Thinking about purchasing a existing Website

1. 74

   Richieb799posted 13 years ago

   I just saw this website for sale, $45 and about latest Technology
   
   It already has a Twitter group that has 50 followers and the site gets 200 from direct and referring sites so far.
   
   Seems like it could be a big Adsense earner?

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      relacheposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      According to the domain registration, the site is just barely two weeks old and was made by some guy in Romania. 
      
      It's slapped-together, brand new, not fully developed and trafficked.

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         Nelle Hoxieposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Ouch.

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      2. 87

         Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         That's not uncommon.  I wondered about buying a ready-made site and spent some time looking on Flippa.
         
         I found a lot of sites that looked convincing, but fell over on closer inspection.  They claimed to be 'established', when domain registration indicated they'd only been around for two or three months.  They would claim to have "great original content", but only had a couple of dozen badly written articles. 
         
         It's not hard to get 200 backlinks fast with article marketing - but they may not be good or long-lasting ones.
         
         In the end, I came to the conclusion that I could do a better job myself than any of the sites offered under $50, and in most cases could find a better domain name too! 
         
         The most important thing to check when buying a domain is whether the keywords have potential, e.g. how much competition is there already?

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      iamalegendposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      it's looking very good and attractive.

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2. 74

   Richieb799posted 13 years ago

   Oh well, Ive bought it now lol
   
   Lets hope I wasn't too hasty!

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3. 61

   saleheensblogposted 13 years ago

   best of luck

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4. 74

   Richieb799posted 13 years ago

   Thanks mate, its called Gizmospot, I guess Im gonna have to do some SEO on it

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      Vcizeposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      When I go to gizmospot it's a photography site...

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5. 74

   Richieb799posted 13 years ago

   Gizmospot.info

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      TiPHUBposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Hey Richie
      
      The $45 for the theme alone is pretty good. Good luck mate!

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         skyfireposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         That theme is part of elegantthemes subscription (which costs 20$ for old subscribers and 39.95$ for new subscribers with developer license for all themes) so if it's for the theme then he wasted 45$with this deal.

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   cookingdivaposted 13 years ago

   Good luck, where did you buy it?

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7. 74

   Richieb799posted 13 years ago

   Digital Point forum

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8. 72

   thisisoliposted 13 years ago

   50 followers is not much, and 200 is pretty low for a bought site, the good news is $45 is not too much so you might be able to work with it, the downside is you are stuck with an info domain, try and get a better domain for it if you really want to get the website up a bit!

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      Nelle Hoxieposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I've actually had very good results with .info domains.

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         skyfireposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I think there are some myths on domain names which google will soon debunk as algorithm changes shows signs to everyone. For example, many developers on stackoverflow.com are using .info domains on their websites and have PR3-5 on it. Many .info sites appear in google image search and niche website results. Still i see many people commenting against .info domains and i just don't understand if they tested domains priority on SE results themselves. I came across many  webmasters who think .com has more weight but recent google changes shows that if you're targeting regional crowd then getting regional domains (.uk, .de)is better choice.

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9. 60

   Don Simkovichposted 13 years ago

   I keep forgetting about buying and selling websites. I recently purchased a domain name I thought was / is pretty good. I haven't done anything with it yet. But I want to schedule in working on the site.

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10. 0

    Nelle Hoxieposted 13 years ago

    It's a little late now, but the problem with buying a site is that you don't know what trouble it might've been in before. If the owner was banned by adsense for example, it could hurt your adsense account. There's a lot of due diligence that needs to be done before you buy a website from someone.
    
    But it's a great step, and here's to lots of success.

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       BRIAN SLATERposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Nellie-how would you go about doing due diligence on a site you might be thinking about buying?

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11. 60

    KristenGraceposted 13 years ago

    Best of luck!!
    
    I have NO idea how to go about doing that - So I'm jealous ! Hope you have great success.

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12. 43

    Mikeydoesposted 13 years ago

    Let us know how it turns out. Good luck!

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13. 71

    vaguesanposted 13 years ago

    it could work out for ya. I think 45 bucks for a fully developed and trafficked site is a pretty awesome deal. Only problem is that you're going to have a lot of competition. Smartphones and technology blogs are pretty ubiquitous these days.

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14. 0

    ryankettposted 13 years ago

    I hate to break it to you, but all you have bought is a Wordpress theme and a load of duplicate content.
    
    I would have built you that for free in a couple of hours. But you live and learn.
    
    It's a nice theme, but the 'developer' if you can call him that has unlimited access to those themes for $39, and just paid for his unlimited theme access in one go.
    
    As for that duplicate content, I would check to see that it is permitted for use; otherwise you have just paid $45 to be liable for content theft.
    
    I don't understand why you keep buying sites when you can buy hosting with one-click wordpress install for $50 a year. Wordpress themes are free or low cost.
    
    It took me maybe a month to master wordpress, it would take you the same; then you can sell your own 2 hour websites to people for $45.

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       ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       That said, I don't think that you would have been able to build Contakz on the wordpress platform.
       
       But in future, you should note that Wordpress sites are effectively free and you can turn them into pretty much anything that you want.

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       Marisa Wrightposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Ryan, I'd go further than that.  I built my first Wordpress site in a day, from a standing start.  Of course it didn't look that great, but it worked and had content!
       
       What I struggled with was understanding how hosting worked and how to do the initial install.  Once I was at the point where I had the Wordpress login screen in front of me, I was up and running in no time.

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          ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

          I didn't want to make him too gutted, lol.
          
          In fairness though, it did take me a month to get to the point where I fully understood plugins, could change headers in the code, etc etc. Not every day for a month, a month worth of spare time, if you get me.
          
          But yeah, anybody can have a blog of some sort up and running in a day or two.

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    ryankettposted 13 years ago

    In fairness, I'm sure that if he builds up fresh non-duplicate content, gets rid of the duplicate content, and builds up backlinks... he will soon make that back.

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16. 74

    Richieb799posted 13 years ago

    Well, Well, Well, this thread has taken off since Ive been gone.
    I have had some negative feedback on this purchase and I guess I did rush in a little bit but I am not disappointed. Wordpress is something that I haven't learned yet and I haven't got time for it at the moment, I just thought that the content on there was good and I understand the theme would of cost me.
    I just did a search for the duplicate content and it appears on quite a few websites so if I was to get in trouble for that then first they would have to single me out amongst a lot of websites. However I do plan to upload original content but at least I have time to get traffic flowing in first. I realise 200 daily visitors is not a lot and that it is a new site.

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       Mikeydoesposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       You can look at the glass half empty or half full.
       
       That $45 dollars could easily be more than worth it. The amount of time that it would take me to make a site would take much more money than that.
       
       You could spend that time making hubs rather than having to actually make that site. Either way it is a $45 dollar experience where you will learn plenty.

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       ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       On the plus side Rich, at least you paid over the odds for a great looking theme, rather than over the odds for a crap theme. The site looks good, what it becomes as a site is firmly in your hands. And to be honest, 200 page views per day for a 2 week old site IS good; particularly when considering that it is duplicate content.

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       china manposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       the curve is all about learning !  as a cheap lesson you will at least get something concrete from it - so do those of us who don't really have a clue what we are doing !  I am making my own and getting a Chinese programmer to put it together for me - which is proving to be an interesting experience all round!
       
       My excuse is that I want about twenty sites up around the same broad theme quickly - and so went for professional help    May have been quicker sending letters with the last wagon train that went through - but we will see.

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17. 74

    Richieb799posted 13 years ago

    Alright Ry, yeah the guy is just trying to transfer the domain for me now, except I have to create a GoDaddy account and my best mate just phoned me because hes broken down!
    I keep getting Horoscope and dating ads on Contakz and I set them to business, do you think they are ads that Google is serving because there aren't any of my choice available?

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       karenfreemansmithposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Google looks at your web history too... if you've visited a horoscope or daing site recently they will throw those results in with the ones they serve for the content of the site... any site you visit will do the same.  Gives some strange results for me sometimes as I have varied interests. I'll visit a trucking website for instance and get half the ads for web design.  I think why would truck drivers be interested in web design?  And then I realize I was just at a web design site an hour or two ago... so they are serving the ad to ME, not to the website in general.
       
       Nice looking website for $45.  It's a good place to start.  If you had spent $450 or $4500 on the site I'd agree with most the other comments, but as it's only $45... great job, build it up and make it work for you.

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18. 72

    thisisoliposted 13 years ago

    You might want to check the terms and conditions of that theme site to be on the safe side, it is unlikely they will contact you, but it may be that their themes are for use by the subscriber only, in which case you would be liable. It is unlikely they will bother though.

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19. 0

    Nelle Hoxieposted 13 years ago

    The problems is that if you start a site with duplicate or poorly written content, then Google is less likely to give it high rankings in the future. You can replace the content, but there's no guarantee in Google forgiveness.
    
    If the person who registered and built the site has a poor reputation with G, same thing. Google will not necessarily adjust quickly to a new owner.
    
    There have been people who have been thrown out of the Ebay program because they bought a site, whose previous owner was banned. When they were given the boot, the answer was that they were running a site that had already been banned by ebay. They were guilty by association. Ebay assumed that there was a connection between to the two owners.
    
    For that reason alone, I build all my sites from scratch. As Marissa has pointed out, it really isn't that hard to do.

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       livewithrichardposted 13 years agoin reply to this

       Or if its beyond your skills then go to a site like elance and get someone to build it for you.  Set your budget and get the design you want for your needs.

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    itechposted 13 years ago

    Forget everything... Continue your work on that site for at-least 4-6 months and then decide "What u should do with that"....
    "We get nothing perfect but we make it".

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    mqueeposted 13 years ago

    No matter what, $45.00 is not a huge investments. I have been looking at some sites for sale that in excess of $2000.00. That would be a hard pill to swallow if it was a loss.

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