Midascode | Buy & Sell Websites

Browser Compatibility and Accessibility Tools

If you were creating a website for a city where the residents spoke 3 different languages, would it not make sense to make a site that used all 3 languages?

Of course it would!

So why is it that so many websites don’t cater for many of the popular web browsers?

If you are considering buying a website, why not see if browsers such as Firefox can use the site? If they can’t, then there is huge room for improvement for you.

Watchfire WebXACT: WebXACT tests the quality, accessibility and privacy of single webpages.

Wave 3.0: Wave 3.0 tests website compatibility with WCAG 1.0 and Section 508.

Browsershots: Use Browswershots to see how any website looks in various browsers like Firefox, Safari and Iceweasal.

Ready.mobi: Ready.mobi lets you test any web page to see how it will look on mobile phone browsers.

Note: These Browser Compatibility and Accessibility tools can also be used to keep an eye on your competition.

These “Financial Reports and Financial Research Tools” can be used to:

* Find out more about your competitors
* Research a niche
* Evaluate a website prior to buying it

In terms of buying websites, if you know that your competitor is financially broke, then this gives you an edge during the negotiations.

Credit eValuator Report: The Credit eValuator Report gives information on creditworthiness and payment history. Using this tool, you’ll be able to find out if your competitor is struggling or flourishing.

Yahoo! Finance: If your competitor is a publicly traded company, you can check out stock quotes and analysis on them using Yahoo! Finance.

BusinesScope: Use BusinesScope to directly compare your financials and credit with your competitors. This report is good for a year and updated quarterly.

Public Relations
If you are buying a large site, then it will be important to not only discover if they have a positive image in the industry, but also, you will want to know exactly how they got to where they are, thus allowing you to learn from their mistakes and positives.

Below are some public relations research tools and websites that will help you discover all you will need to know.

Warning: If you are buying a website, then you can skip this stage of the research process UNLESS the site you are buying is a well known brand in it’s industry.

Better Business Bureau: Search the Better Business Bureau’s database for reliability reports on your competitors. You can search by name, address, and phone. You can even check out businesses of a specified type within a certain mile radius.

ok, there you have two of the best sites to conduct your public relations research.

KnowX: Use KnowX to search lawsuit public records by defendant, plaintiff, case number, date and type of case.

There is nothing worse than buying a website or domain name and then receiving a letter from a global mega-brand that says we are not allowed to use the domain.

We know this because it has happened to us.

Below are a list of tools that you can use to do legal research on trademarks, patents etc…

Trademark Electronic Search System Use the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to perform basic, boolean and advanced searches for trademarks.

SEC Filings and Forms Check out the Securities and Exchange Commission’s database for company filings.

Patent Electronic Business Center Search the patent office’s records for full-text and full-page image returns on your competitors’ issued and published patent applications.

Market research is a fundamental area of research that you should be doing on your competitors. Also, if you are buying a website then you should use the following market research tools to learn the hidden secrets of the websites:

SpyFu - Spyfu is a web scraping tool that will show you what a site spends on Pay Per Click adverts. This will tell you if a site is expensive to maintain.

URLtrends gather SEO data, Pgaerank, links, rank trends and more.

Backlink Checker See who is linking to a specific website.

Market Leap Test the rankings of web pages. Great for testing competitor’s sites.

Would you like to know how to see which host a specific website is using?

This can be useful to see if a website is using blogger, free hosting etc…

Who is Hosting This - This is a superb tool. It will show you who is hosting a specific website.

Website Pulse - Website pulse will show you the speed of a web host. It shows response time, sizes and more.

Would you like to know how much traffic a specific website is getting?

If you are buying websites then it is vital to know how much traffic a site is getting.

Here are some tools that will let you know if they are low traffic or mega sites.

Compete Compete give a great overview of a site’s traffic. It shows visitor info, growth, traffic counts, and you can put multiple sites in a portfolio as well.

Alexa - Alexa is the obvious choice, but whilst it is not the gospel that many webmasters think it is, it still provides a good rough guide to a site’s web traffic details.

SEO analyzer This tool will highlight any weaknesses on a website. Then, you simply fix them and BAM! a nice traffic boost.

Statsaholic This will show stats about a sites rankings, page views and a lot more.

Whois - Domain History - Company Reports and other Research Tools

So you want to learn more about a website? Perhaps they are your competitors, or perhaps you are considering buying the website.

Below are my 4 best Internet tools for researching your competitor’s websites.

WHOIS Would you like to know who owns a website and where they live? No problem! Use this whois web tool and you can even find their contact info.

Mark Alert This tool is hugely powerful. I will let the company explain what it does:

What can I do with Mark Alert?

Trademarks can be proactively monitored. You will know when a competitor or infringer registers a domain name helping you maintaining trademark rights.

Watch your competition by monitoring product key words. Set an alert for “pencil” to see when any new pencil sites are launched.

Phishing and Fraud attempts can be shut down before a website is ever constructed to keep your clients safe.

For fun, you can set an alert for your first name and see what other people with your name are doing on the internet.

a Company Profile Report Want more detailed information on sales and contacts of a company? This tool makes a great comparison tool when used correctly.

Domain History Tool This domain research tool shows you how to see the entire historic ownership details of a website. Remember, the current owner may be nice, but the previous owners may have been viagra spammers. This tool also works for private registrations.

So there we are… you are now an Internet private detective.

Midascode

There is not a lot going on in the world of buying and selling websites, so today I am going to share a story with you that in my opinion sums up modern business in a nutshell:

“A Japanese company and a North American company decided to have a canoe race on the St. Lawrence River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The North Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat.

A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the North American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. So, North American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder.

It was called the “Rowing Team Quality First Program”, with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the North American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was outsourced to India.”

Midascode blog is primarily a website buying and selling authority. But in many ways we also cover Internet investments and investing in general. So I believe that what you are about to see will shock and amaze you.

Over the past few months “The Secret” has been a tv and print sensation, but this video shows one of the main characters scamming his students and investors.

If you can spare 10 minutes then you should watch this… if you can’t spare 10 minutes, then watch it anyway!