Has anybody ever used flippa? I was toying with the idea of buying a website or possibly even a mobile app (although I don't really have a smartphone - I wonder if it's even required?).
Some of the stuff for sale there would be for example a website that has a "buy it now" price which is less than its annual profit and apparently requires little to no effort to run. In certain cases it seems way too good to be true.
I'm an engineer and good with computers/coding but not that familiar with web-based programming or blogging - so I'm not the ideal person to be looking at this type of investment. That said, some of you are, so I'd appreciate the insight.
Right now your level of knowledge is the equivalent of walking on to a used-car lot outside a military base, handing over your credit card, and asking them to sell you a car so that you can learn how to drive. Once you boost your skills, you'll be fine and you won't need the used-car lot anymore.
Flippa does a good job of providing a fairly liquid market for websites, but there's plenty of sites built with dubious tactics as well as downright scammers. There are several outside tools that you can use to check their statistics, and you can read the quality of the posts for yourself. As for revenue claims, you could ask for Google AdSense reports or even tax returns-- but when you purchase the site then you're going to take over the advertising for your account. There's no guarantee that you'll land the same quality of deals as the previous owner, especially if you're new to the niche. But experienced bloggers and entrepreneurs use the site to buy & sell, and it's no worse than eBay or Craigslist.
Starting a blog requires zero web-based programming skills. You can certainly use them if you have them, but they're not relevant to starting or running a blog. As for blogging itself, you can start a free blog on WordPress.com (their hosting, not your own hosting) and use their daily tutorials to improve your skills. And after you've done that, you won't need Flippa anymore.
Someone who educated themself a lot on the relevant topics could likely do fairly well (though you always have the caveat of if it's so good, why is the person selling type thing).
Yeah that's what I was thinking. The potential buyers seem to ask that question a lot too, and the typical answer seems to be "I am working on other projects and don't have time for this" - basically, that they have even more lucrative stuff going on, and hence their time is so valuable that even the small time commitment required to run this business is too much for them. Very hard to believe that this is often the case.
I am looking at a deal right now that makes about 3-4k/mo profit...other than the seller using the argument above, 2-3 hrs of due diligence turned up no major concerns, the numbers look pretty much believable, and some obvious improvements should yield higher revenues. The bidding hasn't really started yet, but I could see the seller looking for >50k, which if it is all legit, might make sense. I only would want to pay 5-10k on a first deal though, so I think I'd have to pass on it, no matter how good it looks.
Entrepreneurial bloggers have a lot of ideas, and developing a new idea can consume a lot of time. Having to spend an hour or two a day on an existing blog may not seem like a big deal compared to being chained to a cubicle, but when you're no longer interested in the blog or the topic then you get pretty grumpy. If there are additional frustrations with sloppy web hosting companies or disgruntled customers then it's even more of a hassle. The majority of bloggers are also inexperienced at delegation and hiring out tasks, so they feel that it's easier to just take the money and run.
The guy selling a $4K/month blog is probably working on a project that will yield $5K-$10K/month.
Last week at a conference, one blogger confessed that he's "running" over 40 blogs. A lot of that is delegated and outsourced, and he's making a nice living at it, but he's responsible for more businesses than most people want to tackle.