investment in sites

[worlddom]

Don't know if this is a sensitive subject but does anyone here invest in developed sites?

I've been checking out forums (the usual suspects) with a view to buying some revenue generating sites and I seem to be getting nowhere. All those advertised are either either bull**** or scams, which thankfully are quite easy to detect with a bit of research.

Anyone been stung? and more importantly can anyone point me in the right direction? (silly question, i suppose you'd be buying them yourselves)

[Drew]

Time Travel....DPF and Crapoint have very few things worth buying these day.

[worlddom]

Too true, quite frustrating really. A lot of time wasted that could be better spent.

MrGeeK: I posted you on DP re: the layouts that you may have available. Haven't checked back but if you could pm me with details I'd appreciate it.

Many thanks

[Drew]

Yeah saw it in my email (hate private messages on DP - it crashes my browser)

There not ready yet...will let you know when they are.

[Cyclops]

I have bought a few developed sites but as you say, anything remotely worth buying is rare.

I look at it the same way as buying a traditional business and the first question I ask myself, if it's generating an income why is it being sold.
Who sells a business that runs itself and makes a profit. Very few people do that, it's usually because it is having problems or losing money that it's being sold.

Websites are very hard to pick, they may look excellent on the surface but underneath the surface their could a major problem looming.
Is a major link about to be removed or has just been removed, is there a problem with Adsense. I recently bought a site then a few days later the site was banned by Adsense, I was lucky, I explained that I had just bought the site and it was reinstated.
Is the traffic and revenue geninue...I thought that the stats were proof enough but I have read about a couple of tricks on the forums that show how easy it is to manipulate Adsense and traffic stats.

It's bloody hard to value an existing site and it's even harder to build a site from scratch and get it earning an income within 12 months.

Even then there is no guarantee that it will still produce revenue, I had a site that went from making around $50 a month to around 10k per month overnight, Yahoo placed the best terms on their first page, two months later Yahoo removed those terms....for the last 8 months it is back to around $50 per month.

Adwords is pricing itself out of the market, I read a report today that confirmed what I had already noticed, over the past 12 months the cost per click across the board has increased by 37%......

[Drew]

Cyclops brings up a good point, I've bought a few sites, and all except for one "network" of 4 sites had a "problem", I bought them because they had a problem. (Sounds mad I know)

For instance, I bought a gaming site for $2500 that had been banned from Google (The Search Engine, not Adsense), when the ban kicked in it lost 70% of it's traffic and revenue, so I got it "cheap".

I bought it because I believed I could get it back in Google, it was a gamble. A gamble that paid off....it took me 2 weeks to get it back into google, and as a result it had a payback time of < 2 months on what it cost me.

Oh and that network of 4 sites, it was making reasonable money, and it was a bargin. I bought it because the guy selling it didn't know what he had on his hands....it cost me $1500....I earned $1600 in ONE day from that network of sites, it did take me 2 months to get to that one day though.

I always try to buy things that have a problem, because I believe I can fix almost any problem, and the ROI can be high in that situation. (It is a GAMBLE though)

Even Twan's site had a problem....and some people think I was mad for paying $1k for just the domain name....all I'll say on that is.....I'm happy on that gamble too!

[worlddom]

Hmmm, some very interesting points raised here. Unfortunately i do not have the expertise to do the same as yourself MrGeek.

All I need are basic income generators with little maintenance (i know you're thinking hen's teeth). I guess there's a steep hill coming up but if I buy a pup I know where to come looking for advice :-)