Want to buy (or start) a website

[NoBenefits]

Hi all,

I just got laid off, and I'm really over working for the man. Basically, I used to work in mergers and acquisitions for mid market companies for a brief period, and a more significant potion of my experience is in a specialised economics area working for Big 4 accounting firms. So my specialty I guess you could say is certainly in finance.

Anyway, Ive tried over the years while working to get websites going of my own but failed. Ive searched over flippa for years almost everyday, and other marketplaces for sites over the years (cheap sites obviously), but never can find anything as my due diligence always seems to point to something off, or Ive just been too scared to take the risk on many of them.

So can anyone help me here in finding a site, or suggest a type of site I could start up on my own that could make a really solid income?

Thanks

[Kay]

If you want to buy a website which will be a good investment for you, perhaps you could cast your net wider than looking on Flippa and on the other obvious places. You might be better off looking around and contacting owners direct. It takes more time to find these, of course, but at least you're not wading through the junk to find what you're looking for.

So can anyone help me here in finding a site, or suggest a type of site I could start up on my own that could make a really solid income?

If anyone did that you'd have a million competitors tomorrow. People who are successful at making a living online don't run around shouting about it. It's only Internet Marketers who do that - and try to sell you their recipe for success with their proven system.

[NoBenefits]

Thanks, I guess I should say them maybe on suggestions for startup site ideas?

Is providing accounting or tax services to web based businesses something that people would want, or there are plenty of great automated services out there? Or other cheap alternatives?

[KenW3]

I just got laid off, and I'm really over working for the man.

Spoken like a true employee As a successful business owner, there won't be a single man (or woman), you will get to have hundreds of bosses (or more) who can tell you what to do, that will fire you if you don't please them.

There is only one way to make money in business: Sell something. It can either be a product or a service, but all companies make money by selling something. Extrapolated further, you can either sell your own something or you can sell somebody else's something. This is what every business does, on or off the web. This is what every employee does directly or indirectly, providing infrastructure to make sales.

What do you like to do? Mind you, this is a trick question because anything you know and like as an avocation quickly fades as an interest when you're forced to do it 60 hours+ a week to pay the bills. A better question may be: What do you know well enough to help businesses compete, and to make sales for either yourself or other companies?

The better you are at helping people with your specialty, the more opportunities you will have for a variety of compensation. You don't always need a website to help others. People willing to work and help others make money will create income for themselves. Those looking for a way to build websites that make the money for them, so they don't need to work, are the people who are sucked into scams and waste money learning how to fail.

Is providing accounting or tax services to web based businesses something that people would want, or there are plenty of great automated services out there?

Why would you limit yourself to services for web businesses alone?

This is research you would be responsible for, as your knowledge of these would play into your ability to help others. If there are great services and you can consult, select the good ones you find that will pay you for leads and sales. If you provide the accounting or tax services yourself and are good at what you do, then you too can eventually have hundreds of bosses paying you money to provide work and information that assists them with their sales of products and services.

[NoBenefits]

Thank you for the response Ken. Yes, I realise owning a business is like that, and I am more than happy to put in the hours when it is for myself. As I said I've tried things before myself and whiled away so many hours with no problem (as opposed to working for a traditional boss), infact I've been prepared to do even more if only for the girlfriends complaints.

The reason I really want something more web based is because I want the freedom of movement, do be able to work from any country. Ideally, I want the lifestyle where I can spend several months in a few countries a year (I know some will say I cant do this due to family etc, but for my situation it would be perfectly fine).

Thank you for the advice so far all. This forum is fantastic in that you receive measured quality responses and little derision.

[crabfoot]

Reading what you have written, I would guess that your attempts to put sites together foundered for one or two reasons -

You lack site-building skills, and you lack the ability to drive traffic to a site (which is often referred to as SEO). SEO is supposed to refer to Search Engine Optimization, but I prefer to use that phrase for the factors in site structure which make a site friendly to search engine spiders.

If you were to buy a worthwhile site, you would be in danger of allowing it to dwindle while you are learning those skills.

I will send you a PM outlining how to get started with some aspects of social marketing, and Empire Avenue - most of that info is available in the Premium Lounge.

You don't know where to start with site ideas? I would suggest you start a finance blog on wordpress. com - but first of all, go to GoDaddy Auctions and buy a used domain with a suitable name. look for a com, net, org or info, at least 7 years old, costing $20 or less, and remember that the bill will be higher when you come to pay for the domain because you have to pay about $16 for a "used domain package" as well. Old domains work better than new ones, don't ask why, they just do!


You will not be able to use the domain immediately, you will have to wait a few days for it to drop - but now you have a domain, you can use the handle as a user name on wordpress. If the domain is financier .com, you use financier as your wordpress username and the blog is called financier.wordpress .com .

Now you can join wordpress and start blogging. When the domain is released to you, you redirect it to point at the blog. You need to write to get into the habit of writing, but because this is a blog you can write about anything you like - not just finance.

You use the domain as your target when you start out driving traffic to your blog. Ultimately, you hope to extract the best posts from the blog and build them up into a website with 50+ pages. You leave behind all the bloggy stuff like holiday snaps and how the beer you drank last night gave you an embarrassing wind problem.

And you can leave that blog behind, because you have created an interesting website on an established domain. Time to apply for an Adsense account, you have a site to support your application ...

[Clinton]

Great post, crabfoot. I'd just like to add one thing.

You lack site-building skills, and you lack the ability to drive traffic to a site (which is often referred to as SEO).

SEs aren't the only senders of traffic.

[NoBenefits]

You've hit the nail on the head. My inability to drive traffic has been my greatest issue.
Is there any low cost, yet effective way to get someone to help me with this? Im working on a new venture now and in my mind anyway it has potential, but again its the chicken and the egg scenario. Its very community/collaboration based, so it needs the audience using it to attract the audience.

[NoBenefits]

Actually thought I'd ask another question here from some experienced old hands (I use the term old not in age!) related to my new project Im working on.

Quite simply I could focus on several sub niches and I am not so sure how to assess which one has the best market opportunity and is more likely to bring in a viable return. The sub niches in this case are Penny Stocks, Equity Crowd Funding, or potentially a specific stock market (for example Australian Stocks).

So I am try to work out what's the best way to assess which market has the best opportunity, as in largest numbe rof participants, is easierly accessible to find users and more likely to have users who are willing to pay for services.

A tough question and perhaps too vague, but giving it a shot to see if anyone knows the way I can best assess this.

[Kay]

You've hit the nail on the head. My inability to drive traffic has been my greatest issue.
Is there any low cost, yet effective way to get someone to help me with this? Im working on a new venture now and in my mind anyway it has potential, but again its the chicken and the egg scenario. Its very community/collaboration based, so it needs the audience using it to attract the audience.

We have a great thread about driving traffic here:
http://experienced-people.net/forums...etting-traffic

As for getting help, anyone who is any good would probably be expensive. There are some MMO products in the market which teach people systems to drive traffic. I've tried a few. Mostly they consist of recipes to follow and step by step plans for what to do. And what they're suggesting usually takes quite a lot of time and effort. It's unlikely they'll tell you anything which isn't already in the thread I linked to above. You will have to put in the hours to do it. Either that, or you can outsource the grunt work. But to outsource effectively you will first need to learn for yourself how to do it so you can instruct the outsourcer and monitor their performance (and managing other people takes time too). Probably the quickest way to get traffic is by paying for it, either AdWords or similar or buying links/adverts on high traffic sites.

I don't think there's an easy way to do it that doesn't cost a lot in terms of time or money.

Communities are notoriously difficult to build from scratch. You'll need to muster all your friends to help, invent multiple personalities for yourself, and probably have to pay some people to post at the start. I don't envy you the task. Actually, I tried and failed a few years ago with a food-related forum. I thought I could do it because I have plenty of online contacts who are interested in the subject, plus there were other factors in my favour, experience of running forums, an established food blog, etc. But, sad to say, it was a failed venture. It never reached critical mass, even though I did all these things. If you go for it, I hope you have better luck than I did.

Actually thought I'd ask another question here from some experienced old hands (I use the term old not in age!) related to my new project Im working on.

LOL. Some of us are old.

Maybe you should try to break it all down into manageable chunks and create discussions on each of them. Eg, one about how to assess market demand, another about what type of premium content people will pay for. I'm pretty sure we already have threads about these already but you'll need to dig for them.

Good luck and keep asking questions.