The internet represents a good proportion of where people spend both their time and money; so why arn't people mentioning their internet based investments.

Personally, it's a first for me, but i've just bought a website that requires minimal work, and currently brings in around £100 (will be more soon ) per month.

I paid a fairly substantially amount, bearing in mind it's only a website, but i should have a return on my money within 6-8 months.

This is a trial as i have logged hundreds for sale, with alot higher earnings - i was just wondered if anyone else (besides Brian who is obviously an internet guru) has experience in this field!

Thanks

The point is is to take great care - I've surfed a lot of website sales in online markets, and most are underlined by the following characteristics:

- sold on potential rather than real value
- most potential is over-stated

Simply put, online marketplaces are a haven for scum and villainy who often make outright attempts to mislead buyers into thinking the site has a higher value than it has in reality.

Some are even illegal content sites that pretend otherwise - I actually ended up buying one a couple of years ago without realising, dumped the content, but was still able to make a success of it.

I think the big pointer is to know your markets and look for those rare gems where the sale is due to genuine reasons - usually from people with little internet knowledge, who have an asset and know there is some value but no real idea, but have to sell because the technical or time challenges are becoming too great.

I no longer buy websites actually - just develop my own.

That's the way forward Brian, for me i need a successfull model to take ideas from, and it seems good enough so far.

I'll be honest i searched 1,000's of listings, and spoke in depth with probably 20-30 + website owners, and narrowed it down to one.

It's a long slow process, but it's worth it if it's sustainable.

Things to look out for are:

Image hosting sites - They tend to pay people to spam facebook and the likes every day, as soon as they stop this, the site makes nothing.

Video/Music - Watch out for copyright, or watch that the source doesn't loose the content.

Forums - Again, paid posters are very common so you could end up paying alot for something that doesn't exist.



The main point is to take the time to do as much due dillegence on the seller, and the website itself.

It's all about spreading your weight, and with the current property crash (although i've mentioned what i think of that) to create a long term passive (ish) income, you need to be spreading you weight a bit...my 2p worth.

The thing i find with making news sites, getting them indexed, ranked, backlinks etc, is a pain in the backside.

If you could pay say $2,000 and have a site that is 80% along the right lines, got good search rankings and already earning, it's go to be worth it.

For anyone looking at this as return, it's about 13% per month on the site i've just bought

Yes, copyright is a big kicker - and forums are notorious time sinks to run. I tried paid posting, but unless you're running a general forum, paid posters usually have little or no idea of the subject being presented!

One of my clients recently purchased sites from a well known web site sales broker forum. One turned out to be totally useless, the other worked out very well, although they bought it mainly because it was cheaper to buy the site than pay someone to code what they were after.

One of my businesses is doing corporate finance for online media businesses. It is getting tougher to find good ones as the cost of entry is, obviously, virtually nothing these days and the volumes of start ups is huge. Every one of them thinks they are the next you tube/facebook etc.

Buying a site is a good way to get started, I think, but be realistic about your returns, be professional in your approach to finance and I think there are some great opportunities, even in this market, to get backed.

There is definately some rubbish out there, bit if you spend the time evaluating the sites then you can find some good ones.

Of course it's all risk Vs reward

If they were such a solid investment they wouldn't return 10% per month when they work!