Genius or Bogus ? A creative way to sell a Facebook fan page in disguise for $20,000

[equity78]

I wrote about this today but will post it here too

The auction listing for SuitUpBros.com sold for $20,100 on Flippa, there were 59 bids made in the auction.

The interesting part about this sale is that the value looks to be in the Facebook Fanpage that has over 500,000 Fans.

Here is the description:

With purchase of the domain, I am giving the buyer the Admin rights to my "Suit Up" Facebook fan page with 538k legitimate and active fans that is the main source of traffic for the site. Posting a link to the fan page can drive a lot of traffic to the blog - I've had close to 10k visits in one day from posting one link. There is a lot of potential to increase traffic (and revenue) with regular blog and fan page posts.

The fan page is thrown in for free for the winning bidder.

How much you earn from the site basically depends on how much time you want to put into it. Someone willing to put a lot of work into the site can easily make a consistent $1,000 per week. My best weeks have been $1,300 to $1,600. Then as low as $200 to $300 when I didn't have much time for it.

For the last two months, I've been focusing on other projects that I am more passionate about and rather than let this site and fanpage die altogether, I've decided to put it up for auction.

Proof of Clickbank income and Analytics traffic are attached. PLEASE NOTE: 100% of Clickbank profits are from this site and fanpage. I have not done any other activity to achieve these earnings.

It's obvious (when looking at the Analytics proof) when I have posted links to the fanpage to drive traffic. Without posting links to the fanpage, the site averages around 60 visits per day.

In the comments it looks like some realized that this really looks to be a Facebook page sale, but technically you cannot do that, so hence the website, and access to the page which is legit.

By making the new owner the page admin they have control over the Facebook page.

One commenter said the following:

So basically you are selling the FB fan page?
How do you successfully transfer the admin of a fan page to someone else - I know someone that tried to change admin and Facebook shut their whole facebook account down and their fan page

The reply by the seller:

wiseguy_75 - I can't sell a FB fanpage because I don't own it - Facebook does. I'm simply the admin and the buyer of the website will become the admin of the page for free.
The way it is transferred is I make the buyer a full admin and then they remove me from being admin - leaving them as the only page admin.
I would find it hard to believe that simply changing the page admin was the cause of them getting banned from Facebook...

Another commenter asked:

A few questions -

1. When did you start your FB page? How did you grow to the 500K+ fanbase? ie, after buying could I grow it further?
2. Why is such a big chunk of your traffic from Australia?
3. Why are all links to the same "how to get laid" video?
4. What are you selling on Clickbank? I don't see where your Clickbank links are.

The seller replied:

1. The fanpage was started in August 2009 and the fans grew 100% organically. No fans have ever been bought. Like any fanpage, if you have the right strategy, you could definitely grow it further.
2. See "Facebook fanpage demographics" image attachment. Over 60% of the fans are from Australia so the majority of clicks are from Australia.
3. I have found that particular product to convert very well. I have tried others, but this has worked best for me.
4. The no_url_shorteners links on the fanpage link to the Clickbank product. There are links in some posts on the website and I have also experimented with siderbar and banner ads for Clickbank products. At the moment I just have Adsense running instead of CB in sidebar.

The Facebook fanpage was established in 2009, the domain was not registered until 2013.

So what do you think ? Was this a great idea to make a $20,000 sale off of a Facebook page, or is it going to be problematic and Facebook may shut the account down ?

http://www.hybriddomainer.com/2013/...was-it-a-clever-sale-of-a-facebook-page-.html

 

[Eric Lyon]

Wow!!!!! Chalk up another one for the sly fox.....

The FB page stats itself comes into question. I suppose, so many people got caught trying to pump / fake stats for actual domains / websites to sell them that it was decided pumping a FB page would be more conceivable.

It might be a loophole in the FB policy since it's a company page, that the company remain in control. With that said, if a companies employee or ownership were to change then so would the companies account controller. Or at least, that sounds like the most logical explanation.

FB does have a policy that doesn't allow actual accounts to be sold, which is probably why the domain / website seller worded it the way he did to slide into the gray area of the loophole.

I think we all know by know how easy it is to get FB likes / Fan Page followers. Heck you can buy 100's / 1000's of fiverr. I'm not convinced his Fan page followers are organic. At first I thought that maybe there was an old website years ago that went down to be attributed with some of the growth, however archive.org shows no record of a previous site: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://SuitUpBros.com so that knocks that theory out of the water.

I suppose it is possible that someone with no website development experience used a FB page as their primary business venture in 2009. Then later transferred it to this guy who built a website to connect to it to try & milk it for money. At some point he realized that the money wasn't what he thought it would be and or that he was violating a policy somewhere so he decided to get out from under it.

Red Flags:
1.) FB creation Vs. Domain Creation
2.) Revenue Stats missing to support his claims
3.) 100% organic FB follower claim (Even the most honest have a couple un-organic)

In Conclusion:
It's a toss up. While I can certainly see how the loopholes allow for such a thing as well as the possibility that the fan page was the primary business model for years before a site came along, I think that there's a fine line on ethics and FB policy that might hurt such an attempt in the future. Like with anything with loopholes, once it's exploited a while, the platform owners take notice and adjust their policies to compensate, thus closing the door for any future manipulation. (Kinda like the ongoing changes with search engine algorithms to close doors on seo companies manipulating exploits).

With that said, there may not be much legal recourse for this incident as it stands until FB changes their policies to cover it better. And even once a policy change takes place, the new account / company owner has the ability to dispute it based on the dates of the policy change (Which they will probably lose and get into trouble anyways). So I suppose it's just a matter of time, a ticking time bomb, and the more people start to do it, the faster the bomb clock will reach detonation.

Just my thoughts anyways, with minimal research into this situation. So consider my post based on opinion and not any facts ,

Eric Lyon

 

[PNW]

Zero page rank? I took a look at LikeAlyzer, for the first time btw, and it mentioned posts by fans "very rarely."

It doesn't appear legitimate to me.

 

[biggie]

:talk:

from posts I've read, seems like flip will let you list anything for sale


and we already know fb has no morals

 

[Traveler]

500,000+ fans and not a comment on the whopping 16 articles that make up the site, yeah, that makes sense. If someone actually paid 20k for the site, I feel really sorry for the person.

 

[equity78]

Yeah Don lately Flippa has been a bit interesting with the tms, Nascar.co sold for $600 and then someone sold Reddit.info for $105 yesterday.

 

[Ms Domainer]

*

If Facebook decides to shut down that account, there is no recourse. At least with a domain name, you have some rights, but with third party sites like FB, YouTube, Tumblr, etc., you are basically at the mercy of the site owner.

The buyer will be building his empire on shifting sands, I'm afraid.

As FB users figure out the shifting sand dilemma (through hard experience), they will likely turn to domain names.

*

 

[alien51]

If Facebook decides to shut down that account, there is no recourse. At least with a domain name, you have some rights, but with third party sites like FB, YouTube, Tumblr, etc., you are basically at the mercy of the site owner.

And i think Facebook employees, are nastier than Google employees when it comes to shutting down accounts that violate their TOS.

Taking his financial statements into the equation, he says his worst days earn him $200 a week. Presuming a new owner will not have the same creative output on the site being a new guy and all, he then needs to keep the account for 2 years to breakeven.

Maybe he needs to display a huge banner on the FB Fanpage asking "fans" to visit and bookmark the domain, ir order to benefit from this "purchased" traffic.

And lastly, this is supposed to be a "fan page" ??? How can someone develop a sustainable domain website if you are not really a fan but is only after the traffic ??

 

[freedom30]

Zero page rank? I took a look at LikeAlyzer, for the first time btw, and it mentioned posts by fans "very rarely."

It doesn't appear legitimate to me.

...ya gotta admit though, this snake-oil salesman sold that Rube a bona fide bill of goods...

 

[Name Trader]

Whoever paid the $20,000 for a worthless domain name with a free FB page, where all the revenue is coming from, and that could be shut down at any time by FB must have money to burn. imho. Of course it's a sale of the Facebook page. It's not even thinly disguised.

 

[alien51]

Whoever paid the $20,000 for a worthless domain name with a free FB page, where all the revenue is coming from, and that could be shut down at any time by FB must have money to burn. imho. Of course it's a sale of the Facebook page. It's not even thinly disguised.

I think he wants to SPAM the feeds of these "500,000 fans" with solicitation offers for conversion. It's already a targeted audience, just like how i continuously get Namecheap feeds on my Facebook ever since i "fan" them for that $1.99 domain promo i got last year.

Whether he can convert those fans enough to get his $20,000 back, that's a different question.

 

[Ms Domainer]

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One thing we haven't really discussed: this guy is potentially throwing away any shred of a good reputation in this field, which no amount of money can buy back.

If the buyer is unhappy, this sale will come back to haunt the seller, and there will be no white washing it.


*

 

[equity78]

You make a good point Jennifer but the comments clearly spelled out what was going on, anyone bidding knew it was to post on the Facebook page to get them to click over to the website.

 

[alien51]

*

One thing we haven't really discussed: this guy is potentially throwing away any shred of a good reputation in this field, which no amount of money can buy back.

If the buyer is unhappy, this sale will come back to haunt the seller, and there will be no white washing it.


*

$20,000 for a journeyman, is a lot of money. While what you are saying may be true, you have to realize that it is very easy to change your identity on the internet for a quick hit-and-run.

And seriously, any guy whose main intention is to pull a fast one is more likely not interested in building a brandable identity for a repeat performance reputation.