Turnkey website providers: Avoid? Proceed with caution?

[mark2000]

In my searching for websites for sale, I'm coming across many providers of turnkey websites, where the site has been completed, products selected with dropship arrangements in place, a shopping cart setup, some seo work done, and more. I realize that this is no guarantee of success and that 99% of the work in attracting traffic, supplying fresh content, converting sales etc. still lies ahead, but assuming that one accepts this, is there any other reason to avoid turnkey site providers? Are they considered 'legitimate' or are they looked on with the same mistrust as the MMO providers?

Are there any turnkey providers that any of you could recommend?

[crabfoot]

The main problem with most turnkey sites is that they DON'T come with SEO. They don't even come built on a suitably selected aged domain, with a bit of traffic and backlinks. You're a beginner, you suddenly own a site, you have yet to figure out how the affiliate codes in the ads should be changed so that you get the money, and nobody mentioned that you need to get traffic ...

Your "starter" site has a domain and hosting. The hosting can be 90% cheaper, in most cases - but the vendors rely on novice cluelessness to be able to charge their rate for hosting. They aren't usually the cheapest for domain hosting, either.

There's only one sensible reason for buying a turnkey site that I know - it can get you approval into an affiliate network that has previously rejected your application.

There were two people building turnkey sites that I could have recommended pre-panda - but they were building thin aff sites, and the panda doesn't like aff sites at all. Now there's nobody I like the look of ...

[mark2000]

Thanks Crabfoot, I thought there was something 'too good to be true' about these offerings.

[KenW3]

As long as you recognise turn-key and PLR web sites for what they are, I don't see anything wrong with them. Years back, I bought about a half dozen for various reasons.

For one, I liked the layout, graphics and thumbnails, and it fit an EMD I had, so I bought it and replaced all the content and added a few things. After that, it was just a matter of continuing to give it some attention to buld it out. Another PLR site I bought was because I wanted rights to the wording and disclaimers used on the site. It was a one-off specialty site, and I never did anything with it other than copy the disclaimers. There have been a couple of WordPress sites that had features I couldn't readily figure out, so I bought them to learn what plugins were being used.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with buying any site, even turn-key, as long as you know what you are getting, don't overpay, and know how to work with it going forward.

[Kay]

Mark, why are you considering buying a turnkey site? Is it as a shortcut to having a site that's already built and up and running? It wouldn't be so hard to start from scratch because, after all, buying a turnkey is only buying a website not an established business. As crabfoot says, you'll probably end up paying through the nose for expensive hosting and possibly for a more expensive domain too. You would be probably be cheaper to arrange domain registration and purchase some hosting yourself, then outsource the site build if you don't want to do it yourself.

I expect that most sellers of turnkey sites rely on newbies to purchase them. These sellers are usually churning them out. Once you know how to do it, it only takes an hour or so to build a website. (It might not be a very pretty website.) There's a lot of free software, templates, plugins, etc, that you can use too.

As you say, once the site is there that's when the hard work starts - getting traffic to it and making that traffic convert. I would think you're better off spending your money on outsourcing the various tasks you don't want to do for yourself. Either that or buy an established website that's already making money. If you buy a turnkey site, most likely it was something the seller knocked up yesterday, and you're simply paying for his time to churn it out. It's unlikely that there will be anything unique about it.

Turnkey sites are like the old "business-in-a-box" idea. The catch is that you're not actually buying a business. You're just buying a cookie-cutter site.

[Clinton]

As crabfoot says, a turnkey site can get you access to a program you might otherwise not have access to. Turnkeys also remove all the headache of choosing a theme, tweaking it, adding content such as embedding youtube videos etc. The creator has usually also done some keyword research and tweaked onpage elements for those keywords.

However, these are the caveats I see with turnkeys.

1. Don't trust anything the creator tells you about SEO. The SEO could be highly exaggerated, faked, or benefitting from a temporary boost of some sort.
2. Don't assume that the design is unique, even if it's claimed that it is. Sometimes a few elements are tweaked and it's passed off as a new and original design.
3. Expect that, as turnkeys is his business, there'll be other turnkeys he churns out very similar to yours and these could end up competing with you
4. Be cautious about any freebies offered. Work on the presumption that they won't happen or will be of poor quality or lacking support or something else.
5. Remember to change all his affiliate codes, his Adsense publisher ID, his Google analytics code etc etc.
6. Remember to go through all the javascript and php. Is there something you don't understand?! Get it explained by a neutral third party?
7. Demand to know the source of the images and get proof if you can that they aren't copyrighted. Get copies of the psd files.
8. Is there a flaw with the domain, has it been blacklisted anywhere, is it on spam databases, was it previously an adult site, is it violating a trademark?

I'm sure there are other caveats and hopefully somebody will post some more in due course.

Are they considered 'legitimate' or are they looked on with the same mistrust as the MMO providers?

I don't know about this. There must be some good guys. Well, there were some good guys ... till Flippa went crazy with promoting "site flipping" and got every scammer jumping into creating and selling turnkeys and honing their scams to the point where some now are very sophisticated. I have trouble telling good guys from the bad ones any more

[Slowdive]

Its actually an interesting topic in a way.....
The problem with the market is the sellers, they replicate the same site many times, they make bold claims and they would happily sell each poster here the same product given a chance....well most would.

One of my income streams and one I am desperately trying to extricate myself from or at least stream line is web design. With a lot of smaller clients the process goes like this.
Meet, greet and discuss requirements, set goals and form a tangible plan....quote!

Customized one of a kind website with custom developed features and design. By the time we factor in customized features and the graphic designer the small business owner has already teared up and realized we are taking an elephant gun to a mouse.

Finding a template or existing layout and personalising it, using existing software solutions to solve the problems the site presents works out far more affordable and easier for both parties so the smaller business or start up often opts to go that route.

Now of course when your working with someone, you are paying for and receiving a website, plus consultation, plus customisation, plus support and if your lucky some pretty well refined keyword pages and maybe some backlinks. However the similarities cannot be ignored a lot of what I do is create "turn key" sites for businesses. Looking at theme forest and other places a lot of people do this too.

I think the problem arises that if I did this and put it up for sale some years back it would have been called a turn-key site or a out of the box website. However these days it would be called site flipping, so the problem with turnkey websites is you are nearly definitely looking at sites that could not even be sold on flippa or flipped. Heck if my site was worth a damn, I would hang a for sale sign on it and let the offers come in.

So what are these guys really selling? A website that has no market value except via dangerous claims of potential and a few aff-links hanging of them? I recall some one asked this some months back and I looked at the site they were considering shelling out over $500 for, it was a dog. More over these affiliates, who are they? Do they pay reliably? Do they have a conversion rate or are they just so over priced people do not buy the product.

Unless its really cheap I would suggest taking your money other places....
Aged domain with backlinks 100 - 300 and up depending on a lot of variables.
Template +- $40
eight pages of unique content, lets splurge and pay $80
All the images you can eat, again we splurge and spend $80
Worse casing it I have replicated the turnkey site for $500 but its simply so much better and would get into an aff program the pre-made site is embedded in. As the only criteria it would be failing to meet for affiliate programs is traffic, which I assure you 90% of turn key sites do not have either.
My thoughts anyway....

[mark2000]

I don't want to get fluffy as Ken will ding me ( ) but the information you all provide is just amazing. Thanks!!

As long as you recognise turn-key and PLR web sites for what they are, I don't see anything wrong with them. Years back, I bought about a half dozen for various reasons.

That's actually what started me down this road, e.g. if I want to sell jewelry why not get one of these sites and just cannabilize the images etc that might appeal.

Mark, why are you considering buying a turnkey site? Is it as a shortcut to having a site that's already built and up and running?

As you all maybe can tell, I'm in an initial learning period where, as things come up, they may look attractive. As I started in on my first '150 hours' of learning, I came across some of these turnkey sites and it made me curious about them.

Clinton, your list is going into my 'what to watch out for' list when buying an existing site, turnkey or not. That's the type of nuanced info that just doesn't come thru in the stuff I'm reading now.

1. Don't trust anything the creator tells you about SEO. The SEO could be highly exaggerated, faked, or benefitting from a temporary boost of some sort.
2. Don't assume that the design is unique, even if it's claimed that it is. Sometimes a few elements are tweaked and it's passed off as a new and original design.
3. Expect that, as turnkeys is his business, there'll be other turnkeys he churns out very similar to yours and these could end up competing with you
4. Be cautious about any freebies offered. Work on the presumption that they won't happen or will be of poor quality or lacking support or something else.
5. Remember to change all his affiliate codes, his Adsense publisher ID, his Google analytics code etc etc.
6. Remember to go through all the javascript and php. Is there something you don't understand?! Get it explained by a neutral third party?
7. Demand to know the source of the images and get proof if you can that they aren't copyrighted. Get copies of the psd files.
8. Is there a flaw with the domain, has it been blacklisted anywhere, is it on spam databases, was it previously an adult site, is it violating a trademark?

Slowdive
From what I glean from your post, there are 'turnkey sites' and turnkey providers, and than there are themed sites/ templates that can give one a real head start over trying to build from scratch. In other words, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Thanks for providing a a starting list below. I think I'm going to ask a lot more about this kind of smart start in future posts.

Unless its really cheap I would suggest taking your money other places....
Aged domain with backlinks 100 - 300 and up depending on a lot of variables.
Template +- $40
eight pages of unique content, lets splurge and pay $80
All the images you can eat, again we splurge and spend $80
Worse casing it I have replicated the turnkey site for $500 but its simply so much better and would get into an aff program the pre-made site is embedded in. As the only criteria it would be failing to meet for affiliate programs is traffic, which I assure you 90% of turn key sites do not have either.
My thoughts anyway....

At this point, I've taken a step on my learning program, reading stuff all over the net on this subject. I'm thinking though that instead of trying to accumulate a bunch of information, of trying to prepare myself in all areas, that perhaps it makes more sense to buy a 'low priced' site and begin immediately applying the knowledge as it's being learned.

[crabfoot]

Slowdive pointed to this, but didn't emphasise the point.
Looky, the most valuable thing you can get as a beginner is a recently dropped domain that vaguely fits the niche you have selected which has some backlinks and traffic - but you have to realise how to use it.

First, you want all your articles/site material written and ready to go. You pick your niche and your keywords and write the stuff around that niche and keywords. You select a site template - but don't build the site yet.

Next, go and fish through the bargain bins and pending delete domains for a domain which has something with an association with your niche, some links and traffic. This is tedious, but a lot less tedious than starting from a list of dropping domains - you get some sort of a traffic estimate looking in those places, which you don't get from most "free SEO" sources. You check the backlinks by looking at Alexa - look at the backlinks, the domain is not going to be useful to you if they are all Chinese or Turkish (unless you are Chinese/Turkish).

If the domain looks promising you go on to check with Open Site Explorer, but remember that only gives you 3 free tries a day. There's a good reason for looking two or three days in advance.

If you find something of interest, check the Wayback and the search engine caches to find out as many page names as possible. You want to use those page names if you actually get the domain.

You found one you like? Then you go to place a bid on the dropping domain - either you try to snipe it in an auction, or, if you are chasing a "pending delete" domain, you place a bid on it at 6.44pm GMT (the books close at 6.45pm). I'm not recommending them, but Snapnames are very good at catching domains.

If you get a good domain, get a site up ASAP using the page names you previously found and your prepared material. Don't look to monetise it from day one, get it out there and be sure to use the syndication source tags to protect your original material.

Now you have a site, it has some traffic from the start - track the traffic and decide on the best way to monetise.

You could do this with a turnkey site but then you're into duplicate content issues - you could rename some of the pages and use a masked redirect to utilise the traffic from the domain you just bought.

EDIT: I should have warned that a lot of dropping domains with traffic have been dropped because of copyright issues. Check your domain to be sure it does not include a trademarked term. For example, there have been numbers of dropped domains I've seen recently including "Ugg" or "uggboots" - a sure sign that Ugg's legal dept have been sending out "cease and desist" letters.

WTH it is a jumpstart for a beginner ...