Noob!

[Sn00p]

Hello all,

I am a total noob....was looking to buy my first website but doing some research before I just dive in. Any advice would be welcome, looking for a£5000-10000 investment. But happy of course to spend less. Any one able to break down what sort of profits one should expect - a bit of a wide bearing question I know but rough ball park figures would be good. I have been reading the guides on this site but have not got through all of them. Any advice on where to start, where to look for sites for sale and pit falls/scams to look out for would be most appreciated.

[Magnus]

Welcome Sn00p.

I'm not as experienced as the rest (well, I'm pretty new at buying sites to be honest) - but I have bought a few now.

I watch what comes up for auction on Flippa.

I put websites of interest to me on my watchlist there and keep an eye on them; see what questions are asked, see what they go for, see if they don't sell, see if they are re-listed for a lower price, and so on.

I'm typically watching around 100 at any one time - but only about 10-20% of these are realistic prospects for me. I make sure I watch the auctions that are out of my price-range as well.

I feel I have learnt a lot in terms of what passes for value just by doing this.

Again, welcome to the forum Sn00p.

Magnus

[Sn00p]

Thanks,
Just had a look around on flippa. I noticed it has been mentioned on this site several times, usually not in a very positive light. I can certainly see skill id reqd to look over flippa and pick out the viable investment options. One I hope I can learn myself.
Is there any other broker sites people can recommend??

Is there one where the sites listed are verified by the auction site itself. Thus giving you peace of mind...so if the seller is claiming he makes x a month and has y amount of traffic a month It would be great to just accept what the site stats state next to the advert. Then every one can just check the site and buy what they like the look of. The auction site itself could charge sellers for the ad and buyers can shop with no worries. Surely some one has built this, if not some one build it will you? Ill be your first customer.

[Sn00p]

A bit of background about myself if any one is interested. I graduated in computer science several years ago, experience in web design, c++, c-sharp among others. Anyway after finishing uni I went to work for one of the worlds largest police services. A far cry from IT I know. At that point typing at a desk just seemed a bit useless. Almost a decade on and there is still nothing like the feeling of convicting a burglar or sexual predator. Equally powerful but at the other end of the spectrum is when you see them get released early but thats a whole can of worms, prob not for this forum.

I am now married and just want to stop the night shifts and 12-15 hour shifts a have to complete on a regular basis, my wife is not happy and I really want to spend more time with her and the children. I was thinking about starting an internet business or buying an existing one which led me here.

As above any comments are welcome. would any people that have started like me recommend an area? e-commerce? blogs? etc

Thanks all and I have to say I found this site at lunch on a sat afternoon, its now 1630 local time and Im still here. Great site so far and great forums. Thank you

[crabfoot]

Congratulations! The first bobby I ever met who can type his reports with more than two fingers ...

Wherever you buy a site from, you need to complete due diligence (DD) checks for yourself before you buy - there's plenty of info around here on the subject.

Flippa is a good place to look for a site that can be improved, but you will have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your princess.

It can be a good idea to start by throwing a site together from nothing, then learn how to drive traffic to it and monetise it. The lessons learned from doing this will be invaluable when you pay out good money for a site you intend to improve.

The big caveat is not to try building on a newly registered domain until you know how to overcome the "sandbox effect" (search for it, you're learning) - buy a used domain, or register something that has recently dropped.

Clinton's opinion about help in buying a site -
http://experienced-people.net/forums...-Due-Diligence

[crabfoot]

This recent Flippa blog post by two EP members will also be useful -
http://flippa.com/blog/guest-post-7-...ing-a-website/

[Clinton]

Thanks all and I have to say I found this site at lunch on a sat afternoon, its now 1630 local time and Im still here. Great site so far and great forums. Thank you

And that's before you've made enough posts to qualify for the VIP Lounge

Anyway, welcome to experienced-people.net

[Sn00p]

So having looked around I dont want to buy a site but make one myself. Got an idea and there does not seem to be a dedicated site to what I want to put up, it is a little niche though... I played around with dreamweaver and have a crude prototype going.

Wanted some options for cms...I tried wordpress - don't really like the feel of it...seems too blog orientated and I feel there is a learning curve involved with little power at the end..am I wrong? should I have another look?
Now having a play with joomla but what is the easiest cms about? and I really wonder if their is one which can make a site that I can then take and mess about with in a html editor. Anyone tried cmsms? the demo looks so intuitive its almost unreal.

[hooperman]

Now having a play with joomla but what is the easiest cms about?

I've got a couple of sites on joomla, and I don't like it at all! I wish I'd used Wordpress for it like I did on most of my other sites. There is a small learning curve with WP, but once you're familiar with it you'll find it very quick and easy to use. It needn't look like a blog either. On some of my WP sites, I don't display "archives" or "recent posts" as they are too tied in to the chronology of posts. There are plugins you can use that allow you to display links to all/any posts you want. You can hide all the author/posted date meta data gubbins too (and disallow comments).

The biggest downside for me is the time it takes to update sites when a new WP version is released.

[hooperman]

I've got a couple of sites on joomla, and I don't like it at all!

A few reasons for this: you have to mess around with plugins to display Adsense whereas you can just insert the code directly into WP posts, the HTML editor opens a new window (picky, I know), the image uploader feels a bit primitive next to WP's, and it just feels more complicated than WP in general.