where are the sites f/s>>>??

Its a sellers market.

Right now ,there are 10 WTB threads in the first two pages & you guys are bitching about no good sites for sale In the few years i've been lurking here @ DP, i've never seen so many WTB threads.

What other industry in the world can you sell a business in a few hrs at the drop of a hat? I think what froggy is willing to pay may be the new yard stick for how "good" sites are valued next year.

 

We just need better quality control, like impose a minimum of all listings should be sites at least 6 months old. That would stop all these people registering domains, copying Wikipedia, then trying to make a quick $50. It's currently quantity instead of quality - but I'm not sure DigitalPoint will change it as the more posts the better?

 

I think DP should charge for premier listings like SP does. This way there can be a section for serious sellers and the capability to delete improper posts.

 

Selling turnkey and other young sites doesn't reflect a lack of quality, and the fact is, they sell.

It's like condeming Wal-Mart for selling electronic equipment inferior in quality compared to that of an electronics specialty shop. You can hate Wal-Mart all you like, but you can't dispute their business model.

Basically, as a seller, if you feel that your sales suffer from the turnkey sites for sale here, then maybe your product is lacking in quality. I sell a wide range of both turnkey, young, and well established sites, and I don't find that my established sites sell any more slowly or at less profit because of the young sites for sale here.

 

Selling turnkey sites are fine as it covers one segment of the market especially for people who want to drive right into running a site.

I don't like putting in a lot of money into a website I have not heard of, past profits may not reflect future profits as I've experienced with a site which I bought earlier. So turnkey is great because they usually come cheap because they are new and who knows they could be undiscovered diamond in the rough.

But it is just plain wrong for someone to slap an existing script to a domain name and sell it the very next day for an obscene price tag.

 

I agree with earlier poster, splitting it in to "turnkey/brand new" and "premium sites" would suit everyone

(maybe premium sites would be ones over 6 months old, traffic above X uniques, income above X amount)

 

I don't necessarily agree, but I don't think splitting the two groups would be a bad thing.

 

Big sales have always been happening at sitepoint, not here. For every good site that comes up for sale here, ten come up for sale at sitepoint.

Being a seller myself, I care for the integrity of the sites I own and want to keep as well as the ones which I plan to sell. I would much rather have a premium listing at sitepoint, and leave it at that, then go out of my way and post the details at every webmaster forum. Others I believe would do the same, and settle with one sitepoint listing instead of mutiple sales threads all over the place. What does that mean for dp, it means the only threads here are WTB ones and threads selling less than 6 month old crap unfortunately.

 

I agree to an extent, I wouldn't say the only sites selling here are crap but I am sure you meant it is the majority??

Also, It seems like I see the same sites for sale here all the time, sites being flipped here and thre and/or the same owner selling many copies of the same site just with different domain names.

 

Again, I can't stress enough: a site less then 6 months old is not necessarily crap.

 

I agree there should be some sort of control over the buy/sell forum.
Maybe charge $5 to list a quality site, and have a sub-forum for all new, turnkey or for the plethora of myspace/proxy etc sites.

 

The problem with buying expensive sites (over 1K) is the very strong possibility of being scammed.

 

For a buyer who knows how to research sites (some good tools) it's very, very rare to get scammed, and I speak from experience. Suggestion: Treat site buying like a bet and don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

Er, WTB = Want To Buy i.e. WTB listings indicate buyers, not sellers.

 

Er, WTB = Want To Buy i.e. WTB listings indicate buyers, not sellers.[/QUOTE]
Yeah I caught that one too- pretty funny!

One site that seemed to list some decent sites f/s was Sedo, which seems to be based in the uk, but the sites are international.

I read SPDudes posting as well, but Ive been lurking thru SP and havent seen much there lately either.

As previously mentioned, this might be an opportunity for DP to create a new thread to post sites f/s for a fee (premium listings) to help weed out the bargain basement, newbie out of the box sites.
Seems there is a need by responses to this thread and sheer # of WTB posts..

For now, Ill just keep lookin....

 

An interesting thread ...

There are not many sites that suit what I am looking for here either. I like finding older sites and redesigning them to resurrect traffic and earnings. The perfect "gem in the rough" for me is a site that is 3+ years old, original content (around 100 pages+) and never been promoted from a money-perspective. Redesign, add new content and (tastefully) monetize! Google, text links, whatever suits it best.

One issue is that we are web business-people selling to web business-people. Ordinary folks who would like to sell their site would never post here, first because if you search on "sell website" DP is not in the top 20 in google, and they need 30 posts to sell a site here in the first place. I occasionally find sites at sedo, but I have bought here and at sitepoint too. It takes time to take each purchase through the steps above.

I would also like to agree with differentiation of the threads, selling established and turnkey separately (like sitepoint.) It makes scanning for sites of interest quicker and easier.

Thanks,
tasty

 

"The problem with buying expensive sites (over 1K) is the very strong possibility of being scammed."

This is probably not true, many buyers would insist on using Escrow at that level and therefore all the statistics can be verified before he accepts the transaction.

I actually think that the offerings now available on this and other marketplaces are the highest quaility I have seen for two years. It is just that high quality sites carry a very high price tag with respect to monthly eaarnings. For example Borgos unloaded a large chunk of very high quaility sites recently but they were very expensive.

The most stable sites are large established forums or community sites whose traffic do not depend entirely on search engines. My main worry with many succesful sites that are priced over $10,000 is that custom written scripts are sometimes used. Personally I have had an experience where the seller inserted a backdoor on the site so that he can close the site at will and extort money from me.

 

Actually your post makes no logical sense if it was meant to defend the argument that there are plenty good sites for sale.

A) The reason there are so many WTB threads is because there are so many crap sales going on that the buyers have to BEG for a good sale. That means there's not enough good sales in between all the scams and crap ones so buyers have to start their own threads. That is NOT a good thing...

B) What other industry in the world lets you sell a business at the drop of a hat? eBay.... That's why the thought of looking on eBay for a decent site for sale is laughable to most webmasters.

I'll say it again, it's a buyer's market. What you don't seem to understand is that yeah the sellers are flooding the market with crap but they're not selling. People are getting fed up and most of the big buyers are leaving. Trust me on that one

The number of buyer threads outnumbering the seller threads does NOT make it a sellers market. Your site is still only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

 

Well said!

I could easily make a thread stating, "WTB: Site with 100k users per day paying $10" .. it doesn't mean someone will sell it to me at that rate.

Most owners of turnkey or low traffic sites sell their sites regularly as part of their normal revenue stream. Most owners of higher traffic sites only post their sites for sale when 1) the need money for personal or investment reasons or 2) they no longer wish to run the site.

I believe that most owners of sites that receive a lot of traffic would sell their site if offered enough money. The problem is that the amount of value they put on their sites is often well above what buyers are willing to pay. To close this gap, it makes more sense for the site owners to continue growing the site's traffic and revenue while waiting on potential buyers to contact them at some point. When a buyer contacts the seller, the seller has a lot more leverage than when the site is publicly posted for sale.

There are always exceptions of course, but more often than not, this is the case. I mean if someone has a 100k users-per-day site and posts it for sale for $1k, I guarantee they will have a lot of buyers ready to buy it immediately. However, if they list it based on more realistic value, they are unlikely to get the full amount they are seeking.

The problem is that the number of sites for sale (whether listed or not) greatly outnumbers the number of sites that buyers are interested in buying.

-Zeras

 

Well said that man! I think DigitalPoint urgently needs to address the number of turnkey sites with 0 income and 0 traffic trying to be sold on here. It's been months (perhaps since March) since there hasn't been a majority of brand new sites trying to be sold. Perhaps a thread limit per month or something will help get us back to quality vs quantity!

 

I will also scan more often if we have separate area for quality site.