Starting a business has always been risky.
And the same holds true even for online business.
Nearly 90% of websites fail in their very first year of operation.
It is really a daunting task to make your online business a big
success story. It needs persistent efforts, right decisions, your 100%
involvement, funds and investment, and most importantly the patronage of
online users.
And all this can start when you have the right and solid online
business model that has the capacity to last the test of time. As online
business model centers on a website, it is the website that can make or
break you.
So if you are on the verge of starting an online venture, there’s a decision to take upfront.
Well, you have two options before you.
You can build your own website or can
buy an existing website.
In fact, building, a website from scratch is a good option when you
are a novice and have just entered the online business world. Building a
website gives you the freedom to learn as you climb the ladder of
success. You do research, apply it, learn from your experiments, see the
outcome, correct yourself and improve slowly and gradually.
Here, you have to ask yourself these important questions.
Do you have the patience to test?
Are you willing to take risks?
Will initial failure hurt you?
Have you enough funds to survive the testing and experiment phase
till a solid and revenue generating online business is developed?
Are you confident of your online business model?
Would you be able to generate traffic for your website?
All these questions (and perhaps more…) are extremely important and require answers from you.
If you get favorable answers to all these questions, then nothing like it.
Start and build your own website from scratch.
Else, the only other viable option before you is, to
buy an existing and established website which is running a successful online business model and has a wide customer base too.
Buying an existing website
has more than one benefit and gives you a great opportunity to have a
successful online venture. I call this an opportunity because, however,
established website you procure, it would still require your efforts,
business acumen, time, money and willingness to take your online
business to new and unattained heights.
Here under I have illustrated the benefits of
buying an existing website
so that you can get a clear picture of the advantages you can derive by
buying an established website. Moreover, I have also illustrated the
drawbacks so that you can remain cautious and take the decision of
buying an existing website after performing a thorough research and
analysis. In fact, this is not the end as I also illustrate the right
way of buying an existing website so that you do not falter when you
actually go out and select a website (or websites) for purchase.
So here’s a comprehensive look into the pros and cons of buying an existing website.
Benefits of Buying an Existing Website
Takes out the initial pain of developing a website:
It is a daunting task to create and develop a website so much so that
it becomes a revenue generating model. The whole process of starting
and developing a website is a real challenge. From the very first step
of picking up a domain, to selecting a host, maintaining your website,
to writing quality content for your site, getting traffic and upto the
point of optimizing for leads, conversions and sales, all is
painstaking. So, the checklist for building a new website can be big and
daunting. It takes persistent efforts, and real patience to test and
experiment your online business model.
However, when you buy an existing website, all these initial tasks
have already been performed. You actually get a running online business
where you only need to concentrate on increasing traffic, getting more
conversions, and sales, and can actually focus on making more money
through the existing website.
An existing website already has an income generating model:
Well, statistics reveal that more than 90% of websites fail within
their first year of operation. So, as a valid conclusion you cannot
guarantee yourself that if you start a website, it will be a sure shot
success. I am not emphasizing that your website cannot see success, but
instead showing you the real picture that portrays that making a startup
website successful is really difficult. On the other hand, if you buy
an existing website which has already seen off the initial phase of
development and has an income generating model to support, you can start
making money instantly. You have a business in hand which you have to
protect, nurture and grow. So probability of success in existing website
is high as compared to starting a new website.
You get access to existing traffic on the site that you buy:
Well, for any type of online business model to succeed, you require
traffic of visitors. With no traffic, how can you monetize your site?
For a start up site, it usually takes a year or two to have a steady
flow of traffic coming to that site. It is the case, when new website
progresses positively and all goes well in your favor. You have done SEO
tasks,
written quality content, getting page views, and PPC model is working for you and you are getting large source of traffic.
But what if your website fails to generate traffic in-spite of best of your efforts.
You will feel frustrated and disgusted.
However, this is not the case when you buy an existing website.
An established website has already seen these challenges and is
generating a steady stream of visitors. You can be at an enormous
advantage as you get to have ready-made traffic for your site. So you
save upon your efforts of building traffic for your site and actually
can concentrate on promoting products or services to your visitors so
that you can make more money doing online business.
It is easy to rank content and keywords for an existing website:
Buying an established website is also beneficial from search engine
point of view. Getting a good rank on search engine results page (SERP)
is extremely difficult for new websites. It takes time to build an
authority website whose content is ranked high on SERPs. However, when
you buy an existing authority website, it becomes easy for you to rank
content and keywords on SERPs. Search engines give preference to
authority websites and rank their content high in comparison to new
sites.
When you get good rankings on search engine results page, it becomes
easy for you to get a large volume of free traffic. With high traffic,
you have a greater chance of conversions and can get high sales too.
Your content is easily recognized by users as they are already accessing
the website from a long time. The users built bondage with an existing
site which is good for your online business promotion and success.
With an Existing Website, you have the Content with You:
Well, building quality content is a huge task when you have just
started a new website. It needs research, time, and your diligent
efforts to produce quality content time and again. And that’s not the
end as you then have to promote the content in various ways so that you
get visitors for it. However, with an existing website, you already have
the content with you. You can optimize the site, do keyword stuffing or
can follow other techniques so that your content is ranked high on
SERPS, and you get high volume of traffic. What matters the most is the
fact that you already possess the most vital ingredient for search
engines and that is, “Content”.
Drawbacks of buying an Existing Website
The most important challenge or if you want to call it a drawback of
buying an existing website comes in the form of finding a suitable
authority website in your niche. Although, you can get a lot of existing
websites, buying an established website is a daunting task in itself.
Then the second challenge or drawback is that it is really hard to get
an undervalued site. You would not like to pay a high amount when you go
out for buying a website. You will always like to keep your expenditure
low.
Thirdly, you require doing extensive research before buying an
existing website. You have to look into the history of the website, what
is the website ranking, how is the SEO done, from what sources do it
gets the traffic, how sound is the earning model, what is the technology
used, what is the competition and things like that. When you have
gotten answers to all of these questions, then probably you move closer
to buying that site.
And last but not the least; you have to see whether the website
content is original and authentic. You have to determine and make sure
that the website you propose to buy has no copied content in it.
Right Way of Buying an Existing Website
Well, doing a comprehensive and extensive research is very much
important before you finally buy a website. It is the right way if you
want to procure an authentic authority website.
You require being aware of the overall structure of the website that you propose to buy. You need to know which
keywords have been ranked in search engines. How the website is
stacked against the competitors.
You would have to check for plagiarism and find out that the content
is copied or not. You also require finding out the history of the site.
How long has the site being running? Whether it has any inventory or
not? What all products it sells and things like that. For this, you can
use software tools and online services which provide detailed analysis
of a website.
Tools such as
SEMRush,
Copyscape, and
Majestic SEO can be highly useful for website analysis and research.
Then make sure that you buy an existing website from a trusted and
reliable online source. Websites such as Flippa, Site Point, Flip
Filter, eBay, Website Broker, are among the reliable online sources from
where you can buy existing and established websites.
So you require to perform a careful research, analyze and confirmation so that you end up
buying an existing website that is already making money and which is ultimately beneficial for your online success.
Conclusion
Now, with all the above points in the place, you can easily come to a
conclusion that buying an existing website can be a boon for your
online business model. Buying an existing website has many advantages
over building a new website from scratch. It is a tough ask to build a
new website and make it a successful online venture. Here, I want to
make it clear that developing a new website for a successful online
business is difficult but not impossible. If you have the resources,
time, patience, willingness to learn, and can survive the initial
setbacks (if any), then probably creating a new website would be a good
option. However,
buying an existing website
has many distinct advantages (as already highlighted above) and can
provide you a platform from which you can easily rise to success in the
online business world.
Before we go further in this article, we want to clarify that we are NOT
being paid in any way or form to write this post. We just wanted to let
every new blogger know that without BuySellAds, we would not be where
we are.
