Web Ladder

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

Hi all,

This week I sold a site using Escrow.com for the first time. For those who don’t know what escrow is and how to use it, here is a small explanation.

First of all what is escrow?

Escrow is a service that offers you protection when you buying or selling products. It is designed especially for virtual products like domain names or websites. Unlike paypal, they take care of the transaction, so if something goes wrong, both parties (seller or buyer) have a protection.

For example let’s say you want to buy a website. You contact the seller and you agreed on a price. Now here come the tricky part. You need to transfer him the money before the seller transfer you the domain. If you are using paypal you take a risk. You can send him the money and he can disappear without transfer you the domain. Paypal will do nothing about it, no mater how much you will complain. They will response that they don’t take responsibility for virtual transactions. Believe me, I tried

It is not that bad if you sent $40 for a service and you never got it. But if you send $2000 and the seller is gone with the money, you $ucked.

So if you are sending more than $200, use escrow.

How to work with escrow?

I have to admit that I had a lot of luck with my transaction. I wrongly used the system and I was in risk to lose my site and not to get the money. Why? Because I didn’t follow the procedures…

So let me save you some time. Here is the right way to do it:

1) The buyer login to escrow and open a new event. He/She sets the terms and conditions.

2) The seller will get an email asks them to login to their account (or to create one, if they don’t have) and accept the terms and conditions.

3) The buyer will have to pay using credit card or other method. Then Escrow will ask the buyer to send a fax to confirm the identity of the card holder. Once the buyer do it, the seller will get an email asking to login again to the account.

4) In their account the seller should choose the domain registration company, and send a request to transfer the domain.

5) Escrow will check if the domain has been transferred to the new owner and will send to the seller the money.

If for some reason the domain hasn’t been transferred the buyer will get the money back.

Now for the seller here is a very improtant tip: Don’t ever transfer the domain before you get a confirmation that the buyer has paid. Otherwise you are risking loosing your site. The buyer can pull out and cancel the transaction, and you will lose your site.

Hope it makes it clear

Assaf

Hi all,

I am sure we all had bad days in our life and some good ones… but you have to admit to have both on the same day is quite unique.

Yesterday I had the worst day in work - one of the scripts that I wrote decided to have its own life, and created havoc. It is amazing how small innocent script can create so much mess.

But then on the evening after 2 days on-off negations I’ve sold integralcom.com for $1750. I know that I said that I won’t sell it for less than 2k, but I was after a long day, and the buyer is really nice, so I agreed.

I am still thinking this site worth more, and if the buyer will put the effort it can generate a lot of profits. Good luck for him.

Assaf

Hi all,

What I like with Sitepoint is that they are always tried to improve things, and they are listening to what the users have to say. This is great! And I wish more websites will do so.

I read today in a blog that Digital point forum is better place to your site for selling. I couldn’t disagree more. With DP you just feel lost. Hundreds of posts per day give a great traffic, but you can never track what is going on there. Which one you are bidding, and who where is your site there. In Sitepoint it is much easier to get your fingers with what’s going on.

But Sitepoint has their own problems which they try to fix. The biggest problem is that biddings are not binding. You can place a bid and doing nothing with that. The reputation system can help, but it will not solve the problem.

Another thing that I would like to see change is the interface. Long lists of websites just create confusion. The Internet was taking off with Yahoo directory, because they had categories. This makes life easier for searchers. Then Google took over and the ‘keyword’ is the king. I would like to see both of them. For example search PR5 sites under sport websites. Easy!

Sitepoint says that they are going to add more info per URL like PR and Alexa rating. I do hope that we will be able to search for them.

The more I think of it, the more points I have. I’m sure the good people at SP don’t need me to tell them what to do. But I am envy them that they are in the middle of the process of improving things and create better platform. I wish I could help
Have a nice weekend,
Assaf

Hi All,
3 months ago I wrote about a crazy auction, that the owner of the site sold his site for $25000 with just $700 net income a month. I thought that people has lost their plot.

But recently I’ve notice the opposite. Good sites don’t get sold. Take this site for example. It is 3 hours before the end of the auction, so maybe it will still manage to get bids, but at the moment no bids at all.

Hello??? This site has $500 income per month, he is selling a real business and no one wants it? Believe me I would buy it if I wasn’t living outside the state. The other day I tried to sell a directories site of mine with $175 net income per month. Not a while ago I would get $3000 or $4000 for it. Now I got only 1 bid for $1500 which was well below my reserve price.

Or the site that I was recommending to buy… no bids at all. Another one? my directory that I try to sell. It has a bid of $210… Ridicules… for a site with $325 net income a month…

I didn’t trade a lot lately due to lack of time. I do hope that it is not a trend, but you can never know. Maybe it is the summer (or the lack of summer in London…)

I would love if someone can points me to auctions that prove the opposite.

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