Web Ladder - Websites for sale blog

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Hello all,

I am following  the websites for sale market for 4 years now. When I created and owned  Sitebazaar I monitored Google’s rank for keywords like:

• websites for sale
• buy websites
• sell websites

And more… For years websitebroker was the top website on Google list. I can imagine that they have thousands of unique visitors a day. But still I never bought from them any website or listed one for sale. And I tried…

It seems to me that they got it wrong. You get limited information about the websites. When you try to contact the seller you don’t get any response. The design is awful, and it seems like nothing really is happening over there.

3 days ago I revisited and I saw that they added a RSS feed. I am huge fun of RSS because it gives me at glance what is new. I’m using netvibes to track my feeds and it is great. So I’ve added their feed and till now I didn’t see any valuable website for sale.

It is a shame, because for long time they could be the market leader and they wasted it. Now Sitepoint are number 1 for the very competitive keyword “website for sale”. Well, they deserve it.

Assaf

Hi all,

I know that I keep say sitepoint, sitepoint and sitepoint… because they are the best website for buying and selling websites. There are serious buyer and serious seller over there with serious money. I think they should upgrade their system and offer more tools (like a good search!) if they want to keep their status.

But there is another vibrate place to buy and sell websites: Digital point it is mainly for  small sites that sell under $1000. There is no insert fees, so its free to publish an ad and it works like a forum. Meaning that any comment will jump the post to the top (unlike sitepoint). So you get a busy forum which is hard to keep track of what is going on.

But on the other hand sometimes there are some interesting stuff there and you can find bargains. It is a mess over there, but I like it. It gives you the impression that a lot of  small deals are going on, and there is a true feeling of a real market.

It is by far less sophisticated then Sitepoint, and it lacks some necessary tools, but it has one tool that I like: I-trader where you can rate the person you dealt with - something that SP promised to add.
Have a nice weekend,

Assaf

Hello all,

When you are dealing with websites for sale you have to be quick. Sometimes you have to decide in minutes if you are going to buy the website or not. If you won’t, someone else will do it.

And when this situation happens? When someone put a bin (buy it now) price too low. Then you know that if you will not offer the bin price, someone else will do.

Last week I was waiting for a phone call. I had 10 free minutes. So I browse in Digital point forums. Usually I don’t. There is a lot of crap over there, but sometime you can find a gem for cheap. And I did found one.

“For sale PR7 domain” starting bid $100 Bin $1000
Immediately I sent him a pm (private message) asking which domain he is selling. He answered with Conita.com a quick check on iwebtool.com confirm this information. It has PR7. Even more then that: 2 Google’s data center said it has PR8. Great.

The website itself had nothing on it. Only one page saying something about new technology for mobile phone. Another quick search on Google confirmed that this company is not longer running. Someone got their domain and he is selling it. Now I had to check that the person who sells this domain is the same person on the record on ‘whois’. It was. I put a bid to buy this domain and paid. All this happened in less then 10 minutes.

Then moved the site to my server and installed a directory on it. After two days I put it for sale on Sitepoint.

Now it became really interesting. I thought that I can sell it for $4000 which will leave me with nice profit. But I was impressed by the professionalism of the members in Sitepoint forum. They do their research well. It started good. I got a private offer to sell it for $2500. I was greedy and refused. I thought I can get more.

I took a lunch break and went to cut my hair. I checked on my mobile and saw this message:

Hi all,

Conita is a US registered trademark. This is what the trademark search throws up. So watch out before buying anything:

Word Mark CONITA
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer software for communications management, namely, telephony interfaces, speech recognition interfaces and PVA communication channels in a telecommunications network; computer software development tools, namely, compiler programs, debugger programs and utility programs for developing other computer programs for communications management; and instruction manuals supplied as a unit therewith. FIRST USE: 20000211. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20000211
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Design Search Code
Serial Number 75894397
Filing Date January 11, 2000
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition April 3, 2001
Registration Number 2565887
Registration Date April 30, 2002
Owner (REGISTRANT) Conita Technologies, Inc. CORPORATION SOUTH CAROLINA 1200 Main Street Suite 900 Columbia SOUTH CAROLINA 29201
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED

That’s it I thought. To be honest my first reaction was to go back home and delete this message as soon as possible. But when I cooled myself, I thought this actually good. Now all the cards will be on the table. In fact it triggered a very interesting topic. And I still got bids for it so I was happy.

In the end I sold it for $2150 a profit of $1150 in a week and 30 minutes work. I need to find more websites for sale like that

Good luck,

Assaf

Hi All,

I think it is not a secret that sitpoint market place is the leading place for buying and selling websites. There are serious sellers and buyers over there, and everyday many deals closing there.

It started as a forum and not long ago they improved the system to ‘mini auction’ website. Why do I say mini? Although there are auctions and many bids it lacks of some basic functions:

1. Feedback – It is so important when you buy a website from a seller to know his past record. A simple rating system (yes like ebay) will give bidders more confidence when they bid high. For example if I am bidding for a 10k website and I can see that the seller sold 3 websites without any problem, it will give me a sign that I can trust this person. This is so important, and I don’t why they don’t add it.
2. Get rid of another 4 hours when someone bid. Basically the way it works is that if there are less then 4 hours till the end of the auction, and someone bid, it push the end time by another 4 hours. Sitepoint says that this function is to prevent buyers outbid in the last minute. And I thought this is the main idea if an auction… It creates a strange situation that if you want a website you can lose it only because of time difference. I am bidding in UK and it is 20:00, I don’t mind to stay a wake till midnight. But if some one will bid at 23:00 it pushes the end time to 3:00am it worth to wait for a good website, but what will happen if someone bid at 2:00am? I have to wait till 6:00… and so on and so on… just get rid of this. It doesn’t help anyone.
3. It will be nice to have a page where you can track all your bids and activities. And see how many watchers your auction has.
   

I know that it sounds like Ebay – but it works so well there, so why not to copy?

I would love to hear your opinion.

Have a nice weekend,
Assaf

Hi All,

It happened for me many times when I bought websites or sold them: we agreed on the price, now how we transfer the website. Who pays, and when.

I think that the right approach should be that the buyer pays and then he gets. I had many times that people asked me to get the website before the paid – which I didn’t agree. Although I tend to trust people, I still don’t know who is the person I am dealing with. So I don’t want to find my self in a situation that I didn’t get the money, and I lost the website. There are many cheaters around, which try to get something without paying. Try to sell something these days on Ebay and you will understand what I am talking about.

I usually try to talk to the buyer or seller using messenger. This give the indication about the like of the person I am dealing with.

And this is the rules that I use:

When I am buying a website:

1) I transfer half of the money and get access to the website files, database and emails and then I transfer it to my hosting.

2) Then I pay the other half and the seller has to push the domain to me.

If you can, try not to change the ‘whois’ details of the domain. A seo expert has told me that this can ruined your Google ranking.

When I am selling a website I use the same method but vice versa:

When I get half of the money I give access to the site, when I get the other half, I give them the domain.

This is simple but effective method. It gives security to both sides and build trusts. And I never had a problem

Assaf

Hi All,

Do yourself a favor and never buy a domain from registerfly or enom.

One of my domain is expired on the 15/12/2006 and although that I’ve paid to renew it, they didn’t do it and the site is down. No matter how many time I try to contact them they say please wait another 24 hours and nothing happen.

Really annoying!

Assaf