Buying websites as an investment

Be sure to get what site flipping guides you can find. I just ran across a decent looking 2006 PLR title "Virtual Real Estate Tycoon" that includes a few page of contract forms. (should be cheap)

Buying a going profitable business site is good for those without the patience and attention span needed to build and promote a site from scratch.

Some of the best deals can be in buying highly ranked sites (or just domain names) who's owners have fallen on hard times or just lost interest in. They are sort of the internet fixer upper in a good neighborhood.

Typical rule of thumb pricing guides estimate the sale price of eCommerce sites at 12 to 24 times the monthly revenues.

Like buying a physical business, you have plenty of due diligence to do. I saw one retail store bring in fake customers for the week the prospective buyer helping at te counter. Web site PR ranking and visitor volume can be faked. You will find some tools like Alexa, Whois and The Wayback Machine to be useful.

If your going to be actively involved, you idealy would pick an area you have an interest in.

If you are thinking of the future , you don't necessarily need to judge a site whether it has an adsense ad or not .

You have to see it from its potential point of view.

There are sites for buying and selling websites and the most recommended is Flippa.com It does not cost a lot to have a small stable of websites which you monetize by using Adsense and let it run on auto-pilot for years.

Websites can be good investments. However, Flippa and this place are full of dodgy investments. I've heard good things about people buying up established sites - look for sites in your favorite niches that appear to have been abandoned, and put in an offer.

Honestly I'd recommend a little "ground" work of your own before purchasing a website for an investment. Most "rehab" websites need loving care and input from someone that's done it before or has a great idea for how to transform the website.

If you haven't done it before, its gonna be difficult and you may end up driving the site into the ground. Assuming that you got a good site to begin with.

Just take great care before buying a website that you verify the traffic and revenue claimed. There is often fake traffic being sent to Flippa sites and fake revenue screenshots. If the seller doesn't have feedback from other sales, proceed with caution.

Not to say that a new seller can't be honest, but it's a land mine there and anywhere else that you buy websites from someone else.

I was looking on a forum today (not here) in the "sites for sale section", and the amount of CRAP (sorry, i don't think another word fits) is just staggering.

70% of sites are autoblogs, and people are still trying to sell autoblogs with spun, garbage content.

Then there are sites where its clear that they got slapped by Panda (huge traffic drop starting in February, March)...due to dupe content etc..etc..

It's really hard to find decent sites.

Tips:

* Stay away from any sites where people give bizarre reasons why they dont have analytics on and similar.

* Stay away from brand new sites and domains. Its ridiculous to see earnings claims for sites which are barely 1 month old.

* Examine the PR (page rank) and double check whether its actually real.

* Check whether site is indexed and whether site-links IN GOOGLE do actually still lead to the links on the site. Someone tried to sell a site where he slapped a new site over it, basically destroying all existing links by not keeping the old links intact.

With such a site you can expect that it will lose ANY rankings, eg. if the links in Google all go to a 404.

* Check where traffic comes from. Sadly, there are LOTS of sites where traffic is mainly from india, pakistan etc. This traffic hardly converts and it can hurt your Adsense account.

* Do not right away believe what the people tell you, double check (DOUBLE!) check everything, their traffic, revenue claims etc.

--> A serious seller will always be able to provide verified analytics (eg. on flippa) or he will allow a remote desktop session or a analytics guest login.

--> A serious seller will be able to provide some months of revenue. Buyers are VERY picky and it can get very difficult to sell a site which has not 6+ months of hard revenue proof. If you are lucky, you can get by if you can prove 3+ months...otherwise hardly a chance to sell based on revenue.

--> Do not sell based on speculation. Buyers want facts. If your site has ZERO visitors and ZERO revenue, you just look like a fool/scammer if you want to sell your site making claims about revenue or traffic which does not exist (or will magically appear "sometime in the future"). If your site does indeed have no revenue/traffic...it might be worth letting it mature and sell it in a few months.

I believe that the best investment strategy is to spend about $1-2k building and promoting authority Adsense sites through outsourcing....make it almost totally autopilot.....those sites will bring in 5 figure Flippa sales when only making a few hundred bucks a month. If you are a capable site builder you can make a mint.

Basically I'm saying don't buy other's sites, that takes 1-2 yrs to recoup the sale. Instead outsource and build your own and sell them for 15-20X earnings within 6 months

The key is authority sites, there is a huge market for them.

The day of making money on auto-pilot is a thing of the past in my opinion. The internet is changing in a major way RIGHT now. I think it's a good time to buy, but I would focus on quality niche sites you can run as a business. Online/Offline would be even better. There are new trends in the making, so you need to search for reference materials that deal with the current situation. Best wishes.

I really like GeorgR's points above.

We sell sites on Flippa pretty regularly lately, but there is quite a bit of garbage that's offered on Flippa. We've had some pretty good experiences in selling out auctions and believe we're offering pretty good value. (Even if we're a little biased!)

Keep these things in mind:
- Anything missing you would expect to see? Expect that it's missing for a reason!
- Do the numbers match? Did they write something different in the auction than what's included in the screenshots? If they didn't even take the time to match the numbers they might not only be a scammer...they're bad at it.
- Do they have a history of selling those sites? What does their feedback say? Have they been doing it for some time?
- Seem too good to be true? It probably is...

Check out our site for free information on what to watch for as a buyer, tips for a seller, etc. We DEFINITELY recommend building some sites yourself first before trying to take over someone else's and we give our process away for free and it's pretty easy to follow.

I see lot of essential checklist to be followed for website flipping already provided.I would like to add that you have to look for something which you enjoy being a part of.It makes building the business more fun.

We had some questions about how to spot good/bad sellers in auctions and thought we'd share and write a post about it. Can check it out here:

Top 7 Things Flippa Sellers Hope You Won't Notice (And How To Spot Them In Minutes) | AdSense Flippers

The main con of investing in Adsense sites is having your Adsense account shut down. Google can and has done this without warning.

If investing in websites is really what you have your heart set on, then I recommend diversifying your portfolio. Buy some Adsense sites, some ClickBank review sites, some Amazon review sites, some sites that have their own products, etc.

Also keep in mind, however, that you'll need to leave some money aside for advertising. Unfortunately, most websites don't generate traffic out of thin air.

Buy something which is well structured ,probably has a few good backlinks from authority sites, has a unique content as well as see the reputation of the seller.

I ve a coupld of Books related to flipping sites, Lemme Know I will send a couple of them to ya..

Buying domain, make a good website, gain hundreds of visitors and sell it..

Hey guys, am interested in this topic as well, for the long term. My thinking is 1. the English market is probably very competitive and there might be better opportunity in other language markets, and 2. Google and other SE's will get smarter and smarter about identifying real content so either have user generated content or prepare to invest in creating yourself. Thoughts?

Do you have any recommendations of these sites?

Thanks

I just have a websites... same like you, make it as investment... hope its going to work

if you don't have a clue to list building then start it right now. When i started doing IM stuff, i did not give a damn to list building and now i realize i have thrown too much money...

I was thinking about the same thing after reading his book Unfair Advantage. Of course I'm not coming into any sums of money from the outside but I'll give you my 2 cents.

Assets and passive income are the way to go:

But most websites aren't what you would call pure passive income. And even on-going maintenance will only do you so much good if you don't understand most of the points that got it to where it is.

Who's to say the original owner doesn't create another one in the same niche, and passes the original up?

I was thinking of the idea of buying websites and I wouldn't rule that out, but I would advise you first, if you haven't already, to create a website from scratch and build it up to make it successful bringing in an impressive amount of money per month. That way you have a better understanding of what it takes to get there (and this fundamental goes for anyone considering buying websites).

If I were in your situation (and of course I don't know your record), would build a few websites (use some of that investment money to learn what works for backlink building, design, etc.) to get your websites to page 1 and monetized.

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”