Need help buying an Ecommerce website

[nEquity]

Agreed.

50K for a site that has no traffic and thereby cannot be generating revenue is ludicrous. Unless there is something so unique and different about this site that is bound to make it a success, but I doubt that very much.

Please give this one a miss!

[hooperman]

He wants US $50,000 for this turnkey site related to yoga and pilates that is not even a business.

If this is the area you want to get into, there are plenty of cheap turnkeys on that subject for sale on Flippa. You could buy one of those and see how you fare getting traffic to it. If you were successful, at least you could feed its traffic to any ecommerce site you bought in the future.

But $50K for a turnkey is ridiculous.

[Clinton]

A confession/disclosure: CET first approached me several days ago. She was referred to me by a well known US business advisor. She emailed me with some details of the proposed purchase and asked me to take it on as a due diligence job. I advised her to use this forum instead. To her enormous credit, she has spent a lot of time browsing numerous threads and soaking up information. I have huge respect for people who're willing to back up their desire for online earnings with some actual graft to do the learnings.

Now to the actual OP. I'm in agreement with all of you, of course, it seems far too much money. But I haven't seen the site yet and there may be a hidden gem there we don't know about that holds substantial value. Perhaps a ton of IBLs (it has been "incubated" i.e. aged site) or a huge bought subscriber database. I doubt it, but there's always a possiblity he's selling more than just a bare template.

I'll admit the bad reviews (which he blames on employees) don't leave me with a good feeling.

CET, it seems to me that you believe that "ecommerce" functionality is something complex and takes a lot of setting up. A good developer could probably add basic ecommerce facilities to your site between breakfast and his mid-morning coffee. And to hire someone to build you a site from scratch with the look and feel you want, personalised to your taste and your way of working, optimised with your keywords and with ongoing support and a contract to maintain the site for a couple of years could come in at under $10K.

Could you give us some more details, perhaps a link to where he's advertising or describing these "opportunities", or a link to his business site?

[Clinton]

I think I am smart enough to learn, but I need to find someone to learn from. Can one learn on the job? Are there people I can hire to consult on this?

I have no doubt you have the smarts. You can certainly learn on the job but, as pointed out by hooperman and others, it may make sense to do that on a $200 site rather than a $50K one. There are people who run courses on building online businesses - at least one or two of them post regularly here - and there are always forums like this one where you can ask questions/share what you've found.

[benitez17]

A confession/disclosure: CET first approached me several days ago. She was referred to me by a well known US business advisor. She emailed me with some details of the proposed purchase and asked me to take it on as a due diligence job. I advised her to use this forum instead. To her enormous credit, she has spent a lot of time browsing numerous threads and soaking up information. I have huge respect for people who're willing to back up their desire for online earnings with some actual graft to do the learnings.

Now to the actual OP. I'm in agreement with all of you, of course, it seems far too much money. But I haven't seen the site yet and there may be a hidden gem there we don't know about that holds substantial value. Perhaps a ton of IBLs (it has been "incubated" i.e. aged site) or a huge bought subscriber database. I doubt it, but there's always a possiblity he's selling more than just a bare template.

I'll admit the bad reviews (which he blames on employees) don't leave me with a good feeling.

CET, it seems to me that you believe that "ecommerce" functionality is something complex and takes a lot of setting up. A good developer could probably add basic ecommerce facilities to your site between breakfast and his mid-morning coffee. And to hire someone to build you a site from scratch with the look and feel you want, personalised to your taste and your way of working, optimised with your keywords and with ongoing support and a contract to maintain the site for a couple of years could come in at under $10K.

Could you give us some more details, perhaps a link to where he's advertising or describing these "opportunities", or a link to his business site?

Clinton, even if there is some hidden gem in this site (like a favorable deal with a great dropshipper), I think CET purchasing this site is a terrible idea.

The most expensive template site I have ever heard of + a buyer with no experience + a seller with a spotty track record = a recipe for disaster!

She'd be better off just picking one of the more frequent posters on here at random and giving him or her the $50k to buy a site for her.

[CET]

Another thing I don't understand is that he tells me the site has a #7 ranking on Google for "pilates equipment". However, when I type it in I do not find see his site at #7. When I tell him this, he tells me my computer logs into a different Google server than his. Then he cuts and pastes the URL's to me so I can see what he is seeing. What is up with that?

Here is an example of what he recently sent me. The ones on Bing match up and the ones on Google & Yahoo do not if I type the terms in on my laptop. I do not use his URL's as that does not matter to me.

#7 on Google for ?pilates equipment?
http://www.google.com/search?q=pilates equipment&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a
#1 on Bing for ?yoga classes equipment?
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Yoga Classes Equipment&qpvt=yoga classes&FORM=Z7FD6&adlt=strict
#9 on Bing for ?yoga equipment?
http://www.bing.com/search?q=yoga equipment&form=QBRE&qs=AS&pq=yoga eq&sp=1&sc=1-7
#8 on Yahoo for ?pilates rings?
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AnGUSNfl_zQY3ejKnZRC1M2bvZx4?fr=yfp-t-701-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF8&p=pilates%20rings
#4 on Google for ?yoga pilates clothes?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GFRE_enUS328US328&q=yoga pilates clothes&start=10&sa=N
#2 on Yahoo for ?yoga and pilates supplies?
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGklTHI7BLjLkAdQpXNyoA?p=yoga and pilates supplies&fr2=sb-top&fr=att-portal-s&sao=0

[benitez17]

To answer your question, Google's results are becoming more personalized and based on your location, so that could explain the discrepency.

However, I am wondering why you are still considering doing business with this guy or buying this site?

[CET]

So if someone is selling a site and they tell you it has the #1 or #3 rank for XXX term on Google or Yahoo, that isn't really true because the rank will vary depending on where you are. How does one optimize for certain key terms if it changes geographically within just the USA?

At this point I am no longer considering doing business with him, but I would like to learn from the experience and understand some of the things that seemed questionable in case I encounter them again. Going forward, I need to know how to spot the con artists and to know what is reasonable and unreasonable.

[Clinton]

SERPs are personalised based on geo-targeting and user behaviour (more). So if he visits his site often, it may well come up higher in searches done from his PC. Traffic logs and Google Webmaster Tools (see this thread) are a more accurate indicator of how your SEO efforts are going.

Example: Pilates site for sale @ $197 BIN. Add another $50 or so if you want an e-junkie shopping cart (to ecommercify it).

[benitez17]

So if someone is selling a site and they tell you it has the #1 or #3 rank for XXX term on Google or Yahoo, that isn't really true because the rank will vary depending on where you are. How does one optimize for certain key terms if it changes geographically within just the USA?

At this point I am no longer considering doing business with him, but I would like to learn from the experience and understand some of the things that seemed questionable in case I encounter them again. Going forward, I need to know how to spot the con artists and to know what is reasonable and unreasonable.

Glad to hear that you have decided not to do business with this person. Once you spend some time here and get a better feel for what your $50k could buy, I think you'll be glad you didn't rush into anything.