What's the scoop?

[pixie]

So whats the scoop on purchasing established websites? Do you or don't you recommend this?

Thanks!!!
Pixie

 

[MarketLeverage]

I keep reading everywhere that you should not purchase a blog. It isn't a good investment. The readers are reading that blog because of the writer. Unless your purpose for purchasing the blog is to own the domain name.

If you do not want to put the time in to creating a site from scratch, it may be a good idea to purchase an established site. That way you are up and running almost immediately.

 

[JAmieF]

It depends what you want to do. I would build a new website rather than buy an existing website. To me building a new website is more fun.

 

[pixie]

I agree building a website from scratch would be more fun. However, I'm really afraid of losing money. I've considered purchasing and established website so I'm up, running and earning immediately. This way I'm not losing while I venture in to starting my own site.

 

[JAmieF]

As much as losing money is painful, great lessons are learned. There is no better experience than learning from mistakes. You can buy a website that is making money but you still need to maintain that money by adopting different marketing strategies.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Buying an existing site can be a really good strategy if you can find one that has some age, good PR, lots of backlinks and some decent rankings. Just be sure all the links are in and out from good neighborhoods, no bad ones and be sure the site is not penalized in the search engines.

Sometimes aged domains do better in the search engines and getting one that already has links, PR and ranking can give you a jump on having to do all that tedious building up yourself.

All that said, the good ones may be pretty expensive. But then again how do you value your time and where do you like spending your time? If you like designing you can always re-design the site after you buy it.

 

[pixie]

I do understand that losing some cash is a lesson learned but I guess I'm to frightful, I want to start on the right foot and my DF is not going to be to supportive If I go losing to much from the get go. He is not computer savvy at all and is definately a little skeptical. He does absolutely nothing on the internet. I am on the other hand very savvy! Bottom line goes, most of the money I would lose would be his because I am currently a stay at home mom! LOL! So I do have to be respectful, I have roughly $180 dollars a month that I bring in from two kids that come to my house before and after school so I'm trying to scale on that budget for starters!!!