Gold Among the Scrap: Finding the ‘Deal’ When Purchasing an Internet Business

About six months ago we decided we’d build out another site in the same niche where we had (have) our most profitable site.  We just figured, “Heck, let’s have two sites doing this instead of just one.”

Instead of going the traditional route of looking for domains/sites for sale, we followed our own advice on buying a website:

Do a Google search for one of your top key phrases. Go through all the websites on page 2 or 3 of the search results. Those should be your top candidates. They have done all of the preliminary work for you but are probably not making much money because they can’t get to page one in their rankings.

We found one that wasn’t ranking well, had some content, and had a bit of domain age, so we low-balled (not low enough to offend) an offer to the website owner, he countered with something much lower than we would have actually paid, and we took it.  The site (content and domain) cost us $500.  To date it’s one of the cheapest sites we’ve acquired.

So far this month the site is averaging $197 per day.  Within two weeks of its purchase we had earned back what we paid for it.  This is not just a site that fits the Prosperly Way — it was also truly a gold nugget among the scrap.

This site was actually our first acquisition of consequence, and I think its success tainted us a bit.  We’ve purchased several more sites since then and none have yet to match the ROI or daily revenue of this one (granted, some of our later acquisitions are in much more competitive areas, so the time required to get to profits of significance is obviously higher).  Is it because we were lucky?  Partially I’m sure.  I think it has more to do with the work that is required.

For every golden site you acquire, you’re bound to either purchase, or at least evaluate several that are garbage.  As you become more experienced, you’ll get better at this, and you probably won’t actually purchase too many junk sites.  Hopefully you’ll do your homework and won’t purchase a single one.

But you WILL evaluate a bunch of junk.

Just like I mentioned my Realtor friend that was doing so many house flips — he didn’t evaluate 180 houses to purchase and flip those 180 houses.  He evaluated several thousand each year.  He was playing the numbers game, and you’ll need to do the same.

Adam has figured out that he adds a lot of value to our portfolio by doing these evaluations, so that’s where he spends a large majority of his time.  He’s hardly wringing his hands if we don’t find a candidate every day.  Heck, we go weeks without purchasing a site sometimes, but that doesn’t mean he stops evaluating.  You’ll need to be like the best real estate investors, who canvas neighborhoods, cold-call, network, etc. and generate enough leads that they can find those gems among the junk.