Buying a website. Where? How? How much does it cost?

While for some people Internet is just a place they visit to look for some information, purchases or entertainment for others it is a place for their business or some social work. Eventually those who was just using the web for pastime begin considering to buy or create their own website for some profit or just to express their thoughts to others. We would like to talk here about where and how one can purchase a new domain name or an existing website that better targets certain purposes.

Questions you should ask before buying a website

Before you sign an agreement and make a payment for a website you decide to buy one expert recommends to consider it in light of these questions:

1. How much money did the site make in the last 12 months? Generally a good purchase price is 12 months of profit. If the site meets all of the Prosperity criteria you should be willing to offer up to 3 times that.
2. How much in the last 3 months? (This way you see if it is improving or declining) If income is declining take the 3 month average and multiply that by 12 and that should be about where you would be willing to offer.
3. How many unique visitors does the site average monthly? You don’t want to know how many total visitors or hits the site got, you want unique visitors. You need to ask to see traffic proof.
4. How much time is involved to run the site? Is more time required to make more money?
5. Can you automate any of the processes on the site so it will take less time to run?
6. Does the site already rank on page 1 of Google. Is the site anywhere in the top 30 of Google for any main key phrases? Remember you can make improvements to the rankings but you do want any established website you buy to be showing in the top 30 for some of their main phrases. If they aren’t then you may be better off building your own.
7. How old is the site? If the site is less than a year old, someone would have to make a very convincing argument as to why I should even look at buying the site. If the site is more than two years old I give it a good long look. You can go to Archive.org to find out the true age of the website.
8. Is the site unique? You will see a lot of turn-key websites out there. Never, never, never waste your time on turn-key sites. There are a million other sites exactly like the one for sale. You want a unique website that someone took the time to custom build, period.
9. How many links does the website have pointing to it? Go to Yahoo.com and in the search bar type link:http://www.theirwebsite.com and hit enter. Then on the drop down menu that says “Show Inlinks” choose “except from this domain” and it will give you all of the websites that link to the site. If it is under 100 links then you know they haven’t done a ton of link building. If it is over 1000 you may have possibly found a gem.
10. Do I have any interest in this industry or product? It makes it hard to dedicate time to something if you don’t have interest in it.

How to find a website for sale

There are several ways you can use to find a website for sales. Thus, experts in this industry recommend trying these options:

• You can try to search via searching engines typing such kind of phrases like "Site for Sale", "This site for sale", "Buy this site", "This site is now for sale", "Want to buy this site?" etc. Experts recommend studying those websites put at the 2nd, 3d and 4th search result pages. The reason is simple. On the 1st page there are 30 results of the websites that obtained relatively high ranks and reputation which means the prices you will pay for them may turn very high. As for the following three pages, there you will also find websites with good rankings and reputation but at a lower price. However, it is all up to you whatever to choose.

Thus, one author recommends to send a letter to the website owner you are interested in. In this letter you will tell about your serious intend to buy this website and ask for the corresponding information.

• You can place a wanted ad in the corresponding forums that allow Want To Buy advertisements.

• You can also go to eBay to look for a website for sale. In this regard you are advised to ask outsource the work of making daily checks and monitoring eBay listings to someone else. This is because it will take you a great deal of time to look through templates, cookie-cutter and other websites, web businesses, web ideas and even "get rich on eBay" schemes listed at the famous auction website.

• Website brokers. You can visit special marketplaces dedicated to selling and buying completely or semi-finished websites. Some of these are WebsiteBroker.com and BuySellWebsite.com.

WebsiteBroker.com was founded in 1997 by two California attorneys who saw the need for an organization to assist individuals and companies in selling or buying already existing web sites. As claimed by the service owners WebsiteBroker.com is one of the oldest and most established places to sell, buy or trade an existing website.

WebsiteBroker.com offers existing websites in these categories:

Arts & Culture
Blog
Business & Employment
Computers & Technology
Directory
E-Commerce
Entertainment & Music
Food & Drink
Forum / E-Zine
Gaming
General
Gifts & Collectibles
Health
Kids
Legal Site
Mailing List Money & Finance
Music
Other
Podcast / Videocast 
Search Engine
Social Networking
Software
Sports & Leisure
Transportation
Travel
Women

The service has very convenient tools to look for the website that best fits your targets. Interested buyers can look up available sites by searching the database with keywords, site categories, price range and more. Buyers can contact sellers directly if they see a site they are interested in purchasing or obtaining more information about.


On the WebsiteBroker.com you can find websites with different prices. The prices vary from just $30 dollars to half a million and more. For instance as of June 11, 2009 www.needfunitture.com which represents just a domain name costs $30. On the other hand nflbettingsystem.com which is a fully developed website that brings an income of $1,840 per month and has 1,000 page views daily is worth $575,000.

BuySellWebsite.com is a website marketplace that claims to be ranked as number 1 most visited internet destination according to Alexa. The service has been providing appraisals of hundreds of websites in a wide variety of industries for over six years. Unlike WebsiteBroker.com this seller dose not categorize websites per certain subjects.

Prices on the BuySellWesite.com also differ and may range from just sever hundred dollars to more than a million. As of June 11, 2009 the service was selling www.mmaviewer.com which is a one year old website with 40,000 backlinks for just $650. Meantime www.militaryvaloan.com which brings $18,200+ per month on auto pilot was priced at $1,200,000.