How to avoid mistakes/scams when buying traffic domains?

[greenlake]

I bought good number of traffic domains in recent months from NP members who advertised on the traffic domain sales forum. am happy with most purchases. However -
bought 2 generic typo financial domains, price based on stats provided by sellers. However- those stats continued for only 30-40 days after I purchased, with steady uniques ( 45 a day..) and great revenue. Then traffic died altogether, and since then am getting 1-2 uniques/day, with no revenue.
any idea what could be the reason? is there something else we should know when checking traffic stats?

 

[irishmat]

maybe the typo was of an advertised site, advertisements stopped to traffic stopped

by ads i mean offline ones so they have to type it in not click the ad

 

[PowerUp]

I don't know of anyways to completely filter out scams or false stats reported by domainers. So I've stopped buying traffic names from domainers.

I suppose one way for the seller to substantiate his traffic claims would be to request for at least 3 months traffic data. I've bought some traffic domains from dropcatchers like Namejet and Snapnames. Traffic from these names are good in the first few weeks. Then traffic starts to drop. Some names will have their traffic drop in the 2nd or 3rd month. The more traffic history you can see, the better for you to estimate if the traffic has stabilized or not.

You also should know where your traffic is coming from. Search engine? Backlinks? Type-ins? SE and backlink traffic will tend to drop over time.

Hope this helps.

 

[Datalife]

It is difficult to prevent scams regarding "traffic" domains. I've bought domains from members who even had decent itrader ratings, and the domains flopped afterwards.

So, I am not going to buy these "traffic" domains anymore, (or check REALLY, REALLY well before I buy one again) and for your own good anyone reading this should take this into account, if you intend to buy "traffic" domains.

This is all from personal experience. IMHO (ask yourself), if the domain is so good, why are they selling it?

Not to say, all are scams, but you have been warned....

 

[greenlake]

It is difficult to prevent scams regarding "traffic" domains. I've bought domains from members who even had decent itrader ratings, and the domains flopped afterwards.

So, I am not going to buy these "traffic" domains anymore, (or check REALLY, REALLY well before I buy one again) and for your own good anyone reading this should take this into account, if you intend to buy "traffic" domains.

This is all from personal experience. IMHO (ask yourself), if the domain is so good, why are they selling it?

Not to say, all are scams, but you have been warned....

I personally have not sold any of my good traffic domains - but still people may have lots of good reasons to sell - needing cash, buying something else etc...so they sure not all scams. I bought some good ones from NP members. The 2 most important issues to watch for imo:

1. for how long have stats (revenue etc) been stable? many sellers show stats records for only few weeks.
2. how can buyer verify if traffic is real type ins. some traffic is redirected or comes from backlinks or an old website....I wonder if there were good ways to check this.

 

[Sleepys]

I personally have not sold any of my good traffic domains - but still people may have lots of good reasons to sell - needing cash, buying something else etc...so they sure not all scams.

That is very true, although I think that people sell traffic names in less than a month or two for one reason, almost every time. That reason was stated above. If 80% of the traffic names we buy will drop off a cliff a few weeks to a few months later, then some experienced sellers on here know that they will make the most money for a name after a month.

If a name makes $10 a day for the first month, the seller can claim it makes $300 a month and maybe get a few thousand. If it drops to $1-$2 a day the next month, then the seller is out of luck. That is why you should never buy a traffic name from someone who has not owned it long. Three months is a good amount of time, I like four though.

I am not implying that these sellers know for a fact that the name will die off, just that they know that it is the most likely scenario, so you can't blame them if you buy a name from them with only a few weeks stats, just like you can't blame them if it continues for two years.

 

[Jasdon]

If the traffic is type-in, then it should continue - if it's residual traffic from search engines or links, it could be here today - gone tomorrow. Especially the way Google has been acting lately.

 

[thebutler]

Where the traffic coming from?

I bought good number of traffic domains in recent months from NP members who advertised on the traffic domain sales forum. am happy with most purchases. However -
bought 2 generic typo financial domains, price based on stats provided by sellers. However- those stats continued for only 30-40 days after I purchased, with steady uniques ( 45 a day..) and great revenue. Then traffic died altogether, and since then am getting 1-2 uniques/day, with no revenue.
any idea what could be the reason? is there something else we should know when checking traffic stats?

If the domain was dropped maybe the traffic was coming from backlinks that in some situations disappear slowly.

 

[domainman101]

Don't be so quick to blame, most sales are names ppl pick up at exp auctions where there are back links, with previous traffic flow which looks promising, and slowly starts to diminish. Unless you have a one or two word generic domain or typo, nobody is going to type in webhostingwhatever.org day in day out. If it's to good to be true, it usually is.

 

[NameDriver]

There's obviously a mix of scammers looking to offload domains where they have driven traffic, people looking to unload traffic typos because they don't want the risk and people who pick up the name at auction and want a quick sale.
The standard checks always work well to get a basic understanding of the name:
- Does the name, or something similar to it have a lot of Google links - not just do they exist, but what quality are they? It is easy to distinguish between a quantity of low quality Google backlinks (http://no_url_shorteners/46xoux) and quality Google backlinks (http://no_url_shorteners/4gjwcd)
- Is it a typo of a popular site (use the 'Did you mean...?' in Google)
- Is it a hot topic which will soon drop off (OlympicTorchProtests.com)? The traffic could be high now, but in 3 weeks' time?
- Was it a large ex-site (on archive.org)? These are all tests you can do yourself.

One thing I always say to buyers is: if the stats are from a parking company, will the parking company verify them for you?
It is in their interests to know where the traffic is coming from too and they will be able to give you assurances that nothing is going on or confirm your doubts.
We had a case just this week where a domain was for sale on NP and a user asked me to verify the stats. Although the seller on NP was most likely not involved, it seems that whoever he bought the name from originally had been driving traffic to the name like crazy from adult forums - something which we found out quite easily by Googling it, so I had to say that we could not vouch for the traffic as stated by the seller.

I hope this helps.

Ed

 

[PowerUp]

I'm curious. People keep saying that if the traffic comes from backlinks or Search Engines, then the traffic will slowly drop.

Ok, I can understand why traffic from backlinks drop, because these domain owners will update their links and weed out any parked pages.

But why does traffic from SE drop over time? Is it because it is a parked page? Or because there is no unique content on the page? If the latter, then would having unique content prevent the traffic from SE dropping?

 

[DN BROKER]

I bought good number of traffic domains in recent months from NP members who advertised on the traffic domain sales forum. am happy with most purchases. However -
bought 2 generic typo financial domains, price based on stats provided by sellers. However- those stats continued for only 30-40 days after I purchased, with steady uniques ( 45 a day..) and great revenue. Then traffic died altogether, and since then am getting 1-2 uniques/day, with no revenue.
any idea what could be the reason? is there something else we should know when checking traffic stats?

There needs to be a clean up... we need to unite and make an example out of the cheaters.

Please read this: http://www.namepros.com/the-break-room/456603-how-stupid-can-one-think-we.html

 

[soggyindo]

But why does traffic from SE drop over time? Is it because it is a parked page? Or because there is no unique content on the page? If the latter, then would having unique content prevent the traffic from SE dropping?

well, i guess because good SEO is a constant task. and google doesn't seem to have a set view on things, what's good today can be bad tomorrow.

can I ask a question way back to the original topic - how to avoid mistakes/ scams when buying traffic domains. does anyone know what the "fake: all/ yes/ no" options mean on the namepros TDNAM tool, and at freshdrop?

 

[blaknite]

One thing I would add to this topic, is to remember a sanity check. Stop, step back and think about why the name gets traffic. If you can't see a solid reason why that name would get that much traffic the seller is probably hiding something. (or doesn't know himself) Often for this I call my brother and ask what he thinks of the name. A sanity check is best done by someone with an outside perspective. I find myself wanting the traffic to be real so bad I sometimes overlook the negative indicators.

 

[weblord]

you need to check the cache of the site, it's easy to do, just type on google.com
"cache:yourdomain.com" replace yourdomain.com with the actual domain and it MUST lead to it's own page not to somewhere else, if it does, then it's fake traffic/pr.

I bought good number of traffic domains in recent months from NP members who advertised on the traffic domain sales forum. am happy with most purchases. However -
bought 2 generic typo financial domains, price based on stats provided by sellers. However- those stats continued for only 30-40 days after I purchased, with steady uniques ( 45 a day..) and great revenue. Then traffic died altogether, and since then am getting 1-2 uniques/day, with no revenue.
any idea what could be the reason? is there something else we should know when checking traffic stats?