Flippa Alternatives

• A lot of the listings are fraudulent. I’ve seen first-hand websites for sale on Flippa where the earnings are completely fabricated by the seller and the traffic has been inflated through spammy means.
• Many sellers price the website too high. Sites making $2,000 a year are listing with Buy It Now prices of $25,000 or more. Do you want to wait a possible 12+ years to get a return on investment?
• Bidding on listings makes it easy to over-commit. Remember the budget you set? It’s very easy to get into bidding wars on Flippa and before you know it you’ve paid way too much for a website.

• You’ll get a lot of messages from tire kickers. The number of time-wasting messages you will receive when selling a site has grown over the years. From spammers trying to promote their own service to buyers who clearly don’t have the money to buy your website but are just fishing for information – it takes a lot of time to sift through these messages on Flippa.
• You’ll get fake bids on your listings. It’s so easy to place a bid on a listing that you will definitely receive fake bids. I’ve sold websites on Flippa that when it came down to it, the buyer disappeared and I had to relist it. There’s almost no punishment for them as anonymous bidders, and you then have to relist, which is more wasted effort.
• You’ll get scammers and spammers wasting your time. I’m not sure how much this happens in recent years because I use alternative methods to Flippa now, but I’ve had scammers before purchase my website and then try to arrange transfer of the domain and contents before payment had been made. They prey on people who are new to website selling and it’s just another annoyance and time-wasting activity on Flippa.

Advantages of Empire Flippers over Flippa

• The curated marketplace means the websites being listed are much less likely to be scammy or low-quality
• Empire Flippers act as a middleman so that you don’t have to communicate directly with the buyer
• They only focus on profitable websites for sale, no starter sites

Disadvantages of Empire Flippers over Flippa

• To even get the URL of the website you need to pay a 5% deposit
• The sites are more expensive because they look for around $1k a month in earnings before you can list
• As a buyer, they tend to sell websites for a higher multiple than you could get on Flippa (or in a private deal)

Advantages of FE International over Flippa

• The listings are generally better than Flippa (although I have seen a lot of exceptions)
• They create and provide a very thorough prospectus to give buyers all of the relevant information they need on a website
• They handle all communication with the buyer on behalf of the seller

Disadvantages of FE International over Flippa

• It’s very rare to see a website selling for less than $30,000
• Their success/broker fee is higher (but you get white-glove service for this so for many sellers it’s not a disadvantage)
• A lot of the listings are businesses and not “passive” income websites (which means many of the sites don’t actually have that much organic search traffic)

Advantages of Exchange Marketplace over Flippa

• It’s built by Shopify and sells Shopify websites, so all traffic and revenue is verified
• They offer the best e-commerce websites for sale
• You have to pay to use the Shopify platform, which means sellers are generally not scammers

Disadvantages of Exchange Marketplace over Flippa

• Not really a disadvantage as Flippa does this too, but you do have to communicate directly with the seller on Exchange Marketplace
• It’s only for e-commerce Shopify websites, which limits your options as a buyer to just one type of site
• Exchange Marketplace is not transparent about what its sale fee is. In fact, you have to actually list the site for sale before they even give it to you.

• Investors Club is run by Andrej from Alpha Investors, a well-known guy in the industry. With IC, buyers pay a subscription to get access to the listings, and sellers pay nothing. I love the idea and in my limited experience, the sites have been much higher quality than I’ve seen from FE.
• MicroAcquire is a new kid on the block with a really nicely designed platform that is completely free. There are some really interesting listings on there, including some which have received funding from investors, and it has a lot of potential. The one downside of free is that you get “pre-revenue” listings which just makes it harder to find decent sites for sale.
• Quiet Light is a well-known brokerage catering to larger sales of 6 figures upwards. Their NDA system never seems to be work properly and they don’t seem to reply to emails when you ask, but they do list high-quality sites.
• Dealflow Brokerage is a team of experienced merger and acquisition advisors who have a powerful network of investors and entrepreneurs. From what I have seen from Dealflow, they list very high-quality internet businesses for sale and the multiples seem reasonable (but a little on the high side as all broker sites are). If you have a bigger budget into six figures or more, they are one to keep an eye on for unique listings you won’t see elsewhere.
• Sideprojectors are typically hobby projects that are not earning as much as established websites and don’t have as much organic traffic, and they tend to be tech/developer-based projects or SaaS apps.
• IndieMaker was previously 1kprojects-another side project that lets you buy and sell side projects. This one specifically was aiming at projects for selling projects for less than $1,000. The vast majority are from makers who have never made a profit on their project (and want to sell with inflated prices) but it’s worth keeping an eye on for the odd deal.

• Borderline is a place to sell or barter your side project to find a new owner. It’s mostly focused on web apps and developer-heavy projects but it’s completely free and just connects the buyer and seller to figure it out between them. Submissions have slowed to a crawl and most aren’t worth buying.
• Originally the Opportunity Overload email newsletter was started by the guys behind Need/Want, the company that created the Peel iPhone case and other physical products. I haven’t had a new email in a long time. It’s dead.
• Transferslot started as a side project to sell side projects – how meta! It was once a good place to find potential starter projects to build upon and grow but has been somewhat abandoned. FE International bought this site and did nothing with it. Another one bites the dust.