Rand has been preaching about how articles on a theme of “ten hot tips”, or “ten best somethings” get readers excited. So I was inspired and decided to share ten tips for buying a website. I know that there are plenty of savvy readers who visit SEOMOZ… who have bought a lot more domains than I have, so lets use these ten as a starter and you can add ten more good ones. 🙂
OK… I’ll lead off with five transaction tips and five valuation tips. You can add to these categories or maybe you have five more tips on an entirely different aspect.
Transaction Tips…
- Hire an attorney. You should have a purchase contract that is signed and written to protect your interests. All owners on the sellers side should sign (this includes all officers if buying from a company)
- Get a chain of clear title on the domain. If the domain has been owned by more than one person or companies you need to be sure that it was cleanly sold each time. Hot virtual property does change hands now and then. Your attorney can help you document this. After you have built the domain into a PR8 you don’t want it yanked back to some previous owner.
- Get a clean title on the content. Your attorney should write this into the sales contract. The seller will assure you clear copyright to all of the content.
- Use an escrow agent. The escrow agent will make the seller comfortable and hold your payment until all of your conditions are satisfied.
- Don’t close the deal until the domain is in your name, at your registar (shows in the whois query) and you have the passwords to the hosting, control panel and ftp.
Valuation Tips:
- How sexy is the domain?
- How good is the content? Is it linkable? Will you own it completely?
- How many backlinks are there? Are they on theme and relevant?
- Will the backlinks stay in place after the deal is done?
- How much income is the site producing? What is the conversion rate?. Do you think you can kick it up a notch?
…. now its your turn… I know you can add ten more tips!
