Buying Your First Website
Updated on March 16, 2020
Have you ever Googled ‘How to make money online’? Turns out the options are endless. There are many paths you could take to make your first dollar on the Internet. You could take a course, blindly construct something, or…
You could buy an already profitable online business, giving yourself a head start and build off someone else’s hard work.
That’s what Nadya decided to do. Originally from Russia, she now lives in Montreal, Canada and works as a software developer. Though she had a great day job, having a business of her own was a longtime dream. But, like so many others in her position, she didn’t know where to start. After some research, she realized that buying an online business would be the right fit for her, and we’re so happy she did. In this video, we sat down to chat about her experience buying a website with Empire Flippers.
The courage to take this leap is what separates our customers from those who only dream about “someday” owning an online business. Online businesses are profitable assets, but they also offer so many other perks, like being able to work on them at your own pace and have the autonomy to choose your hours. Another perk is your freedom to travel because of your ability to run the business remotely. But all these freedoms only come when you take your future in your hands and keep moving forward.
Being brave is important, but so is being sensible. That’s why we have many processes built in to assist buyers in completing their due diligence. Nadya shares, “I sent the email that ‘I want to buy it!’ and I transferred the money. After the transfer was done, the sale was not yet finished. The buyer gets an opportunity to confirm that ‘Yes, this website is making money’. Until this happens, the sale is not done. For me, it was very important. I felt super nervous when buying this website, and when I got my approval letters, I was so happy, and for me, it was extra proof that Empire Flippers didn’t sell crap or scams, but something real. Something that can really make money.”
Nadya has begun to enjoy the advantages of owning a profitable online business. “Recently, I moved to a new place and didn’t have Internet for two weeks… but the money was still coming in! Just collecting money… it was awesome.” We love hearing stories like this because, as Nadya pointed out, this is why we do what we do.
“This is the best part about Empire Flippers. They are really customer-oriented. They don’t want to push anyone, they don’t want to make the hard sale; they just want people to find what they love and help them to get what they want.”
If you have been passively considering beginning your online adventure, we hope this story inspires you to take action. Yes, reading blog posts and watching YouTube how-to videos is very satisfying! But your journey won’t truly begin until you either build or buy an online business, and we’re here to help you either way, with the resources to guide you.
You can keep up with Nadya’s spirited journey at livingoffcloud.com, where she shares her business updates and income reports.
Discussion
Been seeing about the website a lot across social media and search engine as well. Love the overall post and really worth to see and buy a website with all the details.
I’ve always been skeptical about buying sites or online businesses that claim to be making money, because I always wonder why someone would sell a business that was profitable, instead of just hiring people to handle it for them while they still collect some of the profits.
Is that a thing that happens often? People selling sites that claim to be making money that either aren’t, or they actually are but then they stop a few months after the sale? That’s what I’ve always assumed would happen if I ever bought one of these sites. And then they’d say “well you just didn’t do enough work to keep it earning!” or something else to put the blame on me.
Hey Steve!
Great question and I totally understand your skepticism – it’s a good thing to have. Let me answer the first part of your question. People with profitable online businesses sell them for all sorts of reasons, both personally and professionally. On the personal side we’ve seen everything from someone needing money due to a divorce, raising money to adopt a child, or just not interested in having anything to do with the business anymore.
On the business side, we’ve seen people sell their businesses due to a partnership break up, people looking to take the profits online to offline assets like real estate, people looking to mitigate risks by collecting 24-40 months of net profit upfront, and where they want the profit to act as a war chest of funds to help them start their next project that might be in a more competitive (and lucrative) niche.
As far as hiring someone to run your businesses, that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Hiring good help is a long term skill you need to develop to make sure they’re quality hires and to make sure they’re going to stay around to work for you for the long haul instead of go off and do their own thing. Definitely doable, but for many solo entrepreneurs this part of business growth isn’t appealing for them so they’d rather sell off the business and let the new owner go about building the team while they remain a solopreneur on their next project.
The second part of your question about people making claims of how much money something is making but isn’t… unfortunately happens a lot in our industry. You won’t see it on our marketplace though because we’re one of the only (and maybe only as far as I really know) that has an entire vetting team in place. Our vetting team looks at each business that is submitted for sale with us to verify that traffic and earnings are real. We’re often logging into affiliate dashboards or helping the seller create an presentable Profit & Loss (P&L) statement before that business ever goes live on our marketplace. During this process we reject 2/3 of all the listings that come to us on the marketplace. Most of the time a business isn’t rejected due to being a scam but rather other reasons that made the business low quality or just not the right time for that business to sell with us. We will often help these sellers to let them know what they need to do to fix their businesses so they can come back to us at a later date and get a better deal on the marketplace.
To be clear, while vetting team makes sure there is no scamming or wrong doing happening to the best of our ability, vetting is not a replacement for a buyer’s due diligence. A buyer needs to understand the business, and be willing to lose their money if things go south once they take over that business. Even an amazing business you acquired might have things happen to it that are out of your control – say an SEO update that destroys your organic traffic. So while our vetting makes sure you’re getting a real business, it is still up to you as a buyer to make sure it is a business you’re willing to take the risk on. If you are willing to take that risk, the ROI from acquiring an online business typically outpaces any other investment I know about.
There are a few things you can do to mitigate your risk and make sure the seller is on your side when you go about buying a business. I recommend you read my post here on deal structuring, as its a powerful tool kit for a buyer to have in their arsenal.