What do you look for when buying a website

**Clinton** · October 27th, 2010, 2:54 PM

I will have to keep trying after about 100 no responses I sort of wondered if I was doing it wrong

I once was trying to buy a neglected site whose owner lived in Korea. I kept calling and kept getting this woman who couldn't speak English. In the end I hired a Korean speaker to make the phone call. It turned out that it was her son's site and he had died. Eventually, through using the interpreter, I made her a fair offer and completed the purchase. I spent several hundred for the interpreter and all the phone calls.

You have to think out of the box sometimes

**Kay** · October 27th, 2010, 3:52 PM

That's an interesting story, Clinton. It reminds me again of how important it can be to have a Will in place for your internet real estate. (I keep talking about it but haven't done it yet). I would hate for my domains and sites to lapse. Much better to leave the passwords and access info to someone to deal with them all and divvy them up between friends.

**ian** · November 4th, 2010, 5:11 PM

Originally Posted by ScottJ

Yeah I have come across quite a few and bought them like physicalgeography.net, animalinfo.org - old info sites built over 10 years and then left to gather links and be referenced.

How do you find these kind of sites, Scott? Are they just turning up as you research keywords or do you have a good method for finding old info sites?

**ScottJ** · November 5th, 2010, 5:14 AM

I've been known to download lists of top sites and literally click through 1000's of homepages looking for gems/sites of interest, you can usually tell within a second if it's polished/active or warrants more investigation

**ian** · November 5th, 2010, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by ScottJ

I've been known to download lists of top sites and literally click through 1000's of homepages looking for gems/sites of interest, you can usually tell within a second if it's polished/active or warrants more investigation

Any chance you'll share where you find these lists? Just read your latest blog post and that free animations site was an absolute beauty of a find. A couple of them and I could quit my boring sales job for good.

**ScottJ** · November 5th, 2010, 1:26 PM

PM sent Ian.

**BritishARMY** · November 5th, 2010, 2:18 PM

Originally Posted by ScottJ

PM sent Ian.

Hey Scott.

I know that with free-animations you picked up the domain as it dropped/was dropping and got the old content back, but do you also look for older sites and purchase them, and then add adsense? I think I saw you owned nineplanets... I think that was you. I spent a few days looking into this but to no avail.

**delta4** · November 5th, 2010, 2:23 PM

I think Scott should write a ebook

Because i would also like to know more about finding this type of sites.

**ScottJ** · November 5th, 2010, 2:54 PM

Originally Posted by BritishARMY

Hey Scott.

I know that with free-animations you picked up the domain as it dropped/was dropping and got the old content back, but do you also look for older sites and purchase them, and then add adsense? I think I saw you owned nineplanets... I think that was you. I spent a few days looking into this but to no avail.

Yes I look for old sites, there are lots of sites that people have built for the love of the subject over a decade that I could never dream of emulating, some are monetised, many not, some are def. not for sale and some can be negotiated. NinePlanets is a recent purchase much higher than I have ever bought a site for before, it's one of those that the owner did not want to give any figures on and I had to do my own calculations/guestimate. CeramicsToday.com is another recent one and there are some others listed on the websites page on my site. I am sure there are hundreds of sites that get over 1000 visitors per day that are neglected or forgotten about, I still work on the theory that if I get paid back in 3 years I am happy but I always go after rock steady info sites that are not listed for sale.

The results of getting a site cheap or that performs well are nice and make nice stories but the reality is I sometimes chuck a film on one of my desktop screens and on the other click/research for an hour or two sending letters & emails with little/no reply so you need to have the patience keep going.

A handy site I use for sending real letters if needed is https://www.pixelletter.de/en/
I guess it's just me being lazy but when I am researching I want to email/send a letter and keep moving on to the next one. Have sent letter to Alaska & Auz through them and have bought quite a few domains & sites because of snail mail.