TravisVS Under 
Tags: Now I understand you have a very specific type of business model that you follow with your websites. It has to do with building a community around a product or service and then soft-selling the community various products and services. Can you talk to me about this and why it’s been so effective?
Yeah it’s one that works for us and I think will work for others if they’ll do it. As I mentioned before, community and networks are very important to becoming a successful flipper in my opinion. What I’ve discovered is that if you will take the time to develop relationships within a community, members are far more receptive to buying from you. Think about how many advertising messages are thrown at us on a daily basis. It’s in the thousands for a typical person. We’re constantly being bombarded with others trying to sell to us. I personally am more open to buying from someone I know vs. someone that is just pushing a product or service in my face.
That’s why I think it’s crucial for flippers to develop a large network. With social media today, it’s possible to develop one globally, online, for just about any niche out there. Taking this a step further, what I do in my own business is develop my own social network around a product. For example, right now I have a company called Greenergy2030.com that we launched a couple of months ago. We’ve developed a green business certification program that we sell but we’ve wrapped a social network around it. We have just under 700 member companies already on there and are growing weekly. What the social network allows us to do is to develop a dialog with these companies that join our free network. We’re able to reach out to them on the network forums, via our newsletters, and countless other ways. They get to know me because as they’re active on the network, they see my blog posts and receive regular network updates from me. These members are far more receptive to buying from me as a result.
Plus think about this. If you’ve got a niche network, the members of that network are highly qualified leads. For example, if you build a network focused on horse racing, who do you think is going to take the time to join that network? You got it…people interested in horse racing! More importantly, using invites, they’ll bring all of their horse-racing buddies to your network. Now think of all the ways you can make money off of this type of system. First off you can create products or services that appeal to horse racing fans. Plus, if you build a network up large enough, you can make even more money by selling advertising to others that are trying to sell to horse racing fans. That list of members has a lot of value as well. Obviously this is just one example but this business model can be applied to virtually any niche if executed well.
And with tools like Ning and SocialGo out there, building a social network around products or services has never been easier. The trick is to find a niche that isn’t being served well and building a community that benefits members. If you do that, you can sell your products or services to them because they know and trust you. You still have to offer a great product or service but the selling process is much more effective under this model.
Speaking of this business model, you just launched a site flipping community and a service – a website flipping marketplace. Tell me about it.
Yep you got it. We’ve just launched DigitalFlipster.com this week which is our online network for anyone that is active or interested in becoming a digital media flipper. We provide free training, resources and other tools designed solely to help flippers become more successful. Additionally we’re in the process of rolling out the JustClickAuctions.com marketplace which we’ve recently acquired. We’re working on enhancements of the site that will only further our goal of helping buyers and sellers in their deals. One of my major goals is to become a great information and networking source for all flippers that are serious about succeeding in the industry and that’s what we’re working towards with our new community.
There is no doubt that Flippa is the 800 pound gorilla and is essentially the “eBay” of the site flipping industry right now. How are you going to compete? What’s your USP going to be?
Yes Flippa has done a great job and certainly has been a pioneer in our industry. That being said, I think that a lot of things can be done better. It’s important to remember that this industry is only now really emerging and will only get bigger. There have been techies that have been flipping for years but what is really exciting right now is watching it go a little more mainstream. Because of this progression in our industry, I think buyers and sellers will need options and my goal is to make JustClickAuctions.com one of them.
We’ll compete on price to a point but more importantly, we’re going to really focus on giving our community members the tools they need to really become successful flippers. So we’re really focused on things like education, networking and new technologies to give our auction sellers the very best chance at success. Remember, at the end of the day, it’s not which auction marketplace is the largest. It’s the one that will get you the most money when you’re selling off a site.
JustClickAuctions.com is focused on enabling our sellers to do just that. We have some key technologies that we’ll be announcing in coming weeks and months but I can confidently say that our marketplace will be an extremely competitive one. Additionally, I feel that if our sellers are building better sites to auction, this brings more value to our buyers. As more and more people are seeking to start online companies, it makes sense to consider buying an existing site, community, or application to sell versus building from scratch. The better job sellers do of building great sites, the more successful buyers will be once they’ve bought through our marketplace.
We’re going to be offering our community members free listings for a while so that they can get to know how our system works and our community at DigitalFlipster.com will always be free. So we’re going to be doing things a little differently from sites like Flippa but they’re things that I think will only benefit our industry overall.
I get emails weekly from people who have either launched their own marketplace or are looking to launch their own marketplace. And as a site flipper myself, I’ve seen these marketplaces come and go. For whatever reason, nothing seems to “stick.” How do you plan to be the one that “works” and actually sticks around to be a viable alternative for site flippers?
Yes I have seen this as well. My experience has been that patience is needed when you’re entering a new space such as ours. These sites have come and gone primarily because their owners didn’t put in the time necessary to establish them correctly. I have a lot of patience when it comes to things I really believe in and digital media flipping is one of my passions. This is the first company I’ve launched in over a decade that I don’t intend to sell off within the next few years. So that’s one thing we have going for us.
More importantly however, I think differentiation is the key to any successful business. I don’t care about JustClickAuctions.com being the largest marketplace. What I’m mainly concerned with is creating value for our customers who are digital media sellers and buyers. This means I have to ensure that I have a great product, at a great price. I’m hoping that our sellers will use Digital Flipster to let us know what they need. That’s the real value of a community such as ours because we can collaborate together to make the marketplace, and the industry for that matter, what we all want it to become. If we do all of these things successfully, I believe we’ll be successful in our industry. I don’t care about becoming the Microsoft of our industry. I’ll settle for being the Apple of it however. 
I want to thank JD for his time and for his invaluable insight on what it takes to be a successful website flipper. I hope his new businesses do well and I look forward to them becoming the next Apple of our industry!
