Thread: Purchasing a profitable website

So I've been doing some affiliate marketing in my spare time for the past year or so now and it's been a great learning curve. I've setup a lot of sites, made some money here and there but I think I would like to purchase a site thats fully setup and making a nice monthly income.

I've been looking on flippa for some good buys of late but I'm a bit scared in making the commitment to the sale with only a few details.. How much the site is making, what traffic the site is getting..Most importantly why is the seller selling?

I'm looking to be schooled on buying a site, what to look out for etc I'm sure there would be a few of you on there that have bought sites before that have already been setup.

Any help would be great!

I bought a site that was setup once and would never do it again, simply because they hosted it on their server and one day i logged on to find they had deleted their server and therefore my website and vanished.

Originally Posted by Jtown

I've setup a lot of sites, made some money here and there but I think I would like to purchase a site thats fully setup and making a nice monthly income.

My advice is to keep creating your own sites. Start from scratch and learn as much as you can about programming and marketing them! I can understand why you would like to skip all the "basic" steps but what another person had made could bring on some major headaches. Find your OWN niche then build it up to make additional income.

I've been looking on flippa for some good buys of late but I'm a bit scared in making the commitment to the sale with only a few details.. How much the site is making, what traffic the site is getting..Most importantly why is the seller selling?

I personally do not trust flippa. A lot of sellers use spam or blackhat techniques to increase their rankings rapidly. Sure there are some solid sites but those are the ones selling for thousands of dollars.

Originally Posted by thesmileyone

I bought a site that was setup once and would never do it again, simply because they hosted it on their server and one day i logged on to find they had deleted their server and therefore my website and vanished.

Your suppose to move it to your own server ...

Be careful buying a website. Look out for photshoped earning reports and carefully examine the site traffic of the site.

Originally Posted by Jtown

So I've been doing some affiliate marketing in my spare time for the past year or so now and it's been a great learning curve. I've setup a lot of sites, made some money here and there but I think I would like to purchase a site thats fully setup and making a nice monthly income.

I've been looking on flippa for some good buys of late but I'm a bit scared in making the commitment to the sale with only a few details.. How much the site is making, what traffic the site is getting..Most importantly why is the seller selling?

I'm looking to be schooled on buying a site, what to look out for etc I'm sure there would be a few of you on there that have bought sites before that have already been setup.

Any help would be great!

Buying a website without any hard assets is just an investment in the domain and the sales revenue off the Web traffic.

Buying a website that has physical assets, or a model of revenue that is not Web traffic needy (aka can only make money if people click on something), is always a better gamble.

Originally Posted by lalasd

Your suppose to move it to your own server ...

Be careful buying a website. Look out for photshoped earning reports and carefully examine the site traffic of the site.

They didnt give me any access. Tried ftp, tried SSH, tried everything. Even backing up the DB to localhost was denied.

Originally Posted by thesmileyone

I bought a site that was setup once and would never do it again, simply because they hosted it on their server and one day i logged on to find they had deleted their server and therefore my website and vanished.

And that's why ESCROW services exist. Shoulda known better man.

Originally Posted by thesmileyone

They didnt give me any access. Tried ftp, tried SSH, tried everything. Even backing up the DB to localhost was denied.

You got hustled.

Buying a website can be tricky business, especially when they may have backups and can just make a v2 under a different domain name.

Originally Posted by thesmileyone

They didnt give me any access. Tried ftp, tried SSH, tried everything. Even backing up the DB to localhost was denied.

Ah. That sucks Bro.

Hhmmm So it's not looking like a good idea then..