I often get people e-mailing me to ask how much their website is worth. So I have compiled a list of questions I will need answers to before I give you a site value.

If you cannot provide any of this info then don’t expect to get an accurate appraisal.

– What is your current revenue?
– What % of this is profit?
– Do you have any ongoing liabilities?
– What methods do you use for revenue? (revenue model)
– What is your position in the inustry?
– What is the value of the industry?
– How many unique keywords do you rank for?
– Do you use PPC? and what is the CPC average?
– How many major competitors do you have?
– What is your Alexa rank?
– Are you in a niche with Alexa bias? (e.g webmasters, SEO etc)
– Do you get any traffic from type ins?
– What are the current traffic levels?
– Do you have an estimated value per visitor? (uniques per month divided by monthly profit)
– Have you built a brand (reputation)?
– What are you conversion figures?
– How hard would it be for a competitor to re-create the site?
– Do you have a members base? (opt-in, registered members etc)

Please try and answer as many of these as possible before contacting Midascode.

Many thanks,

Dean

5 Great Reasons to Buy Websites

I have compiled my top 5 reasons to why you should buy websites. Enjoy!

1. To sell a product or service. If you are selling a product or service then you can be guaranteed targeted traffic and an existing customer base to promote your products to. When buying a website try and see if it is an audience that you can sell to.

2. Make advertising money. By far the most popular reason for buying a site is to try and make advertising revenue from the site. For many webmasters this will mean Google adsense ads, but there are also affiliate ads and text links to consider as well.

3. Buy a site to re-sell it for a profit. This is commonly known as site flipping. The concept is to buy a site at a low price and sell it soon after for a higher price. To make a good profit from this technique you really need to be an expert at evaluating a sites market value.

4. Purchase for the domain. We have seen terrible sites on great domain names, so by purchasing the site you automatically get the domain included. This can help branding, and even if you are un-able to build a great site on the domain, you can always just re-sell the domain name for a profit.

5. Increase your portfolio. So you are doing fairly well with your three celebrity blogs? imagine how much more power you would have if you had 5 quality celebrity blogs! buying your competition not only removes the competition, but it also makes you more powerful within your niche.

By DeanHunt.com

More and more people are buying websites, so what are the main advantages of buying a website?

Advantage 1 (Midasrank 9/10) = Established audience: If you buy a site with an existing audience or userbase then it will dramatically cut down your advertising budget. It also means that you have an audience who trust what you say, and will be more open to promotions etc…

Advantage 2 (Midasrank 8.5/10) = Existing Backlinks: Even newbie webmasters appreciate the value of backlinks for SEO purposes. So it goes without saying that having a decent amount of existing backlinks is going to save you a lot of time and money.

Advantage 3 (Midasrank 7.5/10) = Avoiding the Google Sandbox: New websites go into the Google sandbox for an average period of 9 months. So buying an established website that has been online for more than 12 months is often a great way of bypassing the Google sandbox. In many ways you are getting a direct VIP pass into the SERPS.

Advantage 4 (Midasrank 8/10) = Existing revenue: It is always nice to make an investment that starts returning your money from day 1. This is the great thing about buying websites as opposed to buying stocks and shares etc….
Also, if you can see that a site is making xxx per month, then you know the potential of the site and the industry, thus saving you valuable market research time and money.

Advantage 5 (Midasrank 5/10) = Brand recognition: I recently bought a blog that was pr6 and had a good reputation in its niche. So when I contacted sites for link trades, content deals and advertising deals etc I got a positive response due to the power of the brand name in my niche. This can make life a lot easier, but also bear in mind that many sites have a bad reputation, so do your research first.

By DeanHunt.com

The past couple of weeks have been a tricky time for buying web sites.

This is due to the Google pagerank update that has been bouncing around like a rabbit on drugs.

Like it or not, Pagerank still plays an important part in determining a sites value, so during an update can be an awkward time to buy or sell.

I have seen many sites listed with titles like “Pr4 site for sale”, but when I check they are pr2. This of course can work both ways, and if you are sharp you could look for sites that have recently gained a large pagerank increase, and then bid on those sites.

So what is the purpose of this article? am I saying to avoid buying or selling sites during an update? of course not! but you do have to be careful.

The best way to check is to use the following tool to check the pagerank of a site from multiple datacenters: Pagerank Checking tool

If the pagerank is lower than the seller is quoting, then tell the seller. If it is higher, then it may be worth putting in a bid ASAP. 😉

Like anything on the net buying web sites is a gamble, but bear in mind that during a pagerank update the odds can change in the blink of an eye.

Good luck.

There are MANY reasons as to why you should consider buying an established website as opposed to creating a new one.

Market research
One of the main reasons is that an established site will have a past performance, so this means that your market research is included in the sale. By looking at a sites history you can easily see what works and what doesn’t. This will save you valuable time and money.

A few examples of this are:

Keyword research (Simply look through the sites stats and you will see where the traffic is coming from. You can use this to find new keywords and also you will know which keywords provide the most quality traffic)

Learn from past mistakes (Mistakes are time and money consuming. You can learn from the mistakes from the previous owner and therefore save future time and money.

PPC (building a list of quality PPC phrases can take a lot of time and a huge amount of money, if the previous owner used PPC then he/she should include this data in the site sale)

Creation time and money

Creating a new site can take a lot of time and money. Designers can be expensive, and there is always a lot of time needed to make any changes and add content.

Existing userbase

This is one of the most important factors in an established site. If you have existing users then you can e-mail them, get feedback, have a site with an active feel.

Disadvantages of buying sites

Like most things on the net there is a negative side to buying sites as well. Here are the main problems:

A large investment is often required (Simply ask yourself, could I re-create this site myself for less money?)
Transfer costs (On larger sites you may need to hire a lawyer, accountant, broker etc…)
Time is required to research the sites.

At Midascode we can help you with all of the above. If you are looking to purchase a website then simply contact us today and we will send you more details on our site buying services.

The key to buying websites is to find the quality web sites. But these days there is so much rubbish that it can often be like finding a needle in a haystack.

There are also many tricks used by site sellers to trick you, so here is my top 10 list of the TRICKS that many site sellers use to inflate the value of their sites.

1) False reasons for selling: I have heard it all from “I have to sell because I am going to do some charity work”, to “I have to sell because my gran is ill”. NEVER believe the reasons for selling! 99% of the time they are selling because they failed.

2) Deceptive titles: shocking example. In this example the title is “Fishing.com” but the actual site is “californiafreshwaterfishing.com”

3) Estimations/potential : This is the one that drives me mad. We are bidding on the current value of the site, not where it COULD be in 10 years time. There is a great article about false site potential here: site buying potential dangers. Remember that it takes a lot of YOUR hard work for a site to work, potential is often just fantasy.

4) Comparing their little site to a major brand in the same industry. Here is a trick that is being used more and more by site sellers. Lets presume they have a new video hosting web site with ZERO traffic, they may say something like this: “Youtube was sold for billions of dollars, so this shows that you can make a fortune with my site”

5) Not giving the URL in the post. This is a common technique used on sites like Digitalpoint.com. There are a few site owners who genuinely have a good reason for not displaying their url, but there are two other reasons why this is done. 1) If the seller has something to hide then they have more chance of getting away with it. 2) Every time a buyer requests a PM it bumps the topic back to the top, therefore getting more views. In summary, beware sites that don’t share the url.

6) Hits v Views v Uniques: If you do not know the difference between these three, then read this article ASAP. It is possible for a site to have 1000 hits per day, but only 10 visitors per day, so always ask for unique visitor stats.

7) Misleading search engine rankings: Always remember that it is not what phrases the site ranks well for in Google etc, it is how much traffic those phrases bring the site. I have seen many site sellers boasting that their site ranks top 10 for terms that would never be searched for. Always ask for the amount of hits the site gets for those terms.

8) Pagerank obsessions: It is widely known that the majority of webmasters place too much importance on Pagerank. There are certainly advantages to having a good pagerank (selling links, link trading, getting content), but this only makes a small portion of a site. If a seller is constantly talking about how great their PR5 ranking is, remember that they probably have nothing else worth saying about the site. Do you think that Youtubes PR8 was a major factor when Google were in negotiations with them? I doubt it!

9) Fake Pagerank: Now that we have established that the average webmaster places TOO MUCH emphasis on pagerank, it may not surprise you to know that it is possible to get a FAKE pagerank. I am not going to explain the exact process of how to do this, but there are tools and re-direct tricks that can get any site a huge pagerank. However, this is not a genuine pagerank, so use tools like this Fake pagerank detection tool to double check.

10) Dirty history: We all have things from our past that we would like to hide, websites are no different. Bear in mind that it is possible that a site has had numerous owners over the years. What may today be a site about dog grooming may have been a porn fetish site 5 years ago. Use the Wayback machine to see a sites history

Welcome to Midascode.co.uk

We are a group of internet entrepreneurs that make a good living from buying and selling websites. Buying websites is becoming more popular, and we are here to give you all the information you will need to be successful.

Why Buy Wesbites?

Buying websites has many advantages. Essentially you are buying a business and you are making an investment as well. From an investment perspective I believe that buying websites is currently one of the safest yet most exciting forms of investment you can make. When you compare buying websites to buying stocks or shares the risk factor is much lower. But the rewards can be just as high.

Think of the last car you purchased, you probably wiped up to 30% off the cars value the second it arrived. If you follow our tips and information then you should NEVER lose money on a website investment.

Need money to make money

Ask any successful business person and he/she will tell you that you need money to make money. This has never been more evident that on the internet. When you invest in stocks or shares you only make a profit once you sell the shares, but websites continue to provide revenue on a daily basis. But don’t think that you need a 6 figure budget to invest in websites. We have seen websites being sold from $10 and upwards. So by re-investing your sites profits you can quickly build a huge and highly profitable portfolio of websites.

The age effect

The interent is currently mainly driven by the search engines, and one of the factors that is important to the search engines is a sites age. This is another factor that helps increase the value of your investments.

Fun investment

Lets be honest, stocks and shares, trading, antiques, etc… can be pretty boring. But there are websites on almost any subject on the planet. So by buying a website in a subject that you enjoy you can make money whilst doing something you love.

I used to spend a lot of time writing on sports forums. But then I decided to buy a small sports forum for $1,000 in 2004. I sold it recently for $12,000. But I would have been posting on sports forums anyway, I enjoy it, so why not make money from your hobbies?

Summary

In summary buying websites can be a great investment, and if done correctly you can make a large amount of money.This site is going to be an authority for buying and selling websites, so feel free to add us to your bookmarks or feed reader and we will continue to share our secrets with you.

By Dean