Buying an affiliate website - don't get ripped off

Are you considering buying a website but not sure what it is worth? Learn some tips and tricks to research a website before you buy so you don't get ripped off.

I have been recently asked if I was interested in buying a website.

Of course, I needed to know the price and the website in question.

I was given the website name and address, then told how much it supposedly made per month which was a generous figure.

Then I was told that they were selling because they needed to raise money to pay for health care followed by a large asking price.

According to the seller the website is about gambling and in a few months produces $1500/month while getting 2500 unique visitors per month.

The deal for the website was supposedly at a bargain paying 24 months up front but at a rate of $1000/month instead of $1500/month.

$24,000 is a lot of money to pay for a website with content. So in 5 minutes time I was able to do my research to assess the value of this domain.

I won't disclose any information about the person or domain but perhaps you can learn a trick or two about finding out what a website is worth.

Domain Research Tools and Whois domain information

Checking whois.net information:

Domain created mid July, 2010 expires 2011.

This means the domain was bought recently but since it expires in 1 year this person might not be as serious about this website.

If you make $1500/month you will pay a bit more $ to secure it for more than just 1 year.

Traffic Analysis

Checking compete.com and Alexa.com stats shows that this website has virtually no visitors at all.

PageRank Checker

PageRank was 0 as expected.

Backlinks Checker

Using Yahoo Site Explorer (now Bing webmasters tool) shows the website has under 20 links pointing towards it, which of course all links were rather weak ones.

Search engine testing

I tested the domain to see if it ranked for it's own keywords since the domain was keyword1keyword2.com type format and it just doesn't show up at all.

Copyscape and stolen content

I searched for some of the content on this site to see if it existed on other sites and the whole website is copied. There was no original content put up on this website at all.

Conclusions about buying a website

This person is attempting to rip people off with this website.

It would take approximately 4 hours to reproduce a website in the same manner with copied content and that certainly isn't worth $24,000.

Based on the above information this website isn't worth $20.

Having copied content on your site is a good way to ensure that you'll never show up in a search engine and you may risk having your website host shut down your account or have affiliate accounts banned as well.

Last but not least this person said they were selling the site and needed the money to pay for surgery in an EU country they live in. If this person actually lived in Europe they would know that the country in question has public health care.

One final point a gambling website with 2500 uniques per month is worth a lot more than $1500/month in income!

Websites have become a solid method to start making a lot of money online. Therefore, investors have turned their eyes to them, looking for another trustworthy source of income. However, many of them are not experts in the area, so they end up getting scammed and losing incredibly high amounts of money. To avoid getting scammed, it is recommended to follow these tips:

Do your research

Despite not having the expertise in gambling sites or the industry, you can still do some research that can help you make the right decision at the end.

One of the best things you can do is hire an expert in the area. You can simply search for someone that knows about the industry and the best potential sites that could double your earnings.

Another advice would be utilizing simple yet trustworthy and effective online tools such as WhoIs database, this tool allows you to identify the real owner of the site that you want to buy. That way, you can check if you have been approached by the real owner or not.

Checking the traffic that the site has is equally important. When you are about to buy a website, the traffic that it has will determine a big rate of its price, so it is always mentioned in the discussions between the seller and the buyer.

Two tools that you can use to verify the traffic of a site are Google Analytics and Clicky. In order to check the traffic of a site on these platforms, that particular site has to use them as third party tracking scripts. Needless to say, if the site you wish to buy does not have a third party tracking script, do not buy it at all.

You make more money buying then selling

More often than that, gambling sites are great sources of income, so it is quite weird when an owner of these sites wishes to sell it. Because of that, investigate everything you can about that particular person and what possible reasons he could have to want to buy the site.

Of course, sometimes a gambling site owner faces critical needs and is left with no other choice than to sell his precious site, so it is not always the case that there are negative reasons behind an owner wishing to sell his domain. So, keep your mind open to any possibilities, either positive or negative ones.

Look for a site that has growing potential

This is probably the most important tip. After all, if you are looking to buy a gambling site, it is because you consider it a worthy investment that will make you increase your earnings in the long run.

If you are looking to buy a gambling site, make sure that it is possible to make it grow even more. If the site has 10,000 monthly visitors, you can easily double or triple that number using the right marketing tools. So, think big, think about the future.

Do not think about the possible earnings in the near future only, but also the earnings that you can reach after making further investments that could help the site grow and become more lucrative to you.

If would not be worth it to make the effort to buy a site that does not have any room for development. You always have to look for ways to improve and become more relevant when you are the owner of a website.