Buying a site: Some tips on assessing its fundamental value

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I was discussing buying a site tips on one of the SiteBuildIt boards, when I came across this posting "Should You Buy an Established Website?" by Zac Johnson. It’s a good read, and he provides some good tips. Go here to read it, but do come back!

Over the years I’ve had my fair share of web site purchases. Some were good, and some were bad. Search any website forum or auction site and you are sure to find a handful of web sites that wet your appetite. Buying an established web site is a great way to expand your business outside of continually adding more ad campaigns, and can continue to generate revenue over a long period of time. Before you place that bid and jump into buying an established website, you should ask yourself a few questions. Just because it looks like a good deal, it might not be right for you.

While most of the rest of the discussion on the website is fairly mundane, I did think of a few comments that I would like to share with you about somethings that seem to be overlooked. So here goes:

If someone claims that "I cannot offer income statements, nor any guarantees of income", the only way that you can make sense of the value of the site is by assuming that the site makes no income, all.

Now, the siteowner may protest this, but then the siteowner would have to make clear what revenue the site actually generated, in doing so. A siteowner can’t simultaneously or reasonably claim a site has income but refuse to reveal how much. (Well, s/he can… but… it makes no difference).

The only way as a potential purchaser is to assume that, in the absence of any information to the contrary (assertions do not count), the site generates no revenue at all.

Then ask yourself: is the site actually worth the $3,900 it is being sold for.

Check the stats; check the google Index; check the traffic; check … and then assess for yourself, is the site worth what is being asked, in terms of what is being sold or included in the site.

Then ask yourself: do you have the knowledge or skill or relationships to build the site into a viable business that can generate reliable income?

Once you’ve done all that, then it’s time to set a price. Of course, … you may decide the site is only worth $390 or $39,000… but realize that what you are buying is the potential for you to build upon the current work.

BTW, don’t forget to check the site’s keywords in BrainstormIt, especially the primary ones on the main page. You’ll get a good idea about the actual viability of the niche. One thing I’ve noted in the sites on sale is that often the keyword selection is weak… so do your research! For those of you with SBI membership, you can login to the fuller discussion here.

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The Toughest Site Challenge I’ve ever done: SBI

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In late August, I was suckered into buying one of those great 2-for-1 deals at SiteBuildIt, and since then I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels a lot. Why? I will be absolutely frank: the course is tough because it asks you to do tough things, really tough. Blogging on this blog or on my other Blogs is easy by comparison – I know what I’m doing, I know what to write (most of the time).

I’m working on this post over the next few hours, but I’m publishing it now so you can stop in and see how the article’s going.

It’s tough: Tough Questions

For the first time since I started running my websites, I’ve actually been much more focused on finding and examining keywords with the BrainstormIt Tools that SBI provides: this helps tremendously in selecting a niche that has potential for you, eliminating some of the failures that are inherent by pursuing niches that are overly popular or seriously underperforming.

brainstormit tools

The tools also provide help with selecting ways to narrow down, and expand your niche by building out the keywords properly. So for my niche, I’ve now got a potentially good niche with several hundred related keywords.

mkl tools

The toughest questions were the ones that took the longest to solve, and ones which were awfully similar to those posed by a writing course I took years ago, that asked me to examine my experience, talents and interests to determine where I could start. That was the hardest part, and despite my blogging interests I decided not to follow that niche at this time due to overwhelming demand.

The BluePrint

SBI makes a huge fuss about choosing your site concept keywords and then building out what they call a blueprint, based on choosing essential keywords and using the higher demand keywords with lower existing values to drive traffic. So it took me nearly three attempts to come up with a set of blueprints that are halfway reasonable. Of course, I still wonder if I’m biting off more than I can reasonably chew.

Why do I like SBI?

1. It’s slow, it’s methodical and thorough.. There is also an overabundance of materials that make initial problems by overwhelming those who (like me) tend not to put enough time into the program. But, once you gain familiarity  with the materials, you should just follow their simple Action Guide. Take a look at how SBI recommends putting the site together. The videos are pretty good, though many references are made to tools and results only available within the program.

2. It should make the daily grind of producing content less of a drain. In fact, that’s the one reason I hate blogging because of the pressure to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING, just words. There are a lot of other issues with blogging that I hadn’t realized until I read some of Ken Evoy’s words. He actually quotes Google: “Blogs usually have high Bounce Rates no matter what since normal visitor behavior is to read the newest post and then leave.”

Why do I not like SBI?

Because you can’t just start writing, it takes time to work through the program, and so quick results are almost impossible. In fact, quick results are positively discouraged in favour of the tortoise approach.

Overall, I think Steve summed it up best in saying: “So structured and methodical (looks like a lot of tough content writing – I guess you are going for a big authority site with this though).” And that’s an approach that will need me to focus much more on developing both a writing style and meaningful content … that’s going to mean ‘research’.

So, it’s a hard slog; but as a result, I’m not able to post as much on InvestorBlogger (my apologies) though I will drop back on a weekly basis to update you on my challenge, including statistics… and whatever else I have time for. So if you want to stay uptodate with posts on InvestorBlogger, the best way is to subscribe to our site however you like, and you’ll get fresh content as and when it becomes available (even by email!)

Disclaimer: I’ve been using SBI for about three months on and off, am an active affiliate for their program, and highly recommend it if you are interested in developing a self-sustainable business.

Update: I’ve used SBI for three years, and feel compelled to say: Sitesell is in trouble, their methods no longer work effectively, and Google fails to rank Sitesell sites well any more for whatever reason. Don’t waste your time, like I did.

The final straw: tired of Adsense Ads

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I’m tired of seeing adsense ads like this one… from TruthAboutAbs. Why? Because not only do I not care about Abs, I don’t know where they are (are they fitted in my car under the seat or under the steering wheel?)… I see the ads on the most inappropriate websites next to the most inappropriate stories.

So today I complained to Google. If I don’t see an improvement in ads, I will just simply block all Adsense Ads when I’m browsing. I’ll be using a simple blocking program to do that on Firefox called AdBlock plus. I don’t support ad blocking in general, but when I find the ads distasteful and inappropriate… Google leaves me little other choice. I did try to reset the cookie preferences but it made almost no difference. I’m still seeing the ads.

Google, isn’t it time you set an ad optout form on each ad so users can click which ads they NEVER want to see again?

Some samples:

distasetful ads  and distastetful ads 2

and the worst offender, in my opinion….

distasteful ads 3

This really annoys me … does it bother you? As someone who is over weight, it’s not helpful to get these kind of images reminding me of the fact! Nor is it helpful to have that candybar wrapper on my desk from last night… (thanks, Rittersport!).