Managing a website or blog with concentration has become a popular way of making money online. However, the process of leading one website to the path of success is relatively hard to accomplish, and we have to invest a lot of money as well as time in that process! Therefore, if you would like to make money through blogs as well as websites, there is no harm in buying website or blog, which is already established. By doing so, you can skip the primary steps of building, publicizing, and monetizing the site/blog. The task becomes even awesome if you are familiar with the process of managing websites in a sustainable manner, and you can just move on with the decision so that there is no need of different methods like link building, social media marketing, traffic generation etc.
The process of buying websites is quite simple because you can make use of networks such as Flippa or Empire Flippers for the purpose; Flippa will definitely help you in buying the desired website, which is available for purchase, in matter of seconds, and you will have to follow the bidding task simply. Regardless what we have said, the process of buying one website is not that easy since you have to consider many factors of that website or blog to determine whether it would be profitable for you.
The determination process deals with different sections such as the popularity of site, profitability of content; scope of sustainable growth etc and the list goes on as you start exploring sub-sections! In addition, we have to consider the fact that blog flipping has become a common trend among internet marketers and a few of them have started building and nourishing blog and site for the sole sake of flipping it and hence earning HUGE money from it. Mentioned problem would confuse you when you have to buy one website from Flippa because it is not easy to distinguish between genuine websites and the fake counterparts. Otherwise, you should do search each nook and corner of the website/blog. Whatever the opposing factors are, you have to make the choice wisely so that you would not waste your money and time.
Here, we would be exploring different aspects of buying websites so that you could buy the most suitable and profitable website or blog from those platforms. Hope this will help bloggers and internet marketers, who would like to cut down the primary steps of building the website. We have included both technical and the general aspects, and we recommend you to treat both with equal importance. First, we will explore general sides of one site.
1. Popularity of Site – Ask Yourself and Others
Unless you just want to get a keyword-stuffed domain and a hosting account (sometimes), the foremost factor you will have to consider is the popularity of the website in not only World Wide Web but also the community, for who that blog is geared up! We hope that you will be purchasing a website in the niche, which you are an expert at! If so, you can just ask yourself the question about the popularity of website or blog. Moreover, you can ask your friends in field whether they know about the website/blog. Through these methods, you can gather a clearer idea about the popularity of the blog and so the credibility! If you have found that the site is popular among the aimed community, you have fewer jobs to do. The reason is quite simple that it is not much easy to force thousands of people to visit the site/blog unless it has some truly compelling content inside. In this section, you may also observe interaction in social media pages and other occasions, and if you find a good ratio between the number of likes/ followers with number of likes/shares per post, you can make it clear that the site’s worth praising.
2. History of Site – Love History, at Least Here
Before bidding the amount directly, you have to explore the historical side of the website. If you see that the site had its start before a few months, and have acquired thousands of likes and followers, it does means that something is not logical there. Hence, in this case, for the sake of sustainable profitability, you have to check out the history of the site and hence to known how long the website has been helping its visitors. If the site keeps its succeeding path for a notable time-period, you can make sure that the team behind the site has done their job well in such a way that the buyer will not have to ponder over different things to keep that successful behaviour.
3. Revenue – Where Does It Come From
Even though you might be having some other intentions of running a website such as sharing information, recognition, fame in society, etc, the foremost attractive thing of running a website is the revenue you get from it. In the case of blogs, the thing is quite useful because it can provide you both direct and indirect revenues whereas a site just sometimes fails to bear both. However, when people see an attractive amount of revenue in the buying site, they just start bidding before trying to understand the main source of revenue.
As you know, a blog might be getting revenue through different methods such as advertisements, paid posts, backlinks, sponsored reviews, affiliate links, and the list goes on. In addition, we should keep in mind that a few bloggers choose illegal ways for monetizing the blog. Hence, before buying the website, you should inquire about the revenue sources of the website/blog. This will help you also in finding whether you have enough skills to keep all those sources throughout when you run blog. It is also equally important to check whether you are capable of keeping all these revenue sources active. For e.g. If you know nothing about affiliate marketing, there is no point in spending thousands to buy a blog, which gathers most of its revenue through affiliate marketing.
4. Revenue – Is It (Will It Be) Sustainable
We like to connect this point to what we said in the introduction of the post. As we said, some bloggers and internet marketers build one website for the only sake of selling. In that case, as you can guess, we cannot expect sustainable revenue flow, as the record of two or three months is not at all enough for an experienced professional. Since you are not looking for a website/blog, using which you would like to redirect visitors to another site/blog, you should prefer long-term & sustainable methods of monetizing to the contrary. Therefore, preferably, it is good to choose a blog with multiple revenue options rather than one with one or two.
Obviously, if you want to run the site like a professional, sustainability is a big deal, indeed. When talking in that practical manner, you should try to prefer sites/blog, which make use of Google AdSense or other popular advertising networks, rather than sites, which depend upon single advertisers for main revenue. The reason for that altered preference is that the second site cannot assure you that seamless flow of revenue throughout the journey.
Additionally, at the last, if you have found all these qualities in multiple websites, then you may give priority to the digit of revenue for picking one from the list. Thus, going beyond just the higher revenue tag is a bad decision, indeed.
5. Niche – Look Towards Tomorrow, Not Today
This is where most website-buyers fail! Before you hit the buy button in the website, you have to think at least twice regarding the niche of that website or blog. For example, if you are not a geek and lack basic information about different happenings in the technology world, there is no point in buying a good technology-based blog because you will have to strive a lot in order to keep the blog running in a profitable manner. Moreover, it is very important to check whether the niche has possibility of tomorrow!
This means that you have to make sure that the niche could be able to attract visitors and users not only at the current time but also after a few months or years. You should take the competition among the niche to account so that you can estimate how much effort you will have to put on the blog. If this statement makes sense to you, you will not be running behind some fresh Android-niche blogs, which are made just for flipping. Your interest on the topic is the foremost factor in this section, and we hope that you know these things very well than do we. In addition, if you would like to know more about the selection of niches in blogging field, you might be interested in reading our post about selecting a good niche.
6. Time – It Is Kind of a Big Deal
Have you ever thought about this? Probably you have not, especially if you are a newbie in this blogging field. It is a bitter fact that the process of managing some websites/blogs is quite consuming, which is something weird situation for a busy kind of blogger. Therefore, before buying the website, you should determine the amount you have to spend for managing the website.
7. Traffic – Matters Too Much
All bloggers or internet marketers know the importance of GOOD Traffic very well than anyone else in the earth! Hence, it is one of the important things of a successful website or blog to have attractive statistics of REAL traffic, which can be in turn converted into US Dollars through different monetizing methods. However, it seems like most people are obsessed with five/six digit numbers and they are not concerned about inner sides of the section. Yet, if you would like to have a successful, resourceful, and profitable website/blog, you should consider the amount of traffic and its quality before buying the blog.
Instead of running behind just the number, you have to consider the quality of traffic, where does it come from, and whether it comprises real users. Since there are different methods for attracting inorganic traffic towards the site, you should check the authenticity of the traffic as well. This means that your blog should be getting visitors, who like to read the content you have published in the site. Only then, you can say that the site has QUALITY Traffic.
8. Content and Its Quality – Is It Useful
No matter whether it is a blog or website, content you have published in the web space has optimum importance, as Google has started tightening its algorithms for the sake of making World Wide Web resourceful. Therefore, rather than following technical sections such as DA, PA etc, you should consider which types of content has gifted such stuff to the blog. First, you should check whether the content is useful. We are saying so because some websites do not have much quality of writing but those articles would be damn useful and be loved by readers! Thus, we should give primary priority to the content and the second choice may be the quality of writing. Since there are a few methods of getting traffic by useless articles, you should give importance to quality content. However, you should not tolerate grammatical or spelling errors in the post because even if you do so, other readers as well as Google search ranking algorithms are not going to do the same.
It has been a long while since Google PageRank has not considered a metrics. We will not be able to base our deals on Google PageRank when it comes to new websites now, which have tremendous quality along with the power of sustainable earnings and traffic. Here, we can make use of Domain Authority, which is considered as the ranking factor among bloggers and advertisers, at least in the current situation. Hence, if you find a good site, which comprises quality content as well as other features, there is no point of declining the deal because you can rely on Domain Authority, as the mentioned ranking factor is not easy to fetch. This rank is calculated by Moz, and you can use different methods such as Open Site Explorer, Moz Bar etc for determining DA of the website/blog. Domain Authority is calculated based on chances of the website to rank in SERPs and you will get a score between 1 and 100. Since Moz includes different parts while defining DA, you can simply rely on this thing! The same ranking method is applicable when you are making your guest blogging campaigns as well.
10. Backlinks History
Another factor you should consider before buying one website is backlinks leading to that URL. As you know, in recent times, Google has tightened its process of evaluating backlinks flow. For instance, nowadays, you are not going to rank well if you have some unnatural backlinks from random websites with some non-related anchor texts. If the site is in technology niche, you should prefer it to receive natural backlinks, mainly from same niche sites and sites that have high authority. Simply saying, you should check whether the author has gained natural backlinks rather than the artificially looking ones.
At the same time, you have to check whether the site has given backlinks to offensive websites such as pornographic, casino, as well as gambling websites. All these kinds of backlinks will add up to the low ranking of the site in SERPs as well as penalties from Google. As a whole, you should thoroughly check and analyze backlinks of the website before buying the site unless you would like to receive penalties from Google. In addition, to analyze backlinks of the site, you can use those tools, which we had mentioned in our previous post. Using those tools, you can get many kinds of information including what we mentioned above.
11. Value of Accuracy – Last but Not Least
You might be having the habit of rounding off digits during the practical life. However, that habit is not well when it comes to the world of site flipping because even a slight inaccuracy of provided details may cause you some huge as well as important issues. It is always good to check whether the seller has kept the power of accuracy in his deal, and if he has not, chances of being deceived are high, indeed.
12. Copyright Claims – Want to Get Sued
Unless you would like to be sued by copyright claims, you should gather entire information about copyright stuff of the website including text, images, media, etc. Among the list, images get the optimum importance because the notable amount of bloggers frequently use Google image search results for inserting images in their posts. Of course, such a use is damn hazardous because you might have to confront some legal complexities if you fail to understand that inevitable importance of copyrights in this virtual world. Therefore, you should get confirmation from the owner that the blog has been using ITS OWN content throughout the time-period and have given credits wherever required.
Conclusion
Viewing all that we said above, buying one website from platforms is not an easy task but requires an enormous amount of care and concentration. However, we can make sure that you would not have to waste your money if you deeply check those sections, we have mentioned above. Well, we have finished listing out major aspects of buying a used website/blog as well as how those sections could have effects on the fate of the site. Do you think we missed a few points in the list? Then, please do let us know via comments and we are eagerly waiting for your words.
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