How Flippa.com Was Started – The Startup Story Of Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle


There are hundreds of millions of sites on the Internet today. Some of these web assets are something like online real estate – they generate passive revenue (rent) for their owners, and others are big online businesses making millions of dollars. It’s completely natural for these properties to be traded and this need has been growing fast for the last few years. This is what a group of entrepreneurs took advantage of and this was the idea behind the number one site marketplace – Flippa.com.

What Is Flippa?

Flippa is simply a website marketplace, where buyers and sellers of online properties from all around the world meet and make deals. Over the years, the site has become the largest, the most visited, and the most preferred place for buying and selling websites. If you are a buyer, it doesn’t matter what your budget is, there you can find offers starting from $100 and reaching millions of dollars. If you are a seller, this would be the best place to trade-off. Why? Simply because every minute there are more than 2 500 people online looking for a deal. The registered users are over 200 000 and in 2011, around 25 000 sites were sold on Flippa for a total amount of $31 000 000.



How and when the site was founded

Flippa.com

Everything started back in 2005, when the idea for an online marketplace was born and the sitepoint.com market was founded by Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle, in 1999. It was a place, where people could buy and sell all kinds of Internet-related stuff – apps, sites, services, and whatever else you could imagine. Over the years, the number of website deals increased dramatically. This was a totally new niche. There were zounds of websites and no specialized market for them. The founders spotted the trend and these types of offers were spun out as a separate business. This was how in 2009, Flippa.com was born. Since then, its popularity has grown dramatically. The same happened with the number of deals and their value. In 2010, the popular book directory – ReadPrint.com was sold on Flippa for a not disclosed 6-figure sum. Some other big deals followed the same year. Other popular deals are the sale of facesmash.com by Mark Zuckerberg and the amazing site sending glitter online that was sold for $85 000.

About Flippa Today

Today, the site auction is still the ultimate leader in its field. Since its official foundation in 2009, the value of all of the deals there has reached nearly $73 000 000 and counting…  More and bigger Internet companies use Flippa to sell their sites or entire businesses. For example, fitness.com – the largest international fitness website in the world is currently listed there for $4 million, which is a decent deal. Sitepoint is also responsible for some other innovative online businesses, like:

http://99designs.com/ – a crowdsourcing design site, where more than 22000 designers compete for projects there.
https://learnable.com/ – a site for online learning for web developers
http://sitepointmarket.com/ – the web stuff marketplace

These businesses have turned Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle into some of the youngest and most successful young entrepreneurs in the world.

Flippa.com Today

Today, Flippa is one of the largest online marketplaces for buying and selling digital businesses, domain names, and websites.

The Flippa platform offers users a range of options when it comes to buying or selling their business. Buyers can search through hundreds of thousands of listings at various price points, while sellers can list their websites with customizable packages that include pricing tiers and a range of services such as marketing assistance and post-sale support. Transactions are handled through Escrow, with buyers able to pay securely via credit card or PayPal.

For buyers, one of the key benefits offered by Flippa is access to exclusive deals from some of the world’s top websites – such as eBay stores, Amazon web stores, and Google AdSense accounts – that are not available on any other platform. In addition, Flippa offers buyers the ability to research potential investments with detailed analytics reports before making their purchase decision – including earnings history, SEO stats, and traffic data – which helps them make an informed decision about whether it’s worth investing in the business in question.

For sellers looking to find potential buyers for their website quickly, Flippa’s straightforward listing process means they can get their business up and running quickly without having to go through lengthy registration processes found on other platforms; while advanced marketing options give them greater control over how they promote their listing across multiple channels (such as paid ads on search engines like Google). In addition, personalized customer service ensures that users get immediate help whenever they need it during the sales process should any issue arise along the way.

All these features make Flippa an attractive option both for those who are just getting started in online entrepreneurship as well as experienced sellers looking for a reliable platform from which to list their website or digital business for sale; allowing them access not just to potential customers but also comprehensive tools needed for success in this ever-changing marketplace.

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