Why Didn't My Site Sell?

[lauren]

Recently, I put up a client's site for sale on Flippa.com. We received one bid for $100, had 2 users watching the listing, and 85 users view the listing.

My experience with buying/selling sites is quite limited; I've purchased one site, worked on improving it and then tried to sell it but was unsuccessful.

After Googling quite a bit, I was unable to find any good articles or posts on why a site might not sell, which isn't all that surprising since it's pretty subjective.

Of course, I have a couple theories as to why it did not sell, but it's all just novice speculation. I'd really love someone more experienced with selling sites to provide some expert speculation.

Any insight someone can provide would be really appreciated. Let me know if you need more information.

https://flippa.com/2641875-establish...trendsblog-com

Thanks!

Lauren

[Clinton]

Hi Lauren, and welcome to experienced-people.net

I'll have a look at that listing in a second, Lauren, and address your questions. First, may I ask what motivated you to start selling sites on behalf of clients? Flippa is not normally somewhere developers go to assist clients.

Was it a particular site-flipping book that you read? How did you end up on Flippa?

[lauren]

Great, thanks!

I forget how I originally came across the idea of buying/selling sites. It was about a little over a year ago, I think. It sounded like a lot of fun to me and I'm a web developer/designer and know a bit about SEO, so it seemed like a good way to make some extra money. Specifically, I remember reading a lot of the articles on Prosperly.com.

As far as selling sites on behalf of clients...that isn't something I specifically sought out. One of my web dev clients wanted to do away with the site in question since they had not maintained it for quite some time and had decided to focus on another venture. Knowing about selling, and feeling like the site had potential, I offered up to sell it for them.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions!

I didn't read any site-flipping books. I cannot quite remember how I ended up on Flippa but it probably had to do with the fact that I've been a long-time follower (over 8 years) of Sitepoint. I do remember researching the best site for buying/selling and deciding on Flippa---that was over a year ago so I cannot remember how I came to that conclusion, but I do remember researching it.

I'm not actually sure what you mean by "Flippa is not normally somewhere developers go to assist clients."

[grynge]

What sort of price were you and/or your client expecting.

I am not trying to detract from the auction, I am just saying what I found with a quick glance and giving you my personal reasons for not purchasing the site.

To be honest with no traffic and no revenue (500 uniques a year and $14 for 2 years is what I call no traffic and no revenue)

I actually think $100 is way over priced. It would cost me around $50 to set that site up.
The images were borrowed from other sites. While I couldn't find any totally duplicate content a lot of the paragraphs seemed to have a lot in common with a lot of other sites.

[Slowdive]

Hello Lauren, welcome to the forums.
Unfortunately I am not going to be able share great news about the site though.
Basically its a site with no income, very little traffic, hooked up on WP. With only 53 inbound links. The domain name itself is not undesirable, however I could register oiltrends+word easily enough plenty of options left.

If we assume the average price for a site like this is earnings x12 then assuming it earned at $14 then $168 would be realistic. However with the low traffic and somewhat generic domain, it was always likely any buyer was going to offer low. I suspect they might have seen part of that value in the aged domain as well.

So really you have two options, explore ways to drive some real traffic at the site and encourage some serious back linking, if you feel the sites potential is worth your time. Option two except that $100 was probably a fair market offer on flippa when considering the site.
You could always put a banner up that the site is for sale on the site itself, if your patient enough some one who has a portfolio of similar sites may appear and offer slightly higher.

I am far from an expert but I would be surprised, all be it glad for you, but surprised if their assessment varies much from mine.

[Clinton]

Thanks for your reply, Lauren. I'll let you into a big secret ... in fact, I may do a blog post about this at some point.

Contrary to the impression Flippa likes to give, Flippa.com is not a place to sell websites. The average buyer at Flippa isn't there to buy a website!

I know, I know, that seems contrary to what you believe and it's likely contrary to what most Flippa sellers believe, but bear with me here.

Apart from a few misguided newbies, almost nobody goes to Flippa to buy sites - they go there to buy businesses. They go there to buy revenue streams, income generating assets, profitable businesses, however you want to put it. The braver ones will stick their necks out and buy a website that's not yet making a profit but they do it if they see some asset that they can easily extract profit from. Perhaps the site is a very old site with extensive quality content, a lot of incoming links, a large subscriber base, rights to programming scripts etc., ... assets beyond the design and coding, assets that can be monetised. And they'll buy a site like that only if they see an easy route to profit (but will bid low because they appreciate they're still taking a big chance. 99% of such sites never make enough profit to cover the time and money spent on them)

They are not looking to buy websites. It's just that the businesses they want to buy happen to have a website or two as an integral part of the operation.

Too many people have an incentive to encourage the general public to think that Flippa is a place for selling websites. Flippa themselves, other sellers, so called siteflippers and sellers of siteflipping products. Fight that propaganda.

I liked your listing - clean, honest, no hype. But buyers looking for a business don't seem to share your opinion that the site would be easy to promote with a bit of SEO to make more money from Adsense. You've got a nice site. They're looking for a business.

I like slowdive's suggestions. Have you considered developing the traffic yourself? Perhaps you could offer the owner $10 over and above the max bid in Flippa if you see value in the site that others can't see.

[lauren]

What sort of price were you and/or your client expecting.

I am not trying to detract from the auction, I am just saying what I found with a quick glance and giving you my personal reasons for not purchasing the site.

To be honest with no traffic and no revenue (500 uniques a year and $14 for 2 years is what I call no traffic and no revenue)

I actually think $100 is way over priced. It would cost me around $50 to set that site up.
The images were borrowed from other sites. While I couldn't find any totally duplicate content a lot of the paragraphs seemed to have a lot in common with a lot of other sites.

Thank you for your input!

We had no idea what to expect. Of course, one always hopes their site will sell for a great price! Obviously, my expectations were unrealistic but not having much experience with selling, I'm not all that surprised.

How did you determine that "a lot of the paragraphs seemed to have a lot in common with a lot of other sites" and "images were borrowed from other sites"? That's surprising to me and I would hope that was not the case. However, since I didn't write the content, I guess it's possible. But, I'd like to know how you came to that conclusion.

[lauren]

Thank you for the insight Slowdive. It's definitely helpful. Especially the "earnings x12". Interesting. I felt that there was value in the content being unique and valuable (not just generic stuff churned out like a lot of the sites I've seen for sale) and niche (at least, I think so, I could be wrong).

Since this isn't actually my site, and I know nothing about oil trends, I'd have to convince my client to keep it around and to devote the time to it---I don't think they're willing to do that. Since I'm a web developer and know only a bit about SEO, I figured that the first option you recommended was what someone good SEO knowledge would see as the potential for buying.

Great suggestion about putting up a banner! I may do that while we wait for some time to pass before re-listing, if we even decide to.

Thank you for taking the time to provide an assessment. I really appreciate it.

[lauren]

Clinton, wow! Thank you. I had no idea.

Now that I see you suggesting the same thing as slowdive, I may consider it; maybe even just as a way to improve my SEO skills. However, since I know nothing about oil trends, I wouldn't be able to create any fresh, new content. Do you ever purchase or create sites in a niche you don't know much about?

I have another question, if you don't mind...as I mentioned in the listing Description, this blog was created originally as a way to enhance their petroleum consulting company. So, if Flippa is about buying businesses and my client actually wants to sell their consulting company, which I think they do, then would it be beneficial to re-list and include the sale of the actual business, business site and blog?

Thank you SO much for the valuable information. May I also ask what site you recommend for selling just websites?

Oh, and +1 on doing the blog post

[grynge]

Thank you for your input!

We had no idea what to expect. Of course, one always hopes their site will sell for a great price! Obviously, my expectations were unrealistic but not having much experience with selling, I'm not all that surprised.

How did you determine that "a lot of the paragraphs seemed to have a lot in common with a lot of other sites" and "images were borrowed from other sites"? That's surprising to me and I would hope that was not the case. However, since I didn't write the content, I guess it's possible. But, I'd like to know how you came to that conclusion.

One of the images comes from

http://kenhoma.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/numbers-us-oil-refinery-operations/

Another from

http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/peak-oil/peak-oil-202/

which is a copy from another membership site.
That's just the first 2 I saw on the site.

I have coded a bot that searches for snippets of text and similarities of content.

I think what Clinton has said is correct, people on flippa aren't looking for a website they are looking for new streams of income.