buying a website off FLIPPA >>

I have seen various websites for sale on flippa with stated earnings (usually via adsense).

Has anyone purchased a website from flippa and had long term success ??

I am just a bit worried that stated earnings would drop over a period of time.

It just seems too good to be true. Last famous words

 

It's a gamble, especially for newer sites, and especially for fixed-formula sites where the seller has rolled out several exactly the same - the longer a site has been running the less risk there is.

If you want an honest opinion on any sites you're seriously considering buying, pm me the flippa link and I'll give you an honest opinion (from somebody who's been making, buying and selling sites for over a decade). It won't be a perfect opinion of course, but I'll certainly steer you clear of the shit you'd regret

 

Well ofc the earnings will drop if you don't keep doing the work or should I say marketing the person who is selling the site have done and probably done regulary. No site is completely hands off.

The reason why you see sites that have had a consistent revenue for 3 months sell for quite a lot more is because that helps to show it isn't some one time wonder thing.

A couple of things to keep in mind is:

1. How does the site get it's traffic

2. What costs other than the hosting is associated with running the site

3. Do the proof add up. Like if it shows a high bounce rate on say a forum that should be a red flag right there. But if it's a salespage that isn't unnormal.

 

Be very careful over there. Some sellers will build links to a specific domain, then 301 it to the site they are selling. Once it ranks and makes cash for the first month, they go to sell. You buy it, they push the 301 to another site, and you're newly purchased site drops from the SERPS.

 

I'd say away from sites based on adsense. I'd be looking at sites that are offering a product/affiliate sale or a real service that you can offer and sell

 

Alright I'll see if I get this correctly.

They will build all their links to a domain the 301 to the site they are going to sell and then afterwards they 301 the domain they built links to, to another domain correct?

First of all links lose quite a bit when they go through a 301 and second the site won't drop immedietly if they do it.

Common sense is needed in general when doing deals online.

 

If they 301 then they're cheating themselves, a 301 is Moved Permanently, they want to be using a 302 or 307 redirect instead. Not that I advocate such practises.

Rather than checking backlinks, it's wise to check the organic traffic, do a site:domain.org in google, plug in the domain name in to a facebook like-box (to see activity feed and user interactions) and similar "real" measurements of what is going on. Heavy analysis of Analytics data (don't trust any other form, especially counters/self hosted stats) and common sense are usually enough to figure out how genuine a site is.

Further, if somebody claims to have made $1k in 1 month, but are selling for $2-3k, that makes no logical sense at all and is a huge flashing warning sign you'd be a fool to ignore. (Likewise the inverse scenario "made $1k in 3 weeks, selling for $25 or best offer")

 

I'd be very cautious when it comes to purchasing from sellers on Flippa. Make sure you're buying from a reputable seller with good feedback, carefully read the descriptions they provide about the sites and don't get too sucked into their earnings screenshots -- nowadays they're easy enough to fake.

 

This site will help some http://www.compete.com/us/ you can plug in a domain and it will give you traffic stats is it has high traffic numbers, Im not sure at what point it works but it has shown some good numbers for sites I was looking at and I could see that they only had traffic for a couple of months and where just trying to make a quick sale, and when I questioned the owner he confirmed the numbers I was seeing, but on the other hand I have a website that is fairly new and only getting about 50 to 100 visitors a day and it doesn't give me any data for it.

 

Be very careful when purchasing from Flippa - I would only purchase an established site (1+ years old) that is not solely earning through adsense. I would definitely avoid the 'Startup/Cheaper' sites unless you like a domain that is for sale and earnings aren't such a big deal

 

i do not consider any site that is less than 3 years old

 

The type of monetization is personal preference. You can certainly make money in Adsense but it also depends how much time, resources, and which approach you take. If your budget is to buy up $30/month sites one at a time then you're better off buying one or two and learning what it takes to develop those further to be better earners. Unless you have the funds to go all in on a higher rev site, nothing can replace first-hand experience or knowledge. No shortcuts here

Another poster mentioned taking over a service provider of some sort. Definitely a good call but just make sure you know precisely what's involved and whether you can support their current workload and afford to shift resources to keeping more work fed into the pipe.

 

before you purchase any site ask them to send you a copy of the google anaylitics of their site stats. This is huge because if you see their unique visitors dropping then it is probably not a good idea to purchase

 

If someone has listed a website for sale on flippa there is always a reason to it.
That reason isn't "I don't have time" or "I'm working on another project" which seems to be the excuse for selling on every single listing.
The reason to selling it is usually it's going downhill, in this case you can catch a bargain and make a serious profit if you know how to spin the site around and bring it in the right direction.
These words only really apply to websites which are established.
The new websites or auto blogs that are sold on flippa are extremely risky.

 

WOW.. Sounds weird.. Have you get an experience like that ? Or you just heard/read from someone or other board ?

Im agree with your word that i have bold. Need suggestion about this page

https://flippa.com/2755451-amazing-profitable-home-improvements-portal-easy-to-get-500-income-monthly#comments

Code (markup):

Have you any idea for this sales website ?

 

I have never bought I site from Flippa but I lurk there quite a bit. There are basically two questions to ask yourself: 1) will the earnings stay at the current level? and 2) can I grow the earnings even more? There are different types of sites that earn through AdSense and some are worth buying while others aren't:

microsites - A microsite is when someone buys an exact match name and then pays someone to write a few pages of content for the site. There's always only a few pages on the site, so no need to write new content which makes this a good passive earner. A lot of these sites use trademarks in the domain name (like mcdonaldscoupons.com), which could put you at risk for having the site taken away by the trademark earner. Aside from that, if a microsite has a few months of solid earnings it's likely that it will continue to earn at that rate. This is good. The downside is that the traffic and earnings won't grow, but it's generally a safe investment.

autoblogs - I would avoid these. They are crap and any person looking at it knows that. If the content is re-written by Google translate so that it "looks unique," it's going to look like trash to any person who clicks on it, and if they hit the back button and go back to Google after 2 seconds, that's a ranking factor that can hurt you (dwell time). And if you don't do that, you run the risk of duplicate content penalties. Basically the earnings here are riskier. I like to think that any autoblog's days are numbered, but maybe that's giving Google too much credit.

site with paid articles - obviously paying someone to write articles incurs a cost so usually these are more expensive sites with more traffic. These sites have the potential to grow by you figuring out what sort of articles are needing and hiring someone to write them. It takes a bit of management to reap the full potential, but it can be worthwhile.
The big difference with this and an autoblog is that you actually have the potential to build a quality site with direct traffic, repeat visitors, and referrals from facebook and elsewhere. People might actually link to your site because they found it valuable and not because you asked them to. Because your site is quality, you also have the hope of joining a CPM ad network which could potentially pay better than AdSense. You have the potential to build an actual brand and that opens a lot of possibilities that an autoblog doesn't have. You could use the site to promote your own dropshipping store for example, whatever you want.

site written by current owner - this has all of the advantages of the paid content site but with some added management work because you have to find writers and you also have to factor that into the cost (the seller will list it as pure profit because they aren't accounting for their time). The flipside is that a site written by a hobbyist usually has the highest quality of articles compared to paid content, so when you buy the site you are buying all of what they've previously written. Oftentimes these sites aren't well monetized currently, so there's a lot of room to grow the earnings.


Basically if the site is crap, don't buy it. Always think about what the next level is for the site and how you can get there.

Also when anyone says that they've "done SEO" on a site, that makes me very nervous because bad SEO can come back to haunt you. If you're serious about buying, definitely push them for details on what exactly was done.

 

I am also looking to obtain streams of passive income. Currently I have $5k to work with, I was thinking of making an ecommerce site, but I was thinking it might be faster/easier if I just purchase a money making site. It doesn't necesarily have to be ecommerce, anything low maintenance would work. Good info here, I'll post some sites Im thinking of buying...

 

The listing is too long, initial motivated buyers may loose interest when they see its too long unless your price is the BIN.

 

I wrote a book to help address your exact fears about buying sites--how to spot scams, fraud and scummy sellers.

Flippa Buyer Guide

I think it would be worth your time to check it out.

 

I have sold several that I didn't have time for that made a few hundred dollars per month, so that is not really a red flag. When you own many e commerce websites, you frequently pare off the ones that aren't earning as much as other ones or ones that take up more customer service time than other ones in order to better manage your time on the more productive websites.