There are many other options available for how to use a new website acquisition and of course what you do with a new website and what type of website you search for will depend on your skills, the industry you operate in and your cash to spend. Remember to take some time listing a few goals you want your new website to achieve and strategize exactly what you will do with the new website before you buy it.
Investing Time And Energy Into Your New Website
Make sure you have the time to manage your new investment in web property. Remember just the transfer process and daily maintenance of your site will take time and energy and if you don’t have it available now then maybe you should hold off making the purchase. It would be a shame if your good intentions to improve a website result in you instead killing it because you don’t have the time to maintain the status quo. Remember a new website comes with new responsibilities, for example support emails and phone, server maintenance, SPAM control and the usual day-to-day activities of a webmaster. Don’t get caught up in the excitement of the purchase making you blind to the reality of how much additional work will be added to your daily activities.
Where To Locate Websites For Sale
I could point you in the direction of a few good website trading sites (this article has some links – How To Sell A Website) but you will be very lucky if you find a bargain there. To find good sites you have to search deep into the web. Use the main search engines to find websites operating in an industry you feel confident buying into. Don’t look for the big sites, the sites on the first few pages of search results unless they show clear potential – perhaps in industries with low competition so “bad” sites show up in the first page of search results. Professional or popular keyword sites are usually too expensive, well managed (they wouldn’t appear in the first few pages of the search results if they weren’t) and the owner likely won’t be interested in making the sale or will be looking for six figures if they are.
You must look deep in the search results. Find the solo-webmasters that perhaps don’t take their site too seriously but have been diligent over the years adding content consistently, if not in large quantities. You need to find the good sites with potential, not great sites already optimized or poor sites going nowhere. The more research you do during the search phase the smarter buy you will make. No matter how much time you put into the search it’s going to be gamble when you do decide to buy. There are just too many variables to consider and control, but by being smart and patient you reduce the risk.
Buying The Website
Once you find a good site that meets your criteria start monitoring and researching it. Check backlinks, investigate it’s history (try the Wayback Machine) and if the site has a community (forums, chatrooms, comment system, helpdesk, etc) see what goes on there. Check the site design, the structure of the links, headings, titles and keyword density. Check the site statistics if they are available (look for those little webstat icons or try Alexa rankings).
Once you get a good feel for the site and you are interested in buying it’s time to contact the owner. You should be able to find an email address for the website owner somewhere on the site, if you can’t do a domain name lookup in the WhoIs database where you will find the email address for the person that registered the domain. Remember some websites will simply be hobbies for the owner which will make the purchasing process that much easier, while others will be fully fledged businesses making the transfer process just that little bit longer (think about business registration and incorporation detail transfers now consider you may not even be located in the same country!).
Start casually by introducing yourself to the owner, state you like the site and then slowly gauge how much interest the owner has in their web property. Eventually you are going to have to express your interest in making a purchase and you can spend as much time as you like communicating with the owner to negotiate a deal. Like with buying anything, the negotiation process can be laborious as you gather the information you need to calculate a price. This process can be swift and easy or slow and painful depending on your attitudes and the willingness of the owner to make the sale and release private information about their website. You will need to know details like website statistics, revenues, and costs, all information that the current owner may be hesitant to give out (see How Much Is Your Website Worth? for a discussion of important website metrics when determining the value of a site). Demonstrating your sincerity at this point will go a long way in helping you to divulge as much information as you can order to properly evaluate the website.
If you are lucky the owner of the site may simply be so excited that their website will make them some money that a few hundred dollars will seal the deal, others, the more savvy owners will realise the value of their asset and you might have more difficulty negotiating and will pay a higher price. Remember you are never under any obligation to buy so don’t force yourself to offer too much because there are plenty, literally millions, of other sites out there.
Don’t Forget The Little Details
When you finally agree on a price don’t forget to look after the little technical details as you manage the transfer of ownership. Here is a list of some important factors:
* Transfer of the domain name registration details, the business name, incorporation information, hosting ownership and any third party software or subscriptions to your name. Check that everything, absolutely everything, has your name on it by the time the deal is done.
* Get a contract made up outlining the deal and have all parties sign and date it. Also consider creating a clause stopping the previous owner starting up a competing site immediately after the sale.
* Download the email lists. Download the email lists. Download the email lists. There is nothing more important in a web business then the mailing lists so make sure you have these safely in hand with backups.
* Outline how much support, if any, will be provided by the ex-owner for a transition period. Having the owner available for questions for a few months after the sale can make the transfer less stressful.
Buying A Website Is A Very Effective Entry Strategy
Given the time it takes to get a new website off the ground because of issues like the Google Sandbox and the amount of work and effort it takes to create a site, produce content and build backlinks, the prospect of buying a ready established domain and website is very appealing. If you have a sound understanding of search engine optimization and the industry you work in online, you should have no problem finding under optimized websites, or perhaps fully fledged web e-commerce businesses to buy. By adding content, fixing title tags, linking structure and all the other good search engine marketing practices you can very quickly start reaping rewards. Sites with quality traffic but no monetization strategy are huge opportunities ready for you to step in, stick some advertisements up, use your AdSense optimization skills and boom, start profiting immediately. Alternatively you might look for sites that augment your existing web enterprises and purchase the targeted traffic to effectively “buy customers”. No matter what your strategy, the web is ripe with opportunities for smart investors and you don’t have to have a wallet the size of Rupert Murdoch’s to start buying and profiting.
Tags: build own website, buy existing website