I run a website called Sell Domains, which allows South Africans to list and attempt to sell their domain names. Thus far, several domains have been successfully sold and new members are joining on a dailly basis.
Today I came across www.iphone3g.co.za which is currently for sale. I, unfortunately, cannot disclose the amount the gentleman wants for the domain, but trust me, it’s a damn good price!
The website has some great content, as well as a social media touch and a database of members, so it’s up and running really well and has massive potential.
This one is worth the purchase, it’ll take 6 months to make the money back, easily, well that’s if you know affiliate marketing and SEO (which the site needs badly).
Had a look and looks quite well maintained.
Price does not look TOO bad … but maybe abit cheaper due to the lack of in place traffic streams.
True, the backlinks aren’t very good, but in general, if the site were being sold for R10k, that’s $1000, which is not a lot to make back over 6months or a year or actually however long :)
I think people don’t understand that, you buy a website for R10,000 and have a lifetime to make the money back :)
Hmm. Very new domain, no pagerank and not a domain name someone would normally think to just type in their browser to get info on the product. For SEO that domain is as useful as iphoneS3g.co.za (which is available and costs you only R50). It’s worth a premium over the R50 registration fees, but IMO closer to R200 than R10,000. Also, the content there is mostly lifted from other sources so there will certainly be a duplicate content penalty from G, if there isn’t one already. With the lack of original content it seems like a splog.
IMO, save your money on the domain, invest in some good links or AdSense. $1,000 would go a long way in promoting a new site via AdSense.
For direct traffic by people guessing domain names for a product you need a domain like iphone.co.za. I’m sure your visitor reports on a certain social website domain you own demonstrates this very well (Will that domain ever be on your Sell Domains list??)
Russell, I do agree that the domain is new and the SEO has not been tackled correctly, but I run another iphone website with very little effort and it brings in good revenue, that’s why I feel this is a good one.
Sell Domains gets some interesting domains and as the day go by, it gets stronger and stronger..
Hi all.
Im actually the owner of the iphone3g.co.za website. Just to clear up a few things. The lack of traffic is due to the fact that it is a new site – only registered in June if not mistaken, and also that the site has NO advertising whatsoever except on MyBroadband.co.za.
Here are some stats: (From June – Nov 08)
Unique visitors = 10588
Number of visits = 21601
Hits = 677678
October average visits = 196 per day
There are more stats available as well.
I do believe that this site has great potential if managed and dedication was put into it. The iPhone is here to stay and more and more people are buying them. People are looking for a good place for iPhone support in South Africa and where better to look than either vodacom.co.za, apple.co.za or iphone3g.co.za. As we all know there is little or no support on the other sites.
I think the name is the best there can be. You got an iPhone3g so you go to iPhone3g.co.za. – its simple and way easy to remember.
Yes you can get a domain for R50 or even cheaper, but no domain comes with a website ready to roll. The website is already there. Its run on WordPress (the latest) and there is a forum right next door – all ready and running.
How would a web designer charge for the design or setup of the site? The content may be copied from other sites but its all found in one location – South Africa.
The ONLY reason I’m selling this site is due to the fact that I do not have time to continue with it. I have other projects that have taken the for front and I don’t have anyone to run it for me. There is potential for banner ads as the site get popular as well.
All I’m basically asking is for the time, and money Ive invested in it – and its not as much as I have invested.
Any other questions – please do not hesitate to ask – Thank You
Rashaad Sallie
But one doesn’t need to buy a R10,000 domain to get going doing what you did with your iphone domain. Heck, you spelled out the recipe in one of your earlier posts. All one needs is R50 for a iphone-related domain, hosting and a strategy. With little effort one should be able to register a fresh co.za domain and get at least 400-1000 pages indexed in a month with G. The traffic will soon follow.
I have nothing against buying and selling domains – I have bought two this year (Because they came pre-loaded with a valid PR4 with a niche that was relevant) and will probably buy another one in the next month, without pagerank or indexing history, because the name is relevant for my new project – but I’m not paying his R5k asking price – I would rather save 5k and append “-sa” at the end of the domain instead.
I think one should avoid giving potential buyers false hope of being able to recover their hefty investment costs of around R10,000 in 6 months easily. You mention they need to make use of SEO techniques, however if they were clued up enough on those SEO techniques they wouldn’t need a R10,000 nearly-virgin/no pagerank/no backlinks domain to get going; They could register their own domain and do it themselves.
What’s sad is that if the domain does sell at the asking price it would most likely be sold to someone who thinks the hard work has been done already and all they have to do is fork over 10k and make a post every day. It’s not that simple.
I’m not saying the domain isn’t worth anything – far from it. But R10,000 is a lot of money for a domain with content which could have been scraped with an RSS scraper.
I’m also not saying you shouldn’t let it be advertised on your valuable site either, I just think your personal endorsement of it might compromise your good reputation.
“The ONLY reason I’m selling this site is due to the fact that I do not have time to continue with it. I have other projects that have taken the for front and I don’t have anyone to run it for me. There is potential for banner ads as the site get popular as well.”
I’m sure you do have other projects – creating other projects that you will also not have time for and will let go at R10k.
I know how the game goes.
I’m actually being very hypocritical here because I’m not totally white-hat myself. But for some strange reason this game is one I have moral issues with.
Hi Russell
I do appreciate your input. However I dont think that you can assume that the other projects are websites at all or if they were, I would sell them. I’m not in this GAME that you are talking about and feel that I can get something back. Some may feel its too expensive while others not. I cant just drop it in th drain after the time and effort i’ve put into it – would you?
BUT on the other hand, I do attempt to get something out of it. Its negotiable.
This is a tricky one, as I agree with both sides of the discussion here. I feel that the domain holds good value as it’s developed and running as well as having a decent keyword as the domain name, which with a little SEO magic would rank nicely in the SERPS. I run an iPhone website, which is not nearly as established as this one and the revenue is decent.
What is interesting is if you take a look at Google Trends for iPhone 3g, this will show you an interesting breakdown of where people are searching for the keyword – Hong Kong, Singapore and Russia are the dominant cities, each of which are non-english based, so this would worry me a little as to whether it’s a good idea to buy the site.
I don’t think R10,000 is over priced and if it is, then not by too much, however, Russell makes a good point, buying a domain and ranking it up correctly will take you to a point of ROI after not too many months.
This is a tricky one :)
The website is now going for R7,500.00 =)
What I think might help “seal the deal” (especially with someone new to self-hosting blogging) is if it would include 1 years free hosting with some reasonably-priced local hosting company. Part of the owners price justification is that it includes the customized layout. If it included some free hosting it would be a turn-key operation where all the new owner would need is the login details and not have to worry about migrating the website to a new host.
like i said, its all negotiable.
Hmmmm…
Was almost tempted but have to agree with Russel, there’s way too much duplicate content on the site.
Just copied and pasted some random text from a few of the articles into Google.com and it shows up on quite a few sites, not a good sign.
Could be just a matter of time before it gets slapped with a hefty penalty… Could be.
Having said that, all the best with selling it Rashaad :)
Hi Justin.
Yes i agree that the stuff is all copied and pasted. The reason for this is that I have permission from these sites to do so as long as after the article I give reference as to where it came from. – eg [via iClarified] etc. I even got permission from MyBroadband.
Thanks for the wish in selling. Although the content is copied, anyone who takes over the site and does not want to use copied content will obviously write their own articles from there on.
One can just rewrite the same thing in his own words, but why should you when u have the permission to copy it. I don’t mind referencing other sites and never take credit for the copied articles.
Like I said… you take over the site and write your own articles from there on. I have also offered anyone to join the site and write articles as well but no-one has.
Question:
If I had a good SEO in place and wrote every article on my own, would the site be valued a lot more? If so… by how much?
For me, the SEO is not the issue, that can all be sorted over time.
There’s over 300 articles on the site, if that was all quality, original content personally I would probably pay anything up to R20,000, depending on a few other factors.
It’s my feeling, as I mentioned, that the site could be due for a hefty duplicate content slap in Google. At the moment it may have escaped this because it is still a new-ish domain.
Re-writing the articles in one’s own words is almost as much work as getting another site up.