Feb
I Bought Two Websites
I rarely ever buy websites, but this time it was just too good of an offer to pass up. Occasionally, I will solicit offers to competitors of my current websites. You never know when they’re looking to sell, but just never actually list the websites on a forum marketplace. The two websites I recently purchased are Mass Effect 360 and Assassin’s Haven. I purchased these websites for a very good deal simply by emailing the owner.
I was originally interested in Mass Effect 360 only. Most of you know I own Mass Effect Forums, so having an additional Mass Effect fan site with a solid traffic/user baser would be a perfect tool to help build the forum. After contact with the previous owner about Mass Effect 360, he told me he was also looking to unload the Assassin’s Creed website too. He gave me such a good package deal on both sites I couldn’t pass it up.
I got a great deal on the sites because the previous owner hadn’t posted on them in about 2 months. Traffic and revenue was dropping because he wasn’t updating it with content. Also, the wordpress themes he had were not attractive IMO and they were littered with ads. I immediately uploaded new wordpress themes, created custom headers and added new content to give the sites a boost.
I had planned on flipping Assassin’s Haven right away… like after two weeks of owning it. But not I’m not so sure. I may end up keeping it. It has already made me $5 from Adsense in the like 48 hours I had it redesigned. I haven’t even added Valueclick, Adbrite and affiliate offers to it. With all of that, this site should turn into a $100/mo earner in no time. Making it a valuable asset in my network and not something I’d want to sell.
The Mass Effect 360 site, on the other hand, I had always planned on keeping. It only gets a fraction of the traffic Assassins Haven gets, but that’s not why I bought it. This site gets like 60 or so uniques/day as is. Once I start posting steadily I think the traffic will at least double or triple. I bought this site just to fuel my forum, because having a popular forum is way more valuable.
I still have work to do no both sites, like adding more wordpress plugins and doing some link building. But if you have any questions, comments or suggestions about the two new sites I picked up, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Nice buy! I’ve looked into buying some existing sites to build on but not had much luck finding any yet. How did you come across the blog?
Well because I own Mass Effect Forums, I’m always checking the other Mass Effect fan sites. I’ve come across this one many times in the past, but this time noticed the owner stopped updating it. If you find a site thats not being updated, theres a great chance the owner would dump it for cheap.
I’m always reluctant to buy websites as well. I’ve yet to buy one in fact, but I’m always on the lookout for nice sites. Keep us updated on how things work out with these two.
Definitely a good idea! The more sites you have in the same niche (in this case Mass Effect) the more power you have to gain links and generate traffic.
Hope it goes well for you.
[...] the question if it is for sale! I never did this before but it looks like it’s working, as David bought 2 sites this way before! Something we are going to try to from now [...]