Advice Needed : Purchase of Website

[otisdog]

Hi guys,

I hope I am posting this in the correct section.
Need some opinion/advice here.Someone wants to sell me a website for USD3000.

I have been monitoring the stats for almost 2 weeks.It gets around 30000 visitors and 300000 pageviews daily.However I noticed the traffic has dropped since the start of the month.According to him, this is due to the holiday season/period thats approaching (Christmas,New Year etc)
Does this apply to all websites?

What other things do I have to look out for before actually purchasing the website?

Thank you.

[ajferg]

Perhaps you could ask for a larger sampling of visitor statistics (a full years worth?) That would at least let you see the seasonal trend. Although visitor numbers from 1 year ago would no doubt be less than they are now - you can still look for the trends.

[otisdog]

Perhaps you could ask for a larger sampling of visitor statistics (a full years worth?) That would at least let you see the seasonal trend. Although visitor numbers from 1 year ago would no doubt be less than they are now - you can still look for the trends.

Problem is a year ago the site wasn't hosted on this server.

[ajferg]

What period of time can you get the stats for?
I've never bought or sold a website myself, but I'd certainly want stats for a decent length of time to feel comfortable with it. Hey, maybe the site just got slashdotted last week or something and has a huge spike in traffic - the longer you get the stats for, the better!

Anyway, regarding trends on other webpages - haven't really noticed a decline on traffic just because its holiday season on any site I work on. In fact, some sites have had a serious boost to their traffic in the last month or so (they rank highly for some gift ideas that people evidently love buying for christmas).

What kind of site are we talking about, anyway?

[otisdog]

What period of time can you get the stats for?
I've never bought or sold a website myself, but I'd certainly want stats for a decent length of time to feel comfortable with it. Hey, maybe the site just got slashdotted last week or something and has a huge spike in traffic - the longer you get the stats for, the better!

Anyway, regarding trends on other webpages - haven't really noticed a decline on traffic just because its holiday season on any site I work on. In fact, some sites have had a serious boost to their traffic in the last month or so (they rank highly for some gift ideas that people evidently love buying for christmas).

What kind of site are we talking about, anyway?

I am only able to get statistics for the last 6 months? Is that sufficient?
What exactly do you mean by 'got slashdotted' anyway? Hmm

This is not an ecommerce site.Its just a simple site where people are allowed to post entries relating to computing stuff.So meaning to say the reason given by the owner is not valid?

[Derek Sheppard]

Evaluating the worth of a site is fairly involved and always has an element of risk. If you have not done so already, you should reveiw SitePoint's Sell Your Site forum and see what the common questions and concerns are, as well as how to answer them.

Are you considering the purchase of this site to make money? Does it earn revenue now? How much? From where? Has anything happened in the last month that would account for the drop in activity, besides the holidays? Google updates? Legal problems? Changes in advertising or links?

It could be a great deal for you. But there's a lot that's involved.

[ajferg]

This is slashdot: http://slashdot.org/
This is the slashdot effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

Basically, an article on slashdot links to your site, and your visitor numbers go through the roof (its often enough to kill a server, kinda like a DOS attack through sheer numbers).

The point I was getting at is just that something might have happened recently to spike the visitor numbers for the previous month, and the owner is trying to sell while the numbers look more impressive than they really are. With 6 months of stats, you shouldn't have to worry about this - you'll be able to see that the visitor numbers are a constant flow, not just a spike. Which is precisely what you want

The reason the owner gave was that traffic always slows down around the holiday season, yes? Well, that might make sense for that kind of site - maybe it gets read a lot by people at work, who don't read when they're off on holidays.

Derek's post outlines what else you'd need to look for - I can't think of anything he hasn't mentioned. Nice

[otisdog]

This is slashdot: http://slashdot.org/
This is the slashdot effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

Basically, an article on slashdot links to your site, and your visitor numbers go through the roof (its often enough to kill a server, kinda like a DOS attack through sheer numbers).

The point I was getting at is just that something might have happened recently to spike the visitor numbers for the previous month, and the owner is trying to sell while the numbers look more impressive than they really are. With 6 months of stats, you shouldn't have to worry about this - you'll be able to see that the visitor numbers are a constant flow, not just a spike. Which is precisely what you want

The reason the owner gave was that traffic always slows down around the holiday season, yes? Well, that might make sense for that kind of site - maybe it gets read a lot by people at work, who don't read when they're off on holidays.

Derek's post outlines what else you'd need to look for - I can't think of anything he hasn't mentioned. Nice

I don't think such a site would have any chance of getting on Slashdot.The visitor numbers did not shoot up suddenly.It actually increased gradually.Of course revamping the site last month did help.

"gets read a lot by people at work, who don't read when they're off on holidays" - This was the exact words the owner used

[sonjay]

I've seen the traffic drop in December for a good many sites I've been involved with. "Real life" events and activities definitely influence traffic. Here in south Florida, both this year and last, August and September were dead-dead-dead months for most local business sites.