I have been thinking of quitting my day job. So, I went to Flippa to source for websites that are sorta establish with like around 5000 uniques/mth. But there are like so many TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE website. I am NOT a pro but definitely not a dumbA**. I see people bragging about their sites get nearly 10000 uniques/mth and making $400-600 on adsense monthly. BUT they sell for only around $2500?? Its like when the site hit $1000 bid, it turn green meaning it has hit the reserved price and will be sold for whatever amount when the listing end thereafter. I monitored the listing closely and they usually sell for $2000-$2500.. I than use alexa and some other site digging website to analyze their site traffic. I notice that more than 70% of their traffics are from Indonesia, India or Nigeria. But they still get sold. Come on, I mean if the site REALLY gets 10000 unique/mth AND there is a 100% click thru for their website. Like 100% of the 10000 unique click on the ads. I highly doubt they 10000clicks make $400-600. But there are still people buying. Its weird. Are there not enough dumb people in the world?
Yea.Alot of fake websites at Flippa and ussualy get bought bt people like you (newbies) witch don't have atleast your knowledge and take everything for granted. Then,there are some websites where other more knoledgeble webmasters see potential.They know how to improve that website/idea and make it generate xx.xxx$ per month with that same traffic.Alot of ppl out there that have good websites with good traffic and they only do stuff like adsense or other penny stuff. But most of the times this are listings for newbies only.You keep looking and when 1st taking a look at a website think of how you could improve it and make it better.If you don't come up with an idea, don't buy it.That adsense earnings can cut in half overnight.Cheers!
I agree with Alin Alex, there are a lot of people that don't really know what they're doing buying websites. However, you have to keep in mind that its not all about the traffic. There are other factors that could add real value to a site, like the domain name itself, the PR, the niche, the content, etc. Just to give an example of how a site might be "over valued": Lets say you own an automotive parts site. Theres an automotive forum with a great domain name for sale on flippa (or whatever site you're using). You might be willing to pay more than what the traffic itself is worth, because by combining your site with the forum on flippa, you would greatly increase the value of both sites. So the site may be worth more to some people, and worth less to others. Personally, I've purchased sites simply because I liked the domain name. In those cases, it wasn't a business decision at all, so you can't always evaluate the price to what makes business sense.
OP, I agree with you, I have seen sites like your example many many times, and yeah, sounds fishy if you ask me. I have only brought 1 site from flippa (which is sad considering the number of hours I have spent over the past couple of years). Just seems that everytime I bid a fair and reasonable price for what a site is worth to me, there seems to be several fools that will jump in and pay stupid amounts. One trick sellers use, (i learnt this from this forum when the seller was open about finding partners to fund them so that they could do this trick) they pay for traffic daily, for weeks, months; and they might do this for a month or so. Now when they sell the site, it looks more "valuable", yet as soon as they stop paying for traffic, site is dead and worthless. But what takes the cake is that there are people on this forum that FUND that, and take a % of the final sale price. In your example of a site earning $400-$600, I remember a site that was in that sort of income range, I think it was legit at the time, but changes in google's algorithm, saw the site have a sudden (and massive) drop in the rankings, and of course a corresponding massive drop in income..... And this is something that most people dont realise. Even if you buy a site that IS legit, your SE ranking is never permanent, and unless you know what you are doing, (or in the very least updating and maintaining the site, and or policing content created by the site users), then of course, you can expect your SE rankings to slide. To add to this, the average CPC is never fixed, and can easily go up or down.... What I am trying to convey is that even IF a site is 100% legit, and really does have a proven and reliable income from advertising, that anyone buying this site, solely on the basis of its income per month (and no other reason) is gambling their money. If someone has $2500 to waste on the site in your example, well, I think they would be better off to put that into the poker machines... they would probly get more of their money back if they did. You are right, sometimes what people see is a crappy site, but sometimes I have bid on sites that had custom coded apps, or domain I wanted, or some other asset that was valuable to me.
Maybe you didn't think that the fools guy who increase the bid is not actually a customer. That's maybe just a fake or hired one from the creator trying to improve the price. I was playing with flippa for years and i know how its going. Nothing fair and square like you see. Its cheat cheat cheat everywhere even in here DP forums. You have to come up with something to make sure you are not selling things cheap. And of course more people bidding mean its has more potential .... Think about that
yes, I have seen that several times where flippa will show on sellers profiles accounts that they are "possible links to". Not to sure how flippa detects this, but does prove that too many people have multiple accounts. And yes, it is not uncommon for a site to be relisted after being "sold" which is common for when they are using fake bidding and maybe their friend won by accident. But when this happens, nearly every time its relisted, the final price is lower the second time. not much we can do about it "A fool and their money are easily parted."
Alexa can be very wrong on where traffic comes from. For one of our sites it says India is the second place with 20% but google analytics shows india is waaaay down the list around 20 place by traffic.