Buy an old website or develop something brand new?

Cristian Level X³

2

November 23, 2016, 4:00 pm

8

Buy an old website or develop something brand new?

For a couple of days now I'm contemplating if I should buy an already established website or develop a brand new website myself and start from scratch?

Some of the benefits I find in buying an already established website:

• The boring part if already done - I tend to lose myself in the details when I first start a new project, this is why so few of my projects actually become a reality. I tend to abandon them half way thru;
  
• The only thing it probably needs is fresh content;
  
• The amount of work put into it by webmaster who sells is probably way bigger from a value point of view compared with actual prices the website is selling at;
  
• It may have some traffic - You won't get any with a fresh new site;
  
• It may have some authority or backlink - You need to start building them with a new website.
  

• There are strong chances you are buying someone else's mess. Let's face it if the website was doing well it wouldn't be on sale in the first place;
  
• The website's niche may not have money making potential, hence this is why the website is up for sale;
  
• If you are not a coder you can't evaluate any potential bugs that are present in the website;
  
• Buying a website is messy, the domain needs to be transferred and getting everything hosted on your hosting company could be a pain in the ass;
  
• Because this is not your original project, your "baby" so to speak, you may find that you like enthusiasm working on your new acquisition, therefore, the project may be abandoned or sold again to another webmaster
  

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anwebservices

anwebservices

Buying established website can be a pain, but you can do some research before you buy, to minimize risk, check authority etc... BTW transferring domain name and website contents to new hosting is not that hard at all, unless the website have really huge database. if website you buying is in niche you can work with, then it could be real shortcut to success.

Developing new website takes a lot of time to come up on horizon, unless you spend big amount of money in promotions, SEO etc...

I know it's tricky sometime to make decision, but i would probably go for established blog if the price is right

0 10 years ago

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Everett

Everett

If I was ever in the market to purchase a website here are the factors that I would look for before purchasing:

• Is the website banned on Google, or banned by Adsense?
  
• Is there quality backlinks?
  
• How many spam backlinks does the website have?
  
• How many users per day does the website average?
  
• If the website has Adsense, how much on average does the website earn?
  
• How much content does the website have?
  
• How much quality content does the website have?
  
• How many subscribers does the website have?
  
• How popular is the website itself (Alexa, etc)
  
• Does the website have on site purchasable products or services?
  
• Does the website have social media pages (facebook, twitter, linkedin, google+, etc)
  
• Is there any BBB reports from the website?
  
• Is there any negative consumer reports?
  
• Has the website been involved in scams in the past?
  
• Has the domain been registered before, and then registered again?
  

Yeah, a lot of checkpoints but it seems to work. You always should do a lot of research before buying a website, even if you're not paying that much for it. People often list things for sale when there is either issues, or if it's basically dead (low traffic, no ad revenues)

0 10 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

I'm not sure I would buy an old website, not unless I have some expert check it out first. Why would someone be selling a website in the first place? Especially if it is cheap, I would just be suspicious.

I guess that perhaps someone has an old website and can't be bothered to keep working on it, but I can't help saying you just don't know what that person did with that website.

Personally I actually enjoy the whole process of setting up a new website and doing everything myself. Yes I agree some of the tasks are a bit tedious and it does take some time to get traffic coming in... but that is also part of the fun and excitement of working online. All those cool milestones like getting your first organic visitors.

0 10 years ago

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vinaya

vinaya

Unless the website is backlisted or performed illegal activities (spamming, scaming, selling illegal stuffs etc.), buying an old website is better compared to developing a new website. If your website is new, it will take months for search engines to recognize it. If you are using a new domain for your new website, it will take also take a long to time to get indexed on search engines.
On the other hand old website is already receiving good traffic and ranked in Google. When buying an old website, you should always consider the domain name. Domain name is important, therefore the website should have good brand-able domain name.

0 9 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

Maybe I will have to make an in depth study of the old website first before I decide. What I’m pointing at are the resources that that old website may have that can give instant profit like the quality backlinks and the effective keywords. Of course, the negative or downside should also be considered. When the study is completed then the costing starts if the price is good or not. Developing a new website entails a lot of work and it takes a lot of time before it can turn in a profit.

0 8 years ago

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