So I was looking at another website to buy on Flippa, and came across this site with 77K monthly page views and 8K unique visitors (and growing). The price was pretty low as well – the seller was willing to sell it for $3,000 – $4,500, and based on my experience, I’m sure I could get it for less than $1200… probably even for $700 or less.
The caveat was that 72% of traffic was from Pinterest, and only 0.14% organic (bad sign). It was also a relatively new site, with only 4 months of GA history. However, with 77K monthly page views, you can easily make $100/month from adsense, with proper ad placement, especially if your purchase price is low (less than 12 multiple). So I asked for google analytics access.
I looked around and indeed most traffic was from Pinterest. But I already had experience with another site that had primarily social media traffic, and without proper promotion – social media visitors stop coming.
So I decided to wait and see how the auction goes, and if bidding will end below $500, I would snatch it. $500 is not a big risk and with my skills, I can make it back in 4-6 months.
Low and behold I get this message from seller:
Hi Leo,
The site is now blocked on Pinterest… blah blah blah
The rest is of no interest. There is no more traffic to the site – Pinterest canned it for pirated content, and the site is dead. Seller is now “willing” to take $500 for “content”, but in my opinion it’s not worth event $100.
Stay away from New Sites, Social Media sites, and Pirated content
So the lesson here is simple – NEVER buy new sites, that have less than 12 months of established and consistent Google Analytics history AND AdSense income.
Also stay away from sites with Direct traffic, Social Traffic, etc.
Another rule that I personally have – I only buy websites with primarily US based organic traffic. There are many reasons here, but basically – US has the highest CPC on ads, and you can always use various affiliate programs, such as Amazon Associates or a direct deal with US based service providers (something that I really like doing).
Why not buy sites without AdSense income?
Simply put – the site may have been blocked from adsense, and the seller will never tell you. If the site has Google ads on it now, than you can just replace them with your own ads.
If you want to learn how I buy sites on Flippa and make 70-130% annual return, I will have my complete guide up soon. In the meantime, subscribe to my newsletter.