Places to look for sites for sale
NEW: Discuss the best places to buy sites in
our forum
Good places to look:
1. Places we've recommended as good
places to sell a web site
2. DMOZ: Go through DMOZ categories looking for sites that haven't been
updated in a while. Approach the site owner directly. You may need to do a
WHOIS
to find a working email address. Be aware that sites on free hosting (like
angelfire) sometimes make it into DMOZ. You may want to filter them out as some
free hosts don't allow change in owners.
3. Try your favourite search engines for the kind of phrases someone
looking to sell a site may use. Some example: "Site for Sale",
"This site for sale", "Buy this site", "This site is
now for sale", "Want to buy this site?" etc. Then try other
search engines. Know of an algo change at Google? Run your searches again, you
may get completely different prospects. Just when you think you've exhausted all
the search phrases you may find something like "This domain is for sale" on a
site you're browsing, run it through a search engine and discover there are
thousands of results for that term. More tips in
this forum thread.
4. Place a wanted ad in the forums that allow WTB (Want to Buy) ads.
Some
examples.
5. eBay: It takes a great deal of patience to wade through the vast amount of
rubbish, templates, cookie-cutter and other websites, web businesses, web ideas
and even "get rich on eBay" schemes listed at the
famous auction website. However, if you know what you're looking for it may
be possible to outsource the daily checks and have someone else monitor eBay
listings.
6. Sometimes the most value in the site lies in the code behind it. Places
like hotscripts may be the venue to
explore.
7. Business for sale websites do also list websites for sale, particularly if
those sites are profitable businesses. Some examples of
business broker sites:
-
Businessesforsale.com
- Sunbeltnetwork.com
- BizQuest
- BizBuySell.com and
- BusinessBroker.net
Daltons (UK) used to list
primarily Bricks and Mortar businesses but now have a
dedicated section for
Internet businesses.
Nationwide
(UK) and Small Biz network (US)
are a few of the plethora of business for sale websites dealing mainly in fish and
chip/coffee shop/laundry businesses and very rarely have web based ones.
With all the
business broker websites you'll have to filter out the large
number of non-web based businesses. After all, you're not looking to buy a hair
dressing salon. Fortunately, most of them have advanced search functions that
work pretty well and you can often filter based not only on business type but
also price, location or B2B/B2C.
Due Diligence Checklist on Buying a Business
Paying money always helps
Placing a wanted ad in the businesses for sale websites is particularly
for those looking to spend over $50K (on the business, not the listing!). But,
it does get results. Don't expect many brokers to write in (there are very few
"proactive" ones) but you will get a flood of enquiries from potential sellers.
Yes, sometimes it costs money to get what you want. B*gger!
There's a hidden market here that's really, really worth tapping. We'll let
you in on a secret. Several of the users of the business for sale sites are
business owners who are toying with the idea of selling their business.
They have not listed their business anywhere, are unlikely to ever list
it anywhere - partly for privacy reasons, partly for other reasons - but you
can persuade them to contact you in confidence. Get exclusive access to a
business that nobody else may know is for sale! How do you do it? Disclose the
maximum figure you're willing to spend and make your listing look approachable,
"eager buyer wants to pay cash for ...." - that kind of thing. But
there are dirty tricks about. Some have figured you can even have
two listing in two different names, string buyers along in parallel email
threads, offer them a particular high price in one of the threads and then pull
out leaving his only other potential buyer being yourself in thread two.
Some of the locations at the start of this page could take up a lot of time -
particularly monitoring the forums and picking through DMOZ. You may be able to
train someone in-house to do the time consuming part of
the work and to flag potential threads/sites for your more experienced attention.
(Best
places to buy domains)
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