

[super-whois]

I wouldn't usually share sales data, but as a one off, I thought I’d share some of my flip.uk auction sales stats for September. All stats are for auctions that ended in September, therefore some were started in August. These stats are only for auctions, and do not include direct sales.

Number of domains listed: 44 (some were poor, but nothing too fancy, and mostly .uk drops)
Number of domains sold: 26 (and one didn't meet a reserve)
Total sales: £2733
Average Sale: £105.12
fli.uk Platform Fees £0

Had I listed these on a different platform, I probably would not have sold 15 domains, as the sale price was bellow the starting bid of £50, Instead I would have probably lost out on £340 of sales, and end up paying someone £75 for the privilege of being hidden gems.

Estimation if the same domains were put on a different platform:
Estimated Sales: £2393
Estimated platform fees: £240
Net Sales: £2153

I therefore think that in September, I was £580 better off by using flip.uk. I could be wrong, but I'm thankful for @lazarus for providing an alternative, along with taking action on a user that was identified as a shill bidder.

 

[Admin]

I wouldn't usually share sales data, but as a one off, I thought I’d share some of my flip.uk auction sales stats for September. All stats are for auctions that ended in September, therefore some were started in August. These stats are only for auctions, and do not include direct sales.

Number of domains listed: 44 (some were poor, but nothing too fancy, and mostly .uk drops)
Number of domains sold: 26 (and one didn't meet a reserve)
Total sales: £2733
Average Sale: £105.12
fli.uk Platform Fees £0

Had I listed these on a different platform, I probably would not have sold 15 domains, as the sale price was bellow the starting bid of £50, Instead I would have probably lost out on £340 of sales, and end up paying someone £75 for the privilege of being hidden gems.

Estimation if the same domains were put on a different platform:
Estimated Sales: £2393
Estimated platform fees: £240
Net Sales: £2153

I therefore think that in September, I was £580 better off by using flip.uk. I could be wrong, but I'm thankful for @lazarus for providing an alternative, along with taking action on a user that was identified as a shill bidder.

That's a brilliant share, thanks for doing that and really well done. Flip for the win.

 

[JMI]

It still looks like overall domains are getting better prices on DL. Free is great, but ultimately if I want to auction something I wanted best price for I'd stick it on eBay and pay the fees, rather than gumtree and hope someone found it. I base this on the number of people using reserves because they are worried about someone getting a bargain. I think the £50 barrier on DL promotes minimum level of quality.

 

[JMI]

Agreed, and Rome wasn't built in a day and all that, but if at the end of the day I need to auction my domains for the best price I can't see any benefit.

 

[JMI]

eBay and Facebook are old world but unfortunately first move is a massive advantage in business. To write DL off because he's got more important things to do than keep some millenials happy by making it responsive and turning it into a poor mans DAN or Sedo lookalike would be a naive mistake. All the pro domainers who actually have proper, decent domains (not a some .uk ror drops no one wanted) won't give a shit about the DL site cosmetics or that it's not got some fake avatar of a so called "domain sales expert" freak with a weird name on the landing page, they'll care about the credibility of the auction house, millions of pounds of previous sales history and who's running it will enforce fake bids etc. If DL does have a cosmetic redesign what will everyone have to moan about

 

[super-whois]

Further to this, looking at the top 10 Domainlore sales by price alone, how many do you feel should be there? The portfolio of quality domain sales isn't there (in this tiny snippet)

Worth noting:
holiday.co.uk - The winning bidder has opted in to keep details of this auction private.
gay.uk - This sale was not completed.
remortgage.uk - Wrong auction id
holiday.uk - The winning bidder has opted in to keep details of this auction private.

 

[super-whois]

In the world of scripting, when a platform marks an auction as finished and there is a winning bidder, that is considered a sale

My commitments where about the reported sales, not the accuracy of your data. The auctions closed with the reported sale prices, but it looks like 1 if not 2 did not complete, and 2 wanted to be hidden.

 

[signature]

Just to mention @seemly, your site is very good and I hope you can find a way to continue to add to it, may be bring other TLDs and hopefully find a way to monitise it more.

You probably heard of Namebio, may be this will give you more ideas.

Well done.

 

[WalkinDude]

DL seems to me a more industry domain auction platform whilst Flip.uk out of the gate seems more expansive and more obvious potential to go mainstream. DL your domain has to be deemed worth at least £50. Flip.uk it has to be worth £1 and with what gets registered in this country that shouldn't be assumed to be as easy a hurdle to get past as it appears on paper.

With that £1 starting bid feature anyone can have a go at domaining [Students, Grandma etc] at no obvious financial risk which I'm pretty sure is a first in the industry. It's free which is consistent with what the public expects from online platforms or every least a base level free usage.

I've already missed out on a couple that started at that price by simply not getting fully to grips with the plethora of features.

With DL you have no free control over how you set up the Auction and that has its merits and with Flip again there are so many options it feels a lot like domaining to me. You have to have a bit of think or you can just whack one on at £1 and see what happens.

Then there's the domain Flip.uk itself which, and not to get ahead of the owner's intentions, seems open to vertical and lateral scaleability so who knows where it's going especially in this economy.

It's a struggle to think of many industries where a monopoly is a desirable outcome. There's room for both. To me they are aren't the same thing. One doesn't have to be better than the other, they are both better off being different. None of the Domaining platforms I personally use are identical and that's a compliment to their owners. They are smart enough to give you a reason to use their service, something, some aspect you can't get elsewhere and there's still a few gaps left and I'm after one of those myself.


The timing couldn't have been more perfect now RoR is over, all but the final whistle. Was worried about things going a bit flat but turns out that's not the case at all. Now there are two front-facing UK domaining Auctions to keep an eye on and I personally never get tired of looking at or for domain names. Onwards and upwards.

 

[WalkinDude]

There are many types of domainers. There's not much rocket science to 'only' dealing with premium domain names that are so obvious in value as to need no introduction. Thought the whole point of entrepreneurship is to see value where others don't then deliver it.

The world's most valuable websites were all built on domain names deemed worthless at the time the site went up suggesting rather heavily a domain name isn't the entire story. What made these domains important is they inspired the developer to stay the course and that can be any domain name as we are all different.

If your sole purpose in domaining is to flip domains for huge profits you are never going to be on the same page with folks who want to develop websites. £1 starting bids help the latter type whom without the former type wouldn't have a market.

 

[WalkinDude]

People register tens of thousands of cheap domains on a daily basis with no intent develop to seeking 'win the lottery'. It's not as if a £1 auction for some of them is the cause. The tail doesn't wag the dog.

People spend endless hours sifting through domains anyway so a few extra minutes flicking through today's listings isn't going to make much difference.

Then there's the fact you don't have to participate. Free Will etc. Alot of people will enjoy buying £1 domain names. Their interest can grow from there until one day with a fair wind they are as elite as you appear to be.

 

[WalkinDude]

Entrepreneurs do what they want. They make money, any way. If it’s a little or a lot. It all adds up.

This. ^^^^

You gotta enjoy what you do regardless of whether you are any good at it. Best way to get better.

 

[super-whois]

The only issue I have with it so far, and it's a big issue for me, is that 99.9% of the domains there are pure and utter garbage.

There are currently 111 domains at auction, are you saying that 110.889 are pure and utter garbage?

 

[signature]

To add my penny worth, I don't think this is the time to compare Flip to Domainlore, Flip is like a new born baby, crawling and learning to walk, the time for Flip will come when it will be running and become a full grown adult like Domainlore.

We need to give Flip the time to mature, the owner will learn from our comments and from experience of running the site and hopefully fine tune the platform, improve the confidence of the platform as it grows.

Domainlore charges £5 if your domain did not sell, this is to discourage dumping of domain names of little value and a lot of us here have bought and sold domains worth thousands on Domainlore without paying a single penny. Now that Domainlore has prove it's worth, the site now charges 5% for Sport light and still free to listings on Hidden gems. Meaning a lot of domains are still sold with no cost to the seller and buyer.

My wish is for both platform to be successful and I hope the day will come when Flip will have proved its worth and users will start paying for using the platform because the owner needs to be rewarded and encourage to continue to develop the platform.

 

[JMI]

I'm selling a lot

There are currently 111 domains at auction, are you saying that 110.889 are pure and utter garbage?

Yes.

There's crap on DL but it's just slightly better quality crap and this crap has a pre filter which is basically the 'hidden gems' section. If a domain makes it out of there then fair enough. Essentially Flip is like viewing an extension of the hidden gems section of DL. Also its annoying that anything remotely worth bidding (the 1%) people have stuck a reserve on you don't get that on DL. I know some people will dislike this post but if you compare the two sites with whats on auction now its obvious. Now that's not to say Flip won't get some great sales in the future, but there's not point in sugar coating the fact I'd much rather pay a small "service fee" if my domains fetch a much higher overall price.

 

[Hay]

@lazarus - I've just noticed a user has been able to bid on a flip domain 3 times without being outbid by another party, Is this allowed to happen by default?

 

[super-whois]

Is this allowed to happen by default?

Maybe something to do with the reserve not met?