Got an email: Someone "wants to buy" one of my Adsense sites. Scam?

[bummed.out]

Hi everyone,

I do have an Adsense site that is ranking well for its term(s) and is generating consistent revenue. I just got an email from someone that says:

Hello,

How are you?

I was surfing around the internet and found your site
http://XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.org
You have a good looking site that is well monetized.

I want to get in to the XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX niche and I am interested in buying your site.
Please let me know if this is something you would like to discuss.

Have a great day,
Kind regards

I have left their email and name private and replaced my domain and keywords with "X"'s, of course.

Has anyone every received an email of this nature - and if so, how did you respond? Reply? Not reply?

Does it seem fishy; or carry the likelihood of being a scam?

Sorry if these are naive questions; I'm just not sure how to approach this and am curious for your thoughts on it.

Thank you!

Cheers

[Jeremy S]

Ask them what method of payment they'd use when buying the site.

75% of the time this will let you know if it's a scam.

Start pressing him for an offer, tell him you'll put him in contact with your broker, etc. Just play mind games.

Either he'll get scared, or if he's serious, he will proceed.

[askloz]

get him to pay you the listing fee for flippa.com and put up a private auction if youre interested in selling

[Art_Marks]

Originally Posted by askloz

get him to pay you the listing fee for flippa.com and put up a private auction if youre interested in selling

The best way to do it I think.
You will be safe and will have some record of the transaction.

[packjack]

I know what will happen.. Once you say yes..they will ask you how much you earn through adsense, how many visitors you get, stats etc...

Would you like to disclose this to someone you do not know?

[John Williamson]

See if he'll go through Escrow.com - I've gotten plenty of emails like this and some have been legitimate.

[bummed.out]

Originally Posted by Jeremy S

Ask them what method of payment they'd use when buying the site.

75% of the time this will let you know if it's a scam.

Start pressing him for an offer, tell him you'll put him in contact with your broker, etc. Just play mind games.

Either he'll get scared, or if he's serious, he will proceed.

By this I take it to mean that if the buyer says "PayPal" to turn the other way and say "no", correct? (I've read about domain/site sellers getting ripped of by buyers using PayPal).

Originally Posted by askloz

get him to pay you the listing fee for flippa.com and put up a private auction if youre interested in selling

An interesting idea!

Originally Posted by packjack

I know what will happen.. Once you say yes..they will ask you how much you earn through adsense, how many visitors you get, stats etc...

Would you like to disclose this to someone you do not know?

You have a point; however, if you were a potential site buyer, would you not want to know more details about the site you were interested in? (I'm not trying to be argumentative; I'm merely curious how you would approach the situation as a buyer - and if anyone else wants to chime in about this issue, please do).

Originally Posted by John Williamson

See if he'll go through Escrow.com - I've gotten plenty of emails like this and some have been legitimate.

Thanks for that tip, John. Is Escrow a "failsafe" method of doing this sort of transaction? Is it complicated to set up?

And for everyone: What would you do with a site that's been earning consistently for several months and improving, if you knew you could still add more content and linking to the inner pages and almost certainly improve the site's revenue; would you go for a quick sale for a fast bit of cash, or invest the time into bettering the site to increase its revenue and sell it for more, later?

Cheers

[Brian Alaway]

If they mention "domain appraisal"...SCAM

[cheesee]

If your interested in selling to this person, I'd be careful because there are a lot of scammers. So I'd do this to make sure I was safe.

- discuss a price
- ask to be paid via paypal
- tell him you want to be paid by paypal masspay
- hold payment for 24 hours.
- transfer domain & files

[SpikeS]

If your happy with your site and what it's making you and dont need to sell it....think of how much someone wouldn't pay for it...and ask for that much! You never know

[bummed.out]

Good thoughts, everyone.

I think I'm going to sit on this site for a while; I know that I can improve it and increase its revenue; as such, it can bring in more revenue for me for the future, and will be more appealing to buyers/command a higher price, if I decide to sell it later on.

Thanks for all the security tips.

[markowe]

This doesn't sound like a serious offer - a serious buyer would not start an email with "Hello, how are you?" and nary an introduction of themselves. I want to know who they are, what their business is etc. I think you took the right decision.

[carljohn]

It looks like copy and paste messages from link exchange. Unless he is willing to pay > 24x revenue you'd better off selling on flippa.

[GeorgR.]

If you are really willing to sell, write back that you planned to make your site into an authority site ...but you might be willing to sell if you get an appropriate offer. Or simply state your price.
Yes, i get such offers occasionally too.

[askloz]

if your site makes $100 a month, then you can get a min of $1200 for it...
$1k a month rev', then you can EASILY get $12k for it.

i sold my FIRST site for $15k

[bummed.out]

Originally Posted by askloz

if your site makes $100 a month, then you can get a min of $1200 for it...
$1k a month rev', then you can EASILY get $12k for it.

i sold my FIRST site for $15k

Wow, $15K; I take it to mean that your site was making about a grand a month, then?

Originally Posted by markowe

This doesn't sound like a serious offer - a serious buyer would not start an email with "Hello, how are you?" and nary an introduction of themselves. I want to know who they are, what their business is etc. I think you took the right decision.

Thank you; I feel now that the site has too much potential for me to sell it now, and enough potential for me to keep growing and benefiting from it, before getting to a point of selling it. Likely I'd sell it as part of my small network of sites.

Thanks, everyone!

[askloz]

well, ranged from around $600 to $2700 ish per month.

Originally Posted by bummed.out

Wow, $15K; I take it to mean that your site was making about a grand a month, then?


!

[bummed.out]

Originally Posted by askloz

well, ranged from around $600 to $2700 ish per month.

Wow, that's quite a variance in income. It's good to know that sites with even a sub-1000 dollar/month revenue can command a good price.

Cheers!

[askloz]

its the average the buyers are looking at, and I had a two year history to prove the income for it and all the google analytics too. I already cleaned up approx 23k for it.. it only had 25 pages, but they were all ranking #1 for 40 phrases.. not sure about now though, i sold the site quite a while ago now and it's not my prob if the rankings drop... they knew that they had to keep up with the backlinking and if they wanted me to do it, i'd charge them $5k a month for SEO services

Originally Posted by bummed.out

Wow, that's quite a variance in income. It's good to know that sites with even a sub-1000 dollar/month revenue can command a good price.

Cheers!