Have you ever bought a website?

[Shawn Gossman]

Have any of you ever bought a website before?

Tell us about it! What made you want to buy one versus starting one from scratch?

What are the risks of buying websites?

 

[dojo]

I have bought domains. Few forums, back in the day. The problem is that most webmasters will "inflate" their websites few months before getting them ready for selling (those who bother to do this) and usually, after buying it, you have the surprise to realize you had a lot of bot traffic, weird links etc. I do SEO audits for a guy who constantly buys websites (paying tens of thousands mostly) and in many cases, after a while, we've seen a steep drop in rankings. He knows about this and we're usually able to counter this, but it's not really pleasant to have to pay even more after purchasing, just to keep it afloat or not tank down.