Midascode | Buy & Sell Websites

Here’s a headsup: People wanting to discuss matters relating to the buying and selling of websites now have a new forum where they can chat with like minded individuals.

The quality of the chat is extremely high and though the forum is only a week old today, it boasts some of the most respected members from places like Sitepoint and elsewhere who advise on the subject. Already signed up are brokers, accountants and lawyers who deal with matters like Accountancy Due Diligence and Contracts of Sale, buyers and sellers. Flippa is there asking questions and getting feedback on how they can improve their service.

It’s a place where you can find out about the best places to buy a site, what scams to watch out for, what’s a fair price, how to perform due diligence, the best places to list a site for sale, how the pros make money from site holding and site flipping …and much more. Head on over and pose them your most difficult question.

If you interested in any aspect of website buying or selling – you need to be there. Go to the Experienced People forum right now and register today.

Have you ever bid for a website or domain and had the uneasy feeling that the seller himself was bidding against you to artificially push your bidding up? You’d be surprised at how often that happens. Rigged bidding (also called shill bidding) is common in any bidding marketplace and there’s just no way you or the auction platform owners can do much about it.

Shill bidders are a clever lot. They setup new accounts on different IPs. They buy accounts. They ask friends to bid (and they reciprocate the favour when the friend has a domain or site he’s selling).

The net effect of the shill bidder’s activity is that you end up paying a higher price than if the auction was a fair competition among competing bidders. Places like Digital Point, Sitepoint and Flippa seem to make no attempt at shill control. True, they’ll ban you if you try to open another account from the same IP you currently use to sign into their services. But that’s pretty much their own defence. And, let’s face it, pretty useless. We’re talking a webmaster crowd here – people who know their way around using a proxy, people who know how to monitor their IP and are aware when the ISP changes it. If there’s extra profit to be made you can be sure people will try to make it even if the method is dishonest. Bear that in mind the next time you’re bidding – there’s a good chance there’s a shill bidder competing against you.

The latest news is that one of the biggest domain name resellers, Snapnames, has been caught with their pants down. For the last four years or so they’ve had an employee who’s been pushing prices up, causing people like you and me to overpay for our domains … and making Snapnames a huge chunk of extra profit in the bargain.

Unfortunately, many auction sites are designed so that the owner stands to gain if the auction item sells for a higher price. I point no finger at Flippa, I believe they are perfectly honest in their business and above what happened at SnapNames. But, a percentage link between sale price and earnings at the holding company – whether it’s eBay or SEDO – is always going to cause some level of suspicion.

It’s a rough world out there. Take care.

Experience is said to be a very valuable asset. But some people say that experience is a fancy word for failures.

I will tell you about one of my recent experiences and let you decide whether it was a valuable learning experience or a failure.

A couple of months ago I was contacted by a forum owner who had a popular forum that he was considering selling. I looked at all the stats and asked if he would accept $25k. He replied saying $30k was his absolute minimum.

So I went away to think about it for a few days.

During that time I did more research on the site, and in particular on the domain name’s trademark issues. I discussed the offer with my partner and overall we felt that it was probably worth nearer to $25k than $30k, but nevertheless it was a site that interested us.

We decided to wait a while and see what our lawyer had to say about the trademark issues, and before we knew it the site was for sale at DigitalPoint forums.

At this point we were no longer willing to bid on the site, but amazingly the site sold for a whopping $75k ($40k more than it was offered to us at).

So should we look at this as a learning experience? did we value the site incorrectly? had someone overpaid by $40k? did we miss a great opportunity?

I believe I know part of the reason why the site sold so high, but I would probably get into legal trouble if I mentioned it on here. Other than that I feel we may be undervaluing a large membership base.

These are questions you have to ask yourself after every event that doesn’t go as planned.

The great Jack Nicklaus (legendary golfer) once said that every time he missed a putt he would not leave the green until he had figured out why he missed it.

So remeber that every failure or missed opportunity can provide a valuable lesson.

Dean