Avid Amiri from Internet Enterprises

[Avid]

Folks,
I have been traveling for the holiday so I apologize for not responding more quickly.
However, let me respond to the two most recent posts;
First with regard to your offer Clinton, at this point I am going to step away from this forum. It is up to me to protect my name and reputation on a go forward basis while at the same time respecting the opportunity for people to share their experiences so long as they are rooted in truth and not slanderous. I am trying to balance this here and with input from others and advice.
So far no one has contacted me with regard to my helping them or their sites. I have gone back and checked the ranking of every site I have sold and the vast majority of them have better or even authority rankings at this point in time. It is discouraging me to me that on many of the posts it states that traffic has suffered or sites have been banned, etc. when in fact every site I have ever sold has been sold as a traffic platform. Most of these sites have improved vastly since the time I sold them.
Sorry Chris for the delay in getting back to you. First off, I agree with your comment that it takes a lot of work to sustain a successful internet company. I agree with your assessment that no internet company is a pot of gold and it takes work to convert traffic and rankings to sales – specifically a lot of store management and some buyers just expect the seller to perform all the work for them. I do not claim to be selling pots of gold but rather high ranking traffic platforms that require solid store managers to become successful businesses. I agree with your offer about working together and sent an email through the host to Clinton over a week ago suggesting a proposal much like yours where I offered to assume a web project at cost for you or any of the other people posting on the site to demonstrate the quality of experience and what it was like working with me.
I noticed Clinton bought this website for less than 300 pounds and now it is worth more than 120,000 pounds according to one of his postings. This was not a fluke – Clinton has done a tremendous amount of work on this website and just based on how much effort he has put into my threads I can see he is dedicated. I feel that the people denigrating me (ADS1 and Alexjn) here know their traffic and rankings are what they were and just haven’t put in the effort and are now looking for someone to blame. As stated if its not a matter of effort but of what to do next contact me and I will do my best to help you. What I do is provide traffic and rankings and encourage buyers to become active store managers and figure out the best way to manage these areas. This takes a lot of time and work it doesn’t happen in 3 months or even in a year unless someone is working hard. Sometimes buyers get lucky but usually the ones who succeed realize a business does not grow 1000% or even 100% without effort.
In conclusion, I am stepping away from this board at this point but I encourage real discussion about facts. Obviously what is not slander and is fair and reasonable has place on forums like these and I do not want to disrupt those components of this board. Chris, I would be happy to convey a business to you, perform consulting, or have you develop a web proposal on your own that I can assist with and have you document your experiences and I tried to call you last week at the number on your whois of one of your sites (there was no voicemail but I believe it was an Ohio number) to discuss this with you. Similarly I would be happy to work with any past buyers that wants assistance. Please know, that I am open to any productive suggestions on how to mitigate the damage of these posts to my business and personal reputation and appreciate Chris' offer. Thank you for being open to this kind of idea as I see it as one productive a positive way of dealing with this and allowing someone to comment from direct experience.
Chris, I would love the opportunity to work with you in some capacity and appreciate your keeping an open mind to this kind of proposal and giving me an opportunity to demonstrate the quality of my work. As I said, if you would rather propose the project I am open to that too. Feel free to send me a private message so we can discuss. I look forward to it and to speaking with you.
Thanks,
Avid

[Clinton]

I noticed Clinton bought this website for less than 300 pounds and now it is worth more than 120,000 pounds

You may be talking about experienced-people.co.uk which is a completely different site. This experienced-people.net forum isn't commercial, is not for sale, and doesn't therefore have a price tag. The forum has a different owner - an LTD company.

As many of you know I've done a lot of work in the background using my contacts to help members here, putting people in touch with the right folk, making introductions and helping via PMs and email to get you deals. If Avid and Chris (or any one else) find a way to work together then it's in keeping with what I'm trying to do here and it would please me enormously.

I am open to any productive suggestions on how to mitigate the damage

You could do a lot more than mitigate damage and actually gain yourself substantial business if you spent some time participating on these forums, answering questions, starting threads and demonstrating that you're looking to help others. People would forget this thread, SEs would see a lot of threads where your name crops up, and if you start a particularly useful thread with some detailed advice that's not already here that could end up being the thread people find, including people who have never heard of you. This forum attracts a lot of people who're looking to buy sites and many of them have large budgets - a few have posted in public and the others just browse (or PM me!) If you come across as knowledgeable and helpful in threads, they'll contact you of their own accord as they do with other members here.

Do bear in mind the non-promotional nature of this forum, though. We don't promote our own sites overtly or covertly except for the allowed low-key link in the signature. In short, stepping away from the thread need not be a stepping away from the forum. I believe you could make very valuable contributions to the type of discussion we have on these boards.

[Avid]

Thanks for the suggestion Clinton - I think I am going to become more active here. I used to teach ecommerce at a graduate level, have built many sites, and feel like I could make some useful contributions and would enjoy participating in this forum. I have learned some lessons here that I think could be valuable to a lot of buyers and sellers. Having looked around at these posts the last month I think there is already a lot of information concerning valuations of ecommerce businesses that is very perceptive and right on the money.
However, I think an interesting new thread that I would like to create and contribute to would be something along the lines of “Ecommerce Valuation vs. Expectation”. I don’t want to point fingers but I think as a seller I have not always understood buyers expectations and I think a few of my buyers have not understood this either and as a result the situations did not work out as well as I would have wanted. I bought my first ecommerce company 8 years ago in the potty training industry for 14k, it had decent rankings, only a few products, and everyone laughed at it in the industry. A year later after working 60 plus hour weeks I sold it to a women for 330k. To this day she is delighted. She has also done a great job handling conversions and dealing with the managerial aspects of running the company. Her expectations and mine were aligned at the time of the sale.
I fixed and grew a few more very large companies so I think for me it is easy to envision what is possible when a site ranks at the top of Google for a commercial keyword. Many times, I very quickly convey this to potential buyers and they become excited. I guess where I am at fault is that with my experience it is not hard to find dropshippers or develop relationships with manufacturers, process orders, and basically grow an ecommerce business relatively rapidly. Understanding the relationship between adsense and sales, shipping rates, updating sites, etc. are all activities that I have a lot of experience with. These are preliminary research and diligence items that are the responsibility of any buyer, but I would love to be more proactive on my side as well. Reading this forum and seeing the anger some people have after buying a site basically for traffic and rankings and that they are overwhelmed by what to do next is not an outcome I want for any buyer or for any one of my platforms and don’t think other seller would either. This may be largely attributable to the fact that it may be their first venture into ecommerce and may not feel like they have the tools to grow their companies.
In conclusion a business may have value based on what someone can do with it once they buy it. This is how I purchase companies – I look at ones where I know I can quickly add value – as well as all the intangibles and factors such as age and platform strength that are discussed all over this forum and the Internet at large. So I think where I could contribute is helping potential buyers realistically and frankly asses what they can do to add to a business and how that is priced into it. For example a website that ranks #1 for office chairs would be very valuable to someone who knows how to quickly add 100s of office chairs, provide customer service, find suppliers, negotiate margins, etc. whereas that same business may not be worth much to someone who doesn’t know what to do with the traffic and/or how to take advantage of it. Even with training if that training is not absorbed or understood you can end up in a situation of value destruction very quickly. As a seller I need to direct my enthusiasm to buyers that will be able to take what they learn in training and apply it on a daily basis and if I end up communicating that to someone who does not have the knowledge or previous business background to capitalize on it then I am doing myself and them a disfavor. On a few occasions I have sold companies to folks who are better at this than me and in those cases I am probably selling them too soon and leaving value on the table. In some cases, I have sold companies to stay out home moms or retirees that have done incredibly well in internalizing the skills covered as part of training so certain buyer and backgrounds can respond differently. There is no specific phenotype that does well with sites but one of the common characteristics I have seen to be very closely correlated with success is an entrepreneurial verse, a basic understanding of business management, and a willingness to work hard. I have a buyer who was the manager of a delicatessen who understood the dynamics of retail and has quintupled the size of his business from the time he bought it. This couple with a willingness to invest time and personal energy and to internalize the items covered in training really spurned his success. These are all valuable skill sets and traits. So I guess the real key for someone like me is really being realistic about the fact that buyers have different skill sets and not all of them are going to be able to realize the intrinsic value of organic traffic and instead are just going to become frustrated at what they feel is a bad business. If this sounds like it’s worth exploring in more detail let me know Clinton and I will start a new thread.

[hooperman]

I, for one, would be very interested in reading more Avid.

I guess where I am at fault is that with my experience it is not hard to find dropshippers or develop relationships with manufacturers

I wouldn't know where to start when it comes to finding dropshippers/manufacturers, so any tips on that would be most welcome.

[Clinton]

Avid, any member can start a thread on any subject he wants to discuss, share his thoughts on or get advice/opinions from others about as long as it's done in the spirit of this forum which is to learn and share. I have no doubt you'll do it in the right spirit.

So, go ahead, knock yourself out. I look forward to your threads.

I would like to create and contribute to would be something along the lines of “Ecommerce Valuation vs. Expectation”

I've written a lot about valuation, some of which you may have already seen. I've no doubt that as someone who's primarily a seller your opinion will differ considerably from my own on some elements. I welcome that, it makes for interesting discussion.

[kbergeth]

I stumbled upon this thread after joining to discuss another web opportunity.

I didn't real page 2-8 of this thread as it seemed to be mostly finger pointing and responding. But since it was asked several times, I'll respond: I bought spheralsolar.com from Avid about two years ago. Here's my two minute evaluation:

1. Overall I am happy I bought the site from Avid. To do what he had already done would have taken me months/years and I had ZERO experience in online marketing/websites (I came from the construction industry).
2. I do believe I overpaid a bit and the folks that say Avid overvalues his site could be right. I don't spend any time crying over it though and am focused on building my site into what I want it to be, which means it will be worth 5-10x what I paid.
3. The only thing that really determines what a site is worth is the free market, and if Avid can sell his sites at a premium then he should do so. I don't believe he was deceitful in the sales process.
4. Avid also sells an education, meaning at least 3 days of hands on training, then ongoing support. That was worth a good chuck of change as I had no knowledge of SEO, or anything else related to internet marketing.

Overall, I have no regrets. I'm very happy to be in this space and I think the site will reap huge rewards over time. I have almost made my initial investment back even while reinvesting most of the profits back into the business. I have no vested interest in seeing Avid vilified or lionized but thought this forum could use another perspective. As with anything: 'Buyer Beware', do your due diligence, and trust your gut.

Kriss

[Clinton]

Hi kbergeth, and welcome to experienced-people.net

[dmitriy1970]

I didn't real page 2-8 of this thread as it seemed to be mostly finger pointing and responding.

kbergeth; You do a disservice by mis-characterizing the contents of pages 2-8 as finger pointing and responding, because it discounts the very smart comments made by people like 3Six, christopheravell, hooperman, benitez17, tke71709 and others about website valuation and buying and selling of websites. With several exceptions the dialogue on this thread is sophisticated, cordial and informative.

More important than that, this thread provides an illustrative example of how Clinton was able to stand up to Avid Amiri's attempt to bully him into taking down this thread.

Let me ask you this: how many people who running a website as a hobby would have just taken down a thread when Avid Amiri barged in and threatened to sue him for one million US dollars? How many people would have pulled the plug on the site when the London lawyers started sending demand letters? How many people would have accepted Avid Amiri's buyout offer, pocketed $5000, and removed the thread permanently?

I think most webmasters would have acquiesced to Avid Amiri's demands. But Clinton did not give in. He would not be pushed around and intimidated when this guy Amiri started making demands for the thread to be taken down and user IP information turned over.

Clinton said NO! You will not bully me and users of this site, you will not intimidate me with your threats and you will not silence free expression of ideas just because you do not like what people say.

Clinton outmaneuvered and outclassed Avid Amiri and put it on display for all to see. He showed us that for all their aggression and intimidation tactics, <snip> like this guy are usually just weak, inadequate <snip> who have to resort to threats because they are incapable of interacting like civil people.

Anyone who has to deal with a bully should read this thread and follow Clinton's courageous example of how to stand up to these types of people.


_Dmitriy

[Clinton]

Hi Dmitriy, thanks and welcome to experienced-people.net.

[Rover]

Avid is caught with hand in cookie jar http://dockets.justia.com/browse/sta...-Sam/noscat-4/