Can you teach someone to be good at DD?

**Clinton** · February 15th, 2011, 10:12 AM

After writing tons on the subject, doing numerous DD jobs, discussing DD on forums etc., I must admit I think that there's no substitute for knowledge, an instinctive skill for digging and a suspicious mind.

I was casually looking up this auction in Flippa for investingminds.com. The PR looked good, the site is not pretty but it's got a lot happening. It's not monetised (good) because a) I can monetise it and the subject matter attracts high paying ads from Forex, trading platforms etc. and b) the site will be cheaper due to lack of prior monetising. Even the backlinks looked good.

Then I did a backlink search using a different tool that lists anchor text and discovered that there was a long list of keywords all with exactly seven links each - something I missed with the previous IBL check because of the way the results were organised. When IBLs are presented differently, this anomaly just jumps out at you. Some anchor texts that have exactly seven links each:
no credit card porn movie
approval card credit instant student
payday loan no faxing required
colorado debt consolidation loan
etc

So I had to see what these seven pages were, who owned them etc.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I couldn't find the links on the first page I visited. Of course you then look in the source and I found

<u style='display:none'> Newsletter: <a href="http://www. investingminds.com/a/credit/Amex-apply-card-credit.html">Amex apply card credit</a> <a href="http://www. investingminds.com/a/debt/Debt-consolidation-utah.html">Debt consolidation utah</a> <a href="http://www. investingminds.com/a/credit/Credit-score-ranking.html">Credit score ranking</a> <a href="http://www. investingminds.com/a/credit/Canada-card-company-credit.html"> etc.

Display=None; hidden links?!

It does not completely invalidate the site being sold, but it does give a cause for concern. It also gives one a lead to dig out some more unpleasant surprises and use that in negotiations.

How can you actually teach someone to find stuff like this? Can you teach someone to be good at DD?

**hooperman** · February 15th, 2011, 10:24 AM

I think you can give people a starting point but for it to become second nature you have to do it time and again. I'm not even sure you can give a definitive list of DD checks that someone can learn. It's more that you follow exhaustively every lead you've got. Every time you dig up a new piece of info, you record it for future exploration.

I'm sure it helps if you've got the right kind of mindset. I tend to start out from a position of suspicion and work from there.

It also helps if you enjoy the research and analysis and are not just doing it as a means to an end. I mean, I do like to find the odd gem at the end of the investigation, but the investigation itself can be interesting (and educating too).

**Andy** · February 15th, 2011, 11:49 AM

You question kind of reminds me of the story of the basketball coach and the recruit.

"You know I don't dribble all that well..."
"That's okay."
"I'm not really a great shot"
"Not a problem"
"I'm not all that good an defense either"
"I don't really care about that. Look, I can teach you all those things - what I can't teach you is how to be 7'7" inches tall!"

Can you teach DD? Sure. Some will be better at it than others. What you can't teach is instinct.

Andy

**grynge** · February 15th, 2011, 06:17 PM

My biggest tip would be

Don't do DD after you have had a couple of drinks

The rest I think comes from time and patience and reading a lot. Starting off small so the stings are hard to feel is also a great way. Losing $300 to a bad choice/scam/not good enough DD is much easier to come back from than losing $300,000 to a similar bad situation.

One of my earlier site purchases was on sitepoint for a game site, I asked all the right questions and was told all the right answers. I was actually looking at a much more expensive game site, but thought why not test the market first with a cheap one just so I can see what I would be in for. I think it cost me around $120 but the script ended up being a nulled version even though the scammer said it was a sourceforge script lesson 1 should have viewed the code more thoroughly. It cost me another $200 to make the site legit. It took another 4 years and I did turn a small profit but I just waited until I had made enough from adverts to pay for all the fixing I had to do and then once the site was in profit I sold it. But it did teach me a lot about the game site world and had I invested in the bigger site (some $45,000) it may have taken me a long long time to get my investment back.

**Kay** · February 15th, 2011, 11:46 PM

The key thing is experience. You need knowledge, instinct and a suspicious mind. But without experience, then you're just a newbie. When you have experience under your belt, then you develop an eye for it and can more easily spot any dirty tricks.

I don't know anything about doing DD. This is just my opinion based on other aspects of doing business online.