I want to buy a site on flippa without overpaying

Hey all, I am really interested in owning a website for the monthly income and don't want the downtime of building my own site. I am willing to pay for a site, so my budget is around $7,000. $10,000 if the site is REAL good. Basically my goal is $500-$1000 in monthly profit that is stabile with some but not too much work to maintain. Can you guys offer some tips to a newbie like myself? I definetly do not want to get scammed or overpay for a dud site:


1. How old of a site should i buy?

2. what are the stats I should look at (unique monthly searches?, traffic?)

3. How many times monthly profit would be a suitable buy? I was thinking around 7X monthly profit for a site would be a decent deal

4. any other warning signs of a site that has peaked and going downward?Thanks very much in advance

 

well it depends the first thing I suggest is think about which site you will be able to maintain Afterwards, check out some niches and site on flippa before you buy to get a feeling for how much certain sites go away.

After that there is a correlation between the visitors and earnings as a site with only 500 visitors will not make you 500 USD a month You should check atleast the earning stat's, traffic stats, ranking in search engines so you will know if the traffic is organic.

For normal a site is sold for 6-12 times of the monthly revenue but it depends what you feel the site is worth

 

ok i'll note thatWhat revenue sources do you thing are the most stabile with minimal upkeep? google adsense, affiliate, or dropship?

 

There are so many wonderful sites on Flippa it's not super hard to find a great deal if you look hard enough. One thing to be on the look for is sellers who delete a lot of comments for no real reason. Some people might think that the seller is hiding something. Look for sites that are old and seem to be nearly hands free. Adsense sites are easier to run than service based websites. Also remember there are tons of places you can buy sites not just on here on on Flippa. Best of luck with your website search.

 

Hi I found this on websitebrokers:http://websitebroker.com/site-details-999992129.htmlTo me it looks like a good deal, do you think this is a scam? The owner posted "proof" of the income but that could be photoshopped I guess. What do I need to look out for?

 

You must not be so swift... He reports $2,500/month in earnings but is only selling it for $2,000 (3 and a half weeks of income)??? That doesn't make sense. Obviously if the web site made $2,500 a month and the over head was a mere $200 any reasonable person would simply hold on to it and make a lot more money than $2,000. Since he posted the ad according to his stats he basically made what he's asking for........ Use your head. OBVIOUSLY he isn't making $2,500 a month if he's selling it for $2k.

At the bottom of his web site he has a link to "Press" which actually leads to a different web site which is part of the Sugar Daddy network. His site is NOT part of the network.

There are EXACTLY 20 Wealthy Men. 20 Attractive women. 20 Wealthy women. 20 Attractive men. They are fake accounts with fake pictures.

With that said...stop being foolish.

 

Wow, thanks a lot. Yea I saw that, definetly a scam. I guess this is a scam too? http://www.websitebroker.com/site-details-999992092.htmlWhat about this? Not a dating site, but a fivrr clone. It's pretty popular on the auction https://flippa.com/2760565-top-ranked-fiverr-alternative-50-000-page-views-month-plus-huge-potential

 

This thread opened eyes for me too because I was falling for some of those scams.

 

Yes both are bad deals.

If you look both sites list how many daily visitors they get,, and both list how many daily page views they get. Can you spot what is wrong with those stats ?

 

ive seen sites on flippa that are nothing but a free to download template but sold with a fancy sales pitch. best i saw was $500 for a free to download template, a domain name and a facebook / twitter account -> my value of the site is $0.

But then again, that seller made a fortune with that trade with only the domain name and flippa listing fee as the cost.

One worry for me would be that if you buy a site earning $1000 a month, but if google changes the way its search engines work (which has happened before) it could drastically affect the return you will expect.

 

I know this... bidding at the last minute is a bad strategy. Pull your big guns out early.

 

• You won't buy a real good site for 7x monthly profit on flippa, not even at 12x. Real good, stable sites can sell for over 20 months on flippa.
• New sites are most dangerous, so naturally the older it is the more stable and secure. Aim for sites that are at least 1-2 years old.
  
• Check traffic and revenue stats carefully, look at patterns and trends throughout the year, check the niche trends as well through G Insights. Mainly check the sources of traffic. If it's google and other search engines check if the site actually ranks for those keywords and that ranks haven't dropped recently in one of the Google updates. Use external tools like semrush.com to verify serps and check if serps arent dropping.
• Check the seller, his previous sales, profile, history. Google his name, username to find out more. Buying from more reputable sellers, with many positive feedbacks and successful transactions is much safer. Downward trends usually depend on the niche - if the niche is short term or temporary, seasonal - revenues will vary accordingly.
• As a newbie you are much better off overpaying for a good site that will last and bring stable revenue, than going after a cheap site that will drop quickly. Keep in mind that flippa is a fairly efficient marketplace with many buyers so real great deals are quite rare. If it's cheap its usually not very good.
  
  
  

 

Another good way to really protect yourself and legitimize your business purchase is to request the business tax returns from the owner of the business you plan to buy (while this is obviously a lot harder for online businesses for various reasons) it still should be done. Especially if you are going to make over a $10,000 purchase. In the brick & mortar world this is pretty mandatory. There are two huge reasons to do this.

-It in most cases verifies income

-most businesses will try to report earnings as low as possible on there taxes so you can use this as a bargaining tool

There are lots of other cool things to look at on tax returns as well.

Also no valid business making a $1,000 a month profit would ever sell for $10k.

 

I have changed my mind, the internet is just too dang risky for me. I will use my money and buy a high dividend yielding stock with a good balance sheet. I have two sites that I'll focus on to try to make $500 a month. Good day

 

1) You will overpay on Flippa. There are hundreds of sites for sale at 3 months of revenue out there...
2) On Flippa, all screenshots are photoshopped. You are screwed once you have paid and see that numbers are all fake...

 

Flippa used to be a nice website to buy great sites on but now it's filled with BS sites. People are posting sites they claim makes tons of money yet the domains have been registered 3 days prior. I've contacted them about all those types of listings and they just don't care. They get their $19 dollars from each one so it's money in da bank!

 

I could sell you one right now that makes anywhere from $400-$1,000 per month profit. I have two other websites in the same niche and with the new social networking/blogging approach to SEO it is impossible to create fresh new content for three websites that all sell the same exact thing. I've just been letting this one ride, since it is the newest one (it's just over one year old) and I've been concentrating more on the older, more established ones. It's built on a keyword rich domain that should be relatively easy to rank for and it already ranks on page one for some terms.

I've been meaning to list it and maybe one of the other two on Flippa but just haven't gotten around to it. You would have to invest about $2,000 in inventory and ship things yourself (like one or two orders per day - max, at this point) but it already has a growing repeat customer base. I'm just too busy to do a lot of things I want to do. I own six e commerce websites, do freelance writing and am also a partner in a company that I work about 70 hours a week for. It sure would be helpful if someone could figure out how to create 40 hour days!

You can PM me if you want further details. I'll be looking for $8,000 - $10,000 for it - all depending how much hand-holding I'll have to do after the sale.

 

I pmed you