Post: #1

I am saving a lot of money for next few years and have been looking for ways to invest passive income.

I've looked a real estate but the returns a bit slow but more stable, and also some passive style business laundromat, vending machines or atm machines.

These businesses require more time and commitment and also have to watch the financials more carefully, inventory, etc.

I've read a few books as well but don't seem to get into the details of buying a website. A few questions I was wondering about were:

1) What are the pitfalls or risks when buying a website? any specific examples.

2) What are the least hands on types of websites?

3) What things to look for when trusting a seller of a website during your due diligence process?

4) What are some good marketplaces to look for buying websites? flippa etc.

Anything else that might have helped a newbie in the process?

P

Post: #2

Are you talking about domain parking? That's the lowest of the low. I'm sure some people will say, "hey a hustler's gotta hustle" but to me domain parking is the equivalent of selling fake viagra pills from Nigerian email addresses. It's essentially patent trolling, which is depriving legitimate businesses and hardworking people of technologies that produce economic livelihood. Shit, that special circle of hell reserved for false rape accusers?...domain parkers go there too.

You might be talking about buying an existing blog or ecommerce site instead? If that's the case, at least that's a legitimate business but you should have experience or an interest in that niche. Blogs depend on content. Ecommerce depends on supply chain management. Both depend extensively on marketing.

It sounds like you are in the very beginning of formulating a startup business and you do not have any idea what to do - you listed domain parking, laundromats, vending machines, real estate - that covers a whole gamut of industries.

I suggest you take a step back from all these online forums that espouse all these different so-called expert's techniques for getting rich quick with positive cash flow, yadda yadda instert wealth accumulation buzz-word here. Take a step back and look inside yourself to see what your interests are, what skills you have, and what you WANT to do based on your skills, hobbies, passions and interests. That way it will not feel like a job but you will enjoy the process of making money and helping others in the process. Making money takes more hard work than you've ever had to work before, and you will encounter more obsctacles and challenges than you've ever had to face before, so do something that interests you not what some guru from a paperback book or get-rich-quick website tells you to do. What works for someone else will probably not work for you.

Post: #3

Flippa is almost all scams. If you have no experience running websites then you can't just buy one and expect it to do well. Try and build up one of your own first so you know what you're doing and what you're getting into, then buy one. Thomas Smale aka Meathead on Blackhatworld is the only legit website seller I know but I think he only does very big expensive deals these days.

Post: #4

Sort of a tangent, but what can people use to figure out how often a term is searched? I figured if you know about buying sites you might be able to answer my question.

I found these sites
https://my.wordtracker.com/sign-up
http://www.google.com/trends/
http://www.wordstream.com

But none seem to give me what I want which is the frequency of the word search by a fixed period of time. Some are just bar graphs without any meaning.

Thanks!

Post: #5

Nobody is going to sell a business (or website) that makes good money and doesn't need work. You should only be buying a website if you think it is somehow undervalued because you can add significant value to it through existing assets, a business plan or otherwise.

Online businesses are increasingly complicated and specialized as well. Most experts in ecommerce probably would have a lot to learn about online publishing or running a software as a service business.

There is no free lunch.

Post: #6

I've been using

Google keyword planner

Post: #7

(12-26-2014 02:52 AM)tpiddy Wrote:  Nobody is going to sell a business (or website) that makes good money and doesn't need work. You should only be buying a website if you think it is somehow undervalued because you can add significant value to it through existing assets, a business plan or otherwise.

There is no free lunch.

You have a point, but I'm not 100% sold on this. I could think of several reasons for people selling their websites.

Some people move onto other projects or bigger things in life, leaving them with no spare time to upkeep a website.

Others have debt or other pressing financial issues that require them to sell up.

Many people simply get bored of a certain repetitive task and want out.

All that said, be careful of Flippa. 99.9% of those sites are scams or have some major flaw that greatly reduces their value. So there is definitely reason to be cautious, but don't just rule out the idea of buying a site. If you know your niche, why not just approach the site owners directly?