Selling or buying websites is a common business practice with webmasters nowadays.

But what are those features that make the website cheaper or more expensive? I have collected some priceless wisdom from experienced webmasters across the Internet. Feel free to add and share your tips.

Website value (focus on the upcoming two lists while developing your own websites or look for it in the websites you are about to buy):

- Opt-in mailing lists

- AdWords lists

- Copyright to content/ design

- Additional domains

- Merchant account/ stock

- Ongoing deals with advertisers

- Length of old stats available

- Databases

- Free services (SEO tools, for instance)

- Where money comes from (newsletter ads, affiliate programs, AdSense, FastClick, CJ, etc)

- Where money goes to (adv, hosting, salary, other purchases)

- What’s involved into maintaining? How much time, what skills required?

- Technical info: stats, BL, # of PR8/ 7/ 6/ 5 pages, indexed page #

- Any known problems: 301, 302, SPAM blacklisted, SE bans, etc

- Age

- Niche

- Transfer via www.escrow.com, www.paypal.com or how?

Below is the list of questions from buyer’s point – what questions to ask if you buy or what questions to expect from a potential buyer if you sell.

Are you truly good at SEO or Search Marketing – otherwise how are you going to run/ improve the website you would like to buy?

- Unique content sold? Check it with www.copyscape.com

- Places to sell/ buy: become a regular visitor

- See what www.archive.org has to say about the website

- Domain name value: short, memorable, hard-to-misspell, related to the industry; marketability, phone test, name length, brand recognition, dot value, natural site traffic, site traffic by SE, SE popularity, linguistic value, revenue generating, comparable sales value.

- Pages indexed and backilnks (+ trend – see www.marketleap.com). Most important backlinks can come from the seller websites, he can remove them shortly. Ask.

- Proof of income/ traffic

- www.alexa.com data (Inaccurate? But better than nothing)

- What’s industry (=profit potential)

- Traffic: where comes from? What’s quality? What do they search?

- Is the website established? If it looks OK, but no traffic – avoid. Impossible to get an idea of the future profits.

- How much time to run?

- Income sources: the more the better

- Is it fun to run it?

- Current rankings. Competition ability to SEO to top 10

- Cross promotion opportunities with other websites from your portfolio

- Are there flaws in their existing PPC advertising? Could you get more ROI?

- Is there a forum or a community of website members

- Value of links. For how much can you sell links at this website (sitewide, home page)

- How long will the old owner stay on board

- How can you improve the website in the future? Optimize AdSense, new affiliate programs, more products? Remember of the Sandbox for established, but heavily SEOed websites.

- Check to avoid link schemes, cloaking, doorway pages, duplicate content, pay for PR (PFPR)

- Ask for the reason the website is sold

Normal website price: 8-12 months of its current revenue. If the owner sells the website much lower: he is a dumb or knows something the buyer does not know of the future earnings.

Buying sites: have a clear idea how they get revenue and how you will support/ update them

When buying a website with some unique idea implemented: where is the guarantee that the seller will not make the same within a few next weeks? Non-competition clause.

Summary: I have listed the tips you should refer to while evaluating a website for buying. There will come two more posts on this topic:

- I will show you best places to buy or sell websites.

- Also I will point you to the person who is really good at this – someone you can learn from.

[tags]where to buy websites, where to sell websites, domain names, archive.org, adsense, adwords, ppc, text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, news aggregator, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]

I remember that buzz around MilionDollarHomePage website last year. Even Matt Cutts in an interview (I guess to Aaron Wall) says: yes, it is creative (or something of that kind). I could not understand from the very beginning – why are people so excited about it? Why every webmaster forum discusses this? Why people spend money for some space on that page – it was useless for their websites from marketing point of view?

I guess it is a great sample of viral marketing – people will go and tell their friends: you know I have bought some space on that famous website. The friend has left nothing to do but to buy also and to show that he is in the know… and tell his friends of this.

As a proof that I am not the only person who think that it was not such a great idea worth one million dollars I have recently read this post on Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It Big Time

Was the timing when MilionDollarHomePage project started right? Did the guy make a great PR promotion (I am very doubtful)? The idea is not that great, publicity was limited to some simple steps… as a result – $1,000,000 in his account. I do not envy the guy. He is a student who made a lot of money though he was looking for opportunities to raise some funds to pay for his studies. I wish him all the best.

What I try to understand: how could idea of that kind be picked up by the entire Internet, produce so much buzz and result in $1,000,000 income? What is the recipe for this sort of success? The only answer I have is it is a pure luck. If there was an algorithm –people will be fast to make it work non-stop. But it is not the case.

Summary: After much thinking about things necessary to make big online I have made just one conclusion – think, test, try to make it with minimum investment, work at it hard if it shows any sign of success potential, otherwise drop it. Move to the next idea.

Target is clear: invent Dumbest Online Business Idea #11 (that made it big time)

[tags]milliondollarhomepage, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, news aggregator, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]

I think it is not a secret that CraigsList.org is a great place to search for a home work, part time job (for designers, coders, Internet marketers, data entry jobs, etc).

From my experience, it is the busiest place for telecommute job opportunities. Job boards (including Hot Jobs, Dice, etc) do not list many openings of this kind.

Some freelance boards can compete with CraigsList:

eLance,

Guru,

Freelance Work Exchange,

Rentacoder,

Talent Market

but when I see the level of competition for each posted project I feel helpless. I realize that job posts on Craigslist.org are likely to get even more applications – but I do not see that (oh, human nature!).

The only thing I dislike about browsing Craigslist.org for remote jobs – it is necessity to browse each city separately – it takes much extra time. So, I was happy one day to discover at some forum a free online tool that made my life much easier:

This page is a quick and dirty form that scans all Craigslist cities for telecommuter (work at home) jobs. To browse all of Craigslist, just type “craigslist”. Results limited to 250 posts. The newest jobs first.

Just try and enjoy it. Thank you, the Unknown Webmaster, for this simple and useful tool.

[tags]craigslist, dice, monster, hotjobs, guru, elance, rentacoder, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs,  content generation,  news aggregator,  ebay,  google,  make money online,  work from home,  home based job,  wikipedia,  del.icio.us,  technorati,  bloglines,  duplicate content,  links,  earn your living online[/tags]