Buying an income-generating domain name

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Buying an income-generating domain name

Juanito: Jan 20, 2004; I wasn't paying attention
to what you just said.

Can you repeat yourself
in a more interesting way?; Hell Gem

baw posted:

So we had someone here who was selling his $80k per month web site. He explained how he managed to do it too.

However, I'm trying to be on the other side of the transaction (sadly I don't think I could afford his.)

I found a few places online that list income-generating domains that are for sale, but I'm really not sure who to trust or how to verify that the sites are actually generating an income. Does anyone have some experience with this? The biggest questions are how many months of revenue should I expect to pay up front for a website, and where to look for viable ones.

Flippa has stuff for sale, but there is a ton of crap to sort through. The best deals will be word of mouth, if you can find an owner who wants to sell but hasn't advertised.

Depends on how the income happens that you can verify. They might give you login information, although more likely would be that you remote view their computer, and watch them as they log in, etc. If it's something like Adsense, they might let you put your own ads up a few days, and see if the views/clicks remain consistent with what they showed you. It depends on what kind of a site you're looking to get.

Obviously there are still ways to scam, so you just have to be careful.

http://feinternational.com/ are website brokers, and they post websites for sale a few times a week all the time. They'll send out an email with a few basic anonymous details, including asking price, and then you can ask them for the prospectus which has ALL of the details from the owner, how it generates the revenue/traffic, how long it's been in business. I've seen sites from about 15k to 500k. A lot of crap (hugely inflated asking prices from newish sites), but also some very longterm legit investments.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 21:13

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 01:36

Juanito: Jan 20, 2004; I wasn't paying attention
to what you just said.

Can you repeat yourself
in a more interesting way?; Hell Gem

baw posted:

i'm surprised at how few websites they have for sale there. i was hoping to be able to buy many smaller websites instead of one or two larger ones, but i'll have to do more research

edit 2:

i'm thinking i'll dip my toes in one a flippa site or two and see how it goes. it does seem kind of risky though because if all of these were true then anyone could easily retire with $100,000.

The thing about FE International is that it's legit. There is a limited market. People buy the sites that become available.

With Flippa, there are people churning out sites quickly. There is a lot of crap, and a lot of fraud. Usually the best options will be something where clearly the owner has failed at optimizing/monetizing, and you can improve things. Or if it is really good, it will go for a lot.

One (of the many) way that I like to check if a site is legit, look at its Facebook page. If it has a high number of likes, and NO interacting (comments/likes) with the posts, that's a clear sign that they're buying Likes, and very likely have bought traffic for their site, etc. A legit site with a Facebook page will have actual fan activity.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 23:47

Juanito: Jan 20, 2004; I wasn't paying attention
to what you just said.

Can you repeat yourself
in a more interesting way?; Hell Gem

baw posted:

So you've made some purchases?

I have bought a few things, but I mostly browse occasionally to get ideas and just see what's out there. I've never done any large purchases on flippa, I don't have the budget, but I do send anything really good to my younger brother who has bought a variety of sites on Flippa, from a few hundred bucks to 20k, with varied success. He's gotten ripped off before, worst was like 6k, but he ended up getting 3k back. It was on Flippa, something that seemed too good to be true, which it was.

His two most profitable purchases have been word-of-mouth. One seller was a teenager he met through some random affiliate chat, and the other was a guy desperate for bitcoins to buy a better mining rig, so he sold his site cheap.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 00:33

Juanito: Jan 20, 2004; I wasn't paying attention
to what you just said.

Can you repeat yourself
in a more interesting way?; Hell Gem

sim posted:

I bought two different websites from Flippa about 2-3 years ago. One for $300, the other for $100. They were both honest about their traffic and I don't regret the purchases. But, I've been watching auctions in that same price range for the last couple months and it's all been crap. Seems like 90% is pumped out by someone obviously planning to sell it. Whether the traffic is organic or paid, it's still crap content I wouldn't be happy owning. Also, it seems like you used to be able to find deals, but now everything is either marked up too high to start, or gets bid up way past 24x monthly revenue.

This really is accurate. There are a lot of people churning crap sites, and the market is flooded with it. Anything decent is ridiculously priced, or gets bid up too high. I have to think the sellers are the only ones profiting.

You also occasionally find people reselling something really expensive they'd bought on Flippa, 6 months later. But it is oh so profitable, and has so much potential.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 20:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Buying an income-generating domain name