Anyone been ripped off buying a website?

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Fetchwebtraffic

Hi,

By the way I am a newby to online businesses, so take it easy on me.

About 2 1/2 weeks ago I bought a website from a guy in the UK. I asked for and received video proof of purchases made on the website, the video was sent to me on vimeo.com. We made the transaction through escrow.com. The website was profiting between $900 - $1100 a month and had traffic of about 2500 visits. He showed me income from November 2014 - January 2015. He also told me there were 4 purchases made on the site in February right before I bought it. After everything was transferred to me there have been no sales and zero traffic. I found the guy on flippa but we did the transaction outside of flippa. I paid $900 for the site, but what I received was a $50 site because it is now basically a starter site. He sent me a PDF of how to market the website, but it was very generic info. I have emailed him many times and he gives me politicians answers. I have tried to market it the way the PDF says but not any luck.
Any suggestions on what I can do, I am in the US and he is in the UK.
Thanks for any suggestions.

You lost money, that is all anyone can actually say, if you did it through Escrow.com and released the funds to the seller then you just lost $900 and for the future you should always give it at least 5-7 days when buying sites and using escrow.

If the seller can not show you live proof and even with live proof, you need a few days to inspect the website to make sure it's making the claims the seller stated with the sale.

Is the site he sold you the one in your signature?

You can try to make the site a success, paid ads or SEO.

Thanks
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lemonseltzer

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Clintin

You lost money, that is all anyone can actually say, if you did it through Escrow.com and released the funds to the seller then you just lost $900 and for the future you should always give it at least 5-7 days when buying sites and using escrow.

If the seller can not show you live proof and even with live proof, you need a few days to inspect the website to make sure it's making the claims the seller stated with the sale.

Is the site he sold you the one in your signature?

You can try to make the site a success, paid ads or SEO.

5-7 days is way too long. Prospective buyers need to do due diligence before the sale is made.
I've been scammed by a couple buyers who stole my copy years ago via Escrow.com

Thanks

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Fetchwebtraffic

9 years ago

I have been doing paid PPC ads, but nothing yet. I am doing it on Bing, 40,000 impressions and 45 click. Analytics says only 1 visitor to the site, and he is from Russia. I am running ad for US and Canada. Other than that not sure what to do that might be a successful ad campaign.

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Amsterdam81 9 years ago

welcome to flippa. There are tooooo many sellers without integrity out there, escrow wont help. I also have lost more than 10k buying number of websites back in 2010 when i was still naive..... well, lesson learned
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moneyglue

9 years ago

Suck it up as a learning experience. You can't do anything unfortunately

I got conned/scammed with my first site purchase as well which was a similar price to yours. The transaction was completed via flippa.

Since that first website purchase (and I've bought/sold many more since), I've learned how to do better research and due diligence so I didn't repeat the same mistake.

Thanks

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Fetchwebtraffic

9 years ago

Thanks for the commits, I do not feel so bad now. I know what to do and look for on my next purchase.

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AmberK

9 years ago

Dang, hate to read this kind of story. And like the others posting here, I've had the same thing happen to me on Flippa.

Since I'm not sure what the website is that you have bought or your skill/interest level it's hard to give ideas of what to do now.

Not clear on this "I am doing it on Bing, 40,000 impressions and 45 click. Analytics says only 1 visitor to the site, and he is from Russia. I am running ad for US and Canada. Other than that not sure what to do that might be a successful ad campaign."

You got 45 clicks on your ads but only one visitor? What tracking system are you using?

Sometimes you have to look realistically at what you bought and say - Can I honestly do something with this website? Do I have the skills, interest and knowledge to make this happen? And is it worth my time? If there's something different that you can be doing with the same amount of time that generates a better return, this might have to become a lesson learned and a business write off. And it's lousy that you have to take a financial hit because other people can't be honest.

Good luck! And keep on trying with this, like others of us, you will make mistakes and get better every month…..

Best,

Thanks
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Oggyoi 9 years ago

I've been scammed by crappy sellers on this forum.

One registered the domain for me, never transferred it to my account. He then switched my affiliate links and adsense for his own.....

Another built me an Amazon review site, I'm in the UK and had requested the site be UK facing. He went ahead and populated it with products from amazon.com which weren't even available in the UK. He then added videos which were advertising services based in the US.

There have been others who have vanished off here and a lot of people have lost a lot of money.

Seems some scam sellers get banned, others are still allowed to sell on here

Edit ; OP, if you have the sellers address, feel free to pass it on.
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- sbucciarel Banned 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Oggyoi
  
  Edit ; OP, if you have the sellers address, feel free to pass it on.
  
  You might want to check the WF TOS first, since you don't seem to have gotten around to it since 2011. Check Rule #1.
  
  Thanks
  
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sbucciarel

Banned 9 years ago

If it's the web traffic one in your signature, that's an old and apparently very profitable scam on Flippa for years now. These guys make one after another of the same website, web traffic, social likes and fans, movie sites, etc. and sell the copies over and over again. They show traffic and video proof from the original site, I imagine or either fake it altogether. The copies they sell have no traffic or sales.

Sorry this happened to you. One way to look out for this is to check all of the seller's listings and see if he's selling the same kind of site over and over again.

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wedreamseo

Banned 9 years ago

Sorry to hear about that.

Didn't you find it highly suspicious though that someone would sell a site that made $900/month profit for only $900,-?

Normally such sites go for $5000-$18000.

Thanks
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Fetchwebtraffic

9 years ago

Originally Posted by wedreamseo

Sorry to hear about that.

Didn't you find it highly suspicious though that someone would sell a site that made $900/month profit for only $900,-?

Normally such sites go for $5000-$18000.

I looked on Flippa and that is what these websites were going for, and the people buying them were give positive feedback to the sellers

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Robert Herrie 9 years ago

I got ripped off dozens of times..NOT a good feeling.Let me tell you a little advice when looking to buy another website. Always look for proof that it is a scam. Like a site making 900 per month and it is being sold for 900. Thats proof roight there. Another easy way is to make sure the seller has sold multiple listings already with a good total.Maybe a SOLD value over 5 or 6 thousand. Any less than this and the seller can fake it. 65% of the listings on FLIPPA are junk and or thievery. No matter what you think of the income they claim the website will make. If you see the smallest hint of deception then you must move on to the next..There are alot of honest sellers as well on Flippa believe me..
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- Devilfish168 9 years ago
  
  This is what HOLD me...
  
  I have done some search and noticed..in fact many are flipper
  
  in here brought those websites which can resell stated by the seller
  
  than they go another IM forum and sell double the price of it.
  
  Ok I not trying to put black mark on flippers ..out there
  
  there are also WSOs guide how you can earn by flipping websites
  
  no secret here as IM here know outsource to people do than resell it.
  
  problem is many straight aways claim their existing sites can attract this amount of visitors every month ...than go take some good adsense earnings show their adsense earnings..( black out the month ) IF those lucky ones happen this month earn a good sum of money will show the date . But the question and doubts here is......
  
  since they claim " Constant ever day , every month have this amount of visitors "
  Yes adsense earnings also depend ...is not fix by this amount of visitors etc etc...
  but the difference actually not much ..if your site always got a constant amount of visitors per day ...
  
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kendido

9 years ago

The first thing to do when a seller claims he has certain amount of traffic every month is to REALLY check it out. You can do this using compete.com, similarweb,com and feedcompare.com The best of them is SemRush. The first 3 are free.

If his claim about traffic generation is correct, then check how much the site has really made through siteworthtraffic.com This not only shows you revenue generated by the site, but also traffic and real PR as well as age of the site. In this critical time hard to deal with, we need to do due diligence before parting away with our cash. This could be done free of charge using the above tools. Sorry for your lose.

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PBScott

9 years ago

Originally Posted by kendido

The first thing to do when a seller claims he has certain amount of traffic every month is to REALLY check it out. You can do this using compete.com, similarweb,com and feedcompare.com The best of them is SemRush. The first 3 are free.

If his claim about traffic generation is correct, then check how much the site has really made through siteworthtraffic.com This not only shows you revenue generated by the site, but also traffic and real PR as well as age of the site. In this critical time hard to deal with, we need to do due diligence before parting away with our cash. This could be done free of charge using the above tools. Sorry for your lose.

siteworthtraffic.com and all the other rating website are garbage. They weigh heavily on the PageRank tool, and Alexa. Toolbar Pagerank as you know has not been updated in years, and they take the simple number of PR2 or 3 etc from only the homepage, then without counting the inbound and outbound links for the page call it ia PR # website. That is no way to measure value...A PR2(toolbar) page with 200 outbound links most likely has a far higher amount of link juice behind it that a PR3 or even 4 page with only one one link going out simply because it has no dilution, not to mention it simply assumes that the homepage has the most power, which is not always the case. Alexa is not reliable, it simply measures people with the toolbar visiting the website.... seriously how many people have an Alexa toolbar? What kind of people are those? Also the longer they spend on that website the more power they get in Alexa.

There are so many ways to scam people with these metrics that I started listing them all, but then realized someone might use my info to scam others so I took it down.

SEM rush says my website got 9 organic visitors and 0 paid traffic last month. Does SEMRush even function at all ? Look at your own websites with the sites you recommended, lets face it, without my analytic login credentials they have no idea. It counted 0 of our thousands of paid visitors, and failed just as badly on the organic. They estimated my website income at $76 per month, when in reality we take in triple digits.

Similarweb seems to just make stuff up.

Feedcompare wasn't running when I just tried it, but our Rss feed is only on about 1% of our website.

People need to spend more time using Moz tools and Majestic, they take a while to learn because they have a lot of information. If you are buying a website you need to get into their Google Analytics and webmaster tools only then will you have a good idea of what is going on.

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Robert Herrie

9 years ago

In some of the more recent cases of Thievery You have some intelligent people selling BUM websites and have the ability to manipulate the numbers that are revealed on these traffic websites. I have seen also ALEXA rank being forged . They have a method of manipulating ALEXA rank for a short period of time it will reset after a certain period of time.

One sure method of telling all regarding truthful sale of a website. If you see anything at all that triggers any questions in your mind at all,Then STOP RIGHT THERE!! Then try to dissprove the new evidence. If you see a website of interestand it is profiting 10k per month selling for 3000. bucks is enough proof of fraud for me. Another is 1st time sellers of websites is a RED flag.Remember If you are wlling to spend a large amount of money on a website then first hire a 3rd party company to dig deep into the website at large...

TOP 5 BLACK FLAGS WHEN BUYING WEBSITES YOU SHOULD AVOID!!

1) Buying a website from a first time seller.(unless outstanding credibility)
2) Buying a website that earns an excellent profit with a very low buying price
3) When a seller will not disclose Traffic or Financials or even BOTH!
4) Using your best judgement, If something very small catches your attention then jump ship.
5) Always try to buy a website in a Niche you are somewhat knowledgeable in .

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500RealFollowerscom

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Robert Herrie

In some of the more recent cases of Thievery You have some intelligent people selling BUM websites and have the ability to manipulate the numbers that are revealed on these traffic websites. I have seen also ALEXA rank being forged . They have a method of manipulating ALEXA rank for a short period of time it will reset after a certain period of time.

One sure method of telling all regarding truthful sale of a website. If you see anything at all that triggers any questions in your mind at all,Then STOP RIGHT THERE!! Then try to dissprove the new evidence. If you see a website of interestand it is profiting 10k per month selling for 3000. bucks is enough proof of fraud for me. Another is 1st time sellers of websites is a RED flag.Remember If you are wlling to spend a large amount of money on a website then first hire a 3rd party company to dig deep into the website at large...

TOP 5 BLACK FLAGS WHEN BUYING WEBSITES YOU SHOULD AVOID!!

1) Buying a website from a first time seller.(unless outstanding credibility)
2) Buying a website that earns an excellent profit with a very low buying price
3) When a seller will not disclose Traffic or Financials or even BOTH!
4) Using your best judgement, If something very small catches your attention then jump ship.
5) Always try to buy a website in a Niche you are somewhat knowledgeable in .

I have advertised on FLIPPA many years back a website of mine executweet.com which later sold to a guy i'd met on flippa but outside of flippa on agreed amount.

I'll say the best to look out for is google standing of the website. Currently I have a website i'm struggling to sell even though it has some age and value on it but due to google rankings it's been quite unpresentable. Usually buyers will inflate the google rankings standing to a buyer not knowledgeable about carrying out due diligent research.... Meanwhile the website referred to is BuyTwitterAndInstagramFollowers.com

Thanks

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500RealFollowerscom

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Robert Herrie

In some of the more recent cases of Thievery You have some intelligent people selling BUM websites and have the ability to manipulate the numbers that are revealed on these traffic websites. I have seen also ALEXA rank being forged . They have a method of manipulating ALEXA rank for a short period of time it will reset after a certain period of time.

One sure method of telling all regarding truthful sale of a website. If you see anything at all that triggers any questions in your mind at all,Then STOP RIGHT THERE!! Then try to dissprove the new evidence. If you see a website of interestand it is profiting 10k per month selling for 3000. bucks is enough proof of fraud for me. Another is 1st time sellers of websites is a RED flag.Remember If you are wlling to spend a large amount of money on a website then first hire a 3rd party company to dig deep into the website at large...

TOP 5 BLACK FLAGS WHEN BUYING WEBSITES YOU SHOULD AVOID!!

1) Buying a website from a first time seller.(unless outstanding credibility)
2) Buying a website that earns an excellent profit with a very low buying price
3) When a seller will not disclose Traffic or Financials or even BOTH!
4) Using your best judgement, If something very small catches your attention then jump ship.
5) Always try to buy a website in a Niche you are somewhat knowledgeable in .

I have advertised on FLIPPA many years back a website of mine executweet.com which later sold to a guy i'd met on flippa but mutally sold outside of flippa on agreed amount.

I'll say the best to look out for is google standing of the website. Currently I have a website i'm struggling to sell even though it has some age and value on it but due to google rankings it's been quite unpresentable for sale. Usually some sellers will inflate the google rankings standing to a buyer not knowledgeable about carrying out their due diligent research.... Meanwhile the website referred to is BuyTwitterAndInstagramFollowers.com

Thanks

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alodie 9 years ago

Hi Robert,

Very helpful response.

What frightens me, though, is that in these days and times,
when everyone should be on the lookout for swindlers like
the one that Fetchwebtraffic identified above that we are
still so easily taken for our hard, earned cash.

We seem to be so much more vulnerable in 2015,
than ever before.

But what can we do?

To whom can we turn for the kind of quality
help me need from "viruses" such as those?

But guess what? I, myself, have been just
as susceptible lately. And I feel banging
my head hard on the wall, for being so
consistently irresponsible in not paying
much closer attention to conducting
business online.

I feel your pain, Fetchwebtraffic. And if you
are like me, it might not be so much about having
lost your hard earned cash, as it is about finding out
that you have allowed yourself to be taken by a
swindler, a second time, a third time, and fourth
time around. It leaves a very bitter taste in ones
mouth.

Anyhow, as scriptburnofficial pointed out, "Lots
of lessons learned."

You will be okay, Fetchwebtraffic.

And thanks a million, Robert, for that sobering bit of advice.

That's why I like visiting this Warrior Forum as often as I
I am able to.

I still have so much to learn.

All the best, everyone.

Cheers!

Alodieanne
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- TheGMa 9 years ago
  
  This is an excellent thread, one I will be referring to again.
  
  Thank you all for the tools and reviews, and the business sense. It is a delight to read threads written by cool-headed, analytical businessmen and women. I learned a lot today.
  
  @Fetchwebtraffic - thank you for sharing your experience. Sorry about the loss, but awfully glad you weren't afraid to let others know what happened. You'll go far.
  
  Silence is a scammer's best friend; word-of-mouth is a scammer's worst enemy. Pass the word
  
  The GMa
  
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lemonseltzer

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Fetchwebtraffic

Hi,

By the way I am a newby to online businesses, so take it easy on me.

About 2 1/2 weeks ago I bought a website from a guy in the UK. I asked for and received video proof of purchases made on the website, the video was sent to me on vimeo.com. We made the transaction through escrow.com. The website was profiting between $900 - $1100 a month and had traffic of about 2500 visits. He showed me income from November 2014 - January 2015. He also told me there were 4 purchases made on the site in February right before I bought it. After everything was transferred to me there have been no sales and zero traffic. I found the guy on flippa but we did the transaction outside of flippa. I paid $900 for the site, but what I received was a $50 site because it is now basically a starter site. He sent me a PDF of how to market the website, but it was very generic info. I have emailed him many times and he gives me politicians answers. I have tried to market it the way the PDF says but not any luck.
Any suggestions on what I can do, I am in the US and he is in the UK.
Thanks for any suggestions.

A 50 dollar site ?
Anything you invest in you should feel is a good strong domain and a well built website besides any traffic/profit claims.

Thanks

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patadeperro

9 years ago

To all of you that say you were scammed, rule number one of any business:

"UNDERSTAND HOW THE BUSINESS IS MAKING MONEY!!"

Instead of spending money buying sites that are "making money" learn
how the business work, what are the conversion rates, what are the
business models, how traffic generation works etc.... I can't believe that
according to the signature of the people saying they were cheated
they know SEO!!!!

If anything, you bought bit of good sense, for this moment you
should know how to evaluate a site, how to read the GA, know where
the traffic is coming from and if the conversion rates they are talking
about are even possible.

Invest in your knowledge first.... Is it by chance that most of the people
who are writing in this thread saying they were cheated have less than
100 comments in the forum and are pretty new to it? I don't think so.

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johndougs

9 years ago

What sort of business are you into? Your signature tells me another story.

When I review any website whether on Flippa or just buying closeout domains on Godaddy or other auction sites I make sure to do my research and verify from 3rd parties what sort of website and rankings the domain has.

There are many elements to watch for when buying a domain or a site. Some of them were featured by other responders above. eg whois, moz rankings, google pr, onpage seo, google index, flippas own history of a seller is another thing one should investigate.

There are so many misleading auctions on Flippa and it's just a joke.But, then again it is an auction site and you will get many bargain domains and websites.

The site you purchased perhaps has a clause in there that needs one to apply certain marketing tactic to generate revenue from the site and as such these kinds of sales can be highly lucrative if they are honestly pitched to the buyer. However, these kinds of sales pitch auctions usually are intended to target novice buyers who are unable to do a thorough research before committing.

It is not all a loss. In the long scheme of things in "creating revenue or making money on the internet", I will use and anology and say that "it is but a dint on the door of your automobile". Your automobile is probably new and has a minor fix to be attempted but it will still take you to where you want to go.

The best advice I can give you right now is to let it be and don't be discouraged in pursuing your dreams. Take action to grow with your experience.

Peace!

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BenRacicot

9 years ago

He sold a site making between 900-1100 a month for $900? Why would anyone do that? Can we see the site? And also what is the Flipps username He used? You should name/shame him for sure.

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Fetchwebtraffic 9 years ago

He has now been suspended from Flippa, not just because of my complaint but others.
It was my first website to buy and I found out later that it is a very generic website that many sell for quick cash. I have learned a lot since then and hopefully this will not happen to me again.
Thanks for all the input
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visimedia

9 years ago

is there any words he said it's a "website model" that you can replicate yourself with that new website?

If he didn't mention that, it's now a scam.

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maxsi

9 years ago

It may happens... there are lot of web scammers without integrity/honesty....
The best thing you can do is => get the help of an expert (coach) and let him/her create successful marketing campaigns for you

Save more money and your time ;-)

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stewmack

9 years ago

I have had few bad experiences on Flippa
The worst one which comes to mind, I bought site for $600, paid through paypal, He got banned on Flippa before he gave me site.He wants $250 more.lol..Paypal wont let me dispute, as i paid to friend, not as service...oh well...we live and learn.
Another one was, Ah forget it...Flippa full of scammers.
Best to build the site yourself and learn as much as you can from forums like this one.

I cant sell food to a starving man, thats why i've started blogging..lol

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Fetchwebtraffic 9 years ago

It is definitely a scam website and I am not the only one he has scammed.
I am now building my own sites.
I learned a good lesson.
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GenMickensJr

9 years ago

Next time you do this, set the terms. You paid escrow but shouldn't have released the funds until you had the website at least 14 days. In that time frame, you should have seen the actual idea of the site. You will have been able to make a more solid idea.
My next flag was the fact you bought it for such a low price. Many sellers will be okay for you testing everything out prior to buying. I have the same notion. I have nothing to hide as far as getting my website together and being able to "prove" Look for those. Remember you have the upper hand. You are the one who really has what they want.

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tacitinc

9 years ago

3/4 of my sales have turned out to be either duds or fraudulent - however the scammers are easy to spot - make sure you get your funds released before any transfer occurs at all!!

I love using Freemarket though & Frederick has been fantastic to work with - I know that sticking it out the marketplace will become stronger over time & weed out the scammers - Love the format 10x over Flippa - but has allot of room to grow still - No worries - i look forward to seeing what the future has in store for Freemarket!!

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stewmack

9 years ago

when i put my 2 pence worth in....flippa suspended my account lol
Since they unsuspended me i put up appraisal for americasdomain.com and in 4 days havent any appraisals, but stupid .com names get 80+ appraisals lol...

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HostZealot

9 years ago

When you make ANY purchase online, you risk. This applies to EVERYTHING, not to websites only.

The ways to minimize your risks are simple:
1) Use your head. If it's too good to be true, it's not good.
2) Use a reliable medium and cover your back
3) Do some investigation prior to payment (is the other guy reliable, or are there scam complaints o him - a member with 5 years of history and 100 thanks from customers is obviously much more reliable than a newbie with suspiciously good offers)
4) add your own points....

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iron123

9 years ago

Should be a learning experience for you don't trust anyone. Unless they have a really good reputation, or have done a lot of business with you or someone you know...

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sarwanov

9 years ago

Great post

Thanks

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TangoDown

9 years ago

Yup, I got taken also on Flippa for about 3 large. Similar situation, I was fairly new to IM and Flippa and I got stuck with a $3000 domain name. Lesson learned, but I did also get some valuable sites up that I purchased on Flippa. On That site it's all about finding a reputable person when doing the transaction.

Thanks

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chickenfillet

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Fetchwebtraffic

Hi,

By the way I am a newby to online businesses, so take it easy on me.

About 2 1/2 weeks ago I bought a website from a guy in the UK. I asked for and received video proof of purchases made on the website, the video was sent to me on vimeo.com. We made the transaction through escrow.com. The website was profiting between $900 - $1100 a month and had traffic of about 2500 visits. He showed me income from November 2014 - January 2015. He also told me there were 4 purchases made on the site in February right before I bought it. After everything was transferred to me there have been no sales and zero traffic. I found the guy on flippa but we did the transaction outside of flippa. I paid $900 for the site, but what I received was a $50 site because it is now basically a starter site. He sent me a PDF of how to market the website, but it was very generic info. I have emailed him many times and he gives me politicians answers. I have tried to market it the way the PDF says but not any luck.
Any suggestions on what I can do, I am in the US and he is in the UK.
Thanks for any suggestions.

If you used escrow.com, why didn't you set the "Inspection Period" to be 30 days? That way, you could have up to 30 days to realize the website received no traffic or sales, and then return the website for your money back.

During this escrow.com Inspection Period, the seller doesn't get the money, it is still held by escrow.com.

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scriptburnofficial

9 years ago

I got scammed 3 or 4 times
one time for around 5k , bought a wordpress theme site ,he showed me earning proof of 600 a month by theme sales from themeforest , so i bought it since then not a single sale

once i hired a guy to make me a site for peoples who want to learn photoshops , hired to make me a complete website with 100 sample logos , i was really full to beleave in his nice talks and sent him 6k upfront, that guys was very convincing , and since then he took like 6 months and created only 10% of what i asked for and even that he never gave me and just ran away and stopped responding

lots of lesson learned

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mungrey

9 years ago

Originally Posted by scriptburnofficial

I got scammed 3 or 4 times
one time for around 5k , bought a wordpress theme site ,he showed me earning proof of 600 a month by theme sales from themeforest , so i bought it since then not a single sale

once i hired a guy to make me a site for peoples who want to learn photoshops , hired to make me a complete website with 100 sample logos , i was really full to beleave in his nice talks and sent him 6k upfront, that guys was very convincing , and since then he took like 6 months and created only 10% of what i asked for and even that he never gave me and just ran away and stopped responding

lots of lesson learned

That is sad really. Some people can't be bothered to make money in an honest way

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mungrey

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Fetchwebtraffic

Hi,

By the way I am a newby to online businesses, so take it easy on me.

About 2 1/2 weeks ago I bought a website from a guy in the UK. I asked for and received video proof of purchases made on the website, the video was sent to me on vimeo.com. We made the transaction through escrow.com. The website was profiting between $900 - $1100 a month and had traffic of about 2500 visits. He showed me income from November 2014 - January 2015. He also told me there were 4 purchases made on the site in February right before I bought it. After everything was transferred to me there have been no sales and zero traffic. I found the guy on flippa but we did the transaction outside of flippa. I paid $900 for the site, but what I received was a $50 site because it is now basically a starter site. He sent me a PDF of how to market the website, but it was very generic info. I have emailed him many times and he gives me politicians answers. I have tried to market it the way the PDF says but not any luck.
Any suggestions on what I can do, I am in the US and he is in the UK.
Thanks for any suggestions.

I remember I was ripped off once too; I was too dumb back then so didn't think of opting for escrow payment. Paypal being PayPal, it ruled in that scammer's favor because well, intangible items are out of the purview of its buyer protection policy. Thankfully it was just 150 usd

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Joan Altz

9 years ago

As far as traffic verification goes, I only buy websites on Flippa that have a lot of keywords in the top 20 search results. You can check the top 10 on SEMRush for free, but it will give you total numbers of keywords that are ranking as well. The listing has to include verified analytics, and the traffic figures need to make sense with regard to the age of the site and any keyword results.

Never bid on a listing that claims a monthly earnings figure close to the buyer's BIN price. Those are scams. Nobody is going to sell something of real value cheap.

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GordonM12

9 years ago

To the posters in this thread: Lots of good info here on domain selling. Enjoying the post and counter posts without being nasty to each other.

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WebmasterWorkforce

9 years ago

I was ripped off selling a website just last year.

My auction over on Flippa ended with this guy as the high bidder. The payment was put into escrow as is usually done over there. I started transferring everything over to him and explaining how this business worked, including all the secrets.

All of a sudden the guy backs out of the deal, after me giving him all the inside details on how to run that type of site. I had not transfered the domain yet, but that didn't seem to matter. He had gotten what he wanted - for free.

Moral of the story is when selling a site when escrow is being used, make sure you cover yourself every step of the way. I am sure this creep did this intentionally and probably has done it before. Oh well, you live and you learn.

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ibuywireless 9 years ago

can you tell us the secrets, that would get that creep back
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serekesh

9 years ago

Just take it as a lesson in life.

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Taxislave 9 years ago

Well crap...I'm in the process of trying to get this website, just bought it, on flippa. guy is not transferring domain over yet...
hey I'm new to this, they want me to set it up on host gator, yet I can't because the domain is registered the one I bought.
No domain transfer yet in my go dad accout.
Can anybody out there help me I'm new to this, I think I lost my money but this is my time to learn about this. I guess I learned my lesson.
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Anyone been ripped off buying a website?

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