Most of what I’m about to say is from my observaton, if any of you would like to add to this post please leave a comment.

I would say that 90% of the time, if you are buying a site, you should find one that is making a profit.  There are only a few reasons why you would want to buy a site that isn’t making a profit.

1. You have no clue how to build a website and the website is well priced.
2. The design of the website is superb and the website is well priced.
3. The site runs off some amazing script and the website is well priced.
4. Maybe the  previous owner didn’t harness the sites potential.   The site has huge PR with no link sales etc.

I put the “well priced” in three of the reasons above because you can spend anywhere from hundreds to thousands of  dollars on designing and  coding a website if you have it professionally done.  When I say “well priced”, I mean dirt cheap compared to other websites that are in the same category of site.  When shopping for a site, you really have to look around to see what comparable sites are going for and why.  Be extremely cautious when buying a site with no revenue.  You have to do your homework like you would with any other purchase.

When you get into buying and selling websites it’s really a big game. I’ve sold several websites now. I’ve been window shopping websites for the longest time. I’ve been watching how much they are getting sold for and figuring out why they got sold for the ending price. I’ve been learning what’s a deal and what’s not a deal. I’ve made mistakes selling websites. I usually start websites from scratch, but I found a website that had a pretty cool script that was selling for $15 so I picked it up. Whether you are on the buying end or the selling end, you can leave a deal feeling like you did’t get your money’s worth.

I personally believe, building websites just to sell them is a waste of time. I can make more money selling products online and spend a lot less time turning a much larger profit. Some people do very well at buying and selling websites.

Most websites sell for the amount of money that they will make in a year. Personally, it would be hard for me to get rid of a website that is making a descent profit. If I sold it, I know I could make what ever I sold it for in about a years time. Some people sell sites that are making a profit because they have a bigger project they need to fund or maybe they lost interest in the site. All the websites I sold were websites that I lost interest in. They were’nt really making any money. I broke even on one. I made a profit on one. And I lost money on my most recent sale.

The part that gets sticky is when you sell a site and find that the person you sold it to is selling it for way more than what you sold it for.  Or you buy a site and find out you could of ended up with the finished product for half the price.  One site I sold for about for a small price I see the new owner selling for over double what I sold it to them for.  This person changed the site over to an Amazon site this way the new owner doesn’t have to deal with buying and selling products.  Should I get mad?  No, if I did the same thing my site probably would have been worth the amount this person is now selling it for.  I’ve been finding when you go to buy a website, especially in forums, that it is hard to find sites that are selling tangible products.  This is because selling tangible products is much more work.  People are more willing to buy sites where they promote them and get checks for refferels and so on then to have to deal with customers.

Now, on the buying end.  I just bought this site for $15.  All I really wanted was the script.  After I purchased the site, I found the script for sale at $2.  Should I get mad at the seller?  No, the site was sold at a fair price.  I learned if I ever buy a site that is based on a script that I should check to see if I can find a similar script for sale and see how much the script costs before purchasing it.  I knew this nugget of wisdom before I bought the site, it didn’t occur to me until I already bought it.

The moral of my whole story is don’t hate the player, hate the game.  Think through every purchase or sell you make.  There is no reason to be upset with the seller or buyer when they are trying to win in the game of buying and selling websites just like you.

Well, I bought a new site.  I guess I feel like I have to have a project going on all the time.  Awhile back, I talked about starting a site and hiring a freelancer to work on it.  Well, it still isn’t done yet.  It is suppose to be done by September 5th.  My freelancer needs to step it up a notch if he is really going to get it done by then.  I’ve been itching to do something worthy of my time, so I bought this other website.  I’ll let you know what it is and what it is all about when I get it up and running.  I’m going to talk more about this website in the next post.

I was searching around the net the other day when I stumbled across Amazon’s aStore. I guess the concept is quite new according to what others were saying in forums. I would give you a link to the aStore, but I can’t find a way to the aStore with out being signed in. You may have to create an Amazon account just to view what I’m talking about.  Here’s a link where you can join.  Affiliates make up to 8.5%.  Check them out when you get a chance.

Those of us who work other jobs while running internet business can use time zones for their advantage.  I enjoy living in the Eastern time zone. As many of you know, my main bread winner on the internet is a dropship website. My day job is pretty cool for the fact that I usually can leave work between 3pm and 4pm. I get to leave so early because I do children’s ministry.  Pretty much any time the doors of the church are open, I’m there. And the door’s are open quite a bit. I’m also the director of our inner-city children’s ministry so with those two combined I’m a pretty busy dude. But my point is, I get to go home pretty early during the week.

My dropshipper is California. They are open until 5pm Pacific time. Customers can call us all the way up until 8pm Eastern time since it’s just 5pm Pacific time in California, Nevada, Washington, and Oregon. And don’t forget about Alaska, they are even an hour behind Pacific time. My wife handles all of our calls until I get home from work. If there is anything I need to communicate to my dropshipper, or questions I need to ask, they are still open so I still have an opportunity to get business done with them. It works out quite nicely.

Another way to use time zones to your advantage is when you hire someone from another country to do work for you, usually the time that they are awake working is the prime time that you are on the computer.  You can communicate with them effeciently via instant messaging.

Well, I’m finally getting my second Adsense check.  I should be getting it at the end of September.  This site is the only site that I have Adsense ads on.  Before I started this site, I had Adsense up on my product site which had pretty good earnings.  I took the Adsense ads off because I made in some cases 500 times more by selling my products than people clicking on my ads.  It wa