Feedback On These Sites Please

[Wheels]

Hi everyone I am relatively new to IM and website flipping, buying and selling and have spent the last few weeks reading as much about DD, buying and selling websites and webpages and also many threads from this website as one can reasonably do in order to understand it. I recently saw these on Flippa;

a) https://flippa.com/2672694-establish...#comment580408
b) https://flippa.com/2672090-pr2-niche...-last-3-months
c) https://flippa.com/2673368-made-6000...#comment580770
d) https://flippa.com/2662220-premium-o...n-2-1-2-months


And was wondering what others more experienced than myself thought of it. I would really appreciate your feedback about these sales/sites and aside from the points I have raised, also any other thoughts, concerns or other you may have about the sites. Here are my thoughts…

As far as “A” is concerned; I like the idea of an SEO website and can see the market for it, but “A” seems very reliant upon the outsourced SEO services and put simply I don't know how sustainable the income will be for a website that contains text written the way it is (grammar and English is not the best, but perhaps acceptable depending on client’s main originating country) and in what seems to be a crowded market of other (truly professional looking) websites and businesses offering SEO services. Also, they don’t have prices listed for all their services on their websites, but provided these via PM. I asked some questions about how the business worked in terms of how manual the transaction aspects were (as they handle that off-website), how enquiries were handled (no costs detailed for staff to do this) and just generally tried to get a feel for the business and my comment was deleted with the reason being I shouldn’t ask service/business question non-privately. To the seller’s credit he has given me some answers via PM to those questions, but because there seems to be so many other truly established SEO businesses out there, I am not really experienced in website assessment, and the seller’s business model seems very reliant upon other website/owners just emailing them with enquiries via the “contact us” forms, and from there (in email) the entire transaction is negotiated with payment made via paypal; which occurs I am told after the service is defined and before it’s delivered. To me, I don’t know whether SEO is that popular that amongst all the well established competition someone would email in a request based on that website, receive the quote via email (rather than selecting a package on the website), not be too concerned about the business having no one to directly talk to, and proceed to pay for SEO services in that manner. They’re claiming ~$4K/month, been established for just over a years and are apparently offering a guarantee that if SERP doesn’t improve their clients get their money back.

The facebook marketing website “B” is an interesting concept to me, but I am unsure about the licensing issues with the domain name and why the website is for sale, particularly when it seems to be generating such a good profit. The domain name is registered after the site according to Flippa, so there’s a warning there. Interested to hear what those more experienced than myself have to say about this and the concept.

As far as “C” is concerned that auction has finished but I would like to get feedback on the concept and what people thought. Did it look dodgy, too good to be true or OK, and why.

With respect to “D” this business was in Flippa’s latest premium mail out. I note the seller has done a similar thing before and wanted to get feedback on the latest (sold) listing in general. Doe the business model sound interesting? Is The monthly revenue $7.5K seems quite reasonable for a $12K cost. Still the risks are that the seller hasn’t had the website for very long and (amongst other things) the business model seems quite reliant upon others to provide the services.

I’m really interested in understanding what those with experience have to say about the websites and also my insight (or lack of it) and as such would really appreciate your feedback and opinions.

Cheers,

Steve.

[delta4]

I can´t comment too much because these type of sites are not the sites I like. But with respect to your comment on D listing to me it's too good: it would take only one month and a half to recover your investment? Something is wrong with that in my opinion.

[benitez17]

I generally stay away from SEO/social marketing sites, especially newer ones. Every one I have ever looked into seemed to be a fly by night operation, so I just gave up on the entire niche.

I think the fact that listing C sold for about 3 weeks profit and listing D sold for about 6 weeks profit tells you all you need to know about the quality of these types of businesses.

[Wheels]

Thanks for your inputs.

Benitez: Thanks for your comments: I also had the feeling a lot of "SEO opportunities" were a little too sensational for a little (not) too long. But "A" got past my filters in that respect due to its 1 year history. They seem prepared to allow a remote viewing session for the accounts, although I am not up on how easy it is to cover that off if things aren't genuine either.

Is SEO really that hard that people will pay $600/month for it? I mean, I know it's important from a traffic revenue perspective, but all the more reason to ensure you know who you're dealing with I would have thought. Plus, isn't there software out there that allows you to bring SEO in house, and control it? Anyway, they're saying that the money back guarantee of an improvement is what brings clients in (and assumedly allows them to overcome their fear of this).

Delta4: Thanks for your comments: the quick payback is also an eyebrow raiser for me too. To state the obvious, if the person that knows the business well enough to tell you its a big earner sells it as if its not. . . . hmmm.

What did you guys think about the FBcreation opportunity being sold by the guy whose daughter had a car accident (which accounted for the dip in revenue)

[KenW3]

Is SEO really that hard that people will pay $600/month for it? I mean, I know it's important from a traffic revenue perspective, but all the more reason to ensure you know who you're dealing with I would have thought. Plus, isn't there software out there that allows you to bring SEO in house, and control it? Anyway, they're saying that the money back guarantee of an improvement is what brings clients in (and assumedly allows them to overcome their fear of this).

Businesses pay more that $600 for SEO services, but not to sites with services like this. There is demand for SEO services, but specific results are difficult. In answer to your question about software to bring SEO in-house: No, this software does not and cannot exist. If it did, everybody would be buying it, which would make it useless. For SEO, what works today may not work tomorrow. Some of the keywords site A ranks for shows the seller does not understand proper SEO, as he is ranking for use of BH software.

The C site may have been SEO-related, but this was more of a one-time sale of a digital product video course. The best time to sell a digital product sales page site is after you have done a media blitz and a mailing to your list (or JV lists), as new products create interest. Having 28 of the 44 claimed sales in 6 days is a warning to me. I would feel somewhat better with $6600 from a digital product site spread evenly over a year rather than that amount in the stated 38 days.

Site C Claimed Traffic is described as estimates of what this site should receive after a month of operation under Traffic Details. There are grammar issues, and sales text that was copied from another listing, without editing the posted new listing properly. The seller picture is unprofessional. The Buy-It-Now bonuses tell me to look elsewhere.

[Wheels]

Hi KenW3,

Thanks for your comments. The SW I was thinking about SW was something like SEOmoz when I made that comment. Perhaps I have its functionality wrong. Thanks also for your inside info on the digital course - option "B". I thought something may have been amiss there.

What do you make of the facebook social marketing sale and also the concept?

[KenW3]

Steve, Why are you looking at buying this particular grouping of sites? Are you interested in building sites or Facebook pages for people? Do you have skills in that area? Are you familiar enough with SEO to offer services?

I did not look at the FaceBook sale, as that's just a UDRP filing waiting to happen.

[Clinton]

What did you guys think about the FBcreation opportunity being sold by the guy whose daughter had a car accident (which accounted for the dip in revenue)

Never, ever, ever believe the reasons sellers provide for selling. Even if there is some fact in the circumstances - he might be able to prove his daughter had a car accident - ignore it.

In other threads we've spoken about opinion vs fact. Buying a business is a business decision. You decide based on the facts you can get together. Everything else is an unknown - consider it false, misleading, scammy or unhelpful. Separate it. Then throw it away.

It's often difficult to tell the difference between opinion and fact and this is where new buyers are most prone to making mistakes.

The reason provided for the sale is ....opinion.

Another point we've covered often here is short history. It's easy to fake a profitable business in the short term. You can hide that you're paying for traffic. You could avoid disclosing that you spend 40 hours a week to drum up that traffic that makes you $500 a month or that the traffic was reliant on your own contacts, links from your other sites, promotion to your social network and friends etc. When you're buying a "business" that has a short history, buy it not for the claimed profitability but because of the value you see in the domain name, the intellectual property (script/ebook/whatever) or some other asset. But. Not. The. Cashflow.

[Wheels]

Hi Guys

KenW3: I am just new to the game and thought those sites sounded to good to be true and that they would make a good learning curve for me; particularly if I could get feedback from knowledgeable guys like yourselves (no pun intended). I was a long way from parting with my cash on the FB sale, but the concept is interesting because the FB phenomena is - if you know what I mean.. I have quite a varied background and probably could build a website that provided those services if I wanted. Does SEOmoz provide the functionality I thought? Or did I have that wrong? Oh also, what's UDRP stand for?

Clinton: Thanks for your points for my other post and comments here. I didn't believe him and rarely believe what I am told by most sellers of anything. I am aware it's easy to fake business details and appreciate yours and KenW3's time and concern (no sarcasm intended). No one honest wants others to get ripped off and I can "hear" and appreciate the sincere concern in your responses; if I was to buy those sites.

I just wanted to test (with those examples) how well my current spider sense was working in this fraternity so to speak. As whilst I have a lot of my own experience in related fields, I also know I don't know much about buying/selling websites. So I thought a good way to learn would be to use those websites as test cases so to speak. As I was pretty sure they would uncover, at least in the 2nd or 3rd round of threads, whether my suspicions were right or wrong.

Clinton: Today I read about 45 separate threads in your forum. Thanks for recommending me to join the other day via email (do you remember?) it has been most helpful?

[KenW3]

Those couple of questions were an attempt at trying to find an ulterior motive as to why you might be looking at these particular sites They were all based around similar products with no longevity as a business. Often something thrown together and offered for sale, with only a couple months of operation or revenue history, is a site built for a quick flip. I thought you might be looking at development of something similar, rather than a purchase, especially when you asked about the concepts behind the sites.

The SEOmoz product is a subscription for education, not software. Yes, there are links to software applications, but these are to analyze results and track progress, not as a single solution for taking care of SERP ranking. Kay has a useful thread from last week titled Google Guide to SEO and this also has some useful SEOmoz links.

Here is a Wikipedia link to UDRP that has a brief overview of the process a trademark owner follows to force people to stop using their name. There are ICANN archives of very interesting cases that cover everything. WIPO.int has useful information to review on IP issues for businesses.