Buying a website listed on eBay

TheSandman

Is this advisable basically?

The premise is that it appears to be a very flexible sideline business with what will likely be small earnings but quite passive earnings, putting in the time and effort whenever I have the time spare which would suit me.

I'v been reading up on how to actually make money through a website but I'd like to know:

From personal experience what is the hits/£ ratio?

How do I make sure I don't get ripped off? Ensuring registration is properly transferred and,

What price to pay? While I like the idea of learning, registering and designing a website of my own as a project, I wouldn't rule out paying a small fee in order to bypass the man hours and fast forward the process.

Do I value it on traffic? Earnings? Potential?

Here's a typical example http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ESTABLISHED-VIDEO-NASCAR-FAN-RACING-WEBSITE-BUSINESS-DOMAIN-NAME-SALE-/380449135544?_trksid=p4340.m185&_trkparms=algo%3DDLSL%252BSIC.NPJS%26its%3DI%26itu%3DUCI%252BUA%26otn%3D10%26pmod%3D251083230061%252B251083230061%26po%3D%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D205519587882230700

There are a lot more examples like this, I guess I'd pick one which had the potential to generate links to a lot of associated merchandise, blogs and sites, a bit like the above.

Suarez

I get thousands of hits on my website but only 2/3 clicks a day. Earns around £10 a month but it is a forum website so it's easier to get people returning.

I wouldn't waste your time buying the pre installed websites from ebay.

paddyrg

If someone is selling it on ebay, it isn't making money, or at least not enough to pay for its hosting and upkeep. You would need to actively curate the site to give it a raison d'etre, so you end up doing £00's of work for £0's of reward.

TheSandman

Thank you both for your input.

It seems it's pretty unviable then. I knew for sure it was unrealistic for these sites costing £200 to make what sellers claim but I thought if it could make even £10 a month profit it would be generating 300% more income than dividend funds for 20% of the price.

I may still make one myself even if it's just for the novelty and at least I've only spent my spare time on it.

One to avoid, thanks.

InsideInsurance

If the site was going to be as profitable as they claimed then they would actually run the site for a year or two to prove its potential and then they could sell it as a multiple of its annual profits. The fact they are selling it for pennies tells you what it is worth.

I get thousands of hits on my website but only 2/3 clicks a day. Earns around £10 a month but it is a forum website so it's easier to get people returning.

I have an old "fire and forget" site that I forgot about far too quickly. It gets about 1500 impressions per month . There is a click through rate of about 2.5% with about 10p per click and so makes about £4 a month.

You will find that the CTR and CPC/EPC will vary massively depending on the subject of the site, how well you know your visitors, how well targeted your ads are and much competition there is in the advertisers space.

davehills

TheSandman wrote: »

.. I knew for sure it was unrealistic for these sites costing £200 to make .

How it works is that the seller will use the same template for a large number of sites, hence they are cheap.

As it currently stands the site will have zero traffic.

If you can promote the site and generate traffic then there's no reason at all why it shouldn't generate an income. Same would be true of a site you design yourself.

It takes a LOT of effort to generate traffic, whether it's your own site or a template.

DalePie

I think if the website was so profitable they would have millions of the things running away and they would be living in a tropical island somewhere...

I bet they are not though!