I Accidentally Screwed This Guy Over - What Would You Do?

[coopthadaawg]

Hi guys, I just wanted to share with you something that happened to me, and hopefully find out how I can avoid it in the future.

About 2 weeks ago I sold my blog for $3k on flippa, naturally I was ecstatic and the whole escrow process went smoothly, and within 5 days I had $2,951 in my bank.

Now keep in mind this was a site ranking on page 1 for about 6 different keywords, and on page 2-3 for 15 more, and had been pulling in around $400 a month.

A couple days after I sold the website, I got an email from the guy saying that the website had not made any sales, and that out of curiosity he had checked the rankings for the website - only to find out ALL of the first page and most of the second page rankings were gone.

I checked to confirm this, and it is true, all of the rankings basically vanished overnight.

This was the first website I've ever made so I had no idea that during the whole domain transfer process, any down time can erase rankings, which is obviously what happened.

I feel like a complete a$$hole about it, as I am sure this guy feels like I robbed him, any ideas?

Thanks

[Ken Strong]

...... give him his money back and take back the site?

[yourreviewer]

Though I wouldn't be able to help you in any way since I am not a SEO expert, I can say that it is heart warming to know you care about your buyer even after the transaction is complete. I would consider taking back the site and giving his money back.

[grannywriteswell]

Is it possible that when you transferred the files, that might have screwed up the ranking? Or this could be an example of the Google dance so many people talk about on here - i.e. the rankings will probably be back up again in a week or so?

Just two things I could think of
Ellen

[BeachDude]

My guess is that he changed the Whois/nameserver info and this dropped the rankings. Give it 2 weeks and see if this is still the case. I am betting it wont be.

[garyv]

Originally Posted by Ken Strong

...... give him his money back and take back the site?

I think the question was how to avoid it in the future. Which is something I'd like to know as well. Is there a seamless transfer process that prevents your site from losing it's ranking?

[HiAbby]

Originally Posted by Ken Strong

...... give him his money back and take back the site?

I agree... If you really feel bad about it and want to make it right, that's the only thing there is to do. Be honest, take responsibility for your mistake and give him his money back in exchange for your site.

The only other option is for you to both learn from the mistake and move on, only the other guy gets stuck with the bill.

Think of it this way:

It's much worse for someone to pay that much money for nothing, than for you to simply not make the sale.

I would totally feel robbed if that happened to me.

All that aside, I'm really sorry that happened to you! That totally sucks!

[Opportunex]

The new owner should immediately enable whois privacy on taking over the site.

[coopthadaawg]

Yeah refunding is what I thought of immediately and would be the right thing to do, except for 2 things -

First off, 2 days after I got the money I bought a car on craigslist, so I don't even have $3k anymore.

And second, after he sent that email I never heard back from him, and he never asked for his money back.

Anyway I'm getting ready to sell my second site on flippa, and its the same thing, lots of rankings on page 1-2 and I just RLY want to make sure this doesn't happen again, and I'm not even sure what I did wrong.

[James Foster]

Did you guarantee the site would still be at those rankings after the sale?

I view this transaction like I'd view the sale of a used car... yes, you sold it with the best intentions that it will preform well (you didn't knowingly try to rip him off)... but the car is still "as is" - if something goes wrong with it a day, week, or year after the sale - it's not really your fault. You don't know what the new owner did with it after the fact and I don't think you should be responsible for it.

[garyv]

I'd be willing to bet that all is well in a few days. Because all backlinks should still be in place. The only other thing that might cause a permanent shift, is if he put the domain onto an already blacklisted ip address. If he put the domain onto a shared host w/ other domains that may have hurt it, then it would be his fault.

But otherwise, people that buy websites know the risk. If he himself verified that your site was ranking where you said it was, then there's not much else you can do. It's not like you can fake a google search ranking that I'm aware of.

[laurencengirard]

Originally Posted by coopthadaawg

Hi guys, I just wanted to share with you something that happened to me, and hopefully find out how I can avoid it in the future.

About 2 weeks ago I sold my blog for $3k on flippa, naturally I was ecstatic and the whole escrow process went smoothly, and within 5 days I had $2,951 in my bank.

Now keep in mind this was a site ranking on page 1 for about 6 different keywords, and on page 2-3 for 15 more, and had been pulling in around $400 a month.

A couple days after I sold the website, I got an email from the guy saying that the website had not made any sales, and that out of curiosity he had checked the rankings for the website - only to find out ALL of the first page and most of the second page rankings were gone.

I checked to confirm this, and it is true, all of the rankings basically vanished overnight.

This was the first website I've ever made so I had no idea that during the whole domain transfer process, any down time can erase rankings, which is obviously what happened.

I feel like a complete a$ about it, as I am sure this guy feels like I robbed him, any ideas?

Thanks

undo the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

[Floyd Fisher]

Find out why it happened....and fix it.

Even if it's his fault, I would do this as a freebie one time.

If you can't fix it, and it turns out it's not his fault, then and only then do you reverse the transaction (and you had better reverse it or your name will be mud on flippa).

Simple enough?

[VictorBlack]

Originally Posted by coopthadaawg

Yeah refunding is what I thought of immediately and would be the right thing to do, except for 2 things -

First off, 2 days after I got the money I bought a car on craigslist, so I don't even have $3k anymore.

And second, after he sent that email I never heard back from him, and he never asked for his money back.

Anyway I'm getting ready to sell my second site on flippa, and its the same thing, lots of rankings on page 1-2 and I just RLY want to make sure this doesn't happen again, and I'm not even sure what I did wrong.

Explain you don't have the money but you will get it.
Find out what you did wrong, create the definitive WSO on selling blogs/sites.
Give him the first $3K in profit.
Tell everyone what you are doing, and why you are doing it, in the sales page and in the eBook or whatever.

Learn, make money from your new knowledge, do what you know in your heart is right, and build a reputation of honesty and integrity all at the same time so that you make even more money in the future.


Get in touch with him with the same relentless tenacity you would have if you were going to be the one to get the $3K from him.

[garyv]

By the way a similar thing happened to me, but it was with a site I was promoting via adwords. After I sold the site, the auction itself caused a lot of competition to pop up in the same niche, and there was then a battle for the adwords. This caused profits for the site to plummet. But that's part of the risk you take when buying a website. You don't know what the future brings.

[Richard Van]

Originally Posted by garyv

I'd be willing to bet that all is well in a few days. Because all backlinks should still be in place. The only other thing that might cause a permanent shift, is if he put the domain onto an already blacklisted ip address. If he put the domain onto a shared host w/ other domains that may have hurt it, then it would be his fault.

But otherwise, people that buy websites know the risk. If he himself verified that your site was ranking where you said it was, then there's not much else you can do. It's not like you can fake a google search ranking that I'm aware of.

So why did the site make $400 a month and rank well one minute but not once it'd been sold?

No ones answered that yet and I for the life of me, have no idea why the owner of the site can possibly affect the sites earnings and rankings.

A lot of prices on Flippa are based on what the site can earn. I can't understand why selling a site will affect earnings or rankings.

EDIT. This isn't directed at you Gary and the above post explains one angle. The OP made it pretty clear though the traffic was organic, do you know why this could have changed? I just can't figure it out. Other than the algo change of course.

[PaulMark]

I'd try to get the site back up to standard then offer to build him another site in his market for additional ranking and business.

[Kristen Osborn]

I agree with the guys who said to wait a little while to see if the ranking comes back. And just because the guy hasn't contacted you, if it were me, I would contact him to let him know that you're still concerned but that you feel things should resolve in a week or two.

That being said, I'd also like to know how to avoid this as I've been thinking about selling a couple of my sites (although mine are newer and are not ranked nearly as high), but it'd be nice to know for future reference.

[JackPowers]

Originally Posted by garyv

I'd be willing to bet that all is well in a few days. Because all backlinks should still be in place. The only other thing that might cause a permanent shift, is if he put the domain onto an already blacklisted ip address. If he put the domain onto a shared host w/ other domains that may have hurt it, then it would be his fault.

But otherwise, people that buy websites know the risk. If he himself verified that your site was ranking where you said it was, then there's not much else you can do. It's not like you can fake a google search ranking that I'm aware of.

This, and it's not even sure that the drop is because of transfer. There's been algo changes and whatnot.

That being said, I would probably offer a month money back guarantee for any substantial sales price.

[GlobalTrader]

Originally Posted by BeachDude

My guess is that he changed the Whois/nameserver info and this dropped the rankings. Give it 2 weeks and see if this is still the case. I am betting it wont be.

I agree with BeachDude but you may tell the buyer that if it does not by the end of two weeks that you will refund his money back after he relinquishes the site back to you.

It may have just taken a bit of time for his nameserver's to change over and that might have been the time the Big G came calling and did not find the site?

[Adrian Williams]

Hi Coopthadaawg,

Seeing as you asked...

I think you've taught us all a lesson not to be overzealous with a windfall, don't want to get on my high horse but I think you're right in guessing that he will feel like you robbed him.

I'm sure you had no intention of ripping the guy off and your gut is telling you to correct the situation otherwise there's no way you would have made this post.

Besides the cash there are times when things like reputation and your conscience are more important.

Still there's more than one way to remedy the situation even if finding the cash right now isn't an option, the customer may be happy if you put a plan together and help him improve the ranking significantly.

You obviously know what you're doing based on your results, there has to be a bunch of ways to get the site in a decent position again.

P.S In this situation it is worth investigating whether the customer is at fault.

[markowe]

Originally Posted by coopthadaawg

Yeah refunding is what I thought of immediately and would be the right thing to do, except for 2 things -

First off, 2 days after I got the money I bought a car on craigslist, so I don't even have $3k anymore.

Not to preach, I don't know your business situation, but just want to say there's a lesson there about cash flow and about treating your IM business LIKE a business. Every business has to have cash in the bank to deal with any reasonable eventuality, ESPECIALLY refunds. Keep your IM 'wallet' separate from your personal funds, pay yourself a reasonable wage from your IM earnings, but don't just go and blow your windfalls - there'll be rainy days too...

[John Williamson]

Guys, this is probably just the G Dance or the site may have gotten slapped temporarily. I'm sure it's not a big deal, the rankings will be back. They don't just 'vanish' forever unless your site gets de-indexed, so as long as it's still indexed you should be fine. This happens to my sites all the time.

[yukon]

I can't believe the comments to give back the money so fast!

If you bought an offline businees from a guy that had steady traffic, & the new owner isn't getting traffic, would you ask for your money back?

You might, but I doubt it would happen.

Do like already said, wait to see what happens in the next month, which you still don't have a clue what the new owner is doing with the site. It might be his first site, & not have a clue that he is blocking the SERPs. Might sound funny but I've seen it happen multiple times on this very forum.

[paulgl]

Google could care less about whois info. Huge myth about how google
has a man behind the curtain.

No way would I ever buy a site, and switch servers! Why not just take
over the hosting payments? That's crazy to transfer a site over to
another server. But changing to a decent server would be moot
anyway. However, no transfer of any site that uses mysql, php, asp, other
databases, etc. can be guaranteed to go 100% correctly. Not all
servers treat these things the exact same way. They should,
but new (or old) servers may not be compatible to all files. But even
if it screwed it up, google would probably not show this in SERPs for some time.

Yukon nailed it. Why on earth would you give money back? There are
no guarantees. You hid nothing. 3K may be a fair price, no matter what.

I mean come on! No sales? Was he expecting solid gold in a day? That's
crazy. 3K is an investment over years of potential, not days.

Who's to say what the buyer screwed up?

Paul

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Clearly neither party understands what happens when websites change ownership.

[DiagnosticDDT]

It's Google dance for sure. I was only page 1 until i changed hosting then i was on page 7 in the same day. 2 days later i went back to page 1. Give it time.

[ryanjm]

I don't see how this is your problem/fault at all. For one thing (and I'm not sure why this isn't discussed much here except that the forum might be filled with noobs and/or people with only 1-2 sites), it's a well known fact that google changed something in their algo a few days ago which resulted in lower rankings for a huge number of new'ish sites that had aggressive link-building on-going. So it might not have had anything to do with transferring the domain or anything like that.

Unless you sold the site with a rankings guarantee, I don't get why this is an issue. There's a risk involved with buying a website that makes sales based solely off of it's organic traffic. If there was no risk, then everybody and their brother would be rushing to buy up all of these sites which give you a 20+% return on your money in 1 year and pure profits every year after.

[TBInternetMarketing]

Sell the car and make it right mate. It's the right thing to do.

Unfortunately the IM industry has a bad rep already for scams etc. Of course I'm not accusing you of that, but the guy that's just paid $3,000 may not agree.

There aren't many of us out there who actually play by the IM rules. What I love about this forum is that I'd like to think the majority of users on it are honest and treat IM like a real business.

It's the other millions who aren't part of this site that are the problem.
You have an opportunity to do something really good here...don't pass it up.

[sijugk]

If I am in your situation I will mail him back with a quote to wait for one or two week whether the site will regain its lost ranking or not. If it it couldn't, I will pay him back.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by TBInternetMarketing

There aren't many of us out there who actually play by the IM rules. What I love about this forum is that I'd like to think the majority of users on it are honest and treat IM like a real business.

It's the other millions who aren't part of this site that are the problem.
You have an opportunity to do something really good here...don't pass it up.

If you wish to be treated as a "real" business, then why refund the money? Seems
to me refunding the money is not something a real business would do. Do
IMers feel the need to refund because people think they scam? Then you prove the
point by refunding.

If I bought an offline business, and failed to make money, would I be getting
my money back?

I buy someone's profitable restaurant. I don't make money. Do I get a refund?

I'm not buying a pair if shoes or a car. I'm buying a business. Unless guaranteed
profits were stated in the listing or buyer agreement.

Paul

[Billy Rey]

no refunds

it was his fault for not knowing the process.

This does happen especially if the transfer took a long time to finish (along with not protecting the site's public details)

Also, it could be the recent algo change a couple days ago.

[arttse]

Its possible google crawled the site during the transfer process and could not locate the site - hence deindexed it temporarily.

Give it a couple of weeks and the ranking will return.

[Steve Crooks]

If you have a clear conscience then there is absolutely no way you should feel guilty about the transaction. It is a classic case of buyer beware and there is no way you should feel bad about it.

If I bought a second hand car and a day after I bought it the gearbox fell out, that is just my hard luck. Unless of course I bought a warranty with this car. Did you offer any guarantees on rankings or earnings? If so, then that is the only scenario whereby you should offer some sort of compensation.

[smwordsmith]

Kudos to you for wanting to do the right thing!

You can't solve a problem until you know what the problem is. You definitely want to find out what went wrong, since you are preparing to sell your second site.

You said you haven't heard from him again. Take the initiative and contact the buyer to see how it's going now for him. That is simple 'customer courtesy'.

If he is willing to work with you, get a complete history of what you/he did re: to the website from the time he bought it up to the time it lost its rankings. That should help you to ID the problem.

Once you ID the problem, work with the buyer on correcting the situation. You both will learn lots and you will be able to prevent this from happening in the future, either by giving transfer instructions to your buyers or setting things up on your end to ensure 'loss prevention'.

It's refreshing to see there are people like you with integrity! You will go far.

[prateekkole]

I have a question. If the website's hosting server is changed, will information such as back links and rankings be reset?

[Steve Crooks]

Absolutely not.. The URL remains the same, the backlinks still exist.. Nothing has changed in that respect.

Originally Posted by prateekkole

I have a question. If the website's hosting server is changed, will information such as back links and rankings be reset?

[TBInternetMarketing]

Originally Posted by paulgl

If you wish to be treated as a "real" business, then why refund the money? Seems
to me refunding the money is not something a real business would do. Do
IMers feel the need to refund because people think they scam? Then you prove the
point by refunding.

If I bought an offline business, and failed to make money, would I be getting
my money back?

I buy someone's profitable restaurant. I don't make money. Do I get a refund?

I'm not buying a pair if shoes or a car. I'm buying a business. Unless guaranteed
profits were stated in the listing or buyer agreement.

Paul

Gotta say I disagree with you Paul.
It's up to each person in the end, but if you ask me it's not the way to do it.

[aidanjb1]

I'd take the ethical approach and give his money back...maybe you can negotiate to give half his money back since it may not have directly been your fault the site lost rankings...

All depends on if anyone is at fault or if it was just an accident. Thats how I'd look at it anyway.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by TBInternetMarketing

Gotta say I disagree with you Paul.
It's up to each person in the end, but if you ask me it's not the way to do it.

Point taken. I'm not making judgments on refunds, I'm making the
observation that we have enough trouble keeping internet stuff on the
up and up and if we give refunds for things that a normal offline business
would not do, then we are saying that there is something different about
an online business. Risk-wise that is. An online business is a real business
and should be treated as such.

Remember, that $3,000 was for what I imagine was a boat-load of work
on a site. A well-established site is certainly worth a couple of grand.

Paul

[Dano1981]

I see both sides of the argument

DO NOT let the purchase of your vehicle be the basis of your decision.
They are two separate things, and should be addressed as such. If you need to sell the vehicle, then by all means do so. Imagine if you bought something (now I know this isn't a department store with a guarantee, but consider the point nonetheless) from a store, the product didn't work, and you asked for your $$$ back, but they said "sorry we already spent the money" .... so don't play that card, it's wrong if in fact it plays into your decision...

Look at it this way, if the drop in sales would've happened anyway, even without the site being sold, then you would have a site with little value, and it really wouldn't be worth the 3k ???? ....

Consider emailing Google and asking them to address the issue and explain the circumstances. I know they respond top questions. They should under the circumstances be able to provide some reason( I assume. I don't know if that "pushes" into their "secrecy")

You at least owe him the detective work. If you don't the karma could come back to haunt you and you don't want to be "daydreaming" and broadside another vehicle (who knows?) the subconscious can do weird things....

Try to find out "if anything" what he may have done on his end, in case it was something he did.

Go with your gut instinct, if it happened to you, what would you hope the seller would be willing to do?

and remember "put yourself in his shoes" for 3k, you owe it to him
his money didn't "melt" the day after he sent it to you did it?

and best to you..... try to think creatively out of the box

AND LASTLY and perhaps most difficult for you and him, give google-insky time, it may be a dance in the change of the guard, this should give you time to determine if it will come back up in the rankings, AND search GOOGLE on similar problems with other seller/transactions to see if they shed any light on the situation (I'm sure you already have)

Dano~

[larryphoto]

Fantastic discussion! Gotta do what you think is right - but good for you that we are even discussing it.

[hotftuna]

This could just be a temporary situation. Google likely can tell that the sites has moved. Rank may return in a day or two. Check to see if the inside pages url's are the same or if they were changed in the move.

I personally like to host with a dedicated IP. If you were hosting on a fast server, or with a dedicated IP, and the new host is either slow or not on a dedicated IP, then Google may be re-evaluating where it should rank.

Before I offered to take it back, check that it is hosted on a quality server and all page url's are the same. Check if there has been any change in internal navigation links. Find out if the new owner did any spammy link work.

[sean-john]

I believe this is only temporary and its just a google dance.
but if you want you can help him rank back for those sites.

[Oranges]

If it happened because of down time, it will be back soon for sure.

[GeorgR.]

Yes,

rankings can come and go, this is why i would careful BUYING a site based on such claims (including income claims) *as well* as selling a site giving a guarantee in regards to income/rankings/traffic.

If i were to sell a site i would tell the potential buyer that, nothing speaks against showing him data of recent months earnings and rankings. But how would you be able to guarantee this in the future, especially if the owner changes?

Sites often need maintenance, constant link building and SEO. Sometimes Google does unexpected stuff, your 1000s of backlinks can vanish, so your rankings and traffic.

Problem here that a new site owner might NOT do all of this, he doesnt care for SEO..he thinks he buys a site and the site will continue with the same revenue on its own just by magic.

And as a seller i would NOT want the responsibility about WHAT the new site owner will (or will not) do with the site, resulting in whatever change in rankings.

I would make that VERY clear to the new owner that there cannot be such a guarantee, EVER.

[Mike Grant]

It'll come back, no worries.

[Jeremy Barker]

This is just a bad situation. I have made decisions before earlier in my current career and others and found out later that the decisions were not the best to make. I did not know that at the time so was not at fault I did not believe.

But when you really think about it (even though this is not your fault per say) the morale and ethical thing to do would be to give the money back and take the site back.

If you were making $400 a day, you can do it again.

Good Luck.

[Kay King]

The site was earning $400 a month - and he had no income after "a couple days".

Time - it takes time. If the site was down for a while it needs time to come back but assuming it was moved to new hosting correctly, the links, etc are still in place and the bots will find it.

$400 a month doesn't mean $13/day - it may all come in the second part of the month. If the person did not ask for a refund, that shouldn't be on the table.

I'd say there's a good chance the buyer asked elsewhere about this and was told a couple days is not enough to form an opinion and told the site would likely come back in rank as well.

If I wanted to help I'd do some free link building for the person to help him move the site back into place - offering to help would be a nice gesture. However, first I'd give the site time to recover.

kay

[pons_saravanan]

So i assume you have not just sold the domain,but entire website/blog with files and database backups. There are several factors that can affect the ranking after a
server change. You may check the following before deciding to plan for a refund

1) the new server does not have any history in google ban.

2) your site structure remains same as you had in your old server in the new setup.
You can ensure that by cross verifying with the old cached copy.

3)check for any additional links outgoing after the purchase, if it is linked to bad neighbourhood after purchase it may cause a trouble

NOTE: I have made changes to my site top to bottom and used permenant redirects. Moreover few days the entire site is down and google has cached all the pages with server erros. And once the system is up and a fresh crawl, site regained close to earlier positions. So i am pretty sure with little analysis and fixing(advising to fix) the issues you can help the new owner to keep going.