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I’ve been regularly trawling through internet marketplaces for many years now. In the past year the quality of websites for sale has dropped noticeably. Even though there are many more sites being advertised for sale and being promoted as having huge potential, an experienced SEO marketer can tell that the vast majority of sites don’t live up to their bold claims. Buyers need to be more vigilant than ever.
Here are some quick checks I do before even considering a buying a website. The alexa ranking should be lower than 150,000 AND the google pagerank should be PR3 or higher. Also, I don’t trust webstats other than google analytics. Some web analysers give an inflated hit count (which records a hit for every page element that is loaded). Google analytics only counts actual visitors to the site and gives you a comprehensive breakdown of traffic sources by country, whether traffic is organic, what the bounce rate of visitors is and much more. For example, if most visitors come from a website the seller owns, s/he may remove the affiliate link once the site has been sold to you. The buyer then loses both traffic and revenue upon sale.
I never rely on revenue claims without having a screenshot of earnings e.g. from google adsense. Be careful of revenue stats that consolidate yearly earnings into an impressive total. This hides the fact that the website may have generated high revenue at the beginning of the year which has dwindled significantly by the end of the year. Also, revenue stats need to be shown for at least the past 3 months. Sellers may promote high earnings for the past week or month which simply cannot be sustained and may have been falsified.
Revenue of course is only half the picture. If the site looks resource intensive, you need to find out how much hosting costs. A blog or forum may have paid posts. Traffic may also have been purchased. All these costs may outweigh revenue been generated hence the reason why the site is for sale (despite reasons sellers may give such as needing more time with family or for other projects).
Always ensure that website ownership has been verified. I also prefer payments via paypal. Paypal offers dispute resolutions and from personal experience funds have been returned from scammers without too much fuss.
I’ve been searching the following internet marketplaces closely and have not found a site worth buying in months. If there is a site that looks worthwhile investing in, it’s usually overpriced. The reason is simple – low supply of good websites and far too many eager potential buyers. Perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere for business opportunities? Let us know of your own experiences.
http://tek3d.org/internet-marketplace-traps
Here are some quick checks I do before even considering a buying a website. The alexa ranking should be lower than 150,000 AND the google pagerank should be PR3 or higher. Also, I don’t trust webstats other than google analytics. Some web analysers give an inflated hit count (which records a hit for every page element that is loaded). Google analytics only counts actual visitors to the site and gives you a comprehensive breakdown of traffic sources by country, whether traffic is organic, what the bounce rate of visitors is and much more. For example, if most visitors come from a website the seller owns, s/he may remove the affiliate link once the site has been sold to you. The buyer then loses both traffic and revenue upon sale.
I never rely on revenue claims without having a screenshot of earnings e.g. from google adsense. Be careful of revenue stats that consolidate yearly earnings into an impressive total. This hides the fact that the website may have generated high revenue at the beginning of the year which has dwindled significantly by the end of the year. Also, revenue stats need to be shown for at least the past 3 months. Sellers may promote high earnings for the past week or month which simply cannot be sustained and may have been falsified.
Revenue of course is only half the picture. If the site looks resource intensive, you need to find out how much hosting costs. A blog or forum may have paid posts. Traffic may also have been purchased. All these costs may outweigh revenue been generated hence the reason why the site is for sale (despite reasons sellers may give such as needing more time with family or for other projects).
Always ensure that website ownership has been verified. I also prefer payments via paypal. Paypal offers dispute resolutions and from personal experience funds have been returned from scammers without too much fuss.
I’ve been searching the following internet marketplaces closely and have not found a site worth buying in months. If there is a site that looks worthwhile investing in, it’s usually overpriced. The reason is simple – low supply of good websites and far too many eager potential buyers. Perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere for business opportunities? Let us know of your own experiences.
http://tek3d.org/internet-marketplace-traps
