Buying a site from Flippa (Or elsewhere)

I've been discussing developing a affiliate marketing/ecommerce site with my brother (we both work in marketing agencies)

I showed him Flippa as a useful site for seeing the range of niches people use to make money.

However, he's become quite interested in purchasing one of these websites instead of building one from scratch.

My question is, how do we make sure that the website we buy is actually worth that much, and will provide the revenue it's estimated to make?

How do I know which websites on flippa are scams and which are genuine money-makers?

I have this hunch that no-one would bother selling any half-decent site if it makes enough money.

I'm aware I'd still have to put in alot of development/marketing work, which would be fine, as long as the investment was worth it after around 6 months - a year.

Thanks.

Buy a starter one then, but if I was you, I build it from scratch. The money you spend on ready-made one better buy a good theme and some graphics.

Yeah if you're using flippa it should be because you lvoe the current domain and style of the site. Don't buy any with little more than 0 earnings as they are generally overpriced

You can not go wrong with buying a starter site.. like the name says its a starter site. You pay for what you see and nothing else in most cases.
Spending a couple hundred dollars will save you a lot of headache if you dont have the time to learn the ropes and build one from scratch yourself.

At the end of the day you pay for the design solution and if thats not unique.. it's pretty much not even worth that couple hundred.
Flippa lets sellers to modify the listing as they please, they can claim that the site is unique but in reality it's not.

Due diligence. Have the vision ready and just order custom made to be sure it actually is.

It's called due diligence.

Buy from a seller who has good reviews. Also, check all video proofs of earnings.

Tehan123 said:

I've been discussing developing a affiliate marketing/ecommerce site with my brother (we both work in marketing agencies)

I showed him Flippa as a useful site for seeing the range of niches people use to make money.

However, he's become quite interested in purchasing one of these websites instead of building one from scratch.

My question is, how do we make sure that the website we buy is actually worth that much, and will provide the revenue it's estimated to make?

How do I know which websites on flippa are scams and which are genuine money-makers?

I have this hunch that no-one would bother selling any half-decent site if it makes enough money.

I'm aware I'd still have to put in alot of development/marketing work, which would be fine, as long as the investment was worth it after around 6 months - a year.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

You are really asking the million dollar question but basically you need to know what you are buying and the industry, these are some steps you need to do to take to make sure you are not buying a "lemon"

a) Ask for proof of the revenue, see the screenshots and ask them to add you to their accounts as a "view only" (this can be in the case of adsense)

b) Ask them to send you the paypal transaction history and review it.

b) Use ahrefs to verify the backlink profile, see if they are using a PBN or sitewide links (to understand if they can remove the backlinks once you buy the site and lose the ranks)

c) Go to Google and use the info:domain.com to see if the information they have shown you is from the domain you are buying or if there is just a redirection from other domain and all the metrics are fake.

d) Ask to give access to the google Analytics and review the traffic sources, time spent and pages visited to verify they are not pumping their numbers.

e) See what their main traffic sources are and verify they are included on the sale or that they are not going to dissapear once the sale is done (example, many people have a lot of "social" traffic and the reality is they control some facebook pages BUT once you buy the site they do not promote it anymore, so request the facebook pages to be sold with the site or don't buy it.)

f) Make sure you have a plan to grow the site (revenue wise) forget about making development (unless it is to increase the revenue) , can you increase the number of sales? do you have access to a new markets? can you increase the conversion rates? can you create more upsells? are there any cross sales you can offer? if you can't then don't buy it.

Most importantly YOU NEED TO KNOW YOUR BUSINESS/STRENGHTS example: if you have never managed an e-commerce don't buy an ecommerce, if you ONLY know amazon affiliate sites but an amazon affiliate site in that way you will be able to distinguish if the numbers are real, if the average transaction value seems real, if their sources convert at the rate they say they convert, etc...

for to buy a web from flip or some first you have some grip on basic analytics check as an se person.Make deal with some reliable seller and ask for traffic anf earning stats from last 3 or 4 months ,check in deep that there are no bot traffic hits or some