The Coolest Flippa Auction Ever?
A recent auction on Flippa broke all records, with 330 bids in just half a day! It’s a neat new site with a unique service – it sends glitter to the people you hate (or like?) the most. In an avalanche of viral effects and incredible publicity, the site had over 2.5 million visitors and $20k AUD in sales in just 4 days. The profit is 60-80% of this, according to the owner.
However it will likely require some outsourcing to ship this amount of orders, and the costs might increase. So it’s not surprising ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com is not taking any more orders currently due to the inability to fulfill them: “Please stop buying this horrible glitter product — I’m sick of dealing with it. Sincerely, Mat,”, his other quotes included: “I apparently have too much free time on my hands because now my plans for the next few weeks consist of sending stupid fucking glitter to terrible people,”
The site was picked up by many top online publications and even got prime time TV mentions. You can’t buy this type of publicity. And it’s an interesting service, I even wouldn’t mind sending a “glitter bomb” to some people I know as well. Glitter gets everywhere and it’s hard to get rid of. It’s funny, disturbing and amazing at the same time, but just like with this site, the novelty wears off quickly.
And now, correctly assuming that his 5 min of fame will run out pretty soon, the owner, a 22-year-old experienced entrepreneur from Australia, Mat Carpenter, decided to cash it in!
It may look like a one time shot, but this success is no surprise, as Matt has been building sites for a while and had quite a few interesting ideas aiming at the viral effect. His other idea, a site with penises in unexpected places didn’t quite catch on. Mat also has a blog and an ebook where he describes his method and his other internet marketing adventures.
While I admire the owner and the unique idea, I’m 99% sure it’s going to be a very bad deal for the buyer. The price will be quite high (it’s already at over $60K), the novelty will wear off quickly and the publicity will drop. Within weeks, or even less, sales will start to drop dramatically. And, at the same time, there will be thousands of copycats, undercutting each other in prices, along with more popular and established sites offering a similar service to completely kill the “business”..
Another very likely issue is the auction winner will realize what he’s done, and not go through with the purchase once it’s over. So it’ll go over the second bidder.. and then the third .. as it usually happens in such auctions, where people make important decisions (like dropping over $50K-$100k on a 1-week old website) in a rush of the moment following the popular trend.
The auction has a few more days to go, so it’s the best time to make a prediction, what do you think it will sell for and what will happen next?
Does flippa ban non-paying bidders?
Usually, but not always. It’s quite easy to register a new account though.
Flippa gave him “super seller” status reserved for those who meet a whole range of conditions, none of which he actually meets.
When challenged, they removed the superseller status. About $60K too late. There are a few conspiracy theories around covering what Flippa is playing at … but I won’t go into those.
There’s something very fishy in the bidding as well. My prediction is that the highest bidder won’t complete. Nor will the next or the next.
But you won’t hear about any of that. Eventually the listing will show that the site sold (not to whom or for how much).
@Clinton,
interesting about the superseller status. I noticed it at first and found it surprising, I see he has a “verified” status now, which makes a lot more sense.
Would be interesting to see how this turns out and if the sale goes through.
@Clinton, Sorry you feel that way. The site sold legitimately to one of our most active websites buyers.
@Kevin, thanks for the update, if you guys did a follow up on the site with the new owner to see where it is currently and if it’s profitable that’d be quite interesting!