how to avoid scam when buying a website????

hello guys,
i'm in the middle of making a deal to buy a website
the seller is not here i have found a website and contacted the owner and he said he's willing to sell it
anyway i don't know how to deal with that
i'm afraid to pay him the $1000 and he won't deliver the domain and the content
i know the guy is the owner of the domain
and i don't want to use escrow service
i'm thinkig of giving him 50% to transfer the domain and the rest after that
i just need some advices
best regards,
shuman202

 

The only safe option is a third party service to handle the transfer. If you are talking about $1000, I would not risk it. What is stopping the seller from taking the money? What does the seller have to lose if he just takes the money? What evidence is there that he is trustworthy? If you can't get an escrow service involved, don't do the deal unless you are ok with losing $1000 if it turns up bad. The problem with your 50% deal is that there is still nothing stopping him from keeping the 50%, and that is still $500. Too much to risk in a deal that has no consequences for the seller.

 

I would be interested in speaking with you more about this. I'm in the middle of finishing up a product for launch that's about buying websites and looking for more situations, questions and concerns to address in it. BuyWebSitesToProfit.com
I would be happy to help you to look at the facts and information to asses the risk better, like simple checking on the site and the information provided by the owner with whois, the yellow pages, and other databases to verify the information. Asking about active forum or other community accounts that you can reference the deal in so that it's in the public eye, and stuff like that. Kind of hard to give direct advice without any specific information though. Also remember to look into the information on the website itself, and make sure it's really worth $1000... Does it have revenue? Does it have traffic? Have you verified this information with 3rd parties like Alexa?

 

The best way is to ask your seller to list it on flippa.com so that you will be secured although you loose for some commission. But it will save your entire amount, if the seller is a fraud.

Another way is find out on google by his name, username & whatever information you get in the search results, and judge the person from these results. This might help to go ahead.

 

There are not many advices to give since you don't want to use Escrow.
Without Escrow or other similar service you can't verify website ownership and you risk loosing your money.

If $1000 is not a big deal for you then 50/50 spilt payment is a good option but it is still very easy for seller to ask his domain back from domain registrar and you risk using both, domain and money.

Another good things is to use LinkedIn or some other established account of his for verification. Basically you ask hime to send message from that account for verification. If he has like 500 connections in LinkedIn and he works for let's say Google, Apple, IBM he will not be interested in scam.

I have did this with LinkedIn and paid domain investor forum account with thousands of messages and 5 year of membership there, no one wants to risk with such an account. This doesn't guarantee you anything but you will see that you will start to trust this person.
Make sure you don't use Digitalpoint or other crappy forum/websites for verification because no one care about losing DP account unless he has 2000 posts and +50 iTrader.

 

Sedo provides a pretty good escrow service if you want to buy or sell a domain name. You can't trust anyone on the Internet these days, so a good quality escrow service is an absolute must.

 

I think because you have already contacted him, as long as you have all his details, i don't see any problem. In order to be successful in life sometimes you need to risk so that you gonna learn into your mistakes. good luck.

 

that's the point i contacted him using the site contact form so the guy is really the owner so i don't know if i mention that i use escrow service he might go away
and it's a good deal for me

 

actually i'm from Egypt and the guy is from the same country as well, and in here we are not familiar with escrow services the seller might think it will be a complicated transaction and go away and search for another buyer ... and i contacted him through the site's contact form , so I'm sure he's the owner...

 

If you are from the same country, then you can just simply pay $50 a pop for lawyers to notarize a contract, then you would have the legal power to seize all assets up to the value of the transaction, garnish wages, bank accounts and all that jazz if he doesn't follow through with the deal. I'm not familiar with laws and how things work specifically in Egypt, but this is a pretty universal thing... Legal contracts and lawyers are everywhere.

 

yeah you're right I'm thinking about doing something like that...
and also i found an agency works as escrow and it based here in Egypt i think it will work fine