Avid Amiri from Internet Enterprises

[Avid]

Sure, here are just a few examples that I have in my inbox now. In terms of a buyer that has experienced million dollar equity gains, feel free to contact Ron Thompson buyer of americanfitness.net. His number is on the website. Out of respect for Ron I will not publish the specifics of his site online but if he feels comfortable releasing this information I am sure he will do so directly in an effort to communicate the growth in the business he bought from me.
From: <removed>
Subject: Hello, Its been awhile
To: avidamiri@hotmail.com


Avid,

Hello! It has been a while since we have touched base. Are you still selling websites? At the time, I think you were teaching as well. We have owned Shower-Curtains.Org for 2 years now and we are so glad we made the decision to do so. Thanks for all the help getting us going. Its been going well, and there is still lots of room for growth. I am still full time as a software engineer, but hope to make some sort of jump to full time business owners in the next year or so, doing something more/different.

At any rate, hope things are well and thanks again for the assistance already two years ago.

John and Kassie Moen.
Shower-curtains.org

----------------------------------

In early 2008 I purchased an e-commerce website from Avid Amiri. During the first few months of operation it was clear the site was under performing based on the previous history. This could have been due to a number of reasons however without hesitation, Avid Amiri transferred another website to us that had solid performance and good opportunity for growth…the second website actually grew more that 300 percent in sales and profits in the first year and more than made up for the first site. Avid has earned my trust and respect because of the professional way handled my business. He is honest, ethical and reputable. He says what he does and does what he says.
Over the last year I talked to another customer of Avid’s that told me they felt the same and would only buy another website from him. I understand they have recently purchased another site from Avid.
Sincerely,

Craig Nordbrock
President
Imaginary Time, Inc.
www.humanhairwigs.org

What a great site. Thanks for the lead.

I hope you guys are selling sites and making money. I do want one more site down the road. Keep me in the loop on all offerings.

Kori has been helping me a lot on learning Dreamweaver and is handling my art changes for me. She is wonderful to work with. She has taught me more in a few hours on the phone than I could have learned in a classroom in a week or more.
Take care
tom
Tom Siceloff
Walking-canes.net
There are many others…
At this point, Clinton, I appreciate your last posting and am happy to furnish you with additional detail. With all due respect, however, my intent is not to provide information about my intellectual capital base, engage in debate on this forum or furnish inspiring stories. It is to protect the integrity of my business.
If there are people out there who want to know more about me or what I do or need help with their sites, they can call me. If they feel I can effect value for them we can draft a consulting relationship.
My main concern is the multiple pages of erroneous material that is published about me on your site, material that is either directly injurious or just plain wrong. (See my comments above). Clayton your comments are appreciated but terms like scammer and con artist are not constructive conversation. They are slander. If you would like to contact me to discuss please feel free to do so. I would be happy to discuss it with you.
In terms of benitez last remark, once again I am open to the challenge I offered. I have not yet finished the build out for the yoga but hope to have it done soon. As I have said you also may call me and I will be happy to establish an exact structure with a pay out to my charity if you miss the mark.

[benitez17]

In terms of benitez last remark, once again I am open to the challenge I offered. I have not yet finished the build out for the yoga but hope to have it done soon. As I have said you also may call me and I will be happy to establish an exact structure with a pay out to my charity if you miss the mark.

What does this mean? The challenge you offered has already been met, as the seller of the site that I linked to has done what you claimed is impossible and created a successful e-commerce site that is available for less than $50k.

[ClaytonL]

Clayton your comments are appreciated but terms like scammer and con artist are not constructive conversation. They are slander.

I see the terms scammer and con artist used in this thread to refer to the typical scammer and con artists which I hope you had a chance to see at Flippa. In fact, the terms seemed to usually be followed by the poster stating that they didn't know if you were one.

I understand you're here to protect your business, but I feel the need to protect this community as well. I have no interest in arguing for the sake of arguing either.

[Avid]

As a post script to benitez...what do you think ecommerce firms trade at in terms of cash flows? You can download the data from Bizbuysell and organic based companies trade at about 3 x cash flow. That implies a 75k value. Im not trying to be paint myself in anything other than an adherer to the facts. Now the flip side is if a buyer come to you or me and says "I am really into yoga (or any market for that matter) and want you to build me a site with top placement in that market. What would it cost me?" Could you do that? Because its not about buying any site off Bizbuysell but rather building something in a specific market requested by a buyer and do it within a 4 -6 week time period. You would have to find the vendors or brand name products, get them to agree to drop ship, upload a catalgue of over 1k products, oh and by the way, the site should also be in the top ten for a series of the largest key terms within that specific market (yoga and pilates apparel, yoga equipment, pilates equipment etc). That then becomes a cost based calculation. I would factor my payroll, merchanding and upload cost and then my margin. Then I have to train you on site and provide more work based on buyers customizations (branding, now they want to scrap the ypga and just focus on the pilates etc) and provide ongoing support for as long as you need it. If a buyer wants me to build a site in a market they specify and I have to incur all these costs then it is not cheap for me and it is not cheap for the buyer. So call me and we will set the terms of the challenge. Im happy to go through it with you so it is fair and consistent with what I said.

[benitez17]

Avid,

1. There is no challenge. You said that no one could build an e-commerce site with traffic for less than $50,000. I don't need to build one myself from scratch to prove you wrong, since I could just go buy the site I linked to above for less than that and be done, plus I would have a site that is already profitable instead of a start-up site.

2. I am aware that you are offering services with your sites which might be worth more than the site itself, but that's not what you initially said, and was not part of your "challenge".

3. There are established, profitable e-commerce sites for sale for 1x - 2x profit on regular basis at Flippa.com and from business brokers, as I already pointed out. If you want more proof, I'll take the time later to dig some up, but Flippa's search tool is almost useless. Why would I pay all of this money for you to build a site from scratch when I could just go buy one, unless I needed a lot of hand holding, and if I didn't know what I was doing, is it really a good idea to drop a minimum of $50k in anyone's lap and hope that the seller comes through?

[Avid]

With all due respect comments like "Dont do any business with this guy he's taking you for a ride" are slander. Please take a few minutes to read alexjn comments again. That is also clear libel. This is even after trustbutverify, one of your senoir members, came across a former buyer of mine on his own and randomly and commented that I am doing "some pretty amazing things with SEO" and that may sites are not ordinary scam like so many you see out there. Alexjn wont even disclose a thing about himself like even the basic question...what site are you claiming you bought from Avid? I can appreciate the needs of the community but the commentary in this forum but not in the context of libel. Believe me I have no interest in spending time arguing for the sake of arguing myself.

[ClaytonL]

Oh. I don't consider alexjn a member of the forum yet. He just showed up when he found out we were talking about you. Like we tripped a Google Alert or something. I thought you were talking about PeterDavis saying "You're just begging to be taken for a ride." in regards to CET's approach. My bad.

[benitez17]

I'm not debating whether you are a scam artist or not. I have no experience with you outside of this thread, and I don't intend to do a background check on you or buy any of your sites that appear to be overpriced.

I'm just trying to get you to admit that it is possible to produce successful e-commerce sites for less than you charge, and in fact there are sites for sale on a regular basis that are established and profitable that are available for purchase at a much lower price than your minimum price.

[Avid]

Benitez

1. What I said was that any site would have to be in the same context as the site Carolyn wanted me to build. In fact I wrote if any posters could do a job of developing something cheaper "of what I offered Carolyn" meaning the same value proposition. At the time it did not seem warranted to go through all the details as there was quite a bit for me to address. I apologize if I did not explain that well enough.
2. Again it would have to be in the same context as what I would build for Carolyn or any buyer who wanted a custom built site in a catagory they specified with traffic and top placements plus the education and support.
3. I made it clear to Carolyn that she was only to pay the full amount for the business after she had reviewed and approved it and had talked to members of team building it so she understood exactly what she was getting and it met her expectations. There was no leap of faith and she wasnt expected "to drop 50k on my lap" and hope for the best. She was to close on the business only if she knew what she was getting and was comfortable with it. She was to be involved in conference calls repeatedly throughout the entire build out process and weigh in as often as she wanted with customizations of her own. Carolyn knows that.

I dont want to sound difficult, but once again, if you are a buyer who want a custom site in a specific catagory where you have an interest say yoga or field hockey then there are costs. For someone like you or another investor just looking at cash flow and doesnt care what the industry is or what is being sold this kind of site is not the right fit. Once again, Carolyn asked me if I could build her something in the yoga space (or organic dog food space which I didnt think was a good idea as it is too narrow and she would not have been successful and told her I couldnt help here) and I did my best to oblige. The price is fair given the costs.

In terms of multiples on bizbuysell, their data of sold companies suggests 3 x. I am sure there are sites out there that trade for less and there are those that trade for much more. All I have to go off of are the multiples for the solds that I have. My concern would be though are they drop ship or inventory based, are they organic or pay per click, how much content was built, are they fully harvested assets or is their upside, etc. Those companies typically trade at a high premium.

[Clinton]

Avid, this forum discusses the buying of websites (among other things). Some visitors come here to seek advice on specific buying opportunities - as would seem to have happened with one of your prospective customers. Members here who have experience with buying websites then provide their opinions on whether it's a good deal or not.

Without knowing about you or your business, advice was provided in the earlier thread that the deal did not seem a good one. I've had another read of that thread now. I take it you have no issues with that thread as posters were talking in general and your name hadn't come up. (Please contact me by email with specifics if that isn't true)

You bandy "defamation" and "slander" about very liberally. By law, slander is an oral utterance, not written. So there's no slander in this thread. Defamation is the issuing of a false statement against someone, libel involves defamatory statements that are published (such as in a newspaper or online).

I take it you withdraw any accusations of slander. With regards defamation/libel, the main defences are Truth, Opinion and Fair Comment On a Matter Of Public Interest. If you feel that a comment/s here wouldn't be covered by any of those, drop me a note with each specific instance and I'll decide whether to take the comment down as per our Forum Rules. The fact that we aren't in the US would make it very difficult for you to force this forum to remove anything, but I'd like to do it voluntarily if something is manifestly unfair/untrue.

That said, let's now publicly stick to talking about what you offer and why it is or isn't a good deal, as you seem to be doing. And we'll let readers of the thread make their minds up.

I personally think there's value in assisting someone get started and in teaching them the ropes and that cost needs to be added to the cost of the development of the site and the SEO. But it's difficult to put a figure to help and customer support. If you have customers who've been through the mill, so to speak, I feel it would benefit you to persuade one of them to come in and share their experience.