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buying established websites/blogs as investment

by tjc348
13 replies
I was just looking into buying niche websites/blogs that are already making a monthly revenue.

I like the idea of this because of these reasons:

1.The idea/topic/niche has already been chosen, and works if it is making money

2. The site is already built and somewhat established, and is residually making money


3. I don't have to start from scratch on where to begin, and how to begin.

4. I am willing to continue adding to the website consistantly, and build backlinks/ pay for SEO servies etc to keep the site GROWING.

5. I feel like it's a good platform that can allow you to multiply/grow the existing monthly revenue.

I look at this as somewhat of an investment. For instance, say I bought a 1 year old website for 1-2k dollars, and it generated 100-200 dollars a month, within a year (roughly) I could have made my initial investment back, and by then, I could have made that monthly revenue GROW 2-3x what it was when I bought the site.


What do you guys think?

Who has bought already established sites that make money, and continued to build them into something much bigger than they were when you bought them?

I also feel like buying a website that is already making money each month, is motivation in itself to keep it going and increase the revenue.

I'm only looking to spend 1-2k dollars.
#buying #established #investment #websites or blogs
  • Profile picture of the author Jim35
    It's a great ideal but you really have to be careful on what you purchase. Some flippers use tactics to get traffic that when you buy the site they unhook it and go to the next flip leaving you without the most valuable asset the traffic. Also you need to learn how much is too much to pay for a site. I have always been amazed at people who want to sell a site that is making 2,000 a month but sell the site for 6,000 because they need the investment for other sites they are developing. Really? That just don't add up for me. Good luck on your ventures.
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  • Profile picture of the author lotsofsnow
    Basically this is a very good idea.

    If you have no clue about web sites you should hire somebody to guide you.

    You can lose a lot of money fast if you do not know what to look for.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Tandan
    Tread cautiously here. As already mentioned, income claims and traffic numbers can be fraudulent. Perhaps the real income is being earned by the site owner marketing to a personal list.
    There's not much substitute for building up from scratch. May take a bit more time, but you'll be able to track every penny you spend and set that against actual earnings. Sounds sweet when someone has a site for sale promising so many dollars a month, but what happens when the deal is done and the seller is gone?
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    • Profile picture of the author tjc348
      Thanks for all your feedback.

      I understand that I need to know what I'm looking at, and need to do my research before comitting to a purchase like this. I've also seen websites claiming to making 4k a month, and they're selling the website for 8k. Clearly something is wrongh here.

      From what I understand, the website should typically be selling for about 10-12x the monthly revenue. ie: if a site is making 100 dollars a month, it's expected to sell for about 1000-1200 dollars.

      What intersted me in this, is that a came accross an article where a guy purchased 2 forums that were based around a specific niche. The forums had an already established community, and were continuing to grow on a daily basis. At the time of his purchase the sites were bringing in around 1k a month. He paid 12k dollars for them.

      After a few months of tweaking the monetization (location of ads etc) he was able to bring that monthly income up to 2k dollars. At that point he was able to hire a website manager to maintain the website for him at around 500 dollars per month, bringing him a steady $1500 net revenue almost completely hands off.

      Of course this guy did his research and made a good decision. But I wouldn't jump into purchasing just any website without knowing it's a good decision to make.

      I'll continue to research and learn what I need to observe while looking to purchase an established website/blog.

      I was just looking to hear from anyone with experience/success doing this.


      Also, it is'nt more simple to start from scratch in my opinion. Someone made a good example of this:

      Starting a website from scratch is similar to pushing a car from a dead stop. It takes a lot of hard work to get it rolling, where as if you buy a website that has already been established, the hard part has been done, and from there on it's your job to keep it rolling.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jim35
    There are some deals out there. I use to buy some sites and make money from them but not in the way most people do it. One really good example was I would find squidoo pages for sale with pr-1 to pr-3 in popular niches and sell links on these pages. I bought one for 6 dollars one time and sold 300 dollars in links on it in about a month. Lots of ways to make money with established sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    It's a good plan as long as you do due diligence, especially in areas like how the site may be currently impacted by Google shenanigans. Did a guest post on due diligence on Flippa that covers the basics.
    Guest Post: the Domaining Diva on Due Diligence | Flippa Blog | A blog about buying and selling websites, domains and apps.
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  • Profile picture of the author internet marketing tools
    very interesting idea but you just have to know what kinds of products would converts.finding a niche blogs for severals internet marketers are not a rare things.you will find another players have done this for a years ago.maybe i can help you find the best niche blog.
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  • Profile picture of the author RickCopy
    personally Id rather just buy a site with good content and no revenue or traffic... I dont trust anyone's backlinking strategies other than my own and having it already earning just means you're going to be paying a much higher multiple (most of the time more than its really worth). Id rather just have all the hard work done first and then use my standard linking and traffic building methods and monetize it myself then drip more content. If they've got decent keywords and content, but just havent put enough work in it to rank then you should be able to get these for a song and not put a whole lot of work in to start making them revenue producers.
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    This is just me.....

    I would never buy any website from anyone when they say that they get an average of $xxx amount of money each month. That could be true or false. You don't know that.

    I think that the best lesson you can learn once you buy more websites, is if it was worth it for you or not.

    Only time will tell you the truth.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stevie C
    I've never done it but Spencer over at Niche Pursuits is carrying out a case study on this at the moment

    Case Study: Buying Websites and Strategy to Increase Earnings | Niche Pursuits
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  • Profile picture of the author Anthony Manly
    To give you some confidence I regularly buy expiring domains with Page Authority (PA)>30 and Domain Authority (DA)>25 as Page Rank (PR) can easily be faked.

    The tool of choice that I use is Search for Domains with Pagerank at Registercompass which is one of many tools you can use to locate good sites. Ahrefs is also great for understanding the backlink structure and domcop.com and the MOZ are also tools that help. Time machine will allow you to understand what the site has looked like in the past and the following will also help:

    Run the following queries in Google to help you:
    1. "info:domainname.ext" - tells you if the domain points to another domain - if another domain shows up the PR is mostly fake.
    2. "site:domainname.ext" - tells you if the domain has been slapped by google

    Always do your research however if you have a good GVA then they can easily complete the above mentioned research on many domains and narrow down the best ones for you

    Hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author BellaGeen
    You can definitely buy an established site - but you can improve their business only if you know exactly what to do.
    You can buy to see how the business works, though
    It is a great learning experience, but don't go after this guy success - he probably into Internet Marketing for some time. Correct me if I am wrong
    Anyways, do a careful research and talk to a seller - ask them all the straight questions.
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  • Profile picture of the author Anthony Manly
    hi Bellagreen,

    if you take it slowly and complete the basic research you will find yourself with success in no time. Buying an expired domain with high PA and DA for$100 is great way to accelerate your ranking in google for freemium traffic.

    Spend the time and you will get the results
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