Some tips on finding websites to buy - think out of the box

[Clinton]

There've been threads that the usual marketplaces are filled with dross.

So where do you go to find better sites? To find opportunities that aren't easily packaged up for you and placed in the most obvious places? Let's face it, if you are looking where nobody else is looking you've got an advantage.

Let's start with a widely known but little used exercise of running some "this site for sale" searches through Google that I covered in #3 at this article. Currently that search gives me over 8 million results, far too many to go through. So how about narrowing it down? Perhaps "this site for sale" + "Make money online" to find sites in the make money online niche. Or narrow the site for sale + specific niche down further by country, by date, or those that have a price disclosed (use the wildcard). You are limited only by your creativity and your knowledge of Google Advanced Search.

Now you can repeat that with slightly different search terms. Try replacing "this site for sale" with "this website for sale" or "buy this website". You could combine that with "copyright 2005" to find sites that likely haven't been updated since 2005. You should get something like this, a list of sites being offered for sale on which the copyright notice was last updated a year ago.

Then try other search engines to get completely different results!

But that's all old hat. Today I'm going to talk about a slight variation to that which many may not have struck upon.

Finding blogs for sale.

Blog owners often start off with high hopes and then abandon their blogs when it becomes too much work/doesn't earn enough money/ they've moved on. The easy ones to spot are where the blog owner feels like he's neglected his blog. This is a good search term to find the guilty blog owner who realises that he's not got the time to do the necessary. Go through those and you'll find that many of those bloggers made the resolution to post more often .... years and years ago, and still haven't found the time. A few of those blog owners would be delighted to get rid of their blogs. Many of them may not know of places like Flippa and DP and bizquest. If you drop them a note, it may be like manna from heaven!

What are the search terms you'd use to find blogs or sites for sale? Share your tips.

[petertdavis]

Tell us your best success story of a blog you acquired using this technique Clinton! I typically don't like buying blogs at all, because of the upkeep, but a dying or dead blog seems even more of a ball and chain. How do you turn them around to get past the pain of hiring and managing writers and making enough profits on it to make it all worth while?

[Clinton]

I don't generally buy blogs either. But a blog that has many inlinks, lots of quality content etc., would look attractive to some. Like you are good with forums, some are very good with monetising blogs (though it's not really my style and I would be pathetic at it).

As there's no rule saying you can't strip the content out to make a static site out of it, I have in the past done just that - closed any attached forum down and converted the blog.

[TrustButVerify]

I've been doing some of the above, there is a lot of sifting involved...a LOT! But occasionally something pops up - I've never done a deal like this but I did get into some negotiations.

[Clinton]

True, but there is a lot of sifting in Flippa as well. Fine tuning your techniques and put some automation together does help to cut down the time it takes - kmander is the one who is big time into automation on exactly this type of stuff. Incidentally, I hear on the grapevine that he's leaving his job to become a full time webmaster

[tke71709]

Ummm, I did a search like you suggested and this thread come up in the number one position.

Is this site for sale?

[Clinton]

Show me your screenshot

You're probably seeing the article I pointed to in the first link.

Damn this Google! Must do something to get that out of the top spot!

Now go back and do your sifting just like everybody else!

[benitez17]

Another way to dig up information on sites that could be good buys is to search for "Advertise with us" + keyword. You can find a lot of information about the site's traffic, the demographics of its visitors, and get an idea of the revenue it brings in before you even contact the seller, and if you come across a site that is charging rates below what you can get, it's possible to scoop up some good deals.

[Rover]

I think a good way to get a site is to come up with a bunch of niches you like and then just kind of watch the niches for a while. You will be able to see who is doing well, who could be doing better, and who has abandoned something good. When the sites look abandoned, send out some emails and try and call them. It will take a lot of work, but it can have some great results down the road.

[flipfilter]

I wonder what the practicallity of adopting a property strategy would be.

When the whole same day remortgage / Below Market Value thing kicked off investors we're going crazy trying to find people who we're willing to sell their houses below value so they could buy with no deposit and instant equity. (on that subject, does anyone want to give me £10 for www.bmvpropertyleads.com )

This was in the earlyish days of the web so investors tried everything from email and forum spam through to billboards, direct mail and leaflets. One investor in London used to spend over £8K per week with me on the site and when I asked her how she got so many deals before using our leads, she said it was simply a case of being available through any means possible - newspaper articles, free advice lines, running a 'mortgage debt' drop in centre on Thursdays - even a spot on GMTV at one point!

If someone really went out of their way to put themselves in the spotlight as a buyer of established websites, I'm sure the offers would come to them rather than the other way around. The only problem would be filtering out all the dreamers and unrealistic buyers but I guess it comes with the territory. (and worst case, we could use all the content to make "Crack Smoking Seller of the Day" a regular feature!)

Clinton - maybe it's time to put yourself forward as the "We buy Ugly Houses" / "Cash Converters" of the web