How to Buy a Website: 10 Things to Look At

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

I ran into another website for sale this week, and I was very, very interested. It’s in a niche that’s consistent with the website that I bought a few months ago (http://www.natural-moms.com), it’s profitable, and the current owner is a trusted co-member at Mom Mastermind.

When I bought natural-moms.com, I did so almost without a thought. When I first contacted the owner, I was almost already convinced that I wanted to buy it.

This time, I went about it more thoughtfully. After all, after almost 4 months of running natural-moms.com, I knew which questions to ask. Specifically, I considered 10 things (in no particular order):

1. Cost

The rule of thumb that I’d heard is 10 times the site’s monthly income. I don’t know if this is correct, or what the basis is. That said, I’ve seen many sites sell for much more than that. The site I was interested in was selling for less.

2. Niche Marketability

Is there a market for the site? Was it created based on sound market research?

3. Website Quality

I looked at the site itself, of course. Did it look nice and clean and up-to-date? Is it organized in a way that increases usability and responsiveness? Is it search engine optimized? Is the content of high quality and original? The site I looked at looked very good, professionally designed and was easy to navigate through.

4. Subscriber List

Does the site have a list of subscribers? Will it be included with the site? The site I was considering is a membership site and therefore the list of members was automatically included.

5. Recurring Expenses

I also considered the recurring costs, such as web hosting and domain name registration, the cost of generating new content, as well as the cost of necessary software.

6. Time Requirements

I looked at how much time the site needed to sustain and increase its profits. This includes the time needed to produce new content, maintain the site, and market it.

7. Site Statistics

It’s very important to look at the current traffic of the site, whether it has been indexed by Google, which keywords it ranks high for in Google, and the number and quality of backlinks.

8. Website Builder

It’s important to know beforehand how the site was built, whether in HTML or CSS. Site in WordPress are ideal, because WordPress is easy to use and has a lot of functionality. However, a non-Wordpress site is not necessarily hopeless. It does have to be a site builder that is easy to use and is consistent with your vision for the site. For instance, if you want the site to have a blog, does the current site builder allow you to add a WordPress blog?

9. My Business Goals

What are my short- and long-term goals for my online business and is the site consistent with those goals?

10. Ease of Transitioning the Site’s Ownership

What kind of work is required to transfer the site’s ownership to me? If the site has Google Ads, how easy is it to change the codes so that I will be credited for those ads? Will it require manually changing the Java code in each web page? Or will a simple change in a php do the trick?

After much though and prayer, I decided not to buy the site. Although most of the factors I listed above were favorable for buying the site, in the end it was clear that I do not have enough time to maximize its earning potential. Furthermore, the site is not completely in line with my business goals.

Do you think I made the right decision?

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