Buying an income-generating domain name

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Buying an income-generating domain name

baw: Nov 5, 2008; RESIDENT: LAISSEZ FAIR-SNEZHNEVSKY INSTITUTE FOR FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY

So we had someone here who was selling his $80k per month web site. He explained how he managed to do it too.

However, I'm trying to be on the other side of the transaction (sadly I don't think I could afford his.)

I found a few places online that list income-generating domains that are for sale, but I'm really not sure who to trust or how to verify that the sites are actually generating an income. Does anyone have some experience with this? The biggest questions are how many months of revenue should I expect to pay up front for a website, and where to look for viable ones.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 10:14

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 13, 2024 16:21

baw: Nov 5, 2008; RESIDENT: LAISSEZ FAIR-SNEZHNEVSKY INSTITUTE FOR FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY

the posted:

Every domain that has any relevance has already been bought. There are millions of squatters out there buying everything up every day.

I'd imagine every single combination of letters and numbers from 3-6 characters for .com, .net, .org has already been purchased.

I know that they've been bought, but they're also being sold. I'm not trying to buy a blank domain name, I am trying to buy a domain that is already generating revenue. Like spend $1,000 on a domain that brings in $50 a month or something.

Juanito posted:

Flippa has stuff for sale, but there is a ton of crap to sort through. The best deals will be word of mouth, if you can find an owner who wants to sell but hasn't advertised.

Depends on how the income happens that you can verify. They might give you login information, although more likely would be that you remote view their computer, and watch them as they log in, etc. If it's something like Adsense, they might let you put your own ads up a few days, and see if the views/clicks remain consistent with what they showed you. It depends on what kind of a site you're looking to get.

Obviously there are still ways to scam, so you just have to be careful.

http://feinternational.com/ are website brokers, and they post websites for sale a few times a week all the time. They'll send out an email with a few basic anonymous details, including asking price, and then you can ask them for the prospectus which has ALL of the details from the owner, how it generates the revenue/traffic, how long it's been in business. I've seen sites from about 15k to 500k. A lot of crap (hugely inflated asking prices from newish sites), but also some very longterm legit investments.

I suppose this will be a good starting point. It looks like feinternational verifies revenue and then certifies the sellers so that's awesome. Even with the remote viewing it's not scamproof and that's a lot of money to throw away at someone that might be conning you.

edit:

i'm surprised at how few websites they have for sale there. i was hoping to be able to buy many smaller websites instead of one or two larger ones, but i'll have to do more research

edit 2:

i'm thinking i'll dip my toes in one a flippa site or two and see how it goes. it does seem kind of risky though because if all of these were true then anyone could easily retire with $100,000.

baw fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jun 26, 2014

# ¿ Jun 26, 2014 22:26

baw: Nov 5, 2008; RESIDENT: LAISSEZ FAIR-SNEZHNEVSKY INSTITUTE FOR FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY

So you've made some purchases?

# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 00:19

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Buying an income-generating domain name