Posts filed under 'Guides and Tips'
I just finished reading a great book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. And I thought that I should write about the financial intelligence of some webmasters.
Many of the people that daily are active in the buy/sell website forums, they have understood what it is all about. They are financial intelligent, so to say.
Here’s the reason for my statement:
- They are always on the looking for good investments
- They buy websites for the revenue generated by their websites
- They improve the websites to generate higher revenues
- They sell websites for more than they were bought for
This means that they constantly improve their cash flow by improving their website portfolio. And thereby become richer every day. The webmasters are not working for money anymore, the money are working for the webmasters.
Considering that websites typically sell for amounts around 12 months of revenue, this is also a very attractive market. If you’re constantly buying new assets for all the revenue generated by those you currently own, you’ll be experiencing an amazing growth.
Also remember that if you have a corporation for your business you won’t have to pay much in taxes (maybe even nothing) because you get tax deductions for your purchases / investments.
Of course webmasters don’t have to invest in new websites, they can just as well invest in the growth of their current websites.
Tags: website assets, online investment, website investment, website cash flow
April 20th, 2006
I just read a good post at Jensense about how to check for a Adsense ban and it was even written for website buyers: Safeguarding yourself when purchasing a site for Adsense.
She doesn’t mention the online tools available to see Adsense ads such as Google Adsense Sandbox from DigitalPoint. That’s the one I always start with - if it shows ads then everything seems fine - if it doesn’t shot ads then check again in two hours, and if it still doesn’t show ads then you should investigate further.
Found via Problogger
Tags: adsense ban, banned from adsense, adsense tools
Of interest: You can run a criminal background check on a new babysitter, to make sure he or she is safe, using a background check website.
March 6th, 2006
After writing my previous post about validating pagerank I thought to myself that I also need to explain the following problem where sites with a real pagerank is for sale, but with one big problem being that the pagerank is likely to drop after the next update.
What you need to be aware of, is that there is another kind of scam where sellers try to sell high pagerank sites, but the high pagerank has been obtained through few links on very high pagerank sites of their own, or that they just have access to, and those links are likely to be removed after a sale. Here is an example:
- Some guy has a website (A) with a good pagerank let’s say 8.
- He wants to make some easy money by selling another website (B).
- So he links to website B from website A.
- After the next toolbar pagerank update website B will most likely have obtained a REAL pagerank of 7.
- Then he puts it up for sale on some forums where someone ends up buying it.
- After the deals is through he removes the link from website A
- The next time Google measures link popularity (NOT the toolbar pagerank) website B has a pagerank next to zero.
- So the website that was bought is worth almost nothing - based on pagerank.
I’ll just repeat yesterdays tip: “The next time you’re valuating a website based on its pagerank. Check if the pagerank is real and that it is not likely to drop after the next update.”
Tags: link popularity, website pagerank, website valuation, pagerank scam
March 4th, 2006
I once in a while see somebody trying to sell a website which they claim has a pagerank of X. And there is a lot of buyers that base some of their valuation on how high the pagerank is. Who wouldn’t buy a cheap pagerank 7 site?
The problem is that the seller isn’t always right - and most of the times they know it. They use a technique to have the Google toolbar show another websites pagerank for the website they are trying to sell. So how can you determine whether or not the pagerank is real?
The technique is to have Google believe that the domain is another website. This can be done with redirects on the domain pointing to a high pagerank website. I won’t go into details since others have already done so.
You can check if a website is showing another websites pagerank by going to Google and enter the domain name in the search form. Note that you should check the exact domain - including the subdomain - of the site where you see the pagerank. That means that you have to enter www.example.com if that is the URL shown in the address bar.
When you do that Google will return a result showing the title, “description” and URL for the site that the search engine sees as the website for the URL. This URL needs to be exactly like the URL you entered in the search form e.g. www.example.com. If it shows another URL it means that the pagerank you see in the toolbar is most likely belonging to the that site, and not the one for sale.
The next time you’re valuating a website based on its pagerank. Check if the pagerank is real and that it is not likely to drop after the next update.
Tags: website pagerank, link popularity, fake pagerank, pagerank scam
March 3rd, 2006
If some of you are browsing forums and other sites looking for potential website investments, then I would guess that you look into the details for some of them.
Some times you have noticed that not everything seems right. It could be that the stats are manipulated. Maybe some parts of the website is copyright by someone else than the seller. Or it is that there is just something of general interest to potential buyers that you know, and they might not.
Then what do you do…
- Close the browser window and move on?
- You post it for everyone to know?
In most cases - if I find it being important - I will let everyone know about it. And I have my reasons to believe it is the better thing to do.
- I see other website buyers as colleagues, and real people, so I don’t like them to get ripped of. Getting the best deals isn’t a war between me and them. If I help them they will hopefully also help me. This not only being to warn me about risks, but some might even “get to know me”, and tell me if they see something of my interest for sale.
- If what I point out is indeed a mistake by the seller, he will apologize and clear things out. Now the sale can go on and everybody knows that the seller is a nice guy, who is just as human as you and me.
- In case I’m wrong, and what I point out as “not being right” is actually correct. Then I will apologize and let everyone know that I was wrong, and help the seller to repair it, if damage has been caused.
Tags: buying websites, website scams, trading websites
February 25th, 2006
I just read a thread on DigitalPoint, where some users point out, that some guy that has been bidding up his own auctions using multiply user accounts. Numerous other users has ended up paying more for websites than what they probably had sold for.
It is a shame that such things go on, but it will probably always be like that, and it is really hard to catch such cheaters in time. So it is an obvious example of buyers to consider what they want to pay for given website, and stick to that. Don’t think that you’re missing out on something because there is several other bidders competing. Do your own valuation and do only buy for less than the value you conclude.
If you want to buy sites on auction and if you want the bidding to be real, then it is just because you want to make steal and buy it too cheap. Nothing wrong with that, but then you’d have to expect some people to try and drive up the bidding.
Tags: buying websites, auction bidding, auction cheat, shill bidding
February 22nd, 2006
I just bought another website today. It wasn’t anything special except from being in direct competition with one of my other sites. So I bought it immediately and cheap! But something happened that made me think about important things to tell the seller when buying a website.
What happened was when the seller should download and send me all the files. Before he downloaded the files he changed the config files, so that his password for the webserver wouldn’t get into my hands. This isn’t a wrong thing to do - not at all! But it had a side-effect, which was that the website only gave a MySQL error, when trying to access it. I e-mailed him and asked him to correct it, and I also asked him to keep the website running for yet a couple of days. He kindly fixed it and agreed to keep the website running!
What then came to my mind, is that I just expect a seller to keep the site running for a couple of days, until the DNS changes etc. has come to effect. And I guess that some of you also would expect it. But he didn’t, so in the future I need to remember to inform the seller about such expectations.
Tags: website transfer, buying websites, domain transfer
January 25th, 2006
