Hey all,
I just took a look at some "just sold" sites at Flipa and found many fishy/scam sites. Here is just an example of scam sites: https://flippa.com/2892560-pr3-educa...800-mo-adsense
All the information the seller claimed about this site is fake!
But i wonder why it is so easy for him to sell such a site for fake information? Maybe I should jump in Fp to make easy money now

How can you tell its fake?

A site with alexa = 24,865,675 can never have 12k uvs/3m (often, it can only receive from 0 to few visitor/day for sure!). The seller set up this site in 26th Dec, 2012 but he claimed his site had been live for 7 months,..

Web Page URL:	http://sevenlearning.com
The Page Rank:	3/10

Site Information for sevenlearning.com

Get Details
Alexa Traffic Rank: 24,918,040 No regional data
Sites Linking In: No Data



Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: SEVENLEARNING.COM Created on: 26-Dec-12 Expires on: 26-Dec-13 Last Updated on: 26-Feb-13




Claimed Traffic

Pageviews (3 month avg)	13,000
Uniques (3 month avg)	12,000

Would be good to email the new owner, and find out their traffic stats, and new results, I bet that would be a nice blog earner if you done that on every site, and then contacted the owners for their experience, and then wrote a case study

I was scammed on Flippa a couple of time's and sometimes the things just seems and look so real. But there is now many way's to check the site's.

Check the site for comments. any site receiving 12 000 uv will have some comments on posts.

Also check the site in the way back machine to see what it look like previously.

also search site:domain.com to see the backlinks etc. you can actually go and google just the domain name too we have found places where people mention the domain in forums giving away crusial info about the domain. an example of a site earlier this year. The Guy commented on WF forum saying he has this domain and wonder what he should do with the domain, the comment was in september of 2012 but in his flippa listing he mentions that september was one of his most profitable months with the site. lol


Another thing is look at the screenshots look at all the details and spelling . I have seen some domains being listed and then even the domain name spelling in the screenshot is spelled wrong. very funny but these people sell those site's for xxx - xxxx $ so definitely be on the lookout.

I've been keeping track of stats post sale and traffic drop off is almost immediate in some cases. You can check out this prize on good ole' WF as well;

Code:

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/417956-im-making-8700-net-profit-every-month-flippa-ill-teach-you-how-top-flippa-sellers-warrior-special-offer-2.html

If anyone has any detailed advice on how to scout the rats I would personally greatly appreciate it and I am sure others would too, I know Meathead has a WSO but .......,

seem easy money on flippa ....

You can find definetly good sites and business on flippa, just you need to investigate a little bit more.

But anyway i never bought anything on filppa, i just go to stole ideas, then develop myself : )

Looks like same guy as here: http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackha...ase-study.html

Pretty much same pitch just with a new account!

damn, scammers making some money through this arent they?

$2k is a lot of money to scam from people

What you don't see are the limited PayPal accounts and chargebacks made by the buyers. When you step up to this level of website purchases they're typically funded by CC through PP so buyers have recourse if PP doesn't respond favorably to a dispute.

Bottom line is these sellers aren't banking and just pissiing in the wind most of the time. They get the money and soon get the chargeback that takes the money. They get disputes on Flippa that they lose. They get negative feedback if their account survives the dispute. This is why you rarely see any aged accounts pulling this nonsense. Almost always new accounts with little or no feedback making the same mistakes over and over.

His account is SUSPENDED in flippa. Scammed and lost the game.

What a fake mind he has

Making money on flippa is easy, the buyers on there eat up adsense websites. If you create a decent adsense website earning $5~ a day, someone will easily pay $2k+ for it. I recently sold an adsense site earning $15 / day for $4k. I probably could of got more but wanted to get rid of it and i'm not greedy.

But to get back on topic, yes there are a lot of scammers on flippa, you just have to due diligence which seems like you're good at

the owner was suspended
i think if you in IM one month you will know its scamm at first sight

Originally Posted by bullseye123

I was scammed on Flippa a couple of time's and sometimes the things just seems and look so real. But there is now many way's to check the site's.

Check the site for comments. any site receiving 12 000 uv will have some comments on posts.

Also check the site in the way back machine to see what it look like previously.

also search site:domain.com to see the backlinks etc. you can actually go and google just the domain name too we have found places where people mention the domain in forums giving away crusial info about the domain. an example of a site earlier this year. The Guy commented on WF forum saying he has this domain and wonder what he should do with the domain, the comment was in september of 2012 but in his flippa listing he mentions that september was one of his most profitable months with the site. lol


Another thing is look at the screenshots look at all the details and spelling . I have seen some domains being listed and then even the domain name spelling in the screenshot is spelled wrong. very funny but these people sell those site's for xxx - xxxx $ so definitely be on the lookout.

But comments can be faked, too, as you just hire someone to comment on it for you.
Alexa ranking, Google analytic, revenue etc.

I think the only way to be safe there is to let the guy guarantee sales for the next 2 months and his existing clients. You will only do this for your own safety.

Originally Posted by Joesolutions

I think the only way to be safe there is to let the guy guarantee sales for the next 2 months and his existing clients. You will only do this for your own safety.

No legitimate seller will "guarantee" revenue, that's just not possible. Some will agree to a form of performance based financing, but it depends on the size of the business.

You just need to do your due diligence before buying and make sure you understand the risks. Buying businesses/websites isn't easy to do well but can be very rewarding when you get it right.

Yep, this is classic scam.

The way I have been able to spot scammers is history, history, history. It so easy to generate bot and other hallow traffic. Just go to the fiverr website and you can buy 2000 unique organic hits through targeted keywords google for $5. (and it looks completely legitimate in Google Analytics)

In my experience the best thing you can do is get a long history of performance and only buy from established sellers.

Once I was looking to buy a site on flippa and encountered a simple scam. It was a niche jobs site and I was very close to bidding on it. The site had several months of increasing adsense revenue and the seller claimed that all traffic arrived through organic search and long-tail search traffic with no expenses for advertising. But when I searched for links to the site, I found that it had paid links on various bigger job listing websites. These job listing websites cost anywhere from 30 bucks to over 100 bucks a month to run an ad. The paid-link costs were much higher than what the site was bringing in from adsense.

So the scammer had made a site and immediately bought links to bring in traffic. He monitized that traffic through adsense. Then, each month he would buy additional and better paid links to make it look like the site's profits from adsense were increasing every month with a nicely upward sloping profit curve, but it was all fake profits because the site had large advertising expenses. The site ended up selling for over a thousand bucks I think. At the time I estimated that he probably made at least 50% profit from the sale based on my guess for how much the paid links had cost.

Well,

Everything can be faked... easily.

There is no protection against scam right now. Only experience can protect buyer (or seller!).

I just saw Paypal site. Full blown Paypal site, 100% functionality... just like original. SSL, certificates, everything you imagine... it took just two days to get it ready...

Guys...

Give me one week and I will bring you functional Yahoo (or Facebook... whatever you wish...)

Ahh... and regarding traffic...

This is probably the easiest to get done...

With right knowledge you can get EVERY detail ready and just like real (Including browser and OS... whatever)

Indeed, lot of things can be faked. There are bots making up the search traffic to boost the site visits. However, if a site has keywords listed in 1st page ranking, it is not that easy to fake and probably worth a lot more.

Always gotta do your research..lots of scammers out there.