Hello from Everywhere!

[TomsAdventure]

Hi all!

Great to find a quality webmastering forum. I've had it with some of the other garbage forums *cough* dp *cough*.

I started my first site in 2006 while I was still a 2nd year in college. Over the next few years, I dabbled with starting different websites, running PPC ads and CPA offers.

I graduated college in 2008 and went to work full time for "the man". I was making 65k/year at my desk job, and about 20k/year from my online business.

Three weeks into my job, I quit to work on my internet business full time. I decided that I had a lot more potential running my own business rather than working for the man and hoping to climb the corporate ladder. Best decision I've ever made.

I spent the next two years buying websites. I bought some at auction, however the bulk of the sites I purchased were never listed for sale. I had a special method to find aged, neglected sites and send offers to the owners directly. Eventually I had over 50 sites.

In February of 2010, I bought an RV to travel the US. I returned in December and flew to Australia in February of 2011 to travel the world. I'm currently in Barcelona.

While traveling, I realized it is tough to manage 50+ sites. Also, my flagship site (the first one I started in 2006) accounts for 75% of my income. I made the decision to sell all sites except for my flagship site. Already sold several on Flippa, have several auctions going on right now, and a handful that will be listed soon. Very exciting stuff.

If anyone has any questions about buying/selling sites, webmastering or online business in general, or traveling/living in an RV or traveling the world, feel free to ask!

[ScottJ]

Welcome to the forum Tom, I have bought quite a few but am fairly particular about buying any sites now that need much maintenance, sounds like quite the adventure & life your living - there something quite attractive about the idea of hitting the open road in RV comfort!

[JJMcClure]

Hi Tom, welcome to the forum

[JockP]

Hey tom. Nice work sounds like fun.

[TomsAdventure]

fairly particular about buying any sites now that need much maintenance

The "no maintenance" thing is somewhat of an illusion. I realized this when several of my "no maintenance" sites were hit with the panda update. Didn't need to do anything, but then all of the sudden people are telling me that I need to add more fresh content to get my rankings back? Way too much to deal with! Also link sales have to be done manually, which can be a headache if you are selling dozens of links for different prices across dozens of sites. I'm excited about getting all these sites off my hands!

[Clinton]

When the seller gives you an estimate for time taken to run a site, always multiple it by at least 5 or 10

If he says it takes 0 hours over the year, he's either a liar or doesn't know what he's talking about. At the very least you need to check occasionally that it's still up (either manually or via a service you've set up to warn you when the site goes down).

[TomsAdventure]

If you are going to purchase a website, you should have a good enough understanding of how the thing works to estimate how much time will be required to run it on your own. The sites I bought from sellers who aren't listing their sites for sale literally put no work into it, and you could tell by looking at the site when I bought it.

[JJMcClure]

all of the sudden people are telling me that I need to add more fresh content to get my rankings back?

Who told you that and did they explain how that might work?

[TomsAdventure]

Nobody told me, but reading online gave me those answers. I can't possibly add take on the task of adding content to all of my 50+ sites. Instead selling everything! Just want to focus on one site.

[JJMcClure]

Nobody told me, but reading online gave me those answers. I can't possibly add take on the task of adding content to all of my 50+ sites. Instead selling everything! Just want to focus on one site.

In that case don't worry about it. What you've read about is probably what's referred to as the 'Fresh content boost' but it doesn't apply to all sites otherwise getting a high ranking would be easy, you'd just keep adding new content. If there's a fresh content boost it's more likely to apply to sites that publish time critical information, like blogs and news sites, and they'll get a fast ranking but they'll lose it equally fast. 'Regular' sites won't benefit from adding new content as an independent ranking signal.