Web Ladder

Hello all,

I saw on Digitalpoint forum someone asking what are the main things I need to look for?

This is a good question and the answer was on the same level. The user pipes posted this answer. My comments are in bold.

* Domain age. Buy at least one year old domain
* Directory age.
* History of domain. Check in the internet archive that the directory wasn’t something else before
* Reputation of current owner.
* Any current penalisation.
* Any past penalisation.
* Listed Sites.
* Reason for selling. They will tell you I don’t have time. Try to find the real answer
* Seller has a history of flipping sites.
* Any accounts closed that were connected to the directory, ie: paypal, adsense, anything.
* Any promises, obligations made to the past customers of the directory.
* Any shady promotional efforts.
* The true traffic, not the bots and all other traffic that shouldn’t be included. AWstat will give you a good picture
* How easy will it be for the new owner to upgrade the script, mods, etc.
* Expenditure against actual profit, breaking even, in the red, actually making a profit.
* Profit from listings? adsense? anythingthing else?
* Any other obligations

Hope it helps…!

Hi all,

You just bought a website - you paid, you transfer it to your server, everything seems to work fine. Great. Now what?

Let me tell you this - 99.9% of the websites that are been sold need improvements. It is rare to find a website that’s running on auto pilot mode and generates money. No one is stupid enough to sell this kind of website. So on each website for sale there is something wrong that the previous owner didn’t know how to deal with it, so he decided to pass the problem to someone else and earn some cash while doing so.

This is fine as long you remember it! It is very important rule, and it is better to be prepared. I will give you an example. I bought this art website. I like art, and I thought that this site has a potential. It was a pr3 with some income but not a lot of traffic, and I thought I could do better.

So I bought it. First mistake was that it was all written in cold fusion and I am a php developer. So I couldn’t change a thing… In fact the job was so big to convert the site to php that I had to hired a company to do so. (Great one by the way) so another $1000 went down.

Now I know how to bring more traffic and increase the PR. First you want to buy PR6 link somewhere. They are not that expensive and can boost your traffic and rank. A great place to do so is Lola directory Just for the record this is my directory, but it is so good that I had to recommend it.

But traffic and pr is not enough, and I didn’t know a lot about the market. Not a lot are willing to pay for paints online. So I have traffic, but I didn’t solve the problem of the old owner - Selling arts… I now it can be done, but I am a busy man, and don’t have the time to do so.

So the sites earns now around $100 a month - just to cover my investment. Bad one…

So traffic and PR are important but also the art of sell. For tips how to increase your sells read this blog . There are lots of tips over there that can help you understand the online world much better. In fact buy there tutorial. It is well worth the $300.

So the bottom line is that before you buy a website you need to have a good idea what are you going to do with it. Otherwise you will try to pass it to someone else sooner than you think.

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,

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

Hi,

Those who read the my posts here,  know already that it is not easy to find a good website to buy. The amount of crap websites without any feature is amazing. But as always you can find some good ones at Sitepoint market place.

Today I want to recommend to buy this image hosting website for sale. It has good income ($300 a month), and very good traffic (50000 pages). The problem is the high cost of the dedicated server ($220) that bits the profit.

But I think that you can easily find cheaper dedicated hosting plan ($100-$150) so without a lot of hassle you can increase the profit. With a bit of promotion in forums you can double the traffic and the income. After all this image hosting service is great for forum posters. And there is myspace of of course…
What I like with this site that it is easy to use, simple and clean. You don’t need to be a php developer to run it, which is a bonus.

The price is also attractive - at the moment it starts with $2100 without bids. If you can get it for this price, go for it!

So the big question is why I don’t buy it? maybe I would

Assaf

Hi all,

Long time I know… it is just I am busy with buying and selling properties, so I don’t have a lot of time to look for new websites. But I noticed this one:
http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/5792

Nice one - PR6, 200 customers and $700 net profit not bad. There were 2 hours left for the auction to end, and I put $6000 bid. I thought the site is mine. 10 minutes after it got another bid of $6100. I tried to shake off the rival and immediately put another bid fro $6200. It didn’t help.

A third opponent joined and tried to scare us with $6500. He did at least in my case. But I wanted this site, so I called to a friend explained the situation and offered him to join me for %50. He said ok. We set up our limit to $8000. I submitted a new bid for $6600. Again my rival raised their game and put $7000. And $7100 and $7500. I tried to stop them with $7600 but they really wanted the site so they bid for $8000 and 2 minutes later there was a $9100 bid. Game over.

The seller couldn’t believe his luck because an hour latter the bar was set on $13,500. They fought for this site like mad. The buy it now was $25000 and this is what one of the comment was about it:

Ok so site is making roughly $700 net profit after expenses
so why are you asking $25,000, seems a bit steep

And the seller response was:

I am really asking around $7k. Yes $25000 is too much. But still this is a great business. I think it is really worth around $10.

And he was right of course - The site is not worth more then $10k and defiantly not $25. But one of the bidder felt that he needs to use the ‘buy it now’ button otherwise he will lose the auction. And so he did. Maybe he had to go to sleep, and this could be drag for days with sitepoint system that every bid extends the auction by another 4 hours. This system gives the advantage to the seller so the bidders end up paying more.

If it was like eBay I would wait till the last minute put a $6500 bid and get the site. But Sitepoint prefers to give the advantage to the seller. Fair enough.

But $25000 for this website is madness. It will take 3 and half years to get their investment back. Good luck

Assaf