One of the most popular and
ranking higher on search engine for website Buy & Sell is Flippa. Many
known person buy websites on Flippa and social media it is always difficult to
figure out whether the site is actually worth the price and most importantly
whether the seller or buyer is genuine.
On social media 90% of website
sellers are scammers. Why social media platform is created for? To, have continuous
contact with our friends. But, now the purpose is destroyed and used only for
illegal activities and scamming others. Let’s discuss about this in a separate article.
Flippa is the platform specifically
created to fulfill the need of website, domain buyers and sellers. They are at least
trying to give their customers genuinity by putting up some rules, but still not enough.
Best Guide On How to Avoid Bad Websites and Scammers on Flippa?
To elaborate the
sellers who lists their website for sale they should at least provide some proof
of Google analytics, earnings and years online. When scouting a potential
investment website, you want to know if it will lose rankings, whether it is
banned from AdSense or has many bad links. This service flippa is not
providing.
As
a buyer what you should know?
Always remember flippa has a huge
amount of limitations for providing genuinity of any listed websites. The
person who listed a website might be a scammer, flippa does not have any rules
to catch or restrict scammers before hands. They just now started the service
of flippa money in that the seller can’t payout on the same day. As a buyer you
should be very much vigilant and report fast within couple of days after making
payment via flippa money if you are scammed. So, flippa might freeze the
sellers account and have wider chance of getting your money back.
As per our previous experience 50%
or more sellers want to SCAM you, or hiding important info. Thus, investing
in websites becomes a very risky business venture.
However, the good news is that
most scams are easy to spot if you look closely and pay attention to important
details. If you are thorough, you actually can make money on Flippa. Newbie’s must
be very very careful, I recommend don’t do business of buying rather create
your website by yourself or by any genuine paid service providers in you place.
Some obvious but very deceptive
scammers who went as far as making a fake Adsense Earnings Proof Video, some
actually made a fake Adsense dashboard. These are critical things that you
should always check for.
Try searching for the below words
in youtube for clarification,
Scams on Flippa
Flippa scam review.
Here are some instances that
signal’s red flag:
1)
Listed website’s ‘Earnings section’ (AdSense income):
When a seller claims income from
Adsense, Flippa offers a mechanism to verify that income belongs to the
specific website. In theory this cannot be faked, if the seller fills up that
particular section and you should see a green line on the Earnings graph inside
the listing.
You still go further and ask
sellers to provide additional proof of last 30, 90 and 365 days site full reports,
that includes tables (Revenue, Page Views and RPM tabs, and show the graph).
If a seller claims income from
AdSense, but it’s not verified, you should probably avoid this website, and
move on. Now a day’s websites listed are brand new, so we should be very
cautious. As same kind of websites are again & again produced and listed. Say
for example SEO service niche website, there is plenty of automated websites
listed on flippa by the same seller’s frequently but they are as good as
garbage. Buyers won’t make a penny because, same kind of websites are crowded online.
Only very few experts on SEO can make some money but newbie’s it’s a big ???.
2) Always request Google
Analytics access!
It is absolutely essential to
have complete (read only access) Google Analytics access from the time you
contact the seller to the time you finish transaction and preferably until
seller makes you Admin after sale is completed.
Never ever buy websites without
Google Analytics Access (if available).
We never buy sites unless we are given Google Analytics access. If the seller refuses to give access means they are
hiding something. Avoid buying such sites.
If the seller agrees to give
access after some back and forth, they could be a newbie, but you should still
consider that they are hiding stuff.
One more tip: If the seller gives
you access to Google analytics only for 24 hours or revokes access without
telling you, don’t buy from them.
Beware
of fake Amazon Affiliate Income or any other Affiliate Sales:
It is easy to fake Amazon income
because non availability of read only access of reports on Amazon.
Amazon reporting is based on tracking
IDs, which can be used on multiple websites.
For example: Seller claims $200
monthly income from Amazon Affiliate program. In reality, the site can be
making only $50/month, because the same link (Tracking ID) is used on other
websites owned by same seller, thus inflating income. Same can be done on Adsense
reports screen shots, if read only access is NOT provided- 'Beware' get away from there.
Valuable Trick: Do a reverse search on
Amazon Associate ID, using http://analyzeid.com. You can search the domain
name, Amazon ID, AdSense PUB ID, etc. Do as much research you can to make sure
Amazon Income belongs to that particular website.
For example: search for
dpsgeneral-20. You will get the AnalyzeID in 1st position. It is a paid
service, but you can use it free too for a particular amount of searches a day.
Found its results are most accurate, so if you want to use this service most
frequent consider upgrading.
dpsgeneral-20 belongs to
problogger.net and is also used on 3 other websites. So if one of those was for
sale, seller could claim income from 4 sites. Amazon income is easy to fake and
you should spend extra time on analyzing it.
Remember: As new Amazon affiliate
rates came into effect from March 1, 2017 resulted in 20 to 40% drop in income for
members.
3) Screenshots can be edited by “Adobe
Photoshop” Never trust screenshots exclusively:
It’s very easy to fake any
image, and make it look very realistic. Always ask for additional proof of
income preferably live video walk-through.
In most cases, scammers don’t
even need Photoshop. It can easily be done with browser “inspect element” tool,
by editing page’s HTML codes, numbers and words.
As an example, here is a
screenshot of a real amazon earnings report:
Best Guide On How to Avoid Bad Websites and Scammers on Flippa?
We are not here to promote
scamming, just to educate innocent newbie’s.
Note, “inspect element is built
into nearly every browser. In some cases, scammers can even do it on a mobile
phone.
'Again and again I am reminding
you never trust screenshots they are very simple to manipulate'. Always request
a Skype screen share to verify earnings. If a seller gives you lame excuses –
don’t waste your time, just walk away. Don’t let your emotions overtake you
when making decisions. It’s your hard earned money letting it go is very easy.
“Better be safe than sorry”
Conclusion: Scams are abundant not
only on social media’s but equal amount on Flippa too.
The reality is that most sites
that are listed for sale on ‘Flippa are garbage as I said before’. Be very
careful on making a purchase decision.
Key
takeaway points:
·
Many sellers
on Flippa are scammers.
·
Never trust
any seller or buyer, even if they have 100% positive feedback.
·
Most sites
on Flippa are complete garbage (overpriced, repeated content or niche, etc).
·
Always look
for reasons NOT TO BUY a website. This is the only way to get good deals.
·
Contact the
seller and ask access to Google Analytics as guest to verify traffic. If seller
refuses, its an instant red flag.
However, it is increasingly becoming difficult to find a good website to invest on.
Once you tidy out all the bad
sites, most decent ones are now overpriced and competitors are paying
outrageous multiples.
Recap
of What to look for in a website?:
- verified Google Analytics and Adsense
- Ask to provide high resolution screen shots of Adsense site report for several periods, such as last 30, 90 and 1 year, where revenue and page views lines are clearly visible, and where you can also see the domain.
- if a website makes money on programs other than Adsense, seller should provide clear and verifiable proof of income. He/ She should have a screen share over Skype to verify income sources and amounts.
My preferred website purchasing would be, the sites monetized with Adsense.
“Never invest without research or
analyze, it’s your hard earned money. Once gone out of your hands & lost it’s
hard to emotionally get out of it. Lesson learnt from my personal experience”.
-
Servicebloggers.com (Pradeep)
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