5 things to know when buying websites. Or “two fun cases”

Author: Sergey Lazurenko. He likes to cheer up people, his friends, relatives and the cat Businka, loves hamburgers and pizza. He suits striped shirts and he is the best monetization specialist I have ever met.

So… How did it all start? Oh… Good afternoon, dear readers. My name is Sergey, I live in a small village called Malinovka. I have been engaged in marketing, website development for more than 4 years. Dream is an interesting project for people, on which the CTR in YAN will be at least 30% 🙂

I thought I wouldn’t write about my practice in buying / selling sites, but today the Internet was turned off in my company, and I decided to share my experience and tell some interesting and diverse cases. And Skype started flashing… the Internet was turned on, but I won’t stop, because I really want to share useful information with readers, and, of course, become a winner. I’m just missing $500 to buy a Volkswagen Golf 3, so please vote for my article?

Enough talking already, time to get down to business.

Case #1 – “My conscience”

Why did I name this case that way? Yes, because I am a very honest and conscientious person. Now you will understand why.

05/13/2013 auction deal completed http://www.telderi.ru/ru/viewsite/14507 (this is one of my first sites for making money on advertising, once I even tried to open my own waste paper removal company, but nothing good I failed). I already had experience in transferring the site, so there were no difficulties. First I transferred the domain, then I dumped the database and archived the site. Sent everything to the buyer.

We exchanged skypes and started chatting. He received a domain, uploaded files to his hosting, logged in and began to look at what was there and how it was with the site. I examined him for a long time, asked various questions and realized that everything was fine, that I had not deceived him, and said: “I press the button.” This completed the deal and everyone was happy. Now he uses the site, earns money on advertising and, God forbid, after some time the site will pay for itself.

But… What could have happened if I had no conscience?

He forgot about the main thing – to remove the GoogleWebmaster verification files from his hosting. That is, in my GoogleWebmaster control panel there was access to his site!

As you know, there is an opportunity to remove any URL from the search results (Optimization -> Remove URLs) and if you create a request to remove the main page of the site, then in a few hours the site will no longer be in the Google search results (and since it has 55% of users with Google, it doesn’t work very well).

So, it turns out that I have a complete copy of this site. Next, I upload it to my hosting, buy the makulatururuu.com.ua domain (for example) and add it to Google. For him, my site will be unique, and if the buyer’s site appears in the search results after a while, it will already be just a copy/mirror of my brand new site.

Conclusion: make a checklist for buying, as well as a checklist for selling sites. At first glance, these operations may seem easy, but over time, you realize that there are a lot of pitfalls that can take your money.

At the end of this article are the 5 most important points that should not be forgotten when buying sites.

Case number 2 – “5 owners”.

I’m sorry … I want to start with these words, because once I neglected Telderi and decided to sell the site not through their system. Of course, it was not my initiative, but still. Dear Telderi, I beg you, do not lower my reputation after this case, but I cannot but write about it, it turned out to be painfully interesting.

Actually, this lot (http://www.telderi.ru/ru/viewsite/111558) will be discussed.

Probably, everyone was wondering why I called it “5 owners”. Yes, because in a few months it was bought / sold / stolen by as many as 5 people. Guys, I was 3rd in this complex chain.

How it all began:

1. The first owner made an online cinema, developed it and decided to sell it through http://pr-cy.ru (I don’t know the reason).
2. The second owner (a very nice guy from Lithuania) sold this site to me through Telderi. I am constantly “hanging” on the exchange and looking for attractive lots, and this was one of them. The site was visited by 3000+ hosts per day for only $300. I checked everything very carefully, but there was no time for reflection, since there were already about 20 bets, and the price reached the optimal one. I immediately replenished my account on the exchange and made a bet at a blitz price.
3. I turned out to be the third owner. The theme of the films did not inspire me much, so within a month I decided to sell this site. Attendance has already dropped to 1500 hosts per day, but I put a $500 flash price on sale.
4. The fourth owner of the site found me in contact and offered to buy the site not through the stock exchange, bargaining for $400. I realized that I was weak in this subject, and decided to agree. We made this deal. I spent a lot of nerves and realized that I would rather work through the exchanges. The percentage that I will pay for their work is quite justified. I forgot to say that the domain was transferred, we write to 2domains.ru, and there, during the transfer, it is not clear that it is not transferred completely, unlike imhoster.net (reg.ru). Therefore, when you work through this registrar, do not forget to request a complete re-registration of the domain (although you should always follow this). A few days later, the Fourth owner writes to me: “Serge, is the domain registered to you?” I told him the whole truth that I recently bought it and did not request a full re-registration. I gave him the contacts of the second owner. The second owner was exactly like us and said he bought this site himself and quickly sold it to me. We asked him for the contacts of the First Owner, but that was all. I asked him what happened, and this is what he told me: “Earn, count, yesterday I was offered to buy a site for $700. I decided that now I will sell it, add a little and buy something more interesting. I handed everything over to the buyer, and he “threw” me and said that he did not know. Now I’m trying to get the site back, and for this I need to write a statement from the owner of the domain. Then we all realized that this site turned out to be very interesting. The fourth owner never returned the site and will no longer sell / buy sites not through exchanges. I don’t doubt it.
5. The fifth owner is a thief from Astana.

Conclusion: use the exchanges, as there are a lot of bad people in the world. And I’m good. Why? See Case #1.

P.S. In addition to all that has been said, I decided to create my own checklist and share it with dear reader.

Checklist for buying websites through Telderi:

1. See traffic sources. If there is no search traffic, then something is wrong and traffic can be cheated.
2. It is advisable to always look at the traffic. This is one of the most accurate indicators of the quality of the site. If there are 2 people on the site, and its indicators are crazy (TIC = 2000, PR = 7), it is obvious that something is wrong here.
3. Always request access to site statistics. Yandex Metrica, Google Analytics, LiveInternet – no matter what you ask, the important thing is that the data on the chart in the Telderi system may differ from the real picture. This may be due to the fact that data has not yet been updated in Telderi, and traffic on the site has fallen several times in recent days.
4. Always keep an eye out for a full domain re-registration. Even if a domain was transferred to you and it is visible in the registrar’s control panel, this does not mean that it is registered to you. Ask the owner, ask Telderi. Because it may turn out that in n-years, when you “raise the project”, it will be taken away without any problems.
5. Replace Google Webmaster and Yandex Webmaster verification. Make sure that there are no verification files in the root of the site. It can also be meta tags. In order to be sure that everything is fine, immediately add the site to the webmaster of your accounts.

All these steps are very primitive, but some webmasters neglect them and end up losing money.

Thank you all for your attention. Always glad to help you!