Just looking over the Established Sites For Sale at SitePoint and I’m amazed at the extent of the unsubstantiated claims made by some of the sellers.
How can anyone expect to sell a website earning revenue without providing basic information such as:
- Detailed traffic stats including sources, volumes and search keywords. Established websites should have a reasonable amount of historical information to support claims.
- The requirement for any ongoing investment or effort by the buyer.
- Sources of revenue.
- Revenue records to show that the website has been able to make money consistently and will continue to do so.
What also amazes me is how people value their domain names and websites without any real basis for doing so.
As someone who has witnessed, first hand, the dramatic slump in AdSense earnings felt by many in 2006, it’s interesting to see people trying to sell their now-not-earning-anywhere-near-as-much content websites based upon the revenue they used to generate when AdSense was a much easier game to play.
For example, there’s a website on sale that once brought in $20k of AdSense earnings in 2005, but less than $8k in 2006. It’s more likely to be suffering from changes in search engine algorithms and the changes made to AdWords rather than from a lack of updates on the website’s blog (especially if there were only ever blog posts for a brief period after the high earning months). Can its previous performance be regained? If it can, how long will it last?
Caveat emptor!
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