Buying Established Websites Guide

Posted in Article Marketing on 17. Mar, 2009

It occurred to me that people don’t know how to properly buy established websites and how to spot a deal or a scam, so that is why I am taking a break from talking about making money with one, and instead we are going to discuss how to buy one already making money! I will point out some great places to buy and sell as well as how to spot a deal or a scam. So right off the bat, here is a phrase that you must ALWAYS keep in your head while you are buying a website, heck, when you are buying anything, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Do not forget this ever, if you do, you might be conned out of a lot of your hard earned money. So let me guide you through the steps so you don’t get scammed.

Step 1: Find a Website Selling Venue.

I have tried and tried over the years to find a fantastic place to buy and sell websites, and over the years I have found quite a few, and some of those are actually quite decent, here is a list of my top three favorite places to buy and sell websites:

1. Sitepoint.com

2. DigitalPoint (Yes I know it’s a forum that’s not specifically meant to be a website selling website)

3. Sedo.com

First off, I love sitepoint.com, in my opinion you can’t get much better! The biggest two downsides of sitepoint.com are not all buyers of your websites will pay, and they are expensive ($40 per listing for a premium website, $20 for an established website, which means over 30 days old, and $10 for a startup website sale). But, all-in-all, it’s a great place to buy and sell.

Next, number two, Digital Point Webmaster Forum, I love this forum, you find tons of knowledge about the internet and how to successfully webmaster your website; and it’s a great place to buy and sell websites! Biggest downside is that nobody really pays a lot for websites, I have never seen a website go for over a few hundred dollars, that and the bidding system is just a forum, not your typical listing like sitepoint.com has.

Finally, Sedo.com, the best perk about Sedo.com is that it is free! It is free to sell your website or domain name! I know what you are thinking, “Great! What’s the downside?” The downside is that it’s a business listing pretty much, no auctions or anything. If you have your website for sale it will probably take months if not years to sell. That creates a wave of very expensive and unsold websites. Also, Sedo.com is primarily a domain name selling website, so for the bulk of the website visitors, they are there to buy domain names, not your website.

Step 2: Now That You Have Found Your Venue, It’s Now Time To Spot Some Deals!

Now, remember that saying I told you? No? What did I tell you about forgetting? Forgot that too!?!?!?!? “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” Remember it! It will keep you from getting scammed on the internet! Go through all of the listings and find a good website you are interested in! Once you have found your website, look at it, and read everything the seller put on the listing. If anything sounds too good to be true, back straight out of the auction and move on. If everything seems reasonable then move on, on Sitepoint.com they have a comment box at the bottom, ask any questions you have about the website, and I mean ANY question you may have! No question is a stupid question!

Step 3: If The Seller Says He Made Money, Make Him Show You Proof.

Just like the steps title says, make him show you how he made the money! When he or she sends you the proof, study it closer than you would a suspect counterfeit dollar! If anything seems out of place try and compare it to another form, what I mean by this is that a lot of people use PayPal, if the seller sent you a PayPal statement and some of the text looks like it has been edited, login or create your own PayPal account, create a statement and compare the lettering, making sure the size and style is exactly the same! If something looks out of place or suspect, then you delete the files and find a different website to purchase! However, if it all looks good, then move on to step 4!

Step 4: Get The Biggest Bang For Your Buck!

Sitepoint.com allows buyers to bid for the website using “conditional bidding,” this is where you can demand the buyer include something you want in the auction that he or she wouldn’t normally include, for example, free installation and setup or continued support for 3 months or even a 30 day refund period! Buyers will almost always accept these, unless your demand is just outrageous. I will show you an example, I was selling my proxy network (I created in order to find out just exactly what was the best way to make money on it, so I could write an article on: How To Start A Successful Proxy Network!) on sitepoint.com and the auction was going just swell and I received an offer from a buyer for $600 for my 51 proxies. I was hoping to get over $1,000, the Buy-It-Now price was $1,100, but I would have been happy with even $500, anyway, I decided to put a sweet deal that some of the buyers might like. I told them I would throw in another 50 new proxies, set all of them up, and submit the 50 new ones to 87 proxy top-sites like I did the others. It was a steal; I had a taker in less than one hour! 101 proxy websites submitted to 87 top-sites and earning pretty damn good cash every month for $1,100! That is an example for all you sellers, try to sweeten the pot of your deal, a fish in the sea might bite! That is also a lesson to the buyers; make the seller sweeten the pot! You may be very pleasantly surprised by the results of your inquiry!

Step 5: Use a Very Trustable Payment Gateway!

This is the best step you can follow to make your transaction end just as smoothly as it started, go through a trusted payment gateway to ensure that one, you buyers get your website, and two, and you sellers get your money! For example, use PayPal, this will ensure that the buyers credit card is good and won’t come back on you, and it will make sure that the seller actually gives you the website, otherwise you can open a dispute with the seller and get you money back! I also recommend using Escrow.com, they are even better than PayPal, but cost a bit more too.

Step 7: GET YOUR DOMAIN FROM THE SELLER!

I can’t tell you how many people I have sold websites to and they don’t even remember to ask me to transfer the domain to them (I of course transfer it to them, but I just like to see if they actually ask for it or not, it’s just a chance for me to educate them on the internet and stop another victim from getting scammed)! This is another way to get scammed, people just get the domain name pointed to them and the files for the website and then after everything is done and completed the seller pulls the domain and sells it again, very easy scam, but very easy to avoid as well! So after you pay for the website make sure the domain name gets transferred to you! Most domain registrars offer free accounts, so just set one up in your name and have the seller transfer it to you shouldn’t take more than 48 hours for this to get done.

And that is your free guide on buying established websites! You can now see that buying a website isn’t a cake walk, and it’s not like going to the mall to buy some clothes, you have to have a defense. The internet’s biggest problem is the disturbingly high amount of terrible people, but you can rise above them by remembering one simple thing, what? Forgot it again!?!?!?!?!? Jeez! Here it is for the last time: “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you stick around to read some more fantastic articles! Please subscribe to my RSS feed at the top right! It will notify you of any new articles to the website so you can keep up-to-date with all the new fantastic websites to make a fortune off of!

Thank you very much!

Sincerely Your

Internet Income Teacher

-Galen Schneider

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