Well, I haven’t blogged for four days, and it feels like an eternity, seriously. This weekend I was down in Southern California for a wedding and that involved about 14 hours of driving between my husband and I. On Monday I was swamped with work and I kept on wanting to sleep so I didn’t blog at all, but at least this article I wrote for the Money Blog Network went up on Wise Bread, check it out!
Anyway, before I left I checked out the site of a commenter named Erica. Her story is pretty inspiring in that she is a young woman in the Silicon Valley who built up a business and recently sold it for more than a million dollars. Now she is semi-retired and writing. Recently she bought an established website on Sitepoint to run as a new business and she is only a year older than me. So this led me to browse the Sitepoint marketplace and learn about buying established websites.
So far, I haven’t made a purchase because just like any investment, it takes a lot of research to find a profitable business worth buying. A lot of the cheaper websites that cost under $1000 have less traffic than my sites or just aren’t very interesting. I see most sites in the following categories:
- Forums
- Scraper sites that steal content
- Directories
- Blogs
- Established e-commerce sites
- E-books
- Spam sites full of ads with a good domain name
- Proxy sites
There are also some unique sites with custom software, but those are very very expensive. I think if I buy a site, the only category of sites I am interested in buying is a good forum because those have user generated content that I wouldn’t have to worry too much about. As long as a community is there it would be fine. I don’t want another blog because blogs takes time to create new content for and oftentimes readers are loyal to the original writer of the blog that made it popular so once you buy it a lot of its value is lost. I also don’t want a spammy site full of butts. Anyway, it seems that people price their sites at a multiple of their monthly revenue, so anything that’s pulling a decent income becomes very expensive. However, there are gems in the rough. For example, there are sites that webmasters have not monetized at all because all they created a site as a hobby, but want to get rid of it due to it being too much work. So this creates another segment of entrepreneurs who buy a site on the cheap, slap on some ads, and then flip it for a profit. I think that’s a pretty interesting business on its own, but it takes time to research and find the best “fixer-upper”.
Anyway, as I have said to many people. I only need about 10 to 20 times my current blog income across my three blogs to quit my job and work on this full time. There is definitely potential for my blogs to grow. Currently my San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble site is growing quite healthily and could even surpass The Baglady in traffic with minimal promotion. It is already on the blogroll of Redfin, my favorite real estate site. I guess people just browse that site page after page looking at the home prices falling by 200k to 300k like they are watching a train wreck. So if I concentrate on my current blogs and make them grow to their fullest potential I don’t have to buy any more sites. It may take a longer time, but it would be all mine. If I do buy a established site, I will need to spend time to integrate it onto my webserver and learn about running the new site and that may neglect my current ventures a little bit.
Anyway, I will probably still look out for good sites to purchase, but those are very rare and people snap them up very quickly. I am more of a cautious investor and I never buy anything without a lot of research so I probably won’t be buying something within 30 minutes of the listing so I might miss out on some good ones, but I should be able to avoid a lot of bad ones. Looking at some of the better sites for sale, I am amazed at what some of these very young people have done in terms of online income. The biggest sites with millions of page views a day are basically another full time job and cost a lot for bandwidth so I probably don’t want those. I would be happy with 25000 page views a day and enough money to cover my living expenses after taxes. Maybe next year?
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6 comments ↓
I would say that starting from scratch is the hardest, and that is precisely the reason everyone should do it, at least once.
That said, if you’ve done that and are looking at adding/expanding, I suppose buying a site that is past the initial stages is a bit of a shortcut. But depending on how comfortable you are with the niche, you’ll still have a lot of learning to do. I’m not sure if it’s saving a lot of time, especially considering the money you have to put up up front.
You either have to invest your time or money. The more you invest of one, the less you have to invest the other. I guess the right answer depends on who you are.
ari
There are definitely benefits to buying an established business. Years ago I bought a franchise territory of a computer school for kids. Everything was already laid out - how it worked, the marketing materials, what I should do, etc. But in the end, it was never my baby like my blog is. I made a great living for a while, but when things got a little show, I sold it and moved on. Because I created my blog myself, it is much more a part of me. Now, I just need to start making more than a few dollars from it.
Interesting you mentioned the business of flipping site because I have been thinking about doing the same. Unfortunately, it’s a little tough for me to start with 5 sites already in my portfolio.
I haven’t heard anyone making any good money from ’site-flipping’. If you are going to try it, try it with a small site with a low investment, just to learn how to do it. Then, go for a larger site.
Here are some other options to consider;
- you could sell one of your sites and then have time to re-invest into another site
- you could duplicate one of your sites with a new domain name
- you could hire someone to find you a good site to buy
- you could expand your current sites by adding new services
I have been looking at sitepoint for a while now too. I don’t think most of them look like good ideas. Many of them could lose their pr from google and then there go all their earnings down the drain. I did get the idea to start a game site (which i did) from sitepoint. Even though I didn’t buy it.
Hi! Thanks for checking out my site… I’m really glad you found it inspiring. I honestly had little intention of buying a business…but this one was what I wanted to do anyway, and he has a good plan for making money every month…which is what I needed most.
I’d recommend being on Sitepoint for at least a month before you buy anything. You seem to have already sniffed out most of the scams…so that’s good. I’d also stick with Established or Premium sites, as often the Turnkey sites are not much more than a domain name and a template (with no traffic).
Good luck, and I look forward to reading more on your blog!
-Erica
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