Are Pre-Made Websites A Scam?

They are selling it because it takes a lot of time and effort to earn money. A pre-made website is useless unless you optimize it and drive traffic which takes time. That is why some developers choose to sell pre-made site and make quick buck.

Also, if you plan on buying a pre-made site, make sure to check copyscape.com for duplicate content. There are tons of sellers who pull articles from other sites, throw them up on a nice wordpress theme and sell it off.

A site might have the potential to make a few hundred per month, but it definitely can't be guaranteed. The site creator only makes the site, it's then up to the new owner to make it profitable - drive traffic, add more content etc.

Offering a site creation service is just another way to make some money. They're definitely not a scam, but it's best not to order a site unless you actually know what to do with it.

Additionally, many embed "designed by" links into the footer as a means to promote themselves.

"Premade Websites" and "Wordpress Themes" as well as "Joomla Themes" are great ways to get backlinks...FWIW

Why purchase a website if you can do it yourself? Your own simple website could do much better than their fancy pre-made minisite.

SCAM is a dangerous word to throw around. Different people have a different definition.

You are right that it doesn't make sense to sell a site that makes $100/month for $50. That would be stupid. So look at the guarantee. What do you have to do for it to be valid. If they are expecting you to put 60 hours a week into promoting it, getting a certain amount of traffic to it or meeting some other specific criteria then you have your answer as to why they are selling.
No website will make $100/month purely on design. You have to get people to it. More specifically you need to get targeted people to it. Get BUYERS to it. If you know how to do that you probably don't need the pre-canned website in the first place.

If you really want to go down the route of buying a website on the basis that you want to see what a good money making website looks like, then make sure you look for one with a few extra's thrown in. A few examples:

*The guarantee - obviously.
*A traffic generation guide.
*Setup on your server
*Integration with your paypal or affiliate program.

And then be sure to realize that no matter how good the site, you are still going to have to do some work to get people to it, and to get cash flowing from it.

They should never promise the site is guaranteed to make money. Making money depends on the actions taken by the buyer. Pre-made sites are no more a scam than pre-made bread, but if you don't drive traffic, it will just gather digital dust.

I have tried the ready made sites and found that the money I spent trying to promote it was not worth the effort.

Make your own site, and if you cannot do that, hire someone to do it for you - your own site will rasp more return

The biggest problem with these premade sites is the lack of original content, recent google changes have made it yet harder for unoriginal sites to get listed in search results (Panda update) some earning claims for adsense sites may be for the original copy's performance some years ago.

I have seen local businesses like Chiropractors and real estate agents using premade sites (whether they realize this is another story) while some I sampeled basically don't rank in Google general search, when a local search is done (Chiropractors, phoenix) they get Google Places results which link directly to their premade site.

Not all premade websites have the content pre inserted in them. You may be sure that the ones with all content pre done are not going to bring you any profit at all. Google search "penalizing duplicate content" to see how these websites are black listed by Google and never see daylight on Google search pages.
You may try something like pre made business websites - premade.us, create your own unique content and start making money.
To monetize a website through showing advertisement like Google AdSense takes time and a lot of effort though.
Good luck.

I really wouldn't bother... You would be much better off doing it yourself.

You aren't missing anything.

It is one thing to build a site.That takes a certain amount of work.

It is another thing to drive traffic, build SEO rankings and make money from a site. That takes a different kind of work.

Many people like building sites and are good at design. Those same people lack the skills and/or interest in actually running and promoting a site. So they so what they love (build sites) and then sell them.

Many people like finding niches, like doing SEO and are good at driving traffic and money. But they hate futzing around in WordPress and they suck at design. So they buy their websites ready-made from the first group.

Many buyers simply take a PLR web site and put it up on a server. This isn't the most effective use of a pre-made site unless it was custom made for you.

If the pre-made web site is PLR you will want to:

* Change all the content to make it better/unique
* Change the images to make it look unique
* Add/Change plugins to match your plans for the site
* Change any possible 'footprints' like the menu/footer/sidebar content/links
* Remove any hidden backlinks/affiliate links from the code :rolleyes:

But the income claims by sellers are based on a properly executed maintenance and SEO/traffic plan.

IF you can drive traffic and get the site ranked and IF you can monetize it well, THEN it will make all the money claimed.

Mahlon

Most people are lazy. Most internet marketers are lazy. They're looking for the golden goose and want to buy it. What they don't realize is that there are no golden goose that can lay golden eggs.

YOU need to do the work. If you buy any pre-made sites, you need to be the one driving traffic, adding content and doing marketing. Once it becomes your property, it becomes your responsibility.

I would create a simple little sites myself, and provide the content and adsense ads and products that i want to sell on them.

because the key is getting the traffic. getting people to come to the site.

I find it's always better to have a pro designer do one from scratch - there's way too many dynamic factors that influence conversion (e.g. placement, colors, text, graphics, etc.) and a pre-made template just doesn't cut it in my opinion

you can buy a premade site, but you will need to invest into seo either lots of your time or money.

I bought two sites from WF. One was a small site and hasn't really made much money, but the choice of niche was nice. The site does have a lot of potential.

The other one cost a lot of money (over $1000), but after 5 weeks the service provider only had a crappy looking 5 page site to show for his efforts. I ended up requesting a refund from PayPal.

I think my money would have been better spent perfecting CPA advertising or something.

The site is much less important than the content. Content is king and always will be. Everything else is just mush.

These sites are not scams - they are intended to be a starting point upon which you can build your business.

As they are, most will not make you very much money, but if you take the time to do some keyword research, keep cranking out good quality content and build social communities around them, you can build up a lot of traffic and traction in time.

Turnkey website can do better its just that you get a pre built cms in the backend you need to make some custom design in the front end add your own content and that will be profitable in the long run.

You have to drive traffic by your own to get the money.. No traffic = no money