$25000 to spend on a REAL professional site. Are there any on this forum?

Been looking for a money making site with at least 6 months of traffic and revenue proof. Most sites I see here reminds me of going to a second hand store (thrift). Just a lot of hobby sites but no real business sites. So if you have a REAL online business let me know what you have.
Thanks
JK

 

Try sitepoint.com, it got more serious sites (since listings are paid).

Peace,

 

John,

I have one for sale on here at the moment, but as itsa gambling site people tend to think there ios someything wrong with that.

Anyway I amactually showing people how I do it, read the thread if you are interested in making srious money then this site can do that for you.

Reasons for selling are on the thread.

2 more signede up yesterday plus I will have some more this weekend.

Lee

 

sorry here is thread

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1207013

 

sitepoint is actually worse 90% of people fake revenue and once you get site it doesn't make even close to what they say it does

 

To be honest, you need to be smart when buying from Sitepoint.
If you just buy blindly, you often make a mistake and buy a crap site.

However, in my opinion it is pretty easy to pick the good and bad sites

 

Here, here. I don't have a site for sale, but I completely agree with your assessment of the listings. You have to dig through 100 threads to find one worth looking at. There are almost no truly professional listings, which might include a full set of financials (month by month going back AT LEAST six months, and preferably a year or more) as well as links to page rank, alexa, and other statistic verification sites.

Sitepoint is a bit better, but most of the listings are still grievously lacking in any of the normal financial data on which one would normally make a investment decision.

I think it's partly as a consequence of all the bad and lacking information that the sale price of good websites is often so low. Buyers build in a large "fear and misinformation" premium.

With any normal business investment, ROI of 10-20% would already be spectacular. By contrast, there seems to be some strange consensus that websites should for 12X monthly earnings or something like that. Why people even put in terms of net monthly earnings is beyond me. Alert: 12X monthly earnings = annual earnings. Why not just say annual earnings?

Even well developed sites seem to sell for barely 2X annual earnings, which is equivalent to a 50% ROI the first year out if you run a site with no improvements.

Great from the buyers perspective when you do find a rare gem. But from the seller perspective, you have to ask WHY would anyone sell a functioning business for 1-2X annual earnings?

I'm in a state of continuous bafflement.

-

All this make me think: Do you have any interest in partnering to create a higher quality site for the purchase and sale of websites? We force people to give full information and personal financial verification to sign up, like done at SEDO. Then we vet individual listings, and confirm all the statistics (like page rank - no more fake page rank!) before listing. And we require buyers to submit a proper set of financials, accessible by any registered member interested in the site.

Set up a 2 strike and your out policy for any abuses to ensure good behavior.

A proper market place would enable those with legitimate online businesses to reap proper rewards for their efforts when they go to sell.

What do you think?

Erick

 

Lots of good comments Erick!

 

I have been looking for a good website on this site and various others for the past 3 months. What i am amazed at is that when financials or traffic stats are giving quiet often the full screen shot has been cut of at the top. I read people occasionally writing in here that they didnt receive what they paid for, will why not go through Escrow the 3rd party before handing over any money.

Good Luck if you find a good place that sells websites or will give a report on one let me know.

 

Erickd, well the major difference is that buying a website is not comparable to buying other investments like stocks or bonds, in that websites often require work to maintain and run, and so you are actually buying a job. Plus websites are very fickle in terms of revenue and profit. They can die any second due to change in rankings and adwords algorithem and changing competitive landscape

 

I like your idea Erik, pm me if you go through with it.

 

daled1,

Good points. Sites do come with work (which is why I always find it humorous when some one selling a site says "you can run it with just 1-2 hours a week). Sure.

And you're right that websites can be fickle. As some one whose invested in other types of ventures, including real estate, I always find web site purchases disconcerting. When you buy a piece of real estate, you are getting something tangible that has intrinsic, unmistakable value. Yes, the value can decline a bit, but only to a certain point. Yes, you could burn it down, but then you've go insurance.

When you buy a website, you really are buying something intangible and potentially fragile. If you run it badly, ruin the reputation, get banned in search engines, or mess something else up, you can lose an overwhelming portion of your investment (both time and money).

Even taking those factors into account, however, it seems like many websites sell for a remarkable low price relative to earnings.

I've considered flipping websites, but it just doesn't seem like you make enough return on the sale. You regularly see PR4-5 sites with sub 100K alexa ratings going for $8000, like www.wpthemesplugin.com on this site not long ago. It takes a lot of effort or money or both to get a site to that point, and it hardly seems worth it to sell. I'd just hire someone to run it and keep the residual income in perpetuity.

In any case, it seems to me that a large part of the problem is that no one trusts what a seller says about the website. We all assume that sellers are somehow artificially inflating and overstating their statistics (which they usually are). Perhaps they're buying links to inflate page rank? Or setting up temporary PR7 links from their own site networks to inflate page rank? Or running Adwords to inflate traffic? Who knows.

I often think of the market for websites, especially in places like this forum, like the American wild west. It's a lawless, hobbesian world, full of bandits.

E


-
Another interesting side note--it seems like even website valuation tools and calculators don't know how to value sites. I just put www.wpthemesplugin.com into the valuation tool at dnscoop.com and it told me the sit was worth $435,872. A lot of help that is .

 

Thanks, Kyle. Will do. E

 

Every good point Erickd...