As a life long lover of, shall we say creating, or maybe inbound marketing, I have gotten a bit addicted to reading Flippa listings.
It started as an idea from ViperChill to get inspiration and ideas on internet marketing by reading what marketers are doing to boost their sites fast and flip them on Flippa.
He never said to buy them!
But, temptation gets in the way, and the prices seem rather decent, and your creative (and maybe greed) juices start flowing. I can fix this up and improve it, etc etc.
Most of the transaction have been good. But I have lately gotten a bit careless or fast and bought one or two with bad content (spun low qualitY) and another one I want to document for my own records today.
One I bought early this month was trying to not transfer me the domain? He was trying to tell me I can access his server and his team can update the website. He wanted me to market and build up this website /domain and split the profits with him.
But not give/transfer me the website?
I won it on Flippa for 125 bucks – sure not a lot of money – and the domain was a decent name. Not much (or any) organic traffic. But a well built site with a decent product offering that I was planning to put in my portfolio.
He kept trying to have me focus on selling the website’s service so that we can “clinch a sale” and make money together. Always kind of avoiding the transfer of the website. I finally insisted and he let me login to his server / cpanel to do it. So I opened a domain transfer request on his behalf – but he rejected it in the email verification process.
Crazy?!
Then he told me – his “advisors” felt this amount of money was too low and I need to “top up” to get the domain. And asked me how much I would like to “top up”?
Top up? On a deal we already confirmed online?
I tried to not get enraged (I was hitting my keyboard a few times during the Skype chat). Then finally he offered to refund me the money. But it would take up to a week.
So I marked my calendar. And one week later, well maybe 5 days later, I asked for an update. I’m not in Skype much, so he had sent a message already. But it was to see if I had “clinched a sale” yet.
Sure, I have some potential leads, but I am not going to pay you for services if you haven’t even fulfilled a small domain transfer deal. So I reminded him on that. He told me it wasn’t 1 week yet and he told me up to 1 week.
Ok, so I put a calendar reminder for 2 more days.
And on the 1 week mark, still no Paypal refund. So I pinged him on skype. He asked for the Paypal email, name, etc.
Said wait another 5 days (Sunday). But he said 1 week?
So I start to talk about my “partners” who are getting less patient. If he said 1 week, but now needs 5 more days, how can we do more business together if this small transaction is such a problem.
Finally it was reduced to a few more days. I was able to get him to give me an exact day and time – which is Monday 5pm Singapore time. I marked my Google Calendar.
If he cheats me out of $125 USD, it will be a lesson learned. I guess I’ll try at least to get it (by principal) by opening a Paypal dispute – I should win, as it is clear I didn’t get the assets I had been promised in the transaction. But I really don’t like to make Paypal disputes.
I can also ask Flippa for help, and even give him bad feedback on the marketplace.
Stuff I just hate to do.
But this is not cool at all.
Anyway, venting a bit here. But also documenting it – as he has been making it seem like I am the one that is not being reasonable. So I have this record for my own documentation to refer to in the future.
And also warn others – don’t be so easy to make purchases.