Web Ladder - Websites for sale blog

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

Hi all,

I am selling this web directory  over here

At the moment it has a bid of $210 but I won’t sell it for less then $2000. Honestly I think that this site worth much more. It is rare these days to find a website for sale with $325 income per month. I really like the directories business. It is very profitable, and easy to maintain. The only problem is that you have to promote it a lot.

This is why I am selling this great website. I came up with an idea of new kind of directory - keywords directory and I really want to invest all my spare time on it. I have another 4 directories, and I just can’t give the right time to each of them. So this is the most profitable directory that I have. Yes as you can see in the auction, it was a dropped domain, but it is not a problem for Google. Since I bought it there was a PR update, and the site lost one pr (it was PR6), but gain many PR4 to the categories.

So if you are interested feel free to place a bid. I have another 3 directories that I sell, but I didn’t put them on market yet (they are PR4), so if you are fancy to join to the great world of directories this is your chance

Assaf

Hi all,It is not that I am lazy writing… it is just I am very busy lately. Many projects and deadlines etc…

And although I follow the market I didn’t get much involved.

I bought 3 sites:
www.streetbuzzmedia.com
www.thearttree.net
www.basb.org

I also bought www.uaud.com and sold it with a nice profit two weeks after. It was just bargain. PR5 directory for $250… It is not the real value I didn’t want to sell it, but I reaching a point where I have too many directories, so it is hard to follow and give them the right attention.

Now I am selling www.voice-msg.com here:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=358729

Again it is a case of no time. I built this website, and I love it, but it has to go. I just don’t have the time to promote it.

As you can see I am focusing on directories these days. If you know what you are doing they can be very profitable.

Ok, I am off for a short holiday, but I promise to write more!

Assaf

Yes I guess every blog will have this post. Long time since I was writing…

The  fact is that I was busy with other things and couldn’t find any website that I want to buy. So I was quiet for a while. Today I bought a new website, but I will give more details about it as soon as we will close the deal.

As you can see there are some changes on this website:

I have added a search engine that tracks auctions and websites for sale ads, so you can search and find easily what you need.

I do hope you like the design, and I will love to hear you comments.

Have a nice weekend!

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