Brand new domains and websites have no traffic. Therefore, they don’t make money as long as you don’t promote them and make them attract traffic from search engines, or have loyal followers. This is not easy to do. Therefore, one option to start an online business is that you buy a website that makes money and/or is closer to making money.

The question is: How can you buy a website that makes money or you know that it will make money?

Buying a website that the seller claims is making money is not that easy, because you have to know how to analyze the site that you want to buy. You have to look at so many things before you buy a website. And if you want to buy a website that makes money, which means the website’s income is important to you, you have to do some precise analysis.

Before You Read the Rest of This Article, please subscribe to our newsletter. You will love it:

Three Main Groups of for Sale Websites:

Websites that are for sale over the Internet are usually in one of the three groups below:

  1. They currently have traffic and make money.
  2. They have no traffic and don’t make any money yet, but they can potentially make money, if someone works on them.
  3. Premium domains.

Sometimes, there is combination of the above groups too. For example, the site has a premium domain name, while it also receives traffic and makes money. Or, it is a brand-new website with a premium domain name, but it doesn’t make money yet just because it is new and hasn’t started receiving traffic from anywhere.

I will also tell you the interesting story of a site/blog, the buying of which saved a big company, American Online or AOL, from bankruptcy.

Please keep reading… 🙂

When you want to buy a website, first find out to which of the below groups it belongs:

1. Websites That Are Currently Making Money

This group of websites are usually so expensive, because they are making money already. Their value is based on the money they make every month or year. When you want to buy these kinds of websites, you have to make sure that (1) they are really making money; and (2) how they are making money.

– Is the Website Really Making Money?

Usually the sellers must give enough information about the sites’ traffic, and their sources and proof of income. All you have to do is verify the information and proof they give you.

There are so many different ways that websites can make money. For example, if a website makes money through Google Adsense, then the seller has to show you the screenshots and stats of their Google Adsense account that you can verify.

If you are not experienced enough with websites and online businesses, you have to ask the experts to help you with your verification. You must do this before you buy a website that the seller is claiming makes money.

Something that you have to note and ask yourself is that why should someone sell a website that is making money???

You have to ask this question to the sellers too.

I don’t sell a website that makes money, unless I want to get rid of it, because it either has too much work and lots of headaches, or I receive a good offer from a serious buyer who really pays, otherwise I let a website that makes money keep making money for me. The more I keep it, the more expensive I can sell it later. I will tell you why.

Therefore, people usually don’t sell websites that make money. You must pay lots of money to buy a website that is making money, after you verify and make sure that it really is making money. Websites that make money are usually too expensive to buy.

On the other hand, sometimes a website doesn’t make any money at all, while the sellers have already spent lots of time and money on it to make it make money. Therefore, they decide to sell it to recover the money they have wasted on the project, and so they claim that they site is making money, but it is not. That’s why you must be careful.

– How Is the Website Making Money?

The way that the website makes money is very important too. You are buying the website because you want it to make money for you too. What if it stops making money after you buy it?

Yes, this can happen. For example, a website makes money through a special product, like an app that needs to be upgraded from time to time, otherwise it won’t work anymore. Therefore, if you buy the site and you don’t know how to upgrade the app, you will lose your customers.

Or the website offers a special service or membership. You have to be able keep offering the same service to keep receiving the membership fees, otherwise you won’t make any money.

Sometimes the website doesn’t offer any special product and is making money just through the routine organic traffic it receives from search engines and when the visitors click on the Google Adsense ads for example, or what the website sells doesn’t get outdated or expired.

This is great, but the question is: Will you be able to maintain the website’s traffic after you buy it?

If you can’t do it and the website loses its traffic after your purchase, the income will go down too. A website that receives traffic from different sources like different search engines, and makes money with the traffic it receives, can lose the traffic gradually, unless someone who knows what to do keeps the website updated, alive and fresh. Google lowers the ranking of the websites that are abandoned, nobody updates them and no fresh and quality content becomes published on them on a regular basis.

These are the things that you must be sure about and know how you are going to deal with, before you buy a website that makes money.

– The Domain Name

When a for sale website is making money, it doesn’t need to have an extraordinarily good and premium domain name to make you buy it. The website’s income is enough by itself to make you buy it, if you pass the above stages and make sure that (1) it is really making money, and (2) you can maintain or even increase the income after you buy it.

Ask for Our Support

If you want to buy a website that the seller claims is making money and has a constant income, but you don’t know how to verify the things I explained above, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page or contact us, so that we will check and will let you know.

There are so many factors that we must check to tell you whether the site makes money; the numbers that the sellers have given you are correct; and how to maintain the website’s income, after buying it.

2. They Don’t Make any Money Now, But They Can Make Money If Someone Works on Them

As I explained above, usually people don’t sell a website that makes real money. In most cases, they sell a website that has a potential to make money, provided someone to promote it and work on it. There is no point in selling a website that doesn’t make any money now, without it having any potential to make any money in future.

What I am trying to say is that they should give you a good reason to buy a website, otherwise what is the point in buying it?

Either the site has a reasonable and steady stream of income that intrigues you enough to buy it, which is what I explained above; or if it doesn’t make any money now, at least you should see a good potential of making money with it:

  1. It should have a good, strong and premium domain name that is worth buying.
  2. The domain must be old enough to have a strong age factor (I will talk about age factor later in this article), while having a clear and healthy background and history.
  3. The site/blog niche must be a good and demanding niche that should you work on it and add related content to it, it can attract the attention of people who are interested in that niche and topic.
  4. Google should like the site and rank its content and posts rapidly, with the reasonable initial rankings, and a reasonable speed in increasing the rankings.

What Else?

While all of the above conditions need to be met, the price should be reasonable enough. I often see that people try to sell websites for some strange prices like $100,000 or above. But when I check the site, I don’t see a single reason to pay even $500 for them. Sometimes they sell a website for one million dollars, but all I see is a domain name that is worth no more than $40,000, and the site has no other value.

So far, I have paid lots of money for premium domains, and I have built good websites on some of them. I have sold some of them and kept the others for myself. Sometimes I pay thousands of dollars just for a domain name that I am 100% sure is worth the money. But, to make me buy a website that is not making any money right now, they should give me enough reasons (having a good domain name is just one of them).

As you see, buying a website that makes money is not that easy. It is not easy to buy a website that doesn’t make money either. This is even harder than buying a business. However, if you consult with experts in this, they can easily tell you whether you should do it or not, and how much the site you want to buy is worth.

Be Careful!

When I was new to this, I wasted lots of time and money on buying sites and domains. In those days I bought plenty of domains that I thought were great and worth the price, but when I cooled down, I would ask myself why I bought them.

But now, sometimes I check hundreds of domains and websites and buy only one of them after a long time of researching, investigation and thinking.

When you are new and you see website or domain for sale, chances are you will get excited, and so you won’t do enough analysis and will buy it without enough research and investigation. That’s why you should ask the experts before you spend any money on this.

If there is a domain or website you want to buy, and you need my advice, you can let us know. We will do our analysis and will tell you what we think. Click here to send us a message.

3. Premium Domains

Most people buy premium domains just to keep and sell them for more money later. For example, if you buy a premium domain name for $4000 now, and then keep it for 5 years, you will be able to sell it for $20,000 depending on the domain and whether it was really worth the initial investment.

Many of these domains are selling out there as expensive premium domains are not worth the price. I mean there is nothing in the domain name that should make you pay thousands of dollars. But some of them are really good.

The .com domains that have the exact key phrase are the best. I like the .org version when the .com one is not available to register or buy. Some others like the .net version too, but I don’t. Country-based extensions like .ca are great, but only for the local and country-based businesses, not global and worldwide ones.

Both .com and .org domains are good and professional and have the same value from a search engine’s (such as Google’s) point of view. Unless there are some other kinds of problems on the sites, Google treats both the .com and .org sites the same. Dot net domains are also OK.

When you buy a domain to keep it for a while and then sell it later to make some profit, it is an investment. I don’t know of this as an online business. It is more like buying a real estate property. Indeed, domains are virtual properties that you can buy and hold.

But it is a different story when you buy a premium domain on which to build a website. It becomes an online business which is what I am more interested in.

A video that you must watch:

How Buying a Website Saved a Company from Bankruptcy

By sharing this story, I am trying to tell you how that how a website can change the destiny of a struggling and doomed business, and make it turn around and start making a fortune.

Similarly, you can apply the same experience to your own life too. You can change your life and become rich by having a website that makes money for you, whether your life is currently good or not.

So, here is the story:

AOL or American Online was almost the most famous American Internet service provider in the United States. However, other companies including Yahoo started absorbing AOL’s customers.

AOL Stock Price HistoryAs you see on the above chart, which is the AOL’s stock price chart, their stock price went down and got close to zero in 2011. But it turned around later in 2012.

The reason was that they decided to pay $315 million on February 7th 2011 to buy the HuffingtonPost.com website and company that was a news and ideas portal (it is now changed to HuffPost at HuffPost.com).

What If They Hadn’t Buy the Site?

They would have had to declare bankruptcy and thousands of their employees would have lost their jobs. This is something that has already happened to so many other companies who haven’t been able to make the right decision at the right time, and so tens of years of their efforts went down the drain.

You can do the same thing for your life, even if your life is good and you are not suffering from having low or no income. Buying a good website can change your life and take you at least one level higher than where you currently are. Even if you don’t want to buy a website with a premium domain or website, you can start your online business with a cheaper price and have a side income.