No one can deny that sitepoint really took the bull by the horns and dragged buying and selling websites into the main stream when they spun off a section of their forums and turned them into Flippa.

I had used the sitepoint forums in the past to sell sites and it was a great way to make some quick cash. Flippa has taken it to a whole new level and for a while there it got a bit crazy. Buying a 3 day old site built using an automated program for $500 was a great business model for the people selling the sites but not so good for the buyers generally.

Lots of money was made in the first few weeks or months by people selling sites that looked good and promised a lot, many of them delivered not very much at all in the final analysis. You can also see sites that were sold and then the purchaser never claimed them, or else they realized after purchase that they didn’t know how to change the adsense id over and had no way to work it out.

One problem that I heard about was that people were buying sites that made money with Amazon and then they never seemed to see any of the income. Of course people thought it was a Google slap, or the Google dance or something else, most never took the time to look deeper into it.

Much of the software we use to build sites stores info in databases, this is true of WordPress and many other programs, what was happening was that the original owners Amazon ID was stored in the database for each product listed on the site. Until their old id is changed for yours, you WILL NOT get paid for any sales.

Affiliate ID Changer is the tool I came up with for this very reason, and at just $7 I think it is a nobrainer for anyone who buys websites, or is thinking about buying them..

I like buying sites, but I do go for low priced sites and I never worry about looks. As I tell people if looks really mattered I would still be single, a mate of mine recently told me I have the perfect face for radio.

If you are thinking about buying a website then make sure you do your due diligence, look at the numbers not the design. You can change the design but if no one is searching for the keywords then there is no real way to change that.

I will do another post on why I don’t buy expensive sites and what I do look for..