Thinking of bidding on this flippa auction - ovariancystreatment.com... any thoughts?

**3stacks** · May 28th, 2010, 9:49 AM

Hi guys

I'm new to the website buying business and I've been looking at this particular flippa auction...
http://flippa.com/auctions/94044/HOT...unique-content

any tips on what I should look out before i bid?
i asked hooperman for some help and it turns out that a lot of the links came from www.whataboutbrazil.com...which just so happens to be registered to the same guy as well.
I'm a little worried about this but I'm not so certain regarding the real significance though.

any other thoughts regarding this auction? Thanks!

**hooperman** · May 28th, 2010, 10:09 AM

I've done a little bit more looking at those links and although the whataboutbrazil links do account for a large number, there are still lots of links from a wide variety of other sites. I don't think the removal of those would cause any significant change in rankings (that site's off topic too). I've simply looked at volume, not quality of the links here.

**Clinton** · May 28th, 2010, 2:52 PM

It seems like a nice site. There are the usual areas of concern.

1. Earnings. You need to always examine earnings very carefully. He likely has shown you his Adsense stats but he uses Adsense on all of the below sites. Are you sure he's tracking his channels correctly and this site doesn't accidentally include earnings that should be attributed to a different site.
ovariancystreatment.com
loseweighthavingfun.com
iluvbrazil.com
webconferencingreviews.com
fifaworldcupinbrazil2014.com
jogosgratispro.com
I'd also look for where the risk lies in the CB product being discontinued or you not being able to use CB. Is there an alternative? (In this case there probably are several)

2. Traffic. Same issue with traffic. It doesn't seem the case here but it's not impossible that some of the traffic apparently coming to this site could actually be going to some other site/s altogether. It happens by accident when the webmaster uses the same analytics code on multiple sites.

3. Running of this site. For me a concern with blogs is that you need to keep updating them. If you don't keep making new posts and getting links the traffic may just tail off and die. In fact, for a topic like this - what we call "evergreen" - I would have chosen a non-blog format for peace of mind and the ability to build long-term hands-free earnings.

4. Profit. It does bug me when sellers claim their net profit is the same as the gross profit. In this case they are both $151. For that to be true there are no costs for domain renewal, hosting, doing SEO etc., and no time costs for managing the blog, doing stuff like Wordpress updates /cleaning spam comments, writing posts etc.

Read all the info provided. Then throw it away an work out what time it would take you to run this site and how much you expect to make out of it. That's what you need to base your bidding on.

**hooperman** · May 29th, 2010, 4:02 AM

Most of the revenue coming from Clickbank raised a question for me: the CB revenue screenshots look legit (don't they all) but how can you find out whether the revenue originates from multiple sites, all using the same affiliate code, and not just the site listed? I've tried a "Clickbank Spy" tool I found but it doesn't work.

**3stacks** · May 30th, 2010, 4:18 AM

Regarding a non blog format for this type of evergreen niche...when you say you wouldn't choose a blog format for this type of site, do you mean that it's a better idea to have a static sales page selling an ebook?
Sorry, I don't really understand what that means.

**Clinton** · May 31st, 2010, 1:25 PM

Setting up as a blog is suited to subjects on which you wish to post regularly, niches in which there's a lot of new stuff going on. If your site was about latest mobile phone models, a static site doesn't work that well and you'd be better off with a blog that's frequently updated.

Given a choice I'd prefer to create once and continue earning forever (or for a long time), not to keep creating every week. That's particularly true when it's a subject that lends itself so well to the create once concept.

Blogs are a lot more aggro. Period.

**tke71709** · May 31st, 2010, 1:53 PM

But keep in mind that WP does make a decent CMS, so you could buy a "blog" like this one and convert it to a more static looking site by changing the template to one that doesn't look like a blog.

The problem with that is that you are still going to have to make all the effort to keep WP updated so no one hacks it but that is going to happen with any CMS.

**hooperman** · May 31st, 2010, 4:21 PM

There are lots of examples out there, but http://www.symptomsmrsa.com/ is built on WP but looks like a static site. Even though the content is "evergreen", the owner used a blog. The trouble is, the owner hasn't updated since version 2.6.3 and the current version is 2.9.2. If you don't keep up to date, your site becomes more vulnerable to being hacked.

**3stacks** · June 7th, 2010, 2:58 AM

Do you guys think this is a red flag for the site?
I tried checking up on some of this guy's other domains and he's got another site registered under his name
www.ovariancancerinfo.com

Not sure whether the owner will just remove the links to www.ovariancystreatment.com and concentrate on ranking this site instead

**Clinton** · June 7th, 2010, 3:59 PM

3stacks, you've recognised a very real risk. In this case, I don't believe the other site has much link juice anyway. Apart from the fact that it's a PR1 the incoming links to that site are mostly social bookmarking links that you can buy at $20 for a hundred links. I'd get him to throw it into the deal to show he doesn't have any intention of creating a competing site.

If he doesn't then he may be planning on building that up to exactly what you're buying (and with likely the same backlinks).