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Any browse through eBay website sales (try searching for 'website for sale') reveals the total rubbish that is for sale in this area. This of course, is an oportunity. There is certainly a business model in this area - as described below. The water is muddied by what many are attempting to sell as genuine, that is in fact, nothing. There are also traps to be avoided, since much that is for sale is unethical and the sales may actually be fraudulant. Read on...
What the Market Doesn't Want
Most website sales on eBay are sales of templates and sales of sites that have been quickly generated with zero value. Typically a site will
be for sale that claims to be a turnkey website. If that is what is required, then the sites may be quite a good buy - but there are thousands
of them for sale, and the auction closes with very low prices, often below reserve. The 'site' has never been hosted and has therefore never had
a single visitor. As described in the section Sales of Links the most difficult thing with most websites
is getting them linked to and getting recognition from Yahoo and Google, which process takes many weeks if not months. Further, the sites have
little or no content. If they are forums (many are) they are empty and have therefore little value, since they require not only visitors and
links, but also contributers.Most of all, they have no Google PageRank (PR). For websites that have no PageRank there are several dangers. If it's new it fits into the category above - its a completed (though not always) template. If it's not new, why does it have no PR? Possibly becasue Google has banned the site - which really means a banning of the domain address. If Google has determined that the site has infringed some principle, it may ban the site from it's index, which amounts to a living death for any website. This can be very hard for a webmaster. What has been a good source of revenue for a webmaster now becomes useless. They usually throw away the domain and start again with the same material under a different domain name, attempting to get links re-directed to the new domain - a great difficulty. Or they try to sell the site and domain through...., you guessed it.... eBay (and some other site auctions). They might produce apparent evidence for revenue from the site, this may (often not) be valid - but not anymore - the site has zero PR, or has declining PR which is just as bad - a downward trend is often a precursor of zero PR - or in SEO speak - whitelined!
There are so many scams in domain and site sales - that's why there is a good market for ethical sales. Even some sites that appear to have PR are for sale - but the PR (which is the recognized stamp of value) is invalid through something called 'stolen PR'. The webmaster has directed a domain to a high PR site, fooled Google into giving it the same PR as the directed to site - then released the site and attempted to sell the domain as a high PR domain. The next update from Google (roughly every month) would re-set the PR to.... zero!
What the Market Does Want
There are always buyers ready for sites that are genuine and have real PageRank and real revenue potential. For good profit in this area, set up
sites with contents with as good domain names as possible. Work on each site for good content and get the site linked to and get a reasonable
PageRank for the site. Set up some affiliations on the site and try to get some actual commissions though if possible. Document these sales ready
to display when the site becomes up for sale (though, not on the ste itself). Whilst the site is getting it's PageRank
(see Links) by your getting other sites to ink to it, start working on another site using the same method
(the first sale will take two months - by then you'll have some in the pipeline). Make the site simple to maintain, easy to transfer to any user
and if possible, without any complexities like databases which newer buyers may be daunted by. It will probably include some PHP, but may
even be totally HTML. Ensure the site has good content. Make sure it's a pleasure to visit and everything works, just like a show home - you're
marketing it as e-real-estate anyway. Once the site has PR5 or greater it can be offered for sale. If you have reason to believe it could reach
a higher PR, wait it out. But for the basic site, for a working income to be made it should take you no longer than one week, including the link
marketing. For an experienced web developer, this is no issue - but the link marketing can take a long time. Fortunately, this part can also be
sub-contracted to a lower salaried person.For the weeks work, what prices can be expected? This is obviously dependent on a number of factors - audience for the site subject, revenue potential, actual sales in what time period, etc. Roughly as of Sept 2004, a genuine site of this nature and with PR5 may be worth $2,000. The same with PR6 may be worth $4,000. The same with PR7 may be worth $10,000+. A PR8 site is worth over $200,000, very probably more, but don't imagine a PR8 can be obtained easily, and buyers at that price will be very careful to ensure the site's integrity, and will monitor the site for some months (in case anyone is tempted to buy in links just to sell the site then stop the monthly link cost).
The model has the advantage of being able to wait for sellers to provide the right price. Wait it out and the site may gain in PR and any affiliate commission will be yours - you may find it's worth keeping the site and benefitting from link sales, ads and affiliate sales.
The obvious question that arises is - what kind of subjects could be covered in the sites?
Attractive Websites
What sites do you visit and buy from? Build a site like that, though if it's a big company site like Gap, etc. it will take too long to
be worthwhile, and you don't have the name to help it. Follow the same idea. Make sure it's a pleasing site.The site may be a total product show and buy site, or it may be something that has increasing value, a hobbyist site which is well-done and is something that people with that enthusiasm will come to - not ostensibly to buy anything, but who on successive re-visits will venture into your shopping setion. A good example of this is Improve Chess and Very Boring Inc.. See how diverse the subjects can be!
Hobbyist sites have rich pickings. Take the foregoing chess example - every chess player wants to improve chess, so they'll visit and re-visit, and since chess is largely a middle-class pursuit, the visitors may well have significant funding at their disposal. This therefore becomes attractive to a site buyer. Other possible hobbyist site are therefore flowers, african art, photography and much more, infinitely more!
How and Where to Sell
Ebay is often the first thought for auctioning anything, but it's become so muddied by goods that it must confuse potential
buyers and cause them to miss good quality websites for sale. Vote with your feet so that eBay sees the need to improve. Other possibilities
are Sedo.com and AfterNic.com, both of which have a good record with site sales. There are many more, but make sure they have a good record of
actual sales, or if new, they have a real reason for buyers to come to them for website sales. Watch the commission rate for some, which in
eBay's case is favorable.Please suggest your experience with good forums for inclusion in this discussion.
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