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Any advise for someone who is completely new on website investing?

by jean luc antoine
11 replies
Hi guys

My name is Jean Luc from the UK, I'm new to this forum.

I've recently seen some information about website investment, which I found very interesting, buying and keep it as passive income, not selling them back. But, I find it very difficult to find good and recent information. The majority of information on Google date from many years ago, I don't know how relevant these advised are nowadays and the information on Youtube is very limited.

Can anyone guides me on where should I start? I'm a complete beginner. Do you think that the information given from 2012 are still valid today, if not where can I find some? If anyone here is doing it, I will gladly talk to this person. Thank you

Regards
Jean Luc
#advise #completely #investing #website
  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    I am absolutely unclear what you are asking here. Are you talking about buying stocks in publicly traded websites or buying websites?
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  • Profile picture of the author JennyBright
    Interested in the general idea but have no clue what do you mean by that. Can somebody clarify that for me?
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  • Profile picture of the author jean luc antoine
    Hi

    Sorry for being unclear, I meant buying a website and monetize it for passing income.
    I don't know in which niche yet, a content website, eCommerce... I will need to find which one will be the best for me. I have seen some for sale on Flippa but I don't really know all the information I need to check on my due diligence.

    I have found a book, the website investor by Jeff Hunt, but it was written in 2014 and not sure if all the information are still relevant, does anyone have more recent information? Thank you.

    Regards
    Jean Luc
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    • Profile picture of the author kaymehelp
      Originally Posted by jean luc antoine View Post

      Hi

      Sorry for being unclear, I meant buying a website and monetize it for passing income.
      I don't know in which niche yet, a content website, eCommerce... I will need to find which one will be the best for me. I have seen some for sale on Flippa but I don't really know all the information I need to check on my due diligence.

      I have found a book, the website investor by Jeff Hunt, but it was written in 2014 and not sure if all the information are still relevant, does anyone have more recent information? Thank you.

      Regards
      Jean Luc

      Why don't you create your own and work on it? But whatever you do, NEVER buy a site from Flippa, since I'm sure you'll get across that marketplace if you decide to continue with your research.


      Edit: just saw you already visited there. Make sure to do your own due diligence and don't fall for the fancy earning screenshots. Almost everything there is an illusion.
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      • Profile picture of the author jean luc antoine
        It's because I have watched some website investors saying that it was always better to buy one already running that risking building one from scratch because of the percentage of new websites that fail.

        I have read that too many sites for sell on Flippa are garbage, this is for that I needed more information to be able to detect which one is worth acquiring.
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  • Profile picture of the author kebumen
    For long term, if you have a website and serious to maintain, yes, this is can become as investment. If you have huge of traffics to your site, you can put something to sell inside you site. Imagines, if your site have a traffics around 1000 visitor a day, you can offer your service there, for example as web design service, e-learning course, ebook, etc.

    To start the website as your investment, you can begin from register a domain and hosting service, upload an useful article for visitor, and keep to write article, 1 article a day, and do for around 1 years, I think you will see the results.
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  • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
    From what has been posted on this forum in the past. Empire Flippers has more better screening in sellers than flippa does. You could invest in a web site that some one sells and it may not longer be profitable. Be very care with how you spend your money.
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    There are several things that make a website a good one to purchase:

    1) It has been in business for at least 3 years and has shown steady profit growth throughout those years (not revenue growth, which is meaningless).

    2) It is selling "evergreen products" (ones that will be popular 10, 20, 30 years from now).

    Even better, is a website that is selling its own brand name products.

    Finally, I should point out that I made my name in this industry flipping websites. I certainly am not against buying a website that ranks well for great buying phrases but is just poorly made and converts poorly. In that case, you're not going to see a great track record of profits increasing over time. Over the years I've bought plenty of sites for very little money that ranked well but did not do much in sales. In some cases, we turned those sites around in weeks and had them making 3, 4, 5 times as much profit as they were making before. Those kind of sites are undervalued by their owners because they don't know how to make them more profitable. You used to be able to find a lot of them and get them pretty cheap. Nowadays, it's tough to find a poorly made website that ranks well but if you find one, it's a great investment - especially if it is selling evergreen products.
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    • Profile picture of the author jean luc antoine
      Hi

      Thank you for your reply. When you started, where did you learn everything that you know now? Where do you find these cheap websites to buy?

      I find it hard to know exactly what to look for when it comes to due diligence, if you have any suggestion, it would be fantastic.
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      • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
        Originally Posted by jean luc antoine View Post

        Hi

        Thank you for your reply. When you started, where did you learn everything that you know now? Where do you find these cheap websites to buy?

        I find it hard to know exactly what to look for when it comes to due diligence, if you have any suggestion, it would be fantastic.
        Back in the day, nobody knew much of anything about SEO, website design - anything! I picked up my SEO knowledge on webmaster forums back then and the few eBooks that existed. The rest was trial with plenty of error!

        I would first come up with a niche idea that looked like there were a lot of searches but not a ton of competition. Remember, more than 15 years ago, the internet was not the same as it is today. There wasn't a ton of competition for lots of things. Once I figured out what I wanted to sell, I'd search for it online and see if I could find a poorly designed site on page one or two for that product line or that was related to that product line (sometimes, it was just a blog that ranked well). Then, I'd contact the owner and make them an offer to buy their site, which usually wasn't making much money anyway.

        The only tips I can give you for due diligence in the limited space of a forum thread are to get as much access as you can to actual interfaces for the website, Google Analytics and accounting information. Plenty of sites out there state they are doing so much in gross revenue but when you look at what they are spending to generate that revenue, they are operating at a loss. Also, people have been known to manipulate screen shots of sales and/or show their PayPal accounts where it looks like there is a ton of income pouring in but what they don't tell you is that is income from 5 websites they own all under the same account. That's why having some sort of guest access to their actual storefront backend admin panel so that you can see the actual orders is important.
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        We help sellers get the MAXIMUM amount for their websites and all buyers know that these sites are 100% vetted.
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        • Profile picture of the author jean luc antoine
          What do you think about the competition now?

          If anyone has got any website where I could learn everything, it would be fantastic.
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