I’m Perplexed – How Does This Guy Sell So Many Websites?

I saw a listing on Flippa today that has me thoroughly confused and perplexed. I’m not going to give this seller’s profile because I don’t need the headache of the potential complaints and legal threats from the seller. I don’t think it’s necessary to know who the seller is anyway to appreciate this post. And if you really must know, you should be able to figure it out.

At the time of this writing, the seller had 127 ended auctions on Flippa. That amount of activity immediately caught my attention, but what really jumped out at me was that they all used the same title. Here are just five titles I copied:

SEO Optimized Site- $990 Guaranteed Amazon and Adsense Income Monthly
SEO Optimized Site- $2970 Guaranteed Amazon and Adsense Income Monthly
SEO Optimized Site- $810 Guaranteed Amazon and Adsense Income Monthly
SEO Optimized Site- $972 Guaranteed Amazon and Adsense Income Monthly
SEO Optimized Site- $2430 Guaranteed Amazon and Adsense Income Monthly

Literally every auction had the same title. The only thing that was different from one auction to another was the amount of the guaranteed income. When I checked out these auctions, they were all startups with no traffic or revenue. The idea any seller can guarantee a buyer guaranteed income is a joke in and of itself, but to guarantee the astronomical income this seller is claiming on startup websites is even a bigger joke.

I don’t know if I’m more perplexed about the misleading titles or the fact that almost all of his websites sell. It would be one thing if these were high quality websites with just bad and misleading titles, but that’s not the case. These are all startup WordPress sites with virtually no traffic or income and thin content to boot. By thin I mean they provide virtually no content that is useful to the visitor. It appears to be just content pulled from Amazon via Amazon widgets and the like.

And if that doesn’t have you scratching your head like me, maybe this will. If you read through this seller’s auction descriptions and comments, you’ll wonder why anyone would even trust doing business with him. There are numerous spelling and grammar errors – so many that it’s difficult to even read the entire description. Now I’m not saying I’m some kind of English scholar, because I’m not, but come on, how does any buyer trust a guy who struggles to spell or write properly? Call me old school, but I don’t do business with anyone that can’t spell or write properly – unless there is a legitimate reason for it.

Now I know what you’re thinking, maybe the guy is from another country and English isn’t his first language. When you do a Whois lookup you learn he is in fact from Bangladesh. Fair enough, but why doesn’t he claim his country on his Flippa profile (a potential red flag), or state in his auction that he’s from Bangladesh and that English isn’t his first language? Call me crazy, but when you spell and write like that without telling me where you’re from or that English isn’t your native language, I get suspicious and there is no way I’m giving you even a penny of my hard-earned money!

Selling Less-Than-Great Domains At Premium Prices

In the end, what this seller is basically selling are less-than-great, keyword-rich domains at a premium. He probably knows these domains aren’t that great but he figures he can make “good” money on them if he just slaps a simple website template on them and then sells them as websites instead of domains. And guaranteeing income on these websites is just the icing on the cake.

Despite my complaints about this seller, he seems to be doing very well. As I stated, most of his websites sell and he sells a ton of them. He also has a positive feedback rating with a lot of positive comments from buyers. So again I ask, how does this guy sell so many websites? Or maybe the better question is, why does Flippa allow auctions where the seller guarantees income? I’m perplexed. Do buyers really fall for the “guaranteed income” line – so much so that they ignore all the obvious red flags?

What A Buyer Can Learn From This

As I’ve already stated, there are a handful of things a buyer can learn from a seller like this. They include:

Don’t fall for empty promises made in auction titles and descriptions (i.e. “great potential” or “guaranteed income”)
Look for the country the seller is from in their Flippa profile and if it’s blank, that raises a red flag
Unless the seller specifies the country they are from or that they struggle with English because it’s not their native language, numerous misspellings and grammar errors are red flags
Just because a domain has more than one page doesn’t make it a website so don’t pay a premium for it just because it’s being sold as a “developed” domain!

The main thing to learn from sellers like this, however, is that you need to do your own due diligence. Don’t fall for any hype the seller tells you about his site. Verify everything and do your own research. And in the case where a seller is basically selling a domain with a “thin” site, you need to ask yourself if the domain is worth the premium it is selling for. Chances are you can register a better domain for under $10 or find something equally as good (and much cheaper) on domain marketplaces like GoDaddy Auctions.

About Travis Van Slooten

Travis is an affiliate marketer and website flipper who ran FlipWebsites.com until the Fall of 2010.

View all posts by Travis | Visit Author's Website

This entry was posted in Buying Websites and tagged Buying Tips, Due Diligence.

Tim

Even now there is this guy who has posted something like ” for $200 he will tell you the domain name of a PR6 site which are available at snapnames.com or namejet.com. he is charging $200 for telling you the domain name
http://www.dynamicseoservices.co.uk SEO Services Surrey

Flipping sites is something which a great deal of people, make a decent living from. Whilst I agree that making false claims on earnings or traffic stats is totally wrong, if someone is flipping 1 site or 1000 sites I say good luck to them!

Flipping sites is not necessarily about selling sites with hundreds of pages of content, with fancy graphics, logos etc. As you no doubt know, you can flip a site which is 1 day old of 10 years old, with little content or tonnes of content.

I think people who design a site quickly to “flip” it on at a later date, do sometimes get carried away with what price it is worth, but there are people out there wishing to buy them.

Personally speaking everything I own is “for sale” and if you offer me the right price, then we have a deal!

All the best.
James
http://vacacionesenmalaga.com Javi from Málaga

Hi Travis,

really amazing. Why should someone buy that kind of sites? I think there are too many people trying to make fast money with the internet and falling into those kind of traps.

Off topic: did you already write an article about how to get to know wich keywords are bringing the most traffic to third part sites?

Greetings,

Javi

Travis

Javi:

That’s exactly why they are selling – the promise of quick and easy (guaranteed) money – which of course doesn’t exist!

I haven’t written an article on that topic yet but I might in the future.

Thanks,

Travis

http://wordpress.themeshq.net/ Wordpress Themes

The only reason why he keeps selling is because he is getting buyers. This is because newbies are fascinated by his claim he will guaranteed income in the coming months, and if he doesn’t, you can get a 70% refund.

Of course, he hasn’t proven any of his sites which are this profitable (5k a month)

Travis

There is no doubt newbies are the only ones buying his websites – which is what rubs me the wrong way. I hate it when people mislead others or take advantage of them. Yes, he does provide a 70% refund, but I wonder how many actually take him up on it – and I wonder how easily he gives the money back.

Travis

http://vreflipping.com John

Hey Travis,

This is an interesting seller. It was easy enough to find him with those title you included – you might as well have linked to his profile

It looks like he puts a $50 reserve on the sites, because anything under that hasn’t sold. It looks like the sites are built with some kind of autoblogging tool, so his cost is minimal – $10ish for the domain, a few minutes to build the site and that’s pretty much it.

The interesting thing is that the seller offers a backlinking service for $20 a month, and you get the link after buying. It’s not mandatory, but I’m sure quite a few take him up on it. It’s an interesting business model, if you’re comfortable with building and selling thin sites like this, which I realize you’re not (nor am I).

I didn’t spend a lot of time reading the listings, but he does offer a 70% refund after 3 months if the buyer wants it. That might be the justification for the “guarantee” in the title.

He must have happy customers, or a lot of new ones coming into the pipeline, since so many sell. It would be interesting to see how some of the sites are doing two or three months down the road.

Maybe we’ll start to see them popping up on Flippa again once they have some revenue & traffic data, and we’ll see how they fared.

Travis

Hey John! It’s been a while. Thanks for stopping by. Ya, in my original post I called this guy out and linked to his profile but thought twice about it. I’m just not comfortable calling people out directly. I figure if I provided the titles someone who was curious enough would find him:)

He definitely has something unique going on. Like you, I’d like to see how these sites are doing down the road. Better yet, I’d like to check up on this seller a few months from now to see how his sites are selling.

Travis