Buying Developed Sites

[Avabelle]

Has anyone ever purchased a developed website? (Adsense Friendly)

I have seen them on Flippa and I am wondering how safe this is?

I would love to hear some feedback!

Thanks...

 

[Sabre]

I find when buying developed sites, you are always taking an element of risk unless you are able to get a firm contract in place, giving assurances on traffic etc. This is difficult to do unless you are dealing with a business in the same country as yourself.

It's the same as buying an offline business - if you value your money, you should carry out due diligence on the site in question. If the other party isn't willing to give you this information, after signing an NDA, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.

 

[zidane]

Some are good websites, some are not. Since I have not bought an adsense based website in flippa before, I know I am not in the best position to give tips. However best thing to do is to start an extensive research on your prospective listings before even deciding to contact the website owner.

 

[paranoidandroidiot]

As Sabre mentioned, there are always risk when you bought a developed site. Because services like Flippa are not acting like a middle-man. There are so many things that you should get from the owner, like domain transfer, files, databases, e-mails, social media accounts and none of them are owned by the services, they're still belong to owner. So there is a huge risk on that.

Btw, there are services like tweaky.com that helps to transfer website files, but they're so primitive for now.

I think that the middle-man-services like Flippa should take all the risks for buyers. After the agreement process, seller should transfer files to the service and buyer should transfer money to the service. After the website transferring process done, service should send money to the sellers. This is the solution.

 

[Yosi]

Hi Avabelle,
As mentioned in this thread, you must do an extensive research before any deal. In your research try to answer these questions:

• What do I get?
• How much time will I invest maintaining the website's revenue?
• How big is the market? Is it still growing or shrinking?
• Who are my competitors and what is my advantage (if any) ?

Try to notice all the "small details" to make sure there is nothing you miss.

Also, take a look at the seller's ranking. Is he reliable? Remember that Flippa is not taking any responsibility for your money.