Dear Flippa: PLEASE Do Something With Your Tagging System!

When Flippa introduced tags not too long ago it was a welcome addition. Unfortunately, the whole tagging system has become a mess. The reason is because they allow sellers to define their listings with any tags they want. This isn’t good for sellers, buyers, or for Flippa and here’s why…

A seller, especially if he is a first-time seller on Flippa, may have no idea what tags to use. Sure he could look at the tags report on Flippa and figure out which tags make the most sense but is a first-time seller going to know how to do that? In most cases sellers use tags that are a disservice to their listings. You see meaningless tags like, “football soccer,” and “unique contents.” Those are actual tags used by sellers on Flippa. How many buyers do you think are looking for “football soccer” and “unique contents” listings? Hmmm, let me think – ZERO! As a result, sellers are severely limiting their exposure when they use such ridiculous tags.

From a buyer’s perspective it’s even worse. You are relying on the seller to accurately tag their listings, which I’ve just pointed out doesn’t always happen. Consider this example: A seller has a WordPress site that is making great money through AdSense but since he doesn’t understand the tagging system he uses “football soccer” and “unique contents” as his tags because the blog is about football soccer and the content is unique. As a buyer, I’m watching all listings tagged as WordPress and AdSense. In this example, I would never know about that seller’s listing since it wasn’t tagged as “WordPress” or “AdSense.” See the problem?

The current system isn’t good for Flippa either. There are currently over 230 tags being used on Flippa and the list is growing. There is no way you can get any meaningful data with so many tags. And even if Flippa is somehow able to make sense out of so many tags, sellers and buyers still lose. Sellers get reduced exposure and buyers miss out on potentially good buys.

Flippa’s Tagging System Isn’t Working So What’s The Solution?

Flippa needs to determine what tags they want sellers to use and then have the sellers select which tags to use for their listings. Here is how I would do it if I were running Flippa – just thinking off the top of my head so I’m not saying this is perfect but it would be a step in the right direction anyway…

First, I would have a set of tags that would define the type of platform the website was built on. Example tags would be: HTML, PHP, WordPress, Joomla. The seller would select one of those tags. Then I’d have another set of tags that would define the monetization models the website uses: AdSense, Affiliate Sales, Product or Service Sales, None. The seller would then select which ones apply. Then I’d have a third set of tags that would define the subject, or niche, of the website that the seller would select from. This set of tags would be rather broad to cover a variety of subjects and to keep the list to a minimum.

It’s important to note that sellers would be required to select tags from all three groups. That way every listing would be tagged by platform, monetization model, and subject. By doing this you now have a defined list of tags that you can track and get meaningful information from. For sellers, they wouldn’t need to try to figure out what tags to use and they would be assured their listings would get maximum exposure. And finally for buyers, they would be assured that whatever tags they searched by or added to their watchlist would capture every listing on Flippa that was using those tags.

Until such a system is put in place, the tagging system at Flippa will continue to be chaos and will only get worse as the marketplace grows. Hopefully someone over at Flippa is listening

Tagged as: Marketplaces