Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The web site in question is available at a reasonable price, however itīs still quite a lot of money for my small company. So I thought, before I spend the cash, maybe you have a few tips and would share your wisdom with me. :)
Thanks!
You might want to include something about it in the site purchase contract. But on the flip side, you might not want them to know there is such a thing as Google AdSense, if they are not using it to monetize the site currently. You can try asking Google, but I am not sure if there are privacy implications about asking about a site you do not own.
But you are playing a dangerous game. Play with only what money you can afford to lose. Buying a site for what you believe it will earn is even shakier ground that buying a site based on last twelve months proven earnings.
1) Target audience
2) Domain name
3) Monthly income (yes, it does give some indication as to site value, but it's not everything!)
4) Industry
5) Traffic source diversity. For example, all (100%) traffic from google makes the site "high-risk", where as a site who gets 40% traffic from google, 20% repeats, and 40% from other NON-SEARCH ENGINE sources has reduced risk. Why? remove 1 source, from the 2nd example, and its only lost 40% of its traffic, where as the first exmaple loses 100% of its traffic.
6) Age of site (the older the better, generally)
7) Is the site seen as a leader in its field?
8) Reputation (maybe the site is getting 15k uniques because newspapers keep writing bad things about it?!)
9) search engine rankings
10) Has the site been banned from any search engines?
11) Has the site been kicked out of programs such as google adsense?
From the point of view of the buyer, also consider does this site fit into an existing network of sites? maybe the site for sale is a major competitor, therefore having ownership of it would allow you to dominate your market?
Jenstar - thats in fact is something I didnīt think about. The web site in question does look very "clean", so I donīt think that there is be a problem with AdSense. But I will keep this in mind for the next time.
Macro - we can afford to lose the money, still it would really ruin my day. The point is that the current web site owner is not making ANY money with the web site, so I have to guess. There is a certain risk here, no doubt, but on the other hand, Iīm quite positive that we can make some real money here. To avoid negative surprises and get a feel for the revenue levels, the contract will include a 30 day option (for our company) to step back from the purchase.
Tomda - thanks for the list, itīs a great help! We have a web site in the same market (this no e-com, just pure information web sites) and want to build a network. In addition to AdSense it should be possible to get some other advertisers, if you are a big player in your area. Thatīs one of the ideas.
Anbody else?
The web site in question does look very "clean", so I donīt think that there is be a problem with AdSense.
That is what another publisher thought when he bought a website that turned out to have been suspended previously ;)
Is the site posted for sale somewhere, did the the current owner contact you or did you contact them about purchasing it?
If it was posted, and has been for sometime, I would be careful. There are a lot of webmasters out there looking to buy sites or domains that they believe would be AdSense profitable.
If it has been posted for sale for a while, and truly looks like a money maker, you may be missing something that someone else has spotted. Be thorough with your research.
I approached the webmaster, the site is not for sale officially. In fact, the webmaster doesnīt really want to sell his site - unless someone would make an offer he just canīt reject. However, itīs still a bargain, from a web marketing perspective.
But thanks for the thoughts!
