Is it just me, or does it seem that the majority of site sellers are trying to either fabricate or hide stats that would provide a true indicator of their site's value? Seems a little like either rigging the odeometer or not providing the car rego number to me... I'm beginning to wonder if there are any legit/honest sellers out there at all? Well, sorry, there are a couple I know from person experience, but most seems to want to dodge answering any questions about their stats.
This is why you have to be extremely careful. It's way to easy to buy a traffic package for the site your trying to sell to make it look like it's a lot more popular. Have to do a lot of background research yourself and never believe what a seller tells you.
If it seems to good to be true it is. If someone is selling a PR9 site that makes 50k a year for $200.00 something in that tiny brain should trigger.
I love the come back when asking about google analytics: "I don't trust GA, so I use my own local stats package because it's more accurate." Umm, yeah, and can be rigged! I know I shouldn't care about the naive buyer who's suckered in by a dodgy salesperson ("a fool and his money..."), but I can't help myself...
I always follow the rule of "If its too good to be true, that's because it probably is" When you look at a sales pitch and think that to yourself, everything becomes a little more clear
Another question I love how they avoid answering: "So tell me, what is the percentage of organic search engine traffic?" I had one guy's listing say that direct traffic was more important than search engine because search engine traffic could stop. Ha ha!!
Oh, and have had a great laugh from one such dodgy operator, see some of his comments via private message to me: http://zavadesign.com/zava-blog/sit...d-car-salesmen-and-shady-dealings/#comment-31 Hilarious!! A few more of those and I could write a book!