Bought site 6000 dollar. Zero Income. What Happened?

[tilanus]

I hope you can help me out on this mystery.

In july I bought a site called gamerzunderground.com (I'm not allowed to put a link here because I'm new) on Flippa.com for 6000 dollars that sells game consoles to the UK audience via Amazon.co.uk

The previous owner claimed that he made about 700 British pounds (900 dollars) each month and spend 200 dollars on adwords. He had 4200 visitors when I took over. He showed his Amazon account and visitor statistics (not google analytics). He used his real name and I could check his address via domain name search. I thought that everything that I could do to check was done and I couldn’t find anything suspicious about this guy.

However,

The moment I took over ownership the number of visitors dropped and no one bought anything! In August I used adwords to drive traffic to the site according to the instructions he gave me and in total 600 people visited the site in August. Later I tried again advertisement, this time Adbrite. Also this time, no visitor bought anything.

In September I changed the layout completely but to no avail. Although I stopped using advertisement I had expected that even without the advertisement people would visit my site. With 200 dollars as he claimed that he spend on ads you can’t get 4200 visitors to your site so most of them should have come organically. But at this moment it’s barely worth mentioning.

I had 5 articles written about my site and all 5 were accepted by Ezines. I use USfreeads to send people to this site. Nothing happened.

Of course, I can spend more money on advertisement ,use article spinners, but I simply don’t get what had happened to the site. Did the previous owner conned me? Did he forged the Amazon picture where I could see the proceeds he made in April and May (1400 ponds)?

I asked him in August why the proceeds were zero from the very moment I took over and the number of visitors dropped immediately. I pointed out to him that the 200 dollars google ads couldn’t drive 4200 visitors a month to the site. Where are the visitors?

His response was that traffic fluctuates and sometimes people buy sometimes they don’t. He also said that I should work on seo. Well, he mentioned on Flippa that his site in June was offline a couple of weeks without him knowing and in July he had again 700 pounds of proceeds. Great seo! I never knew that seo works that way! Forget about keywords: just be offline.

I can put more time on the site, but I fortunately have other sites that makes profit and are worthwhile working on. I have no idea if this game site has any chance of success.

I have still money ready to invest in websites but if I don’t know how I can see if the seller is telling the truth I think I better build my own sites rather than buy them.

But can you help me out with this riddle? Did he somehow conned me and should I forget about the site or is there any chance of the site making money in the future? Many thanks for your time.

Thanks for your time.

Harald

[yommys01]

So sorry for you, I think you have been scammed by the seller. No matter what, you should still be able to make some sales even if the site is experiencing some down time which is normal with some niches.

I think you should try to get your money back if you can or accept the fact that you have been scammed. Make sure you ruin the guys reputation on flippa if you can.

[Hamida Harland]

How long was your inspection period? You need at least a week to verify that the traffic is what the seller tells you.

[Danny Cutts]

holy shmoly!!!

welcome aboard!

at present your site is in need of some work (i am going to be blunt) its about 6 screens wide!!?!? I scrolled and scrolled!!

so maybe a new theme is in hand, you have spent 6000 which is a serious amount of money and by the sounds of it you are pretty new to IM? if I am wrong I am sorry but just the impression I was given.

The next thing is that the figures he showed were they from teh site and not in total from all his sites? As I know you can display all your campaings in one setting... so maybe he was showing you 20 sites income?

Its pretty hard to say though.

What I would do is find a good WP theme install phpzon which is the amazon script and start again, if the site was as successful as he said it was there is no reason why it cant get there again however in teh present state you will struggle.

Good SEO is the key and article marketing is a fantastic way to drive traffic your site needs to be appealing first. For $6000 I would have wanted a whole lot more site.

I hope I have not been too harsh and you are not offended however I wish you all the luck

Regards

Danny

[graham41]

So sorry for you. I really feel for you.

However, it showswhat a lucrative and profitable market newbies are. I think many including moi have succumed to some degree at the start.

But newbies are a great market to focus on

G

[rapidscc]

If it says that it was earning that much, it should still be doing the same especially now that the shopping season is here. Also online shopping has increased according to some news site, so bearing this in mind, that site should still make you money.

But the problem is that after you took over the site, the traffic just dropped. What you should have done is to check the incoming links to the site before you bought it. So that you'll know where the traffic is coming from aside from the organic search.

There is a possibility that before you took over there was something or some site that sends that traffic and when you bought it the link was removed. Or there is also the possibility that the owner was sending "junk" traffic to the site to increase its perceived value and after you bought it, the junk traffic was stopped.

If the owner told you to SEO the site why not tell him that you bought it by that much because you thought that with all the traffic, it's SEO'd already.

Next time before you buy a site, check out the incoming links first. The more the better.

Here's how to check it out. Type in google -Link:www.thisisthesite.com
you can also do that in yahoo which is way better coz in will be presented to you in a better way.

All the best,

Omar

[SeanSupplee]

Honestly before you do anything else you need to fix up that site if you still want o push ahead with it.

The width of the site is way to large, there is no catchy graphics which is a big thing all gamers look for, Remove the word cheap and put in some other word like low cost cheap just makes the site sound cheap at least to me.

[Danny Cutts]

Originally Posted by rapidscc

If it says that it was earning that much, it should still be doing the same especially now that the shopping season is here. Also online shopping has increased according to some news site, so bearing this in mind, that site should still make you money.

But the problem is that after you took over the site, the traffic just dropped. What you should have done is to check the incoming links to the site before you bought it. So that you'll know where the traffic is coming from aside from the organic search.

There is a possibility that before you took over there was something or some site that sends that traffic and when you bought it the link was removed. Or there is also the possibility that the owner was sending "junk" traffic to the site to increase its perceived value and after you bought it, the junk traffic was stopped.

If the owner told you to SEO the site why not tell him that you bought it by that much because you thought that with all the traffic, it's SEO'd already.

Next time before you buy a site, check out the incoming links first. The more the better.

Here's how to check it out. Type in google -Link:www.thisisthesite.com
you can also do that in yahoo which is way better coz in will be presented to you in a better way.

All the best,

Omar

top adviced that!

Another thing you can ask on here about sites.

I have a group of warriors in my skype and we discuss sites on Flippa.... maybe that is something you or others could do!?

Danny

[derekwong28]

This seems to be the original listing on Flippa

Site for Sale: Gamerzunderground DOT com $1100 per month in revenue — Flippa

I am very sorry about this but there is really no doubt in my mind that you have been scammed badly. One reason that the traffic dropped off once you bought the site is that the previous buyer stopped driving low quality traffic to it such as popups.

The site was only established in January and there are no backlinks listed in Google. No experienced buyers would pay more than 3 to 4 months multiple for a site that claims to rely on PPC. Even if the PPC data was correct, there is no guarrantee that it will work for you as Google will assess the campaign again once for CTR once you set it up in your account.

I am not even sure whether it is worthwhile to work on it. Unfortunately, this is a very tough lesson to take in and that is why I never recommend newbies to buy expensive sites. For expensive sites, you should also insist on using escrow with an inspection period of at least 7 days. I hope you will have better luck and better research in future.

Derek

[Alex Williams]

Agree for the traffic - that guy could just buy junk, to increase it.

Also, did the guy prove to you somehow that the earnings were made by that exact website? Maybe he earned money by referring people to merchant, from other websites?

Well, probably not much we all can help you now. But I really feel sorry for you...

[gracebiz1]

Some of the links from your site are broken.

I know this sounds stupid/obvious but have you checked that the links actually go to your uk amazon sellers account? and have you checked the number of ad exposures in your account?

[mikengo]

I would not even pay $600 for this site, never mind $6,000. It an Amazon affiliate site with very little traffic. "Traffic averages 141 per day for the past 3 months which is around 4500+ uniques per month".

Try to get a refund if you can. Claim fraud or misrepresentaiton.

[SellDGuide]

I am sorry to hear that...

Always get access to their Analytics Reports before you a site. Don't spend anymore money on the site now. Do some keyword research and try to find some good keywords and then do SEO.

[MarkAndrews IMCopywriting]

The person above has a point, are you
absolutely sure that all of the links to
Amazon are actually pointing to your
own account and not his still? Plus
whatever other revenue streams
there are?

My feeling is too that you have been
scammed pretty badly and I really feel
for you.

It's pretty obvious that you are very
new or completely inexperienced in
Internet marketing.

That site, I just looked at it briefly,
that took the guy all of about 2-3 hours
at most putting that together. Lesson
learned here, always look at how much
care and attention has been put into
any site that you might consider buying.
This one is going to require a lot of work
to get any kind of serious revenue out of
it I'm afraid.

It might just pay to cut your losses and
move on.

When did you buy it btw? And did you
pay for it using your credit card?

Have you considered RipoffReport.com?

Too, look at the Flippa site description,
the guy had scammer written all over
his description of the site.

Hopefully, you'll never make this mistake
ever again.

Wishing you all the best for the future.


Mark Andrews...

[Catalin Ionescu]

Mark,

It could be helpful to others if you have a few minutes and can expand a little on the signs that it was a scam, from the Flippa description.

Just like the OP, I have no experience in flipping sites and I'd like to learn more about it.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Catalin Ionescu

[1960Texan]

Sorry to hear of your situation, but gamerzunderground (dot) com could be a lucrative site once you do the proper groundwork. Spend some time on the forums here, read the sticky about article marketing, and don't be afraid to ask for advice when you come across something you don't understand. With the help of the Warrior Forum, six months from now the scammer that took advantage of you will be wishing he'd kept the site. Good luck!

[MarkAndrews IMCopywriting]

First he provides very scant information
about the site in question for sale, that
should put up a warning flag straightaway.

His comment that he was going away
until the end of the auction and was
therefore unable to answer any questions
until he got back, that would send my BS
detector straight off the scale.

His spelling isn't exactly brilliant in the
description either, it all goes to show the
level of care and attention put into into
this website which was obviously, not
much.

Hope that helps.


Mark Andrews...

[steven seven]

I am sorry to hear that.

No income prove, stat prove. Look closely at the alex ranking and index.

This website WORTH = $0
Daily view = 0
Daily ads = 0

You have been SCAM man !

Check my trusty site.

http://www.cubestat.com/www.gamerzunderground.com

Let me know if you need help to buy any more site from Flippa.

[madison_avenue]

The site is listed on flippa as saying the income derives from Product or Service Sales but it doesn't, the income derives from amazon affiliate commission.

Nevertheless if developed, the site still has the potential to be profitable. Best of luck whatever you decide to do.

[Matt Fulger]

Sorry, but it looks like a Black Hat Domain Seller suckered you on this one.

First of all, the thumbnail that was pimped on Flippa looked much nicer than the site that I'm seeing now. I'm assuming that the way it is now is the way you got it, yes?

If so, that's misrepresentation right there.

Aside from that just take a look at what Archive.org has archived for this site or the lack thereof.

Internet Archive Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine archived it's pages from Sept 19, 2003 - Feb 05, 2005.

I randomly clicked on about a dozen of those links.

All of them returned a page saying nothing but "Coming Soon!".

After Feb 05, 2005 no more pages were ever archived. Doh!

Now, I know that a site owner can contact Archive.org and ask them to remove their site from the archive, but I find that highly unlikely for a site such as this who's purpose would be to get links back to it in order to make sales.

I'm sorry to hear of your situation & I hope you can get a refund from the seller (though I find it unlikely). My advice to you would be to make sure you do your own due diligence before investing such a large sum of money into a site you know virtually nothing about in the future. Don't be afraid to post on forums asking for advice before making the investment. Research the seller and the domain itself using the various search engines, Archive.org, Alexa, etc.

Always demand to know the sellers REAL name before sending any money to them. If they are legit, they have no reason to hide their identity from you. With their REAL name, you can do some research on them to find out if they are trustworthy or not.

Anyway, I think it's still possible to make money with the site, especially with Christmas coming right around the corner. However, you will need to tweak it, do some SEO and send targeted traffic to the site.

Good Luck!

Peace & Prosperity,
Matt Fulger

[steve39]

The only good thing about the whole deal is that the domain is 6 years old. Maybe it will respond well to some seo and backlinks. Hardly worth 6K though. It looks like the domain has been neglected for a while, as it has only a handful of backlinks and is still at a PR0.

[jrod014]

Nice tool.

Some stats are accurate. My site generates a little more daily revenue than the tool estimates.

http://www.cubestat.com/www.m1arifles.com

But thanks for sharing this tool. bookmarked.

Originally Posted by steven seven

http://www.cubestat.com/www.gamerzunderground.com[/html]

[jrod014]

I'm sorry for your situation.

How did you pay? Was it Paypal? If so, Im pretty sure you can file a claim and receive a refund.

[grovesey]

the same happen to me a while a go i was done out of 6oo dollars and not 6000 thousand but i learned from now on not to trust any one on line and to use escrow.com for any such transactiones

[Marhelper]

Dude, sounds like you got ripped. He was probably building up traffic numbers via traffic exchange, etc.. The money figures sound falsified ... chalk it up to education and do not repeat same mistake. You will be alright.

[tilanus]

Many, many thanks for your advice. Great you are helping me out on this!! I will read and reread your advice about what to do next on this site, but I need to take my time in order not to do something stupid again.

The hosting doesn't cost me much so I can take the time to make decisions what I can do from here.

The site was differently than when I took over in beginning of August. However, when in September more than 600 visitors didn't buy anything I thought there might be something wrong with the design. That's when I came up with my own "design."
It's exactly the same design I'm using for a real moneymaker I also bought on Flippa: amazon-kindle-store.net

The proceeds from this site are each and every month more than I paid for on Flippa. So I was also very, very lucky with that buy. I'm sure this will compensate my loss that I made with gamerzunderground.com

But I learned my lesson and I hope I'm allowed to ask your advise on buying websites in the future before I do something stupid again.

I want thank each and one of you for your help. My first experience with this site warriorforum is great! Btw: I want to buy this site Do you think it's a great investment?

[Hebe]

One of the first things I would have done would have been to ask to see the traffic in google analytics. Its easy to fake the stats or send junk trafficand show you the statcounter but if you look in google analytics you can clearly see where the traffic is coming from and this is a common ploy by scumbags trying to rip people off by buying junk traffic and sending it to a site.

$200 ppc a month will not drive anything remotely like the figures he quoted thats just a made up figure as well.


He could have copied someone's elses screenshots for amazon or used some from another account he was using and I would also verify the affiliate links on there are yours and not his in case they have not being changed.

Unfortunately the way the traffic dropped suddenly screams scam and so does the lack of information he provided.

[jazbo]

A real hard lesson to learn. I have to question the sanity of paying $6000 for a site with such flimsy evidence attached to it, no matter how green you are. My advice is to have a long hard look at what drove you to buy it, and to learn to not give in to that urge!

Sounds like he just used traffic exchanges or ping software to get the visitors up and then pinched some earnings screenshots.

I would still ask him again if there is anything else he used to drive traffic to the site, in case something has been overlooked.

The reason I say that is I sold a site on flippa for a considerable sum recently. It was a social network getting around 1500 uniques a day. Within a week of moving it to the buyers server they said that traffic was half what I had shown them it was.

The reason traffic dropped was that I had a widget game on 500+ bebo and facebook profiles, and I had forgotten to give them a copy, so when I deleted everything on my server, it stopped pulling images and the game would not work - so traffic dropped. It went straight back up when they edited the paths in the widget.

So it *could* be something simple like that, but I suspect you just got shafted.

[mr2monster]

This might be a stupid suggestion but.....



Did you change the affiliate links to your own?

[Prashaant]

The alexa traffic rank is far too low to show so many visitors... and $200/month on adwords? That's $6.6/day.. it's ridiculous.. the keywords for this niche are far more expensive..
I must say though, that there were a lot of "giveaways" in the sales copy itself. Even if you assume that 3500 out of 4500+ visitors came from adwords, that's about 6 cents/visitor - which is hardly possible in this niche even with a 10/10 adwords quality score. The sales letter screams SCAM...
I think, before you invest that kind of money.. you should spend couple of 100's on an expert to validate it.

[EvcRo]

Because flippa allows comment deletion by seller + flippa is famous and attracts lots of newbs ===> flippa scam paradise

i sold a site for 600, new owner resold it for 2500, how ? faked ss's of income, deleted all comments unmasking him, sold.

90% of the auctions of flippa are scams, check 10 times before you buy anything there, ask for trial of 1-2 days to see how adsense/sells works.

[monitorit]

i would try for a refund. There is no way that site was making anything near that amount. The design is just plain rubbish

[hotftuna]

The fastest way to loose money is to invest in a business that you do not understand. This is true online & off.

If you had an expert in this site service/product and business model, I doubt you would have bought it.

[Kay King]

This was purchased last july and the seller claimed $200 adwords spend monthly. Was anything spent on adwords after the purchase?

The site today has little visible relationship in style to the site shown in the auction. Has it been changed?

Site Profile for gamerzunderground.com | Compete

big splash and sinks like a rock

kay

[dotcomdude]

It looks like the seller is in the UK. If you examined everything in minute detail that was told to you or shown to you as part of the discussions around the sale of the site - you may well find something (or maybe even lots of things) that weren't true.

If this is the case, you would have two options:

1. A civil claim for damages based upon any false representation made

2. A criminal case for deception

I think it's likely that in either case - the relevant court would frown upon the guilty party.

Obivously you wouldn't have a leg to stand on if everything was correct, and the bottom just fell out of the market on the day you did the deal (caveat emptor - let the buyer beware!)

[SurviveUnemployment]

I'm sure you've already done this, but just in case...

Did you change all the logins? Did you make sure that the money links are your own? If the seller left their own links in there, they're still getting the money.

[wholesale]

Please say that you paid by credit card and not bank transfer ? if you paid by credit card there is still a chance you can get your money back. contact the bank or paypal and open a dispute and they will claim the money back for you. I am from the Uk and I know how the credit cards work. i hope that you can make something of it or get your money back

[UltimateWarrior]

In the first place , have you ask yourself this question before you purchase this website , why would anybody want to sell his website when it is as profitable as you have mentioned.

[Wham]

So many problems

First of all people are already programed to go to certain places to get video game consoles and such, anything expensive really, so they go to places like bestbuy, walmart, straight to amazon. They don't care to go to small unheard of websites to buy them.

Second the design, if I stumbled across the website I would hit the back button right away. If you had a truly professional design that looked like a legitimate online store then maybe people will stay a little longer.

Honestly, I don't see such a website being profitable because your straight out selling consoles and offering nothing. A detailed wordpress review of a ps3 with an amazon affiliate link would probably stand a much better chance then that entire website.

I would try to get your money back, whatever it takes

[Star Riley]

I advice you to duplicate the site you own that is making you money cloning that site would not cost 600 so always ask yourself what would it cost to clone a site and then look at any other added value the seller is putting into it.

I can fully agree with Wham a wordpress site with backlinks built by a warrior or whomever would do you more justice I personally get a few bucks from amazon PM me I'll share a link to a site that I don't touch and it makes a bit of money on autopilot.

[Chris Pambos]

It appears that you have been conned but even so, by what you've explained in terms of how you're marketing this website, also seems hopeless.

Seems like you need to learn how to generate consistent quality traffic as should any successful internet marketer.

[ptone]

Originally Posted by tilanus

It's exactly the same design I'm using for a real moneymaker I also bought on Flippa: amazon-kindle-store.net

I hate to be the bearer of even more bad news for you. But this domain name is in clear violation of Amazon's affiliate TOS.

Specifically here:
include any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, or any variation or misspelling of any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, in any domain name -- for example, a domain name such as "amazon.mydomain.com", "amaozn.com", "amazonauctions.net", “facebook.com/amazondealsgroup,” “endlessboots.com,” “endless.mydomain.com”, “endlss.com,” “kindlemagazines.mydomain.info,” or “kindlewirelessreader.co.uk” would be unsuitable

Once they discover your site, they will ban you and not pay you commissions earned.

NOTE: You should get 2nd or 3rd opinions on this, but my advice is:
quickly move this site to a new domain name that does not contain Amazon or Kindle. You will take a hit if you are relying on SEO, but you will take a bigger hit once Amazon discovers this.

There are some b l a c k h a t solutions to this problem, but I'm not going to recommend that...you will have to get that from someone else.

[tilanus]

Hi Ptone,

About my Kindle store. I took over not only this site but also the Amazon account of the Kindle store from the pevious owner. The TOS you're mentioning was set in place after this account was set up . They grandfathered me in so to speak. So, if you try to become an Amazon affilate from now on with Amazon or Kindle in your domain they won't accept you. But my domain was accepted before the TOS was 'law'.

About Gamerzunderground. Many thanks for your response and advise. I bought it after I had that luck with this Kindle store which makes me good money. There were for me at that time no signs that something was the matter Gamerzunderground. I could look up the address of the English, he used his own name, I know were he lives (checked with google maps), the works. I thought. So I wasn't sceptical enough. Now I am. I now have stopped buying websites all together.

I will think very hard what to do next with this site and if I can take action against the previous owner. It has a lousy domain name (no keywords in it accepts for 'gamer') and I don't have any knowledge about consoles. I tried many years ago a game with Lara Croft. Nice lady but she still waiting in a cave to be recued.

Anyway, I'm learning but to my defense I want to emphesize I'm also make a decent income with various financial websites despite my lack of knowledge about this business. And from now on I read my daily internet news on Warriosforum. That's for sure.

I really appreciate your comments. I hope this will also be a warning sign for everybody who wants to buy a site on Flippa. Flippa doesn't take any responsiblilty whatstoever.
Harald

[Kay King]

Flippa doesn't take any responsiblilty whatstoever.

That should not surprise anyone as they can't take responsibility for bad sites or for people who buy sites without knowledge of how to maintain them - which happens.

Had to laugh at the Laura Croft comment. I've never been interested in the gaming aspect online and the lesson here may be to avoid niches (even if they sound good) where you have no personal interest or knowledge.

One thing I have noticed with "pumped up" sites for sale is that searching the domain name always results in a ton of web2.0 results and little else. It's one thing to watch out for.

kay

[Darth Executor]

Originally Posted by mr2monster

This might be a stupid suggestion but.....



Did you change the affiliate links to your own?

If this guy is making decent money off other sites but doesn't know how to change affiliate links then he must be the luckiest n00b on the planet.

[euhlir]

I actually remember looking at that auction when it was live. I'm always wary of sites selling that only get traffic from adwords.

They were likely not telling you the truth about the site. They may have been making that much from their online store, but probably not from their site.

[manhal]

This is really frustrating for new buyers ...

[joshril]

So sorry to hear about this, but there is some good advice on this thread. It may be hard to get a refund at this point, but if you feel scammed, you could always open a dispute with your credit card company.

Best of luck!

[moneysoapbox]

It sucks that happened to you. I know I've fallen for some fancy claims myself >.<

For what it's worth, gamerzunderground.com, the domain name, has a lot of potential. I know - I'm an underground gamer myself >:P

When I hear the name, I think of a forum site. You could easily monetize a forum with affiliate links and Adsense. Hell, you could even build a list - sign up for your list for incredible offers on low-cost games/consoles, or set up a "Game of the Week" type newsletter where you review a game and then, whether it's a good or bad review, anyone who buys it goes through your affiliate link.

Just an idea

[Wham]

Originally Posted by moneysoapbox

It sucks that happened to you. I know I've fallen for some fancy claims myself >.<

For what it's worth, gamerzunderground.com, the domain name, has a lot of potential. I know - I'm an underground gamer myself >:P

When I hear the name, I think of a forum site. You could easily monetize a forum with affiliate links and Adsense. Hell, you could even build a list - sign up for your list for incredible offers on low-cost games/consoles, or set up a "Game of the Week" type newsletter where you review a game and then, whether it's a good or bad review, anyone who buys it goes through your affiliate link.

Just an idea

thatd actually be a good idea, a lot of potential in that