5 Types of Websites That Aren’t Selling As Well Anymore

I spent the better part of my morning today digging through the data I’ve been collecting from Flippa.com. Let me tell you, there’s nothing more fun than looking through data…lol. Flippa is the largest and most popular marketplace so it’s the best (and only) place to spot trends in the industry.

Flippa uses a tagging system, that in my opinion is completely worthless right now the way they have it set up as I lamented in this post, but it’s the only thing we have right now to gauge what types of sites are in demand and selling well. Studying Flippa’s tags is far from perfect but at least it gives us some idea of how some of these types of sites are selling. Then again, the tagging system is so screwy that it might not tell us anything but I thought it might be interesting to post my findings anyway.

Looking at the chart below, you’ll see the clearance rates from week-to-week for the past couple months for the five most popular types of sites according to Flippa’s tagging system. Clearance rates, by the way, are the percentage of solds.

Flippa Clearance Rates

The first thing you notice is the obvious downward trend in the clearance rates for all five types of sites. In other words, websites using the five most popular tags aren’t selling as well as they were just a couple months ago. Affiliate sites and WordPress sites are down the most by 10 and 9 percentage points respectively.

Open Listings Trends

While I was putting that chart together I thought I would take a peak at the open listings data for the same tags and chart it. Here is how it shakes out:

Flippa Open Listings

What this chart shows is the number of open listings by these tags from week-to-week for the past couple months. Open listings are auctions that are live and not yet sold. With the exception of websites tagged by “affiliate,” all websites using the other tags are down.

What Does All This Mean?

Again, given Flippa’s weak tagging system it might not be showing us much. However, I think we can be confident in concluding that sales are down – period. Websites just aren’t selling as well right now regardless the type of website. This is confirmed looking at the total Flippa sales from week-to-week:

Total Flippa Sales

Total sales from week-to-week are down just a little over 7.5% from a month ago. I’ll continue to track this data and will post an update in a couple months. In the mean time, if you are finding that your websites aren’t selling as well as they used to on Flippa, you’re not alone. This is why website flippers need to think outside the box and look at other ways of flipping websites – such as selling websites locally as taught in the Local Flip Formula.

About Travis Van Slooten

Travis is an affiliate marketer and website flipper who ran FlipWebsites.com until the Fall of 2010.

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This entry was posted in Selling Websites and tagged Marketplaces, Website Sales Analysis.

http://cobases.com Michael Cobases

It some time since you have wrote this post but I still would like to add my 2 cents.

It’s possible to sell all kind of websites on Flippa if you have traffic and earning proof for as long time as possible(minimum 6-9 months) then you can sell almost all kind of websites becouse you have proof that website was earning stable income before you sell.

The thing that most of the website doesn’t get sold on flippa is no traffic proof(verified Google Analytics, no other data is counted), no earning or no proper earning proof. Website is only few days up to few months old. And of course reserve price is too high for crappy site.
http://www.websitetrafficresellers.com Buy Targeted Website Traffic

Good thinking Im not flipping anymore and only building long term websites
http://smokingnomore.info Adam

Hi Travis.

I’m quite new to site flipping and some of your your info helped me a lot. I have a question, is there any value for a typo domain? I don’t want to waste my time to developed something that has no value, this is why I’m asking. Hope you or everyone else can give some good input. Thanks in advance.

Travis

Adam:

A typo domain may carry some value if you’re flipping just the domain itself but for website flipping, I would never build a website on a typo domain. My suggestion to you would be to park the typo domain and maybe try selling it down the road but develop your website on a domain that is spelled correctly.

Travis

http://provillusreviews.us Djbory

Location, location, location… Revenue, revenue, revenue…
I’m building crappy (ugly) one page, sites, SEO and backlink them for a couple of months until they are making $200 to $500 month and them flip them… Travis knows I’m been doing pretty good consistently… Start up sites are not selling that good anymore, PERIOD. Adapt! and “do what works now” is the key.

DJBory

Travis

Great words of advice: adapt – and do what works now.

Thanks!

Travis

http://salahstudios.com Salah – Virtual Real Estate with Curb Appeal

Hey Travis,
You know I can’t get enough of your numbers. This is why I love statistics and hate being on, if you stand out trends don’t really mean much.

As PotPie pointed out I’m sure it had a lot to do with those big sales, but then again the percentages of those erroneous tags do indicate a general downward spiral…maybe its the weather? Then again it could be all those crappy startups

As far as the uncrappy goes, I just flipped a brand-spanking-new-very-super-duper-totally-awesome startup for $475 yesterday and it was worth every penny. Gotta give the people quality…they crave it, deserve it, and pay for it…but let me shut my big mouth.

Startups don’t sell, DON’T EVER TRY TO FLIP A STARTUP!

Travis

Salah:

Congrats on the sale! That’s awesome. Care to share the link to the auction so my visitors can see what a $500 startup looks like?

Travis

http://salahstudios.com Salah – Virtual Real Estate with Curb Appeal

Thanks Travis, you can check out the auction at http://flippa.com/auctions/98271

Travis

Salah:

Nice site! You must have put a lot of work into that one. It looks sharp.

Travis

http://www.flipfilter.com Justin @ Flip Filter

Hey Travis,

As you probably know I have a love affair with statistics, so this is certainly my kind of post!

I tend to wonder what the impact of the media (in this case web news, forums, blogs) has been on clearance rates.

For example, if the Government announced we were in a recession, everyone would cut back on spending regardless and almost create a recession whether or not one existed. With so many people and blogs screaming “starter sites no longer work” would that have had an adverse effect on the number of people who would otherwise have purchased one?

It’s one of those questions that cant be answered with stats directly but gives food for thought all the same.

J

Travis

Justin:

There is no doubt that the media influences people’s behavior. However, in this situation I think it’s a case where the market (i.e. Flippa) is being flooded with crap and nobody is buying it anymore because they’re becoming more informed, smarter buyers.

I’m going to continue to track these numbers and will be posting an update in a couple months. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

Travis

http://www.potpiegirl.com PotPieGirl

Hi Travis =)

Very interesting stats – thank you for sharing!

Ya know, as I was looking at the chart for “Total Flippa Sales Week-To- Week” I got to wondering about something.

I took a trip back thru your weekly snapshots to see how it all related.

What if that big spike on the 6/4 is mainly due to the fact that there were some really big $ sales that week. The top 3 sellers in your 6/6 snapshot totaled over $300k…MUCH more than an average week.

Perhaps it’s not as much a downward trend as it is showing a spike from an unusual week? Thoughts?

Seems to me that about $300k is an “average” week for Flippa? Unless, of course, there are some big sales that happen that spike that amount.

Regardless, none of that addresses the obvious decline in clearance rates. From my own observations, it seems that there is a bigger selection of brand new sites being listed that have no history….and the BIN/Reserve prices don’t seem to match up with what it being offered – which leads to no sale.

It is getting harder as a buyer to scroll thru and find the “good sites” … you have to sift thru so many “I just made this site yesterday and want $500 for it” type listings…lol!

Anyway, just sharing some thoughts. Love your stuff!

Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

Travis

Jennifer:

Great observations! That’s why I wanted to post this information so I could let my visitors draw their own conclusions and maybe together we can all make some sense on what’s going on in the website flipping marketplace these days.

I totally agree with you after looking through the previous snapshots myself. It does appear that the spike was due to some unusually high priced websites that week.

And as you’ve pointed out, you can’t ignore the decline in the clearance rates – likely due to the ever increasing number of startup sites being listed on Flippa these days.

Travis
http://salahstudios.com Salah – Virtual Real Estate with Curb Appeal

Hmmm….guess it depends on your rates and effort, if I put over ten hours into a site I don’t care if I registered the domain this morning you betta believe its worth $500. But I do get where your coming from, if I see that same Woo Gazette theme one more time I’m gonna throw up.

I think startups are taking some flak for the whole industry though. What is an Xfactor AdSense template with an hour worth of content, half hour Scrapebox/rotating-link campaign, and a whooping earnings history of $20 for three months really worth? Most of those sites just showcase an untapped niche for the world to see. I’m about to start adding an “s” to their domains accompanied by a real website and some sticky backlinks. I’m sure those new pseudo established site owners are gonna feel like they got screwed. And that ain’t the lot of em’, don’t let me get started on the PPC pimps “I only had to spend $50 on a simple AdWords campaign and it just converted like crazy!”

No matter what spin you put on it, crap is crap and as with anything online there is a heap of it surrounding website flipping…but its coming from every angle.

I think everybody should just sell websites that they would consider purchasing themselves and stop playing on the noob learning curve. Integrity shall preserve our industry.

http://www.potpiegirl.com PotPieGirl

Ahhh, but one man’s crap is another man’s treasure….

Crap is in the eye of the beholder? (hmmmm…running out of tacky cliches here…lol)

I like to show my sites for sale the same way I would show a house for sale…. bare bones and void of personalization.

I want a potential site buyer to look at my site and think “wow… it’s ugly and boring… but it’s already ranking and making money. Just imagine what *I* could do with it!”

I want someone to imagine moving into it…what they would do – just like showing a house.

But, like you said – sell websites that YOU would consider buying. Those type of “bare bones” sites are what I do like to buy. I don’t like to think that all that is possible with the site has already been done.

Bottom line tho – value will always be decided by the market…by the one who is willing to pay x amount of dollars.

I know what my sites are worth to ME – both now and in the future – and it’s silly for me to let them go for some silly under-priced amount.

For someone who could crank out the same site in an hour, they wouldn’t pay a dime for it. But for someone who struggles creating a good starter site that is well-optimized and already ranking, the value increases dramatically in their eyes.

Regardless, I think the best way to sell on sites like Flippa is to give the market what they WANT. Reading things like Travis’ Market Snapshots are a big clue =)

GREAT conversation!

Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

Travis

Jennifer:

You must have been a Realtor in your former life…lol. I could totally relate to your comments because I was in residential real estate myself for about 5 years. I NEVER thought of looking at building and presenting websites like real estate but you bring up some awesome comparisons and some great points to think about.

What’s interesting is that what you’re suggesting goes totally against what most people preach – which is to build “pretty” websites and load them up with everything.

I wonder, however, how your “bare bones strategy” works with total newbies? The bare bones approach makes sense if you’re marketing to experienced IMer’s but to the newbie, they may not have a clue how to improve it and make it their own. Are most of your buyers experienced IMer’s?

By the way, be sure to check out the past website sales too. They not only have all the Market Snapshot stats but I include additional sales as well. If you look through those listings there is a goldmine of information at your fingertips:) Here is the link to it:

http://www.flipwebsites.com/past-website-sales/

Travis

http://www.potpiegirl.com PotPieGirl

“What’s interesting is that what you’re suggesting goes totally against what most people preach – which is to build “pretty” websites and load them up with everything.”

Yeah, I’ve been known to uhhhh…march to my own beat…lol!

“Pretty sites” are great… real eye-candy… but do they make money?

Let’s think back to an auction I think we are all familiar with – School-Grants.org.

Was that a “pretty site”? No, not even a little bit (Sorry Cary – no offense if you’re reading). But was/is it effective? Oh, absolutely.

As for past sales… yes, they are very important and a nice insight into what people want.

I have a running list of all the stats for closed sales in the market I work in. That site I just sold that you talked about in a Market Snapshot a week or two ago? It sold for exactly $1 less than I predicted based on all the stats I’ve been keeping. But keep in my mind, my stats are based off only sites that are comparable to what I do – not ALL sites…just my type.

As for “appealing to the newbie” – I’m not sure that is really my target customer to an extent. Most of my auction views come from my own readers and they know I don’t make sites with the primary objective to sell them – I make them for ME…and I make them to make money

Jennifer
~PotPieGirl

(oh, and yes, I was a Realtor many, many moons ago)
Travis

There is no doubt that it doesn’t take a “pretty” site for it to be effective. Cary’s website was a perfect example, as you mentioned. I’ve seen many many “ugly” websites that do very well. Heck, I have a couple of those myself.

Travis