advice buying a website

tinplane · #1 (**permalink**) 01-19-2005, 03:53 PM

I am looking at trying to buy someones website.

Does anyone have advice or tips on buying a website?

I looked at the site on Alexia.com and it has no information. Is there somewhere else I can determine the traffic to the site? Where can I find where the site is hosted?

Any other things to check?

Anyone been burned trying to buy a site?
Thank you in advance
Tinplane

**brian.mark** · #2 (**permalink**) 01-19-2005, 04:42 PM

Anyone serious about selling a website will give a potential buyer at least a few days worth of logfiles to analyze on their own. This will give you information about what types of traffic the website gets (what keywords, referring urls, etc.)

If they don't / won't provide any of this info, then there really isn't much to go by. Alexa is pretty much useless any more, and trafficranking.com isn't much better. They give a tiny indicator, but nothing that really says there is traffic.

Best of luck,

Brian.

imaginemn · #3 (**permalink**) 01-19-2005, 06:10 PM

If this is a well known site and you already know that it is getting traffic then it's probably worth it. I would suggest getting some type of financial record or some type of proof what they are spending on run and maintain the site AND what type of income they are getting from the site. In most states you need to disclose finacial records prior to a sell of a business including web sites unless all you are buying is the transfer of the domain name.

The reason for getting the financial data is that log files can very easily be manipulated. You can either create a bot or application that queries and spoofs your website x amount of times a day to build phantom traffic. Another thing anyone can easily do is buy "cheap" useless traffic for a few months just to bring up their web stats prior to a sale.

Finally if the url is well indexed in Yahoo, MSN, Google then it's probably worth it just for that alone even if it's not getting much traffic and/or sales. It would make things easier (give you a head start) to try to get traffic and sales to your site.

imaginemn

Har1equin · #4 (**permalink**) 01-19-2005, 07:57 PM

Hi imaginemn.

I don't know if this is of any help but I had a cursory glance at the site and crawled around the web and wasn't impressed.

If a site is hosted in the UK it's very easy to find further information such as which company the URL is registered to and in turn find out that company's data such as when they were established and what their turnover is.

By all means get in-touch and I'll help you with a UK search for company's but with regards to US and Canadian I'm as stuck as you unfortunately...

janeth · #5 (**permalink**) 01-20-2005, 09:09 AM

What type of site and what price range?

I know some people that buy a lot of sites and may be able to help a little.

StevenAllen · #6 (**permalink**) 01-20-2005, 03:42 PM

Who hosts the website? In the case of Yahoo there are tons of independent reports generated that can be helpful. Audited P & L's and if those are not available tax filings are helpful. The information you most want is expense VS revenue. In addition, you will want to see what the above numbers have looked like over a period of years. Finally, you will need a balance sheet if the seller stocks inventory.

Good luck!

tinplane · #7 (**permalink**) 01-20-2005, 04:15 PM

This is an education site. I am making an offer to someone who has not offered it for sale. So most of the information I am trying to find without having to ask.
It appears the site is stagnant. It has not had any real SEO work done to it. It does not place well on the search engines for any related searches. It has only one page.
The real value of the site to me is:
1. I am working on a new site that is similiar. This would allow me to avoid the sandbox by purchasing an existing site(it has been around since 2001) that I can adapt and improve.
2. It is a good domain name.
3. It has a PR5 and lots of inbound links.

Be for I make a solid offer I want to know everything I can.
Tinplane

StevenAllen · #8 (**permalink**) 01-20-2005, 04:33 PM

Look at keywords that either are part of the URL or at their Google ranking for key words that are important to you. Use wordtracker and see how often these key words/URL are "searched". At .20 a click for PPC perhaps this gives you a ball park number.

sbeco · #9 (**permalink**) 01-22-2005, 03:57 PM

Have you visited this site?

http://www.websitebroker.com/