Buying a website.. Need advice

22 replies
Greetings

I need somethings cleared before I proceed. I am planning to invest in website. Consider I am new in this field and I bought a ready website from flippa or anywhere for some $'s with 10k unique monthly traffic generating some x$ from adsense. I dont have an approved adsense account. So when I buy a new website which was already earning, how many days will it take for my adsense account get approved and start earning the same x$ amount from this site.. What would be the overall process of buying a new site and start generating revenues..

Thanks in advance..
#adsense #advice #buying #website
  • Profile picture of the author CyberAlien
    There's no way to estimate how long it will take to get your Adsense account or if it will even be approved. Assuming the person who owns it now doesn't have a Premium account at Adsense, that you don't change anything about the ads, and that you continue sending traffic the same way they are - then the earnings should be very close.
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  • Profile picture of the author mindwire
    You also want to chase the site URL through the wayback machine (at archive.org).
    I often found high quality, niche related content this way and the best is: it is completely unique!
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    • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
      Originally Posted by onlineworkers View Post

      with 10k unique monthly traffic
      That's only like 300 uniques a day. It better be priced cheap. I would look for something in the area of 3,000 to 5,000 uniques a day. That would give you some assurance that people like the site and return often via typein. Whereas 300 a day could be come & go SE traffic that isn't really building towards anything.

      Originally Posted by mindwire View Post

      You also want to chase the site URL through the wayback machine (at archive.org).
      I often found high quality, niche related content this way and the best is: it is completely unique!
      That is illegal copyright infringement. Just because content is taken offline doesn't give you the right to use it. Even if you're talking about doing it for a site that you bought, you still don't have rights to the historical archive of content unless that was explicitly included in the sale.
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  • Profile picture of the author kinyash
    I think you have to purchase the website first then use it to get approved for adsense. They are abit strict nowadays.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve B
      How do you know the links and traffic will continue once you take possession of the site?

      You don't.

      I'm just saying be careful about how you expect the site to perform after it has changed hands. If you're paying for the traffic flow you could be buying nothing.

      Good luck,

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author onlineworkers
        Originally Posted by Steve B View Post

        How do you know the links and traffic will continue once you take possession of the site?

        You don't.

        I'm just saying be careful about how you expect the site to perform after it has changed hands. If you're paying for the traffic flow you could be buying nothing.

        Good luck,

        Steve


        Yes thats true... So is it worth to buy a website through sites like flippa and others.. The immediate question which arise is "Will it be genuine".
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Obviously if you leave the adsense ads as they are, the person who sold you the website will earn those commissions. If you already bought your website from them and you own the site already, I would delete those ads because you have not been approved yet by Google to run any ads.

    I also want to add that there are some dishonest people who don't earn any commission from their site but will tell you that they do and lie to you. You will find out very fast if it was all worth it or not. If it wasn't, then it is your loss bur you will learn a lesson.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve B
      Good advice Tal, also . . .

      The previous owner could have been buying his traffic and it will stop when you take over. You don't know where it's coming from so I'm just saying that I would be careful about spending a lot for a web site and expecting the site to perform at any certain level.

      It's good to trust others in certain situations; but on the Internet when you are spending money it pays to go in with your eyes wide open.

      Good luck to you,

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author talfighel
        I think that he should go with the buy.

        Worst case scenario is:

        You buy the website and it does not get any traffic. It is not earning you any money and the traffic is not there really. You get angry for a while but you learn your lesson and you move forward.

        OR.....

        You buy the website and it is getting you steady traffic and is earning you great commissions from the products that you added to the site.

        You never know.
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  • Profile picture of the author january14n
    I think you should pursue buying the website of your choice then while waiting for the adsense approval, I suggest you to use some alternatives like selling affiliate products from where you may get commissions.
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  • Profile picture of the author rodsav
    I agree with all the comments, just be careful because the traffic flow may change and the site stops generating income. I would be prepared for the worst case scenario. Good Luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author pinks
    It really depends on how much you are spending to get the website.If you are spending thousands and you dont know much about generating traffic and monetizing the site,then I would suggest you don't buy the site yet.You don't want to buy a website and then wonder what you should do next.
    On the other hand,if you are spending a few hundreds and are ready to take it as a learning experience,go ahead,the site will get you started.Just do proper research,ask questions to the seller to get a feel of what you are getting into so you have no surprises later.
    And if you are already good at generating and converting traffic,then the site will add to your assets and you should buy it.
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  • Profile picture of the author imoffersonline
    never trust on flippa....only a few sites you found real..and rest of all are crap.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joan Altz
    I'd say pass on Flippa completely. A lot of those guys have some pretty clever tactics for making their sites seem better than what they really are, including buying cheap, untargeted traffic to boost their volume and using buffer site techniques, bots and so on....

    Better to start fresh and invest in quality traffic imo. I don't trust Flippa sellers at all. They have a whole network of collaborators who work together. Not all sellers, of course, but it's more prevalent than people believe.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rebeccha Haase
    You can replace those ad sections with some adsense alternatives. Chitika is a great option I think while your adsense account is under approval. Also, you need to be careful to maintain the traffic flow and know the tactics the previous owner used to drive traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    If you want to speed up ga approval, apply via a blogger.com account. Worked for me.
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    • Profile picture of the author onlineworkers
      Originally Posted by writeaway View Post

      If you want to speed up ga approval, apply via a blogger.com account. Worked for me.

      May I know more about your experience.. Can see your blog if you dont mind...

      regards
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  • Profile picture of the author onlineworkers
    Thanks a lot guys... This really opened my ears and eyes. .. Will not take a risk of believing them and buying a crap or a gold mine, but instead will create my own gold mine. . . Because After seeing all the comments above i realized those websites have some 50 odd articles with keywords and some backlinks and some social media page which drives traffic for them. So why not I do the same thing and start it form fresh... So I have thought of building my OWN SITE now . I have a niche in my mind, so will start writing on that. And will need advice from you guys until I stand on my own feet..

    My first step: Which cms can I use... since I will be posting articles and posts... ( Wordpress or blogger) which one is better for adsense...
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  • Profile picture of the author lisakynan
    I would educate myself fully before purchasing a website off anyone. You are going to need to carry on adding content and updating it constantly to retain the same results anyway..
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  • Profile picture of the author mikelmraz
    Make sure the site has Google Analytics added. It will be better if the Analytics data is verified by Flippa as well (Flippa has a system to confirm the Google Analytics as genuine).

    You can also ask the seller to add you as an observer in Google Analytics so that you can see where the traffic is coming from, in order to verify his claimed traffic sources.
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  • Profile picture of the author curationsoft
    you should make a plan first before investing a website. make your adsense account ready and figure out how you can make money out of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author ivansk
    I have bought several sites at Flippa and if you watch the site and seller carefully, there are nice sites to buy.
    You have to look at traffic sources - it should be verified by fflippa and you can also ask to share google analytics and you can see it yourself where the traffic come from.
    From my little research made there, it looks that there are several groups of sellers doing the same scenario - expired domain with PR + images from google on various topics (one DMCA and your adsense is past) + some backlink from high PR website + adsense ads = website is making few hundreds monthly.
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