I won!

Today was the end of bidding for the website that I've been eyeing and since I wasn't able to participate in the last hours of bidding, I decided to just buy it now. I'm the proud owner of Tattoos Designs! Please give it a visit and check it out! It's been a fun experience. I've learned alot about how to research websites before buying and learning a little bit about search engine optimization (SEO), etc. I get 3 days through Escrow.com to evaluate the site that I bought and determine if the revenue/traffic was for real before finalizing the sale. There are a few things that need to be transferred and I'm both excited and worried at the same time! Wish me luck in making the transfer happen!

Buy it now?

I've been keeping an eye on a website (tattoo site of all things!) and the seller just changed the end date so I can participate because I'll be on vacation when it ends. I thought that was a nice gesture. He also added a buy it now price which he's been sticking to since the beginning. One thing that's disturbing is that the domain (under godaddy.com, one can check who owns a website by checking whois.net) still had the previous owner info and everyone on the question board for this listing are thinking twice about whether it's legit. Anyways, the seller did get his name changed, but left all the other info un-updated. I mentioned to the seller that the old email was still there and he just say leaving that to be updating for the new owner. I've been also trying to get ready only report for google analytics to his site and have been unsuccessful. Apparently, you need a google email account (i.e. gmail), so I had to set one up right away and asked the seller to add my again to gain access to the analytics. So far, I had to set up the following accounts:

-google account (adsense & analytics)
-google email
-escrow.com (to protect myself)
-aweber.com (for marketing)
-godaddy.com (for domain and hosting)

That's the basics and I'm sure there are more. Well, the auction ends in a few days and I'm kind of excited to think that I can own a website! I do have reservation about whether the traffic and revenues are as claimed by the seller. So, I'm a little worried and excited because I just don't want to get ripped off on my first website. Anyways, wish me luck and until next week.

Weekend doldrum

It seems like weekends are a little slow on the website auction listings, but maybe it's just early in the day. It's 7:45am on Sunday as I type this blog. I had to get up early since my daughters (toddlers) get up like around 6:30am everyday. I don't know where they get all their energy from since they sleep around 11:00pm!

I spotted a posting that leads to another tool for evaluating websites. It's called Estibot.com and provides info on the values of a domain. So far, I see a few components as I navigate and learn my way to buying my first site. Here are some components to consider:

-domain name (better w/ the ad words in the name and great w/ .com, but not necessary)
-age of domain (the longer the better and it contributes to the Alexa ranking)
-content/theme of website (is the sector competition/satuarated)
-traffic (uniques and page views/month)
-revenue (adsense/affiliate promotions)

I'm sure there's more, but those are the most important. You can gather info from various websites and put a value to the website you're trying to purchase with a formula. I would rely on the google adsense to be the first value since that's verifiable and easy. Depending on the site, a 2 year multiple would give an good estimate (e.g. month adsense times 24) for the adsense part. And then estibot for the domain name itself plus the other revenue (more conservative value relative to adsense depending on the reliability/consistentcy of the revenue stream). Enough for now, I got to go make some breakfast for the little ones.

Bidding on my first website

Hi, I just wanted to share my experience in trying to own a piece of the net. My brother in-law got me interested just recently. Actually, he provided some useful info a couple years back and I didn't follow through. I kind of regret it now knowing what could have if I started earlier. Anyways, enough thinking of what could have been.

What I got me really excited was how much my brother-in-law made from selling one website (he got it for a few hundred dollars and sold it for over 6 figures)! Hey, I thought he can do it, I can too! The family didn't have a high regard for my brother in-law because he didn't have a job or anything and was still living at home (he's 30!). We all thought he was a slacker, but he built quite an ownership of websites (15+ at the last count). That's not bad for someone who hasn't finish college and never held a steady job!

I opened an account at www.Flippa.com (use to be called website market place I think) and started to doing some research. I made my first bid on a website just two weeks ago! Hey, I thought to myself, this is easy...just like Ebay! Actually, it's alot of work in trying to filter through all those listings and figure out which auctions are good to own (for the long term). At first, I focused on the revenue details, but as my brother-in-law reminded me, that it's the space you're in that matters the most (e.g. is it a fad, costs to entry, etc).

I made my first bid on a car info site, but got really concerned when checking out the stats through www.websiteoutlook.com and turns out that most of the traffic was from Pakistan!? The seller said there was some kind of mistake and not too worry about it. Anyways, I didn't win that site. The 2nd site I got interested was a site on designer hand bags. Hey, that would be cool! What every women wants...new handbag to carry everyday. I can't go wrong with that. Well, it was sold in a matter of days as I was wrestling with how much to bid and whether it was a good sector. Anyways, I moved on to another site that caught my eye. I can't say what it's since I'll still bidding on it! So, look for my next post on the outcome. My ultimate goal is to retire and not work by owning a whole bunch of website to replace my income. Hey, can't a guy dream!