I have mid xxK to invest / buy an established site. Can anyone tell me what I should be interested in and what niches. Also pm me if your selling your business. Thanks.
The niche of site you buy is depend on what you think that you have interest in. And most important is the site you buy must will generate money in the next 10 years to make sure you can break even the buying price.
Man if you take 10 years to break even - GIVE UP NOW AND SAVE YOUR MONEY! Otherwise just PM me and I'll send you my paypal details and you can just deposit it today. It'll save you 9.5 years of heartache and anguish. Instead of wondering if you wasted your money for 10 years, you'll know as soon as you click Pay Now! Seriously though, this is one of those "how big is a hole" type questions. Probably more importantly, and with all due respect, is that if you don't have the business acumen to know what to look for, you are in big trouble. Buying an established site is very much like buying an established business. You need to find something that people want, that has potential for growth, and that can deliver an ROI in the shortest possible time frame. The niche is not the most important aspect - the potential to earn is!
Wrong. Both are important. Whatever you choose or invest in you have to be willing to do, or look at it, every day. "Potential" comes down to the individual behind the site. ANY site has "potential", but ultimately it is the owner/WM that is the driving force behind it and will make, or break, the site. The time you invest will eventually outweigh any dollar amount you put into it. Especially if you keep a site long term. Being in a niche will give you more stable sales and recurring revenue then trying to compete in a more mainstream market where there is more aggressive competition. However, you trade off that there may also be a ceiling of sorts depending. Also you need to know how to market and sell niche. Not everyone does. You need to pick something that inspires or motivates you. Money alone will not do it. It might in the beginning, but it will not sustain you over the long run. You have to enjoy your work as well. Good luck. 2 cents
LOL and how am I wrong? I guess Donald Trump only invests in businesses he knows and is passionate about? Yeah Right! You are clearly a 1 man band and your only speaking from that perspective. But at the end of the day the OP asked what niche he should be looking at for an investment. It doesn't matter if it's blue widgets or nascar, if the public isn't interested and there is no potential to profit then I don't give a rats ass about how much passion you have - you'll burn every last cent because there was no demand for the product. By your definition, I'm passionate about top soil and so therefore I should invest thousands of dollars into a web site that CANNOT BE MONETIZED. So once again, the niche should be the last of your worries. First concentrate on a market, do some research, ensure there is demand. As far as webmasters go, you can outsource every last bit of it including the SEO. If there is no market, and no demand then there is no profit no matter what niche your in. I would suggest you look for a market that already has plenty of competition. Competition tells you that there IS A MARKET and that people are buying but also it will tell you if others are spending money to advertise to that market. If no one is advertising to that market then people are not spending money there and you will lose money trying. I think it was Edison who said don't try to come up with something new. Find something that's already popular and make it better, easier etc. The same theory applies to you. Find a niche that has a large market. Find the top 3 web sites and look for ways that you could improve upon it. Then find an established site in that niche and apply what you've learned from your research. So I say again the niche is not important, potential to profit and consumer demand is what's important.
Thanks ShoeMoney wannabe. When you actually make a living in online full time, feel free to come back and post up some of your sites to back up your success and advice. Carry on.
Both of you make good points. I used to think it's all about the reveue, but even well established sites with low revenue have a lot of value and like Barefootsies says the potential comes from the person behind it.
I don't disagree about the person behind it - my point is that no matter how good the person, you need a market, and you need a profitable one. By the definition given about focusing more on the person one would have to assume that Donald Trump or Robert Kyosaki should never have gone bankrupt, yet they both did. You'd also have to assume that because they went bankrupt that they were the wrong people behind the business. That's just absurd. Both of them have clearly said that the reason they went bankrupt is because they were too emotionally involved and failed to properly assess the markets they entered into. As a result they each ended up bankrupt. And remember that passion is an emotion, and emotions should never be involved in business decisions. Certainly do your best to find something that your do enjoy because it makes your work day far easier to get through. But emotion should never be the driving force. But the best advice for you IMO is to look at the market first because only you know if you can do this. If you believe you are the right person to take 10's of thousands of dollars, invest it and turn a profit then that argument is moot. And if that argument is moot then the only real concern should be the profitability of your market. Hopefully the whipper snapper who seems to know how I earn money, what I do for a living, and who I aspire to be, can manage to stop for a moment and realise that there are some people in the world who are older than 16 and actually have a formal education, and real world success on the subject to draw these opinions and conclusions from. Mine took place before the internet even existed for the general public. Not to mention I've successfully, built, run and sold off several brick and mortar businesses in the past 15 years. Maybe I was just lucky - right? Mate if your going to take 10's of thousands of dollars, make sure, above everything else, that you can get a return on your investment. Unless of course you don't care about making money. But lets face it - even if you're not the right person to have behind the wheel, you can always hire a business manager. I've been fortunate enough to work with some very wealthy and successful people over the years. A couple of them you'd likely know or know of their businesses. All brick and mortar with the exception of a few. This is where I got my real world training and insights from. Not from some overweight seagull on a blog. Real life successful business people, with real S&P500 companies. The most recent (about 5 years ago) was with a JVC. None of the businesses he bought into, cultivated, and grew were about him or his passions. For instance his profession is as an accountant yet he owns catering companies, plastics manufacturing, internet kiosks, prosthetic body parts, kitchen wares, camera store chain, just to name a few. In fact at that time he owned or was the major shareholder in over 100 different companies. Is he passionate about all of these things. Not in the least. Does he run all of these himself. No. He first analyzes the market, the profit potential, then employs the 'right' people to run each of those businesses. He only looks in on the businesses once a month because he trusts the people who are running them. More importantly he trusts his own ability to find profitable businesses to buy up cheap, grow them by outsourcing the day to day operation, and to only enter into a venture if there is a massive profit potential. The best thing Brian ever told me was this: No one can do anything as well as I can do it myself, but if I did everything myself I'd never get anything done, and I'd never have had the success I have. Hopefully you'll have a better perspective of what I am talking about now. Yes the person behind the business is extremely important. If you believe you have what it takes to succeed in business, or you think you know what to look for in someone to hire them to take care of your business, the only thing left for you to worry about is protecting your investment. Even the most passionate people get hungry when there is no money in bank to buy food with!
A lot of businesses are hurting for cash flow now. You can probably get 15%-25% annual on your money pretty easily if you were to offer private lender funding to small businesses and secure the note against machinery or other assets. Wont be as exciting as buying a shiney new website, but you might actually make some money. I've been doing quite a bit of this in the past 6 months...