How to Buy a Website with Chris Guthrie

[ChrisGuthrie]

I notice Chris hasn't replied to my previous post particularly on whether he's generous with pointing his readers to good sources of free information (most MMO merchants don't as that reduces the avenues of selling them associated products via affiliate links .... and there's nothing wrong with that ).

Anyway, Chris has a new tool out call Site Finder Pro

There is the usual WSO thread etc., with the typical claims you'd expect in a WSO, but is the tool something members here would find useful?

It looks to me like this tool is essentially combining the information from the Flippa API with the kind of information you can find for free using the tools I mentioned in this post. Is that pretty much what it is? (I haven't tried it out)

Hey Clinton,

When people ask for forums specifically about buying and selling websites I send them here. I don't know why you get the sense that I'm out to only make money and provide as little help as possible to everyone. I want people to succeed and all of the software tools I've built are as a result of something I'm annoyed with. i.e. I've made tens of thousands of dollars as an Amazon affiliate and roughly a year ago I was fed up with how slow it was to create affiliate links in Amazon so I commissioned a local Wordpress developer to create a plugin to help make this process faster and the end result was: EasyAzon.com

Then because I value my time and money invested at greater than $0 per hour I charged for it and now after several iterations and free upgrades for customers we're sitting at v2.0.4 of EasyAzon.

Now getting back to Site Finder Pro I created version 1 of the tool because I wanted a starting point to help speed up the research process for websites and utilizing the data source from Flippa seemed like a good natural fit for the beginning.

Yes you could go to the website being listed and see more details about the site etc. but the point of this tool is to be able to look at a lot of listings faster and when something catches your eye, press the button to expand more results and then the tool goes out and looks to see how the site makes money, where it gets links from (a few key spots like Dmoz, Yahoo Dir, BOTW) etc. as seen here: http://screencast.com/t/pCyM0ATXp

Hi Clinton,

I just bought his SiteFinder tool to see what it's all about. For $27 I figured I had little to lose and maybe some information to gain in the process. For background, I've been buying on Flippa since 2009 and I'm not a WF member. (haha)

Your assessment is pretty spot-on. It's like an semi-advanced search that coordinates a bunch of info that you might have to click around in Flippa to get--things like bid counts, BIN, auction end date, how the site makes money (AdSense, Clickbank, and a variety of lesser known affiliate and ad network sites).

Will I consider it a go-to tool when searching Flippa auctions? Probably not, because I can get higher quality leads from an RSS feed in my browser for certain criteria, like min revenue per month, PR 1 and higher, that sort of thing. Chris' tool isn't mature enough to do that--yet. But it may in the future, since it's SaaS based (with a one-time fee).

I consider it a work in progress and one worth watching at this point, but probably not a game changer.

You should send more specific feedback to me about how to improve it - i.e. additional data sources or what?

Hi Dave, Welcome to Experienced-People.net.

I looked at the tool provided (while this offer was still open) and decided it didn't add much value. While it is great to have all the information in a single screen, with a synopsis of what is in Flippa listings, that is something I get directly from their site.

When I find something of interest that requires further evaluation, I no longer am interested in an overview and need to research specifics. If I am only looking at Flippa listings, I would rather do that directly on their site.

See my above reasoning for creating the tool, but it's a fair if you don't think it's valuable for you then that's fine.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how a tool like this could be more useful?

I'm all ears.

I should again clarify that I don't just release software and never improve it. Going back to the EasyAzon plugin as an example (because it's the oldest) I have done 3 major upgrades and about a dozen minor upgrades and users got free updates to each one.

In any case, I'll be back to reply in this thread but I'm not that quick because I frankly try to steer clear of spending too much time on forums because I want to spend more time working and less time talking about the work I should be doing.

i.e. I'm launching a forum on one of my really high traffic website acquisitions this week. Got two sponsors to provide a ton of free products related to the niche in exchange for exposure during the forum launch. Done this method of forum launching (again outside the marketing niche of course) twice before with great effect and this will be the third time I've done it.

[Clinton]

I don't know why you get the sense that I'm out to only make money and provide as little help as possible to everyone

I'm not, mate!

I revived this thread after it went dead because you had a new product and I thought it would be of interest to members. I couldn't provide my opinion on it because I hadn't tried it but was hoping others would and offer some suggestions on what it's good for and some suggestions you might find useful. I like tools like this and if they can add further functionality, even better.

I wanted a starting point to help speed up the research process for websites and utilizing the data source from Flippa seemed like a good natural fit for the beginning

Absolutely, and this is the kind of project I genuinely wish you 100% success with. It's providing information to arm buyers and I support that. My comment about "is that pretty much what it is" wasn't meant in a derogatory way as the mash-up itself is a good idea and a useful combination of data. My question was meant more along the lines of "could someone check it for me and tell me what it does" (because I didn't have a chance to try it myself).

[ChrisGuthrie]

I'm not, mate!

I revived this thread after it went dead because you had a new product and I thought it would be of interest to members. I couldn't provide my opinion on it because I hadn't tried it but was hoping others would and offer some suggestions on what it's good for and some suggestions you might find useful. I like tools like this and if they can add further functionality, even better.


Absolutely, and this is the kind of project I genuinely wish you 100% success with. It's providing information to arm buyers and I support that. My comment about "is that pretty much what it is" wasn't meant in a derogatory way as the mash-up itself is a good idea and a useful combination of data. My question was meant more along the lines of "could someone check it for me and tell me what it does" (because I didn't have a chance to try it myself).

Hey Clinton,

Cool thanks for the comments and for opening it up to feedback. I've already got a few things in mind but nothing beyond adding additional data sources.

I would put the SEMRush and Compete data etc. all right into the actual plugin instead of making a link but because the software is a one time fee I know that my usage fees would have been really pricey over time. Might just bite the bullet on that one we'll see.

Chris