FP - Flippa Buyers Be Careful - Seeing A Lot Of Forged / Faked Income claims on Flippa

[mrstealth]

Hey Everyone - if your looking to buy a site on Flippa please check out all income claims before bidding.

I am seeing a lot of faked & falsified earning & traffic claims right now:

- One of the things that sellers will do is take income from a different site (either affiliate or adsense) and make it look like it is income from the site they are currently selling. If you see a new site (less than 1 month old) with income over $100, it is probably faked income.

- High earning adsense sites with minimimal traffic. While there are some sites that experience High Click through rates on Adsense, most do not. Take a close look at traffic numbers carefully and ask seller questions as to how it is being generated and where it's coming from.


I know it's easy to get tied up in an auction on a site your really want, but just be thorough so you don't get ripped off.

[Bryan]

- High earning adsense sites with minimimal traffic. While there are some sites that experience High Click through rates on Adsense, most do not. Take a close look at traffic numbers carefully and ask seller questions as to how it is being generated and where it's coming from.

And for god sakes, whenever buying an Adsense site request screenshots (or better yet - a live screen sharing session showing the seller log on to the account) of URL Channels, as this is the ONLY report that can actually show whether the claimed revenue originates from the site being sold or some other site. No custom channels, no "sites" reports, only URL channels.

[mrstealth]

Right - good point Bryan, not where the seller just shows a screenshot of their overall adsense account with everything blocked out except the bottom line earnings. And if the seller says "well, we haven't broker our earnings down by site", that should set off a red flag as most anyone who builds these wants / needs to break earnings down by site to see how they are performing.

[Clinton]

Falsified income is a perennial problem at Flippa as we're talking smaller businesses that don't have audited accounts.

One way I've used in the past to find some fake income claims is overlaying traffic stats with earnings stats, Adsense page "views" figures or affiliate program clickthrough reports. Are the peaks and troughs in earnings matching those in the other metrics?

This is not an infallible approach, it's just one of the little things you need to do.