flip.uk - .UK Domain Auctions and Marketplace

seemly said:

In the world of scripting, when a platform marks an auction as finished and there is a winning bidder, that is considered a sale

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My commitments where about the reported sales, not the accuracy of your data. The auctions closed with the reported sale prices, but it looks like 1 if not 2 did not complete, and 2 wanted to be hidden.

super-whois said:

My commitments where about the reported sales, not the accuracy of your data. The auctions closed with the reported sale prices, but it looks like 1 if not 2 did not complete, and 2 wanted to be hidden.

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The 2 sales wanting to remain private; This is a service Domainlore cannot provide.

Incomplete sales: This could highlight the kind of PR flip could implement. There are a handful of reports out there on the "sale" of gay.uk, where the sale doesn't even need to complete in order to get the advertisement.

Just to mention @seemly, your site is very good and I hope you can find a way to continue to add to it, may be bring other TLDs and hopefully find a way to monitise it more.

You probably heard of Namebio, may be this will give you more ideas.

Well done.

signature said:

Just to mention @seemly, your site is very good and I hope you can find a way to continue to add to it, may be bring other TLDs and hopefully find a way to monitise it more.

You probably heard of Namebio, may be this will give you more ideas.

Well done.

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Thanks very much for the kind words!

I will definitely be adding to it, but it will always remain restricted to .uk domains only.

Redevelopment is currently in progress, but I have no estimated date of launch as of yet.

DL seems to me a more industry domain auction platform whilst Flip.uk out of the gate seems more expansive and more obvious potential to go mainstream. DL your domain has to be deemed worth at least £50. Flip.uk it has to be worth £1 and with what gets registered in this country that shouldn't be assumed to be as easy a hurdle to get past as it appears on paper.

With that £1 starting bid feature anyone can have a go at domaining [Students, Grandma etc] at no obvious financial risk which I'm pretty sure is a first in the industry. It's free which is consistent with what the public expects from online platforms or every least a base level free usage.

I've already missed out on a couple that started at that price by simply not getting fully to grips with the plethora of features.

With DL you have no free control over how you set up the Auction and that has its merits and with Flip again there are so many options it feels a lot like domaining to me. You have to have a bit of think or you can just whack one on at £1 and see what happens.

Then there's the domain Flip.uk itself which, and not to get ahead of the owner's intentions, seems open to vertical and lateral scaleability so who knows where it's going especially in this economy.

It's a struggle to think of many industries where a monopoly is a desirable outcome. There's room for both. To me they are aren't the same thing. One doesn't have to be better than the other, they are both better off being different. None of the Domaining platforms I personally use are identical and that's a compliment to their owners. They are smart enough to give you a reason to use their service, something, some aspect you can't get elsewhere and there's still a few gaps left and I'm after one of those myself.


The timing couldn't have been more perfect now RoR is over, all but the final whistle. Was worried about things going a bit flat but turns out that's not the case at all. Now there are two front-facing UK domaining Auctions to keep an eye on and I personally never get tired of looking at or for domain names. Onwards and upwards.

There are many types of domainers. There's not much rocket science to 'only' dealing with premium domain names that are so obvious in value as to need no introduction. Thought the whole point of entrepreneurship is to see value where others don't then deliver it.

The world's most valuable websites were all built on domain names deemed worthless at the time the site went up suggesting rather heavily a domain name isn't the entire story. What made these domains important is they inspired the developer to stay the course and that can be any domain name as we are all different.

If your sole purpose in domaining is to flip domains for huge profits you are never going to be on the same page with folks who want to develop websites. £1 starting bids help the latter type whom without the former type wouldn't have a market.

Entrepreneurs do what they want. They make money, any way. If it’s a little or a lot. It all adds up.

People register tens of thousands of cheap domains on a daily basis with no intent develop to seeking 'win the lottery'. It's not as if a £1 auction for some of them is the cause. The tail doesn't wag the dog.

People spend endless hours sifting through domains anyway so a few extra minutes flicking through today's listings isn't going to make much difference.

Then there's the fact you don't have to participate. Free Will etc. Alot of people will enjoy buying £1 domain names. Their interest can grow from there until one day with a fair wind they are as elite as you appear to be.

Ben Thomas said:

Entrepreneurs do what they want. They make money, any way. If it’s a little or a lot. It all adds up.

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This. ^^^^

You gotta enjoy what you do regardless of whether you are any good at it. Best way to get better.

Trauiner said:

I would say the £1 starting bid feature has more cons than pros.

The biggest one is that it just fills the marketplace with rubbish domains. If a domain can't achieve £50, let's be real for a minute... the domain is pretty much worthless and not worth buying. (Exceptions are there of course.)

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Those people can use the price filter, and maybe save that URL as a bookmark.

I think it could be a fun case study to do something here along the lines of the one red paperclip to traded up to a house, flipping domains starting from £1 up to a target value.

Trauiner said:

The only issue I have with it so far, and it's a big issue for me, is that 99.9% of the domains there are pure and utter garbage.

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There are currently 111 domains at auction, are you saying that 110.889 are pure and utter garbage?

To add my penny worth, I don't think this is the time to compare Flip to Domainlore, Flip is like a new born baby, crawling and learning to walk, the time for Flip will come when it will be running and become a full grown adult like Domainlore.

We need to give Flip the time to mature, the owner will learn from our comments and from experience of running the site and hopefully fine tune the platform, improve the confidence of the platform as it grows.

Domainlore charges £5 if your domain did not sell, this is to discourage dumping of domain names of little value and a lot of us here have bought and sold domains worth thousands on Domainlore without paying a single penny. Now that Domainlore has prove it's worth, the site now charges 5% for Sport light and still free to listings on Hidden gems. Meaning a lot of domains are still sold with no cost to the seller and buyer.

My wish is for both platform to be successful and I hope the day will come when Flip will have proved its worth and users will start paying for using the platform because the owner needs to be rewarded and encourage to continue to develop the platform.

I'm selling a lot

super-whois said:

There are currently 111 domains at auction, are you saying that 110.889 are pure and utter garbage?

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Yes.

There's crap on DL but it's just slightly better quality crap and this crap has a pre filter which is basically the 'hidden gems' section. If a domain makes it out of there then fair enough. Essentially Flip is like viewing an extension of the hidden gems section of DL. Also its annoying that anything remotely worth bidding (the 1%) people have stuck a reserve on you don't get that on DL. I know some people will dislike this post but if you compare the two sites with whats on auction now its obvious. Now that's not to say Flip won't get some great sales in the future, but there's not point in sugar coating the fact I'd much rather pay a small "service fee" if my domains fetch a much higher overall price.

JMI said:

I'd much rather pay a small "service fee" if my domains fetch a much higher overall price.

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And isn't it lovely you have that choice, and it provides you the ability to express your opinion in such a derogatory and negative tone.

@lazarus - I've just noticed a user has been able to bid on a flip domain 3 times without being outbid by another party, Is this allowed to happen by default?

Hay said:

Is this allowed to happen by default?

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Maybe something to do with the reserve not met?

Hay said:

@lazarus - I've just noticed a user has been able to bid on a flip domain 3 times without being outbid by another party, Is this allowed to happen by default?

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I presume this is because there is a reserve price so the bidder is trying to reach the reserve?

Hmm yeah, i guess, can this only happen if there is a reserve though? Has someone tested it?

Hay said:

Hmm yeah, i guess, can this only happen if there is a reserve though? Has someone tested it?

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Hiya @Hay Yep, the reserve has not been met.

Once the reserve has been met or if the auction has no reserve, the bidder can still increase their maximum bid.
This would be their proxy bid. It wouldn't be shown as a bid until someone else invokes their proxy bid.

Cheers, Colin

@lazarus ahh right, to be honest, i didn't see the reserve until the others pointed it out, ive not used flip yet and see that domain in the widget on acorn.. when i clicked the domain it took me to the auction page and i see the same bidder 3 times so i was like "im sure that isnt right lol"