Web Ladder – Websites for sale blog

Hi all,

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Assaf

Hi all,

I’ve just bought a new bidding directory expending my directories network to 8 directories. Three of them are bidding directories.

Some will argue that the days of bidding directories has past, but I found that you may not get the same amount of submissions but there are still some webmasters that want to be on the top.

For example I bought thearttree.net for $60 and since then I’ve made around $1000 from it, without any marketing. Two weeks ago someone bid for $114 which is nice income

So I thought that if I can find another one for the right price I will buy it. The seller wanted $600 for bidweblink.com but we agreed on $350 which I found is a fair price for PR3 website.

I will keep you updated how this directory is doing.

Assaf

Hi all,

I am about to teach you a method that can save you a lot of money. I didn’t invent this method, but when I read it, it sounds so logical, so I started to implement it, and it works. It is a very simple but yet powerful that every professional buyer must use.

Let’s say you looking to buy a webmasters forum website. You can go to Sitepoint or any other website that offers websites for sale and search for ‘webmasters forum’ or similar search terms.

If we will stick with Sitepoint for a moment you will get a list of sites that are on auction. Check it yourself – The first one is me when I sold webmastersroom.com

Now take a look on the second result:

Looking to buy any webmaster forums/ web design or programming forums or any related domains

This is much better than to bid on auction. Why?

First sellers approach you so you can choose between several websites.

It also gives you the power to negotiate better. If they approached you it means that they are keen to sell. And you are the only buyer at the moment. So you can knocked down the price heavily. Of course that 80% will be crap, but still using this method gives you at least 5 websites to choose from.

Now if you decide to bid on an auction you compete against other buyers that will raise the price you are willing to pay. You also have to wait for the auction to ends, and there is no room for negotiation.

On the real world you can get bargains on auctions, but not with websites. The amount of quality websites that are out for sale is very low, and the competition is high. In fact I stopped bidding completely, because for every website that I wanted to buy and bid for it, I was outbid by someone, and the closing price was higher than I wanted to pay, or even worst higher than what the site is really worths.

Now I have some messages in relevant forums like:

“looking to buy…” and I get 5-10 offers a day. Now all I need is to chose from.

Have a great weekend,

Assaf

Hi all,

A month ago or so, Sitepoint as launched their new marketplace system. They claim that they worked on that more than a year. For those who didn’t visit the site lately won’t be surprised by the change. The changes are minor and you need to have a careful look to see what’s new.

So what’s new?

1) the look – is seems to be cleaner – not a huge difference – a different font, the upgrade listing has moved to the left- that’s it I think. Overall it looks better.
2) Sorting – you used to be able to sort the auctions by ending time. You can still do so, but then it gives you all the auctions that have been already ended. Why? I don’t need this information. Now I have to go to page 5 to find the ones that are about to end. Sorry but this is stupid. In 2-3 month time you will need to go to page 15 to find this information. Just remind you this is an auction site, so the ending time is one of the most important information. Now they buried it. Huge disappointed.

3) Buy it now – According to the new system when the reserve price is met the buy it now disappear. This to encourage people to use the buy it now. I don’t like it. As a seller I prefer to have a full control on the sale and not use artificial rules.

4) Conditional bids – Now you can submit a bid with condition – something like : I will bid for $400 if you can send proof of income. Again I don’t like it. This is something that the buyer should ask before he bid.

5) Legal binding – Sitepoint claim that now if you sell a website and there is a winner (if you didn’t reject his bid) you must sell the site to him. Likewise if you are a buyer you must buy. This is good but I can’t see how they will monitor it. It is not E-bay where they have you paypal account and your personal details. Anyone can open an account bid not pay and disappear.

6) Feedback – Buyer and seller can leave feedback on each other. It is one of the things that were missing in the old system. It is too early to say how it works on the new system, but it is a good news to have it.

These are the major changes. The bottom line is a bit disappointing. Yes there are some good new features, but it seems to me that Sitepoint are afraid to go all the way and have an auction section like ebay. Why? I am sure they have the answers.

Hi all,

Have a look here: http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/20371

This is a very good site that generates a lot of leads per month. But this is not what I want to talk about. Look at the bidding history:

• 22 Feb 2008 05:39

  $120,000 – chip2447

• 19 Feb 2008 12:08

  $80,500 (Private)

• 17 Feb 2008 03:39

  $80,000 (Private)

I can understand that someone has decided to raise his bid by $500 (the second one) but it is beyond me to understand why user name chip2447 has decided to raise the bar to $120,000 4 hours before the end of the auction. It is not that there are 10 bidders that are fighting for this website.

It is a lot of money to put, and I don’t think that many buyers have this sort of money. Apart of that, to run this website you need to be a lawyer , and again this limits the cometetion.

So why do raise the price to $120k? I really don’t know…

Assaf

Hello all,

It is about time that someone will offer a good system for webmasters to trade their sites.

We came with a very good auctions system that should answer all sellers and buyers needs.

Some of the features are very impressive:

1) For the first time you can rate the buyer and the seller like Ebay. No one offer this yet.

2) User can choose to verified their account, by paying a small fee from their paypal account.

3) 8 Categories, so it easy to find what you are looking for. We will add more according to the demand.

4) You can upload pictures and even a media file like small video.

5) It is almost free. You can post a new auction for free. All we charge is 1% from the final price. So if you didn’t sell you don’t have to pay. This is only fair.

We do hope to see here many auction, and we believe that this site is offering you the best solution for buying ans selling website.

If you have more suggestions and request please feel free to contact us.

Enjoy!

Hi all,

After 3 weeks break for (happy) family reasons I am back.

I was checking some websites on Sitepoint and Digitalpoint and I was amazed to see that excellentguide.com is for sale! For those who don’t know this is one of the best directories on the web.

For me this is the first place where I submit sites. Google loves this directory and it is good for ranking. It has PR7, 20,000 unique visitors a month, 150,000 page views and $6000 monthly income.

I have to admit that I was a bit surprised by the income figure – I think this site can make more. The price tag is $100,000 – not for the regular buyer. It is not the best timing to sell directory at the moment. There are a lots of discussions around the webmasters world about the war that Google has declared on paid directories.

Personally I think (and hope) it is just a hype, but the role of directories is not clear, and everyone are expecting to the PR update to find where the next Google trend goes.

But if you have this kind of money, buy this website. It has a very good reputation and steady income. This is the best website for sale out there.

Assaf

Hi all,

Have a look on this auction

A web based ftp client that allows users to access their ftp site behind a firewall. This is a great for people who need to access their ftp account from their work place. You will be surprise how many of them there are

So this is a solid PR6 with a lot of traffic and revenue from selling links. I know for sure that you can make much more by selling links on the homepage. I would say that you can make around $600 a month. So a buy it now for $3750 is a good price.

I didn’t want to buy it because as I said many time the last thing that I need in my life is to deal with customers. But then he mentioned another domain with PR6 and I thought that I have to try my luck. So I asked him if the price includes http://www.v-wijk.net/ which then will make it very attractive for buying. Just imagine 2 solid PR6 sites fop $3750

You can tell quite fast who is a serious seller and who is not. The ones that answer quickly and give you the info you need and not try to bullshit you are the ones that I try to make business with. And this guy is a serious seller with a great website.

But as expected the second domain wasn’t for sale so I thought I will leave it. And then of course the site can lose a PR on the next update which should be any day now, so it was a bit risky.

But I knew that someone will buy it very quickly and so it was

Good luck for both of them. This is a great site.

And one last thing – I know it is not relevant to this blog, but I opened a website that object the expansion of the airport nearby where I live. Please feel free to sign the petition – any signature counts!

Have a nice weekend,
Assaf

Hi all,

I really wanted to buy this website:
http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/9970

I put a bid 2 hours before ending for $510 – according to Sitepoint rules if you put a bid less then 4 hours till the end, they extend the auction with another 4 hours. At the time I put the bid it was 17:00 local time. My bid triggered a mini war, with someone bid for $600 and I response with $620. Then someone bid for $640 and immediately I raised my bid to $650.

15 minutes later someone bid for $700. This was my limit, but I thought to give it one more chance. So I put a $720 bid. By the time I did so, it was already 21:00, so the auction new end date was 01:00 – because I was tired, and already reached my limit I’ve decided to go to sleep around 23:00 knowing that I am the higher bidder…

So first thing in the morning I’ve checked my emails to see that someone outbid me by $20 and got the website for $740… It is a shame after all the efforts I put… but it is a good website with some potential, so good luck to the buyer!

Assaf

Hi all,

Just bought this new webmaster forum for $510 via sitepoint.

The deal went without any problem and the seller was great. I divided the payments into two, so when he transferred the domain I paid the second half. It took an hour to finish the deal, only because I had to eat in the middle Quick, very quick.

Why I have bought it? it has a lot of traffic, and the site is a true ceo friendly – you can tell that a lot of work has been put in order to optimise it. And with all my directories and sites it can be useful…

Assaf