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The King of Kwangju
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
Location: New York City
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 Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:18 am Post subject: Buying an established website |
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I'm a web designer/developer. That's what I do for a living. I work for CBC.ca here in Canada.
I do freelance work as well, and have always tried to keep my eye out and mind open to new web ideas that I could start myself. I've had a few, but they never really took off, for various reasons.
Lately I've been thinking that maybe the route to go would be to buy an existing profitable website, "fix it up," and maybe sell it down the road, just like people do with houses and real estate.
I think a few people here have some experience in this, and I'm wondering if they have any advice.
I browsed around a site called Creabiz and even eBay and it looks like I'm not alone in this.
Has anyone done this before? |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:28 pm Post subject: |
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"Flip this site" great idea!
Wonder if it'll make it to reality tv...
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The King of Kwangju
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
Location: New York City
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| Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:36 pm Post subject: |
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That's exactly what I was thinking!
Although looking at some of the sites on offer, I might be better off making one and then selling my "successful" site after 2 months. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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Well, that's the trick, eh? How do you make a site "successful"? I think that "buck a pixel" idea only works once, maybe twice... no shortage of 419 scams, maybe you could make phishing sites and sell them to shifty Nigerians?
I'm not very helpful I kow, but it is an interesting idea! (your idea, that is, and not the 419 idea...) |
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superdave
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: over there ----->
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| Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Bulsajo wrote: |
| maybe you could make phishing sites and sell them to shifty Nigerians? |
wouldn't want to generalise at all mate! hehe
maybe you could sell the idea as a 'pimp my site' concept. focus mainly on teaching people how to make a site look good. as you know there are rules about how to design sites, like using space and making menus and navigation simple ... something very few korean websites have mastered!
if you're just talking about fixing and reselling sites by itself, your biggest issue would be the value of the site before and after you renovate it. obviously that's your profit margin.
i'd compare existing sites to the domain name gold rush. people buy up a lot of crap in the hope that they strike it rich with a good domain or website. 99% of it is garbage and not resellable.
the ONE consideration i'd make if i were you would be to make the websites so that the buyer can easily expand or edit the site after purchase. if you built a flash site (for example) they'd be locked into a design which might not suit their needs after 2 or 3 years.
wysiwyg ... but that's just my $0.02 ...
renovating websites is a good idea though. perhaps that's the concept itself. |
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The King of Kwangju
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
Location: New York City
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| Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:18 am Post subject: |
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Dave, the last thing I want to do is teach people how to make websites! I spend alot of my day convincing explaining websites to senior managers who don't use computers.
This project would be a bit of a break, and a way to make money.
Browsing on eBay there are a lot of sites for sale with some good ideas in them, but they need a little finessing.
Some of it is design and code, some of it is just marketing. Sometimes even the crappiest site can make money. The ESLcafe, for example, breaks every rule in the book, but that's another story.
The idea is that I would take a site that made $50 a day into a site that made $500 a day. No one would give a hoot about the design as long as the money kept coming in. |
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zappadelta
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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| "Pimp my Site", haha, that would be great. |
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bellum99
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: don't need to know
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:32 am Post subject: |
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Must be selling something people want:
1: Gambling
2: Porn
3: Gaming
4: Music
5: Movies
6: misc interesting stuff (most people fall under the top 5)
---I have trouble understanding exactly how to interest enough people to religiously come to a site and thereby make money from advertising. Selling a product is getting increasingly hard as big name competition moves into the internet market. People are not usually stupid enough to simply buy your site because it looks good (any yahoo can make a site look good)...they will want to see the traffic the site has and this means you actually have to have a busy site to sell.
How do you see profit from it......? |
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The King of Kwangju
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
Location: New York City
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:35 am Post subject: |
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| bellum99 wrote: |
Must be selling something people want:
1: Gambling
2: Porn
3: Gaming
4: Music
5: Movies
6: misc interesting stuff (most people fall under the top 5)
---I have trouble understanding exactly how to interest enough people to religiously come to a site and thereby make money from advertising. Selling a product is getting increasingly hard as big name competition moves into the internet market. People are not usually stupid enough to simply buy your site because it looks good (any yahoo can make a site look good)...they will want to see the traffic the site has and this means you actually have to have a busy site to sell.
How do you see profit from it......? |
Bellum, no offence, but pretty much every sentence you wrote here is wrong, with the exception of the last one, which was a question.
A couple quick examples:
A mate of mine has a site that links to ringtone sites. Just links to them! He has no ringtones himself. But people come, and he makes a shocking amount of money from ads.
Another guy I know programmed a myspace layout generator. You could go to his site and pick some options and his site would output a myspace layout for you for free. Again, thousands of people came, and he made a lot of money from ads. |
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bellum99
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: don't need to know
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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| When you mean a lot of money..what do you mean? Compared to the time spent designing,maintaining, modifying and upgrading it continuously. A couple grand a month is not big money...I also have some friends who have done this and they make money but not really when you look at the time spent doing it. |
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The King of Kwangju
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
Location: New York City
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:54 am Post subject: |
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| bellum99 wrote: |
| When you mean a lot of money..what do you mean? Compared to the time spent designing,maintaining, modifying and upgrading it continuously. A couple grand a month is not big money...I also have some friends who have done this and they make money but not really when you look at the time spent doing it. |
Yeah, that's the crux of the situation. I'll have to plan it out as best I can so that I'm getting paid a reasonable wage when all is said and done.
I've come to the conclusion that I really need to choose something in an area that I enjoy, so that maintaining the site will be less of a chore.
And I've a few ideas that no one else has done yet, so I think I will go with those first, rather than buying an existing site and playing catchup. |
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bellum99
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: don't need to know
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Post back and say how you are doing...I also love that type of work. Teaching makes money but it is sure dull, dull,dull. |
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The King of Kwangju
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
Location: New York City
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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Ok I'll check back in when I made my million.
By the way, I found this in my wanderings, and no, it's not mine.
http://www.eslbillboard.com/ |
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RokofKangnam
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Location: Between a ROK and a Hard Place
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:07 am Post subject: |
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Check out www.godaddy.com
They have a list of domains on auction. They also sell domains that aren't allready taken for really cheap.
I used them to set up a store a while back and was happy with the service. |
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re:cursive
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 3:14 am Post subject: |
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| Could be worth doing if the "established" site already has high search engine rankings. It can take a while to get those rankings up and if the price is right you could come out ahead. Depends on the nature of the type of site you're looking at getting. For example if you want to start selling kim-chi online it might be profitable to buy a kim-chi website already ranked on the first page of google. |
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