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Stay Away From Shady Sales Listings
By Max | August 5, 2007
I was just browsing Sitepoint today to see if there was anything interesting when I saw this post. The seller has made just about every mistake possible when listing his site for sale. On the surface the site seems decent enough and under ordinary circumstances would warrant a bid, but the seller seems super shady. Here’s a list of the red flags that jump off the screen at me.
1. He says in the post that he is not the actual owner of the site.
So he’s selling a site that he doesn’t own. That’s interesting. If the real owner owes him money, why don’t they sell the site and then just give him the money instead of this odd arrangement? If they owe him for hosting, it can’t be that much can it? If the site is making $500/mon in Adsense he could just change the pub number and get paid back pretty quickly I would guess.
2. Traffic stats don’t match adsense claims.
10,000 unique visitors a month don’t generate $500 in Adsense. Every single one of them would have to click an ad in that case.
3. The seller’s typing is awful.
Smart, honest people don’t make so many typing errors. Scammers do. This guy types like an “3L14e” hacker. Theres a lot of misspelled words, odd punctuation and poor phrasing.
4. He wants to be paid upfront with paypal or WU.
Nothing screams “SCAM” like someone selling a site way too cheap and wanting to be paid upfront. I have bought sites with paypal before, but in both cases, I sent a down payment and then transferred the site. After the transfer I sent the remainder of the money. I prefer escrow.com.
5. The seller displays an unwillingness to provide more screenshots.
Think about this from a legitimate seller’s perspective. You want to receive the highest bid that you can get for your site. Why wouldn’t you present all the information to make a buyer comfortable with making a bid? The more buyers you attract, the more bids you’ll get along with higher prices.
The adage “If something seems too good to be true, then it probably is.” are words I live by. Always take the time to do your homework and avoid getting scammed. This auction listing is so bad its almost comical, but there are more clever scammers out there so be careful. If anyone has any website buy/sell scam stories, I would like to hear them.
Topics: Puchase Pitfalls |
August 5th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
You are right, this listing smells rotten. If it is legit he is killing his final selling price with his listing, answers to questions ect. I would stay away from this one too.
August 5th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
OMG, that is the fishiest auction I have ever seen. I can’t believe someone has bid $2G, I wouldn’t be surprised if its another account of his.
Showing an image of an email offer to prove it seems pretty lame.
August 6th, 2007 at 1:13 am
I am never amazed at how dumb some people are. This scammer is going to have real trouble with a sale.
August 7th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Reminds me of the PR7 this guy wanted to sell me for $150. He had just paid $100 for it and wanted to get his money back plus only a bit of profit to pay off his credit card.
I told him he should list it for sale and get way more money, instantly, but he figured it would be easier for me to buy it.
So I beat him down to $115