How can one verify website income reliably from screenshots?

This is general business question regarding verifying stated income from ecommerce and other business web sites. I don't know how one can trust the screen shots of paypal and other similar processors as true proof of income. These screen captures can be easily faked so how would you verify income of a website in a reliable manner?
Anby suggestions?

 

ask them to show it live to you! get on skype...ask them to share the screen with you while logging in and getting the numbers! I hope this helps!

 

As if they will bother to chat with you just to prove that they give out genuine proofs. Try to check each proof and see if they have other fans excluding you. Its up to you to believe or not on proofs.

 

Thats a very good and "doable" idea. Thanks a lot.

 

I think whenever buying a website the most important thing is the source of traffic. If the traffic is coming from search engines then ok but it is coming from referring sites then it may happen that after you buy it the referring sites remove your link so you will lose all traffic and site will be useless. So better check the source of traffic if you are buying a site.

 

i second that, referrals statistic are very important.

 

Just be careful; even people who aren't tech gurus can easily fake/alter website statistics. Do your own homework using reliable resources like Alexa before getting into a huge transaction especially with someone you don't really know.

Good luck!

Stephanie

 

you can't via screenshot's only way is to get access to the stat tools or to track the traffic on your own using your own code

 

Of course it would be nice if everyone attempting to make some sort of transaction wasn't trying to scam you or take advantage of you...but I like the idea of doing it live.

Another thing you can check out is Cubestat...I'm a fan of it personally, although I'm sure some aren't. Nevertheless its worth the try to see if its something you might want to use as reference.