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Finding a Website to Purchase
By Max | March 29, 2007
The first step in purchasing a website is actually finding one to buy. Fortunately, this is the easiest part. Everyday there are numerous website for sale postings on a few websites. The sites I frequent most often are the forums at Digitalpoint and Sitepoint Marketplace. There are numerous sales started on these two sites each day, but I only see one or two per week that are actually worth purchasing. Just remember to tread cautiously, and read all the comments in each listing to help evaluate the legitimacy of the poster’s claims.
Sitepoint Marketplace is my favorite site to browse website for sale listings. Look under the ‘Established Sites For Sale’ section. They charge $20 to list a website and conducts the sale as an auction similar to ebay. There is also a section where potential bidders write comments and questions for the seller. A lot of times any questions you may have are already answered there. Many commenters will point out potential flaws there as well. This is nice because the community helps to ferret out the obviously bad or shady deals. Because there is a $20 charge to list a site, I believe that clears a lot of the spam out of the way. There still seem tol be a lot of bad deals, but there are a lot fewer trash sites to sift through. I purchased a Final Fantasy site through Sitepoint, and overall my experience was very positive.
The Digitalpoint Forums are a another good place to check out for site listings. There is a Buy/Sale board on Digitalpoint with a special section for websites for sale. This is kind of like the wild west of website sales. There is no fee to list here, so you will run across everything under the sun. Some great sites can be found here, but there is a lot of trash to wade through to find those sites. For smaller sites, I think this is a great place to look because a potential seller isn’t going to want to spend much to advertise a less expensive site. When evaluating a listing, make sure that there is a good description and a lot of stats and screenshots to back up claims. This should help potential buyers to avoid a scam. I purchased my Mixed Drinks site through Digitalpoint, although the actual sale was handled through ebay. That worked great and I think more sellers should place a site on ebay even though they are advertising on Digitalpoint.
A nice feature of Digitalpoint is their “iTrader” rating. This works like Ebay’s feedback system and should provide some extra confidence in the people you are dealing with if they have a high iTrader rating.
A word should be said about ebay. Ebay runs a great auction site, and it is THE place for a lot of markets. I don’t think that ebay is a good place to buy a website though. I purchased a website off of ebay, but I found out about the sale through Digitalpoint. After looking through ebay’s listings, there just appears to be too many scams or turnkey sites for sale. That makes it difficult to find the real gems that actually have sustained traffic. A seller should consider using ebay to conduct an auction because of the slick interface, but it is certainly not the best place to advertise a site for sale.
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June 27th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
This is the best website so far on the internet devoted to “How To Buy Websites” I have read. Alot of the information you provide is practical and real. It is a great resource for people who have got the basics of the business, but want to learn more.
I think you should have an article about using escrow services. What they can not do and do for you? I have not seen any articles about using escrow services.
I also think you should teach people how to find out if they are being scammed. Because there are alot out there. I got scammed three times in the beginning, before doing six very good transactions.
June 27th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Thanks for the advice. I’ll write about escrow services this week. Scamming is a great topic for this site and very relevant. Hopefully by highlighting these issues, the marketplace for websites will become more mature and less like the old west.
Max
October 21st, 2007 at 11:02 am
I’ve been buying and selling websites (and creating!) for over 10 years. Yes I can also say this is good advice. Allow me to add:
- Always appraise a sites value using 3rd party sites, like Alexa.com and SEO Page Stregth Checking Scripts
- A sites value is not only by the monetary value it brings in, also its age, in coming links, domain name and so forth
- One of the MOST valuable thing a website can have is good search engine placement. This is often difficult to get, and takes time - time which is non replaceable!
Hope this helps.