Forum Moderators: buckworks
The issue is that many people know that ecommerce is a growing industry and that more and more people are spending more and more money online. The question is how to access that growth in entrepreneurial interest by specifically targeting people who want to get started in online commerce. Ecommerce is perhaps better if there are proponents to look after the interest of the industry as a whole.
This isn't a question about coding, or anything technical; instead it's a question of how to become the next online superstore, I think.
what i have noticed is that there is a missing middle ground, between buying/selling the domain, and the buying/selling of fully developed businesses.
If a site is producing some income, say around $20,000 per year in net ecommerce sales, adsense, whatever, there is (AFAIK) no "liquid" marketplace to determine it's value, sell it, or even buy other similar sites for consolidation/expansion.
and by value, i mean what someone is willing to pay for it, the same as a security or real estate.
and the way google is these days, it's far far better to buy and exisiting site in your area that is ranking at least semi-well than to try to start from scratch.
Some require x-amount of total up front and then x-amount of montly payments for x-amount of years.
Generally all of the existing inventory is paid for upfront.
The seller includes several months of [ hand holding ] in the contract and then specifies a hourly rate on any thing above that.
Sometimes a broker is involved in the deal, and of course several lawyers that put together the contracts.
However, because of the volatility of the business, the prices realized are very low. On average it is only about 10 times monthly earnings.
SGG24, if you are selling TURNKEY sites, they will get a very poor response in these marketplaces. You will need to provide other resources such as a keyword list for PPC.
What is a PR7 site? a Google news source site? or, PPC?
Minnaple: when I bought my website I did not use any brokers, so I think these can be avoided. Of course, nobody wants to pay lawyers if they can avoid it, just like everybody wants to avoid taxes! It's a matter of dealing with a reputable, trustworthy, branded company, I think. On the other hand, I'm new to this, so I don't know much. Comments welcome, appreciated and accepted.
It is too complicated for me to explain what is a PR7 site except to say that it is rather difficult to achieve on your own. A Google News Source site is simply a site that provides material to Google News. There are only several thousand such sites that Google uses and therefore very rare.
PPC refers to Pay Per Click ie. mainly Google Adwords. A person regularly sells a Turnkey affiliate credit card site for $300. He will also provide a keyword list for use if you ask him.
If you want to sell in these marketplaces, you really have to know what you are selling well or else you will be taken apart.
Derek
Is there a marketplace where traffic is given, along with prices of the site, and turnover? Maybe costs and a brief description of the site would be nice, too. I've looked at Alexa to get an overview of the amount of traffic that various sites get. It is listed according to domain name. A marketplace it is not, unfortunately, because the sites listed aren't for sale. Alexa measures only traffic. And traffic does not equal profitability.
Could I also get a list of those sites?(the forums you look in to buy) I'm a pretty good finder if I know what I'm looking for. Can you also tell me what you look for? And would you pay me a small fee if I found a site that you might buy?
You can PM if you don't want to answer publicly.
Thanks,
MC
-Corey
Buying and selling sites is NOT recommended for beginners. Scams are prevalent and the worse place for that would be eBay. Just in the past week, 3 users of sitepoint reported that the they were scammed.
Use escrow where the transacion is large unless you trust the seller or buyer. In any case do not spend all your budget in one go.
[edited by: minnapple at 10:29 pm (utc) on Sep. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] Not calls to action please [/edit]
So many of them are cookie cutter web sites that developers build and then sell. You used to be able to search for "established" or "developed" sites, but the developers got clued in to that, and starting listing their sites as established or developed.
When I look for a site, I want to find one that is "real"--a site that someone has built (for fun or profit) for its own value, and not to sell (initially).
I don't want to totally dismiss a cookie cutter site, as they may be a good starting point for someone that doesn't know or want to build their own site.
If someone started a widgets site on their own, because they liked or sold widgets, that's the kind of site I would want. Not a cookie cutter site where they built it strictly to sell it. Again, nothing wrong with that, just that it's not what I'm looking for.
It would be nice if eBay could have separate categories for each of those types of sites. Of course, I don't even know the terminology to differentiate them, so I can't suggest anything to eBay in that regard.
On another note, I think people need to be more aware of the potential value they've built into their web sites. Even if you get a small amount, even if you get $100, that's certainly a better deal than getting nothing at all, isn't it?
Several years ago, there was a web site that I would have liked to buy. The site had not been updated in a while. I wrote the owners, and never got a reply. I was able to register the domain several months later, after it had expired. Of course, I didn't get to buy any of their content. I just can't help but think they could have gotten something from me, rather than to have let it expire and get nothing at all.
And, earlier this year, that happened on another site. In this case, the domain was grabbed up after its expiration, so I didn't get it. But, again, the original owners could have gotten something versus nothing.
In a lot of cases, old and neglected sites may not be worth a lot of money, but getting something for your work, or even just something for the domain name, certainly beats getting nothing at all.
