…are people who post their sites up for sale but aren’t really serious about selling them! Last night, I ran across a Hilary Duff fan site that was ranked in the top 10 for its term and had an average of 2000-3000 unique visitors a day - and best of all, the homepage had a link that said the site was for sale.
So I emailed the site owner to inquire about their asking price, and they got back to me quickly saying it was definitely not under $1000… which, of course, got me all hot and bothered, since a site with that much traffic would easily earn us $230-$600/month depending on the payout per click.
After talking about it on the phone, Dave and I made an offer of $1250 to start, but when the owner received my offer, suddenly they wanted $20,000 because of sentimental value. Of course, they presented this price as if it was a joke, so I asked them straight up: how much do you need to make this happen? The answer came back: $20,000.
Bah…
Anyway, the moral of the story is: don’t list your site for sale if you’re not actually interested in selling - and definitely set a price before actively trying to sell it. I see this all the time in the auction forums where people are listing sites just to test the water, to see how much people will offer… but it’s extremely selfish.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Hey…people are selfish and inconsiderate, that’s just how the world works unfortunately. :(
April 25th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Hey Dave & Jay, new poster here.
Unfortunately, some dishonest site owners will list their site for sale and display a teaser price, but raise it once they find out that someone is interested in it.
BTW - I think your guys’ blog is great and I hope to learn a lot from you guys - I’m a teen getting started in the .com business and hope I can make a little bit before the bubble pops again (we all know it will).
-Ryan
April 25th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
This is nothing new. Maybe they’re trying to get traffic to their blog. And I suspect Mitch from Harpzon.com is trying to do that now.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Well this is slightly different, since the user was posting the for sale message right on their site, not on the regular sales forums as Mitch mentions in his blog ebook.
Thanks for the kind words Spaceman :)
April 26th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
I think people like that are just waiting for someone to offer them big money. If not they’re just trying to manipulate you into thinking it’s for that price and then they jack it up.