You mean like the seller of the startup site I highlighted in my post about the average price of startups where the seller said his website was a cash machine – in a niche guaranteed to make money…lol.

Travis

Funnily, MOST starters are junk.

Interesting, hardly any SELLER recognises that it’s junk.

Sadly, most buyers don’t recognise it either (not till several months down the line).

Travis

I actually can’t stand Kool-Aid of any kind, which is kind of ironic because I was practically raised on that crap. And I’ll spare you the details of one of my wilder college days where I got loaded on Vodka and grape Kool-Aid. Let’s just say it didn’t settle well with me…lol.

At any rate, I’m not trying to be a shill for Flippa at all. They frustrate me on many different levels but I don’t have the same gripes about them that you do. I personally don’t see Flippa encouraging newbies to buy anything. They provide a marketplace for buyers and sellers – period. Sure there may have been a blog post or two that *might* be construed as convincing newbies to buy sites, but those posts are far and few between.

And yes, there are many sellers on Flippa that overhype their listings, but at some point buyers have to do their due diligence. Buying a website is no different than investing in an ebook or course on “how to make money online.” There are good ebooks and courses and there are bad ones. It’s up to the buyer (newbie or experienced) to educate themselves and to do their due diligence. To that end, that is why this site was launched – to educate and to be a helpful resource to website buyers and sellers regardless of their experience.

Travis

>>End of the day, and I think this is what Clinton teaches people to do
Er, I don’t teach anyone anything. I chat with people at our forum and we share ideas. I’ve been going around the blogs today and find myself saying in several places that I DON’T sell an ebook, course or video. I don’t even sign people up to a mailing list. I don’t teach anything. I don’t promote anything… except for the forums where we discuss topics related to buying, selling and monetising sites. (It’s a non-profit forum)

However, you’re right in that I do recommend that people buy sites for the longer term and people treat them as businesses. We’re all learning and sharing on our forums and I’ve learnt a lot myself. Drummers are just as welcome as the chefs, decorators, copy writers, programmers, webmasters, brokers and Flippa managers we have there already.

>> Guys like me had no avenue to flip websites because there was no mass marketplace to do so.
You’ve drunk too much of the Flippa KoolAid my friend. There were many avenues. There was Digitalpoint, there was the Sitepoint marketplace, there were others. It’s only now that there’s a marketplace that encourages newbies to buy sites that are completely unsuitable for them, a marketplace that encourages the building of copycat crap by drumming up demand for that stuff via convincing newbies that anyone can make money with websites. The fact is that NOT everybody can. You need to have or acquire the right skills and it’s not as easy as it looks (as many are now discovering. We’re currently talking in the forums about opportunities in buying up all those starter sites sold months ago that are now getting abandoned one by one. Some are selling for as little as $10 as disillusioned victims are getting the hell out)

>>Now (for better or worse as I’m sure you’re thinking) anyone can buy and sell websites
It’s always been the case that anyone could buy and sell websites. I have no monopoly I wish to protect. I love it when someone new comes in and makes good. Heck, I’ve spent thousands of hours writing content, answering forum questions in SP, EP etc., to help them do just that! What I’m not keen on is scamming thousands of newbies into buying something they’ll never make a dime from.

And it looks from Dan’s conclusion that we agree – people want businesses more than pretty, on-the-shelf websites. The fact is that this is what people ALWAYS wanted. Sellers of templates only got sales because they were good at convincing people they could make BUSINESSES out of those sites.

Well said, my friend. I’ve heard about that whole “duplicate content” penalty myth as well. I personally don’t bother worrying about it either way. I’m an old school marketer in that I only work on 3-4 sites at a time and that’s it so all the content I produce is unique across the board. Although I do have my writers rewrite everything a few times – manually – for article networks and directories and the like. Autoblogs are completely foreign to me and if I were to ever use them, I would only use them as part of my network of sites to drive traffic to my money sites.

Travis

James, in regards to autoblog sites, everything has its place.
Autoblogs used in a farm network, where you basically setup sites to help rank your main site work a treat, but as a stand alone site, I have had a little success, but it all depends on where you source the content.
Interesting fact, and this will cause some debate, but Leslie Rhode, one of the most informed SEO experts on the planet, recently came out and said that there was no evidence anywhere that google penalizes duplicate content.
I have had autoblogs that rank and build to decent PR, but it does involve work.
Set and forget style autoblogs, I don’t think work. In my experience anyway.
I like how google explain things in that everything is measured in terms of human experience. Sites that are active, have great and Keyword related content, have people reading and sharing that content, get the most google love.

End of the day, and I think this is what Clinton teaches people to do, is to sell sites that if a buyer continues the work required, they will have every chance of making it a success.

Now, remember I’m just a drummer that shows others what works for me when it comes to selling websites. It’s up to you to learn from as many people as you can and fuse it all into your own model.

You’ve given me something to dig into. I should track autoblogs for a couple weeks and see how many are being listed and sold – and for what prices. In fact, I’ll put it on my to-do list! Thanks for the idea.

Travis