General Tips on how to properly buy or sell a website

[Dekker]

Selling

Do: Do give a URL to the website that you are selling. If you're afraid of a person stealing your content or whatever. That's going to happen anyways, and the person is buying your website because they themselves don't want to do it. Not giving a URL makes you look seedy.

Do: Give point form summarizations of what your website does. No need for a 1000 word essay. People don't read.

Do: Give an auction end date, or a BIN. If you don't, it's just obvious you want the most money possible. Which isn't wrong, but doesn't come across well.

Do: Give statistics about the income. Take a screen shot (Blurring out things that are against TOS of course) and of course provide long term income. At least 4 months, if your website is newer than that, give as much information as you can (i.e. the day that you added monetization)

Do: Give statistics about the traffic. Provide a link to your stats generation page. Or a screen shot. Again, as much information as possible

Don't: Get angry with people if they start questioning things such as, where your content is from, is it copyrighted? Do you have full copyrights? If you can't answer these questions, just hope that your buyer is really stupid.

Don't: Spam the forums to get the required number of posts. People do check your history before purchasing.

Buying

Do: Check other websites such as Sitepoint or WebMasterWorld or some of the other trading forums. Chances are you'll find the exact same listing. Read it, if it didn't sell on another forum, there's more than likely a reason why.

Do: Check this person's history. How much reputation do they have? What are their last 20 posts like?

Do: Check the site statistics. Go on to Alexa, what's the ranking? Is the website indexed in Google? Does it have cached pages? Is it indexed in MSN? Are there backlinks? What's the PR?

Do: Check if any of the content is copyrighted, or stolen. Choose some random phrases from the articles or content, then Google it with "quotations". Does it show up on other websites?

Do: Ask questions.
How old is the site?
Was it originally yours?
Did you buy this site?
Why are you selling it if so?
How much traffic do you get?
How much traffic do you get from the US?
What scripts is it running?
Do I need a license for these scripts?
Do I need to install GD Library, MySQL, Image Magick, etc?
Is it your script?
Will I have full copyright to the scripts and content if I buy it?
Is this content unique?
How much does your hosting cost?
How much resources does it use?
What's the income?
What's the income for the past 4 months?
What ad networks do you use?
Do you have a Google Adsene account? Where you banned?
Will you help me set it up?
etc, etc

The buyer should be able to ask as many questions, stupid or otherwise. If the seller can't answer these honestly, or without hesitation. Take note.

Good luck!

[tesla]

Don't: Get angry with people if they start questioning things such as, where your content is from, is it copyrighted? Do you have full copyrights? If you can't answer these questions, just hope that your buyer is really stupid.

When I read that line I starting laughing. Everything you say is on target though. I'll have to keep those guidelines in mind.

[Crazy_Rob]

Nice thread, SVZ.

Pretty much everything you mentioned is common sense.

People who practice your "dont's" are typically hiding something or aren't worth doing business with.

Any general tips on contracts/agreements would probably help some people too.

[Dekker]

thanks

and another one

use freaking spell check!!!

would you buy microsoft wnidows XP?

[Mister Tut]

Seller: Don't make guarantees of future earnings.

Buyer: Don't assume past performance (hits, ad revenue, PR, affiliate sales etc) guarantees future performance, (even though it may be a strong indicator)

Thinking of a certain other (rather lurid) thread running at the moment where both parties are feeling wronged.

[n0other]

Here is the most important points for the seller to remember IMO:

Don't lie, don't cheat, AND DON'T try to value your site based on the 'potential'.

Anouncing a BIN in the first post is a bad idea indeed. If no one is interested in your site after a while, you should reduce the BIN, if there is no BIN, you reduce the starting BID, having the same BIN in mind.

An excellent thread I must say!

[Dekker]

abide by my RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :P

[Cutter]

One of the most important things: where is the traffic coming from?

I'll take a site earning $1,000 a month from diversified traffic from one earning $5,000 from two MSN keywords any day.

[sarahk]

I didn't see this originally but it's a great post. Thanks Dekker. It's now stuck!

[GeorgeB.]

Do: Do give a URL to the website that you are selling. If you're afraid of a person stealing your content or whatever. That's going to happen anyways, and the person is buying your website because they themselves don't want to do it. Not giving a URL makes you look seedy.

People use this tactic all the time to get free bumps on their thread.

Others use it because they have something to hide.

Either way, I still don't understand why it's even allowed here.

The fact that they can use tinyurl means there really is no reason to hide it. I mean you're putting the site up for PUBLIC SALE!

[Nicks]

Nice info Dekker, though we know most of it, still it will be very much helpful, specially for newbies.

[FFMG]

Originally Posted by GeorgeB.

People use this tactic all the time to get free bumps on their thread.

Others use it because they have something to hide.

Either way, I still don't understand why it's even allowed here.

The fact that they can use tinyurl means there really is no reason to hide it. I mean you're putting the site up for PUBLIC SALE!

Hear, hear!

Mods should not allow such posts.
Maybe would should start a petition of sort to make it compulsory to have a minimum amount of info listed in the thread, (url/start price/bin/end date).

FFMG

[Rian]

Dekker, all is fine, but in certain circumstances where a high profile website is for sale, I would not want the posts in this forum to show up in search engine results. Therefore I would prefer not to post the URL in any post.

DP is a strong indexed website and listing a site here will definately end up in many search engine results.

If this does become a necesity no more high profile websites will be sold here and this forum will loose out on a niche market. I will definately not list a high profile website for sale and have "Website For Sale" advertised in search engine results.

I have no problem with smaller websites though, but there are exceptions.

[Edmunds]

A sales thread of a site I put up for sale 9 months ago on DP now ranks #9 on Google for its main keywords. At one point it used to be #3. That taught me a lesson - if you have anything worth more than four figures to sell, simply mention the website's category, income, and the price you want, and deal with the rest in PMs.

[worksense]

Hm,
I've been in forums for not such a long time,but it's good to see all these advices in one post.
I see that I can take really good stuff here now.


Thank you Derrek!



Best Regards,
Pavlina Rossini

[tasari]

Originally Posted by FFMG

Hear, hear!

Mods should not allow such posts.
Maybe would should start a petition of sort to make it compulsory to have a minimum amount of info listed in the thread, (url/start price/bin/end date).

FFMG

I agree 100 % !!! Bumping should not be allowed. Moderator could delete that specific post or even give warning if persisting ;-)

Maybe posts should disappear after 3 weeks or put [CLOSED] or [RELISTED] behind it...

Just my 2 cents...

[FFMG]

Originally Posted by Edmunds

A sales thread of a site I put up for sale 9 months ago on DP now ranks #9 on Google for its main keywords. At one point it used to be #3. That taught me a lesson - if you have anything worth more than four figures to sell, simply mention the website's category, income, and the price you want, and deal with the rest in PMs.

Maybe there should be a 'members only' section, where you must be a member to _view_ that forum, (or you could ask for a thread to be 'members only when you create it).
That would, indirectly, prevent any bots from finding the thread as they are not member as far as I know .

I understand that DP wants to have the site indexed, that is why only a sub-section would be 'members only'.

FFMG

[Rian]

I would love to hear from any of the site's admins regarding the matter of mentioning the URL's of websites in public.

I would hate to list a website in future and not mention the URL, but in the same sentence I need to sell the sites. It will just be a matter of here or elsewhere. I would also hate to see the good sites go elsewhere and buyers on DP punished.

And yes it is true about your google search results, I learnt the same thing from DP.

[boxer126]

I'll take a site earning $1,000 a month from diversified traffic from one earning $5,000 from two MSN keywords any day.

I've got a site earning $1,800/mo. with diversified traffic. If you have a site earning $5,000/mo. from two MSN keywords, I will gladly trade. Let me know.....

Anyway, nice thread. A lot of good points.

-boxer126

[Rian]

Originally Posted by FFMG

Maybe there should be a 'members only' section, where you must be a member to _view_ that forum, (or you could ask for a thread to be 'members only when you create it).
That would, indirectly, prevent any bots from finding the thread as they are not member as far as I know .

I understand that DP wants to have the site indexed, that is why only a sub-section would be 'members only'.

FFMG

I agree with you FFMG. Maybe a private forum will do, where those who want access can be given.

I understand about DP being indexed and have no problems with this. For this reason high profile site's URL's was not mentioned in posts.

If they want it to be mentioned then there has to be a private forum, if not, they must allow to continue as normal.