Thread: Buying web sites

Just curious if anyone has any experience of buying an established site.

I came across Websitebroker.com and it's interesting stuff. I'd take the Adsense earnings on some of these with a large shovel of salt and I saw some guy trying to sell a domain for about 15 million dollars last month.

Have you bought a site before with proven adsense revenue. Did it work out for you etc? Any nasty suprises?

I've bought one or two sites, but they weren't bought based on their adsense

here's a gaming site my pal bought for his son to earn a couple of adsense shillings ... Play Online Games | Free Online Games . I just put it up for him last night

please excuse the post mearly to get it indexed for him. :-)

Originally Posted by webdream

here's a gaming site my pal bought for his son to earn a couple of adsense shillings ... Play Online Games | Free Online Games . I just put it up for him last night

please excuse the post mearly to get it indexed for him. :-)

It's in breach of the Adsense TOS.

You cannot use the text:
Please support this website by clicking the advert links below.

i knew someone would mention that ... I'll reword it

do you think Google would ever actualy notice?

Originally Posted by webdream

i knew someone would mention that ... I'll reword it

do you think Google would ever actualy notice?

Yes. They would and will. Advertisers pay for that click because it is supposed to be relevant. You asking someone to click for the sake of it is fraudulent. I know you changed it but it really grinds my gears seeing this.

Advertising on the Google content network is ruined because of this activity. 90% of all my adwords campaigns are now search network only because of the low quality traffic sites asking to click adsense ads are generating.

Oh, and on topic

Yes, I have bought over 20 sites and sold about 30. I think all of them were on Sitepoint.

Also, some of the biggest sites I own were as a direct result of me watching the marketplace, seeing what sold for a large sum of money and creating something similar.

Sitepoint Marketplace is a GOLDMINE of money making ideas.

No nasty surprises either. In fact, the only way I got into the top CPM advertising networks was by buying a site that was already approved.

fair comment redfly. the site's just for a 12 year ol lad uno, no harm intended. I think he's going to get all his mates clicking on them anyway.

Actualy, i must say I'm not a huge respecter of google ads, I click loads of them all the time on google.ie just to waste the money of the advertisers... no law against that & sure google have no objections .

quite often I search for 'web design ireland' or something simlar and then click loads of the google ads to see if I can use up their daily spend.

is that iresponsable ? I don't think so ... just a free market

Publicly saying these things webdream, won't make you friends here that's for sure. I certainly wouldn't recommend the services of someone who does such under handed tactics.

Hi Paul,

You're probally correct that saying such things won't help me make 'friends' on this forum, although it would be a fairly boring place without diversity of opinion or personality.

It's not underhand tactis or anything else to be clicking away on these ads, but just demonstrates a weakness of the 'pay per click' system.

I think redfly said he had experience with the low quality of traffic from ppc campaigns and let's be realistic here... it makes no sense at all to rely on the 'good nature' of internet users to only click on ads where they have a genuine interest or intent of buying services.

I'm sure you are well aware of the exploits and vunrabilities associated with ppc. If weaknesses are there they need to be addressed and debated.