How to Buy a Website from Someone
When you look at very rich people and how they got so rich. They almost always either created a very valuable asset or bought an asset and made it more valuable. What we are going to look at in this article is buying an asset / business / website and then making it worth more.
How buying a website works
There are 3 main ways to buy a site. You can approach the owner directly, you can do it through a broker (This is mostly for larger sites, $25,000 and upwards) or you can buy the site at auction. If you want to buy a site at auction, just use flippa.com for that, they dominate the market.
The way the transfer works is that the buyer puts the money into escrow. Then the seller transfers the digital assets to the buyer. When both are happy, the seller releases the money. If you aren’t using Flippa for the sale, you can use escrow.com to transfer the money.
Because I have experience with Flippa and it is the most widely used method, I will focus on it for the rest of the article. However most of the article is also relevant to the other methods of buying a website.
How much does it cost to buy a website from someone?
An established website tends to be worth between 12 and 30 times monthly earnings. That is far less than a traditional business, because there is more risk and fewer buyers. The exact value, depends on factors like traffic sources, the niche, monetization methods and site age.
In many cases you will find that sellers have put a lot of time into their sites and may have a completely unreasonable valuation in mind. The first thing I ask a seller is to give me a rough idea of what they think their site is worth. If the number is way to high, the thing to do is to give it some time so they realize that no one will pay what they want. They may then reduce their reserve. If a website doesn’t sell at auction, because the reserve was not met. You can have a chat with the seller afterwards and make an offer.
The problem with buying websites
The main problem with buying a website is that the sector is overflowing with people that are out to scam buyers. When I look at a marketplace like Flippa, 2 out of every 3 auctions look somewhat suspicious to me.
Stories about these scams are posted all over the internet. That’s great for people like me who can make abnormal profits, because other buyers are afraid of losing their money.
I really know what I am looking at, when I am considering bidding on a website. Because of that I can be 99% sure that I am getting a good deal. But what can you do if you do if you don’t have the knowledge, to buy safely? Should you just stay away? Fortunately there is a site with a program to help you buy without losing your money. Check it out below.
The program costs only $12 and it may be a case of spend $12, save thousands.
My Story
I purchased this website, enfuzed.com on Flippa. If you want to, you should be able to see the listing at https://flippa.com/5367748-established-web-and-graphic-design-blog-with-10-628-uniques-mo-making-30-mo
As you can see I paid $1,000 for the site. That’s fairly high considering the low average monthly profit of $30. So, why did I do it?
The design that Enfuzed was using was not suitable for mobile devices. Because of that the site was receiving significantly less traffic, from the search engines, than it should have been getting. Google has a tool that you can use to see whether a page is compatible with mobile devices. I fixed the problem by installing a premium WordPress theme.
Enfuzed was also only monetized with Google Adsense and the ads where not optimally placed. It was making very little money considering the amount of traffic that the site was getting. In my free eBook I go into more detail about how you can optimally monetize your traffic. These problems were fairly easy to fix and so I was and still am happy with the amount I paid for the site.