Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Why Buying A Website Is Better Than Building One

By Mark Walters

If you want to earn an online income, then you need to have your own website. To get one, you have two choices; you can either build your own website, or you can purchase one that has already been established.

Building your own website is not as difficult as you may think it to be, and there are plenty of free online guides around to help you do so, but it will take up a fair amount of your time. There is the initial designing and coding of the website to think about, then you have to write several pages of content for it, and then you have to get it indexed and ranking well in the search engines. On the other hand, all of this can be done very cheaply, provided that you do not outsource the work to others. If you do the work yourself, then your only costs will be buying a domain and web hosting, which will amount to around just $20.

However, if you do not have the time to go through the self-build process, or if you have some spare cash available, then buying a pre-made, and already performing website, might be the best option for you. If you go down this route, as well as saving yourself time, you will be in a position to start making money straight away, as you will already have the basics and, most importantly, a good flow of existing traffic, in place. Having those foundations to build upon will make your rate of progress much quicker too, as the older a website is, the more authority it is given by the search engines, and the easier you will find it to rank highly in Google, Yahoo and Bing.

There are a number of online auction websites created specifically for the buying and selling of established websites. You can browse through literally hundreds of for-sale websites on a whole range of topics, from health to car insurance to weight loss to gadgets. Whatever you want, you will almost certainly be able to find it, and all budgets are catered for.

You need to remember to proceed with caution though, and act as you would when making any purchase that requires a sizeable outlay. Think with your head, and not your heart, and keep at the forefront of your mind that making money is your aim. You do not want the best looking website, but rather the one with the most money making potential. To assess which ones have such a potential, you need to find out at least the following information...

-How much the website has been making on a monthly basis

-How many unique visitors the website attracts each month

-How well the website ranks in each of the search engines

As for how much you can expect to pay, it is generally accepted that the price of a website is equal to 10 times its monthly income. So, for example, a website that earns $100 a month, would be worth around $1000. This can normally be negotiated on though and, as sales are typically made in an auction setting, there are some real bargains to be had.

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