How To Buy Cheap Websites For Sale

I couple of weeks ago I wote a post about how you should be ready to take advantage of the great deals on websites for sale that would surely come because of the downturn in the market. Even though we have been “in a recession” for a year now, people seem to be feeling the effects of it more now that ever.

Personally, I think this recession is media made and although certain industries may be in a recession I don’t think everyone is. But I digress.

So back to the good stuff. I made a goal to acquire or build at least 16 websites by the end of 2009 that all make at least $100 a day. Naturally with this goal in mind I have been looking at websites to purchase much more aggressively.

I spend a lot of time on Sitepoint.com’s marketplace looking at the current listings. In fact I have made 3 acquisitions since that last post. The common thing on all three websites is that we were able to negotiate a purchase price that was far below what the person was asking. Was it our superior negotiating skills or just desperate website owners in a bad economy? Probably a combination of the two. But here is how I did it.

I would see a website up for sale and after doing background research on the industry and deciding that I was interested I would contact the seller. Keep in mind that I usually will only pursue websites where there is not a lot of bid activity which makes the seller more motivated. I ask him what it would take to part with the site.

They all came back with a figure to which I replied to the email and said I need to discuss it with my business partner. Then I wait a few days and come back with an offer that is way below what their price was. All three website owners agreed to my price without any further negotiation. This technique seems to work well.

For example, we recently purchased the website OrlandoTravel.org. I did the preliminary research and recognized that the term “orlando travel” gets high search traffic and based on the fact that Google gives domain name an unfair amount of weight in rankings we decided to make an offer. I noticed on Sitepoint that his opening bid price was $500 and his buy it now price was much higher.

No one had placed a bid so I went through that process with him that I described above. He told me that he wanted a quick sale and would let the site go for $650. I replied that I needed to talk to my business partner. I came back and said I would give him $500 for the site. He replied sounding a little upset because he purchased the domain alone for $550 but he still took the deal for $500. To quote a line from the movie “You’ve Got Mail”, it’s not personal, it’s business.

Anyway, if you are making any website acquisitions, try this tactic out, it has worked for me.