Pages

Monday, April 14, 2014

Tips On Fraud To Avoid When Buying Used Websites


Going online and purchasing an already established website that earns revenue on website auction websites like Flippa.com. Can be a very risky task to undertake and could potentially end up with you purchasing a complete dud, especially if don’t know what you are doing and fall for the most blatant tricks fraudsters often get away with.

When first taking a look at a website you may be interested in buying, always make sure you cast a careful eye over the figures when it comes to the earnings revenue. The calculation often used for valuing website is to take the monthly revenue and multiply it by a number to determine a fair value for the site. This number is usually called the multiplier and sellers will tend to use over the top multipliers like thirty six, and buyers will use very low multipliers like three. But in the end the website is sold at a price somewhere in the middle of these two overstated and understated values.

The way to avoid fraud when checking out these types of figures, is to look at the monthly revenue each month for a whole year. Some sellers will tend to focus on the good months or good quarter during that year to try and hike the price up when selling their website. Never buy a website thinking that every month is going to make the same huge profits.

The next step to look at is the Page Ranking or PR that the Google algorithm has kindly awarded the website. Remember the higher the PR the more of an authority the website is seen in Google’s eyes and could be worth more to you in the long run.

The way that fraudsters fake the PR of a website is by using the 301 Redirect trick, this entails pointing a high PR domain at another domain using the 301 Redirect and the waiting for the Google PR update. Once the PR has been transferred to the other domain they will take down the 301 Redirect from the high PR domain, and sell the other website before the next Google PR update comes around. Always make sure to examine the backlinks to a website to make sure that the Page Rank is not faked.

Some sellers will also try and sell you PR0 domains and indicate the site hasn’t been issued with any PR rating yet. But in reality the site has already been penalized and deindexed by the Google search algorithms. You are always better of waiting for the next Google PR update before purchasing such websites.

Another trick you may discover is when a seller will have a network of websites all pointing to a domain that artificially inflates the PR of the website. Once the domain has been sold to the unsuspecting buyer, the seller will delete the links form the network of websites and point them at the next fake domain they will be trying to sell. Again always be mindful and check those backlinks thoroughly to make sure nothing dodgy is happening on the sellers part.

The next thing to take into consideration is the amount of content and pages that are contained on the website being sold. Quite simply a website with over 5000 pages is worth a lot more than websites that have only a handful of pages.

To avoid fraud in this respect never take the word of the seller when they tell you how many pages a website possesses. Always do a quick search on the search engines and see how many pages from the domain have been indexed. Non indexed web pages aren’t worth anything and if there are web pages that aren’t being crawled correctly by the search engines, this may indicate a hidden onsite problem.

When purchasing a website always check out the domain name and see if it is catchy and relevant to the content contained on the website. A website with a fantastic domain name is worth far more than a website with an over complicated or non relevant name.

Avoiding fraud here is simply done by making sure the domain name does not have any potential trademark violations, that could result with you getting cease and desist letters from the trademarked companies lawyers. Don’t just go out and buy sellonebay.com and not expect eBay to come after you with their attorneys.

Copyright compliance is another problem buyers will face when trying to purchase and established website. In general websites which are constructed with copyrighted material can cost you hell of a lot more than paid for it.

To avoid Copyright fraud you should always check the text of the website for originality using the online Copyscape tool. Also you should check all the website graphics using image search to make sure they have been used with permission. Any websites that sell lyrics or ringtone are usually copyrighted material, so do not buy these types of site unless you definitely know the material is being sold with permission.

Always look for websites that have original content that has not been used elsewhere. Some sellers will build websites, make twenty or thirty clone on other domains and then try to sell each one as an original website. The clone website usually end up being penalized by Google’s duplicate content filter. Again use Copyscape to make sure there aren’t any clone websites indexed with the same content included.

If you intend to buy an established website and put your own Google Adsense code within the content of the pages, you will also need to be careful when doing this also. Some website owners will decide to sell their websites, simply because their Adsense accounts have been banned and they can no longer make money.

If you are intending to use Adsense on a website you are bidding on, examine the website thoroughly and make sure it is fully compliant with the Google Adsense Programs Terms of Service. A major tip just to protect your Adsense account is to email customer support at Google and inform them you have purchase a used domain. This will prevent your account being associated with another account that may have been banned using the same domain.

You cannot protect yourself against everything when purchasing an established domain and website, but hopefully these steps with help your chances of finally owning a quality website possibly bought from Flippa.com.

Source: Black Hat Sparrow

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Indeed.

Determine why it is for sale.

Note that few web sites are well set up, poorly written code will cause problems. (That's "will" not if, someday sooner or later.)

...Keith Sketchley

Anonymous said...

People even buy badly designed services, like Recaptcha.
:-)