

Ask HN: "Scammed" by a website seller on Flippa - paolomaffei

Back in October I purchased this site for $1600:<p>https://flippa.com/auctions/109871/630pm-Ebook-Design-Service-w-Adsense-Income----Google-Page-1---REAL-BUSINESS<p>Some months passed, it always took the seller forever to answer my emails and finally transfer the site.<p>Fact is he put revenues as estimates on the sale page which were supposed to amount to more than $600.<p>More than 3 months after I can safely say I had 0 sales and just 4 inquiries (but see later about this).<p>When I complained the first time that no one was contacting me on the site I received 4 enquiries from @gmail.com addresses within 3 days, none of those turned into a sale.<p>I suspect he's sending fake hits because google analytics shows 85-90% traffic as type-in, which can hardly be the case.<p>So it seems that a lot of data in the auction was bogus (revenue and visits mainly), but I had no idea until I purchased the site.<p>I have tried contacting the seller, who seems a nice guy on the outside, but without any answers in the last 3 weeks.<p>Is there anything else I can do beside swallowing up the loss and try to promote the site anyway?<p>Anything else I could have done better in the due diligence phase?<p>We all make errors, I'm sharing mine so that you know to do better due diligence next time you buy a web property.
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flipfilter
I wouldn't feel bad. I sometimes conduct DD on behalf of third parties for
legal cases so I've seen a lot of scams and this one is (assuming it isn't
genuine) surprisingly well put together for something on the lower end of the
scale.

Reading the listing you can usually get a sense of problems, but there were
only a few places that my BS alarm was triggered (one being that the seller
claimed he made an average of $9 per day from Adsense ads that he set up just
the other day. The screen shot for Adsense shows 19K impressions in three
days, which seems a little off based on 2,242 Page Views Per month, with 1
Adsense block in place.)

There's no hard and fast rule to prevent things like this, but if you were to
do it again, I'd advise

1) Either asking for access, or a video walkthrough of the adsense and paypal
account as this is more difficult to fake.

2) Do a common sense check based on the numbers. Look at the traffic they are
likely to receive from Organic Search (SEM Rush), look at the product and see
if it's been sold elsewhere and look at the conversion rate you would need to
achieve to justify the revenue figures quoted. As a rule of thumb, if product
A costs $10 and the adword CPC is $1, I'll know that other advertisers need a
conversion rate of 10% to break even. If your calculations shows this site
needs more than that to produce the quoted figures approach with extreme
caution.

Hope this helps

Justin

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paolomaffei
Hey Justin, thanks for your message.

the problem with point 2) is that he was claiming this mysterious social media
buy for $5 a day which I asked him to tell me before sending the payment, but
he didn't.

Anyway I'm gonna contact him in a last kind email tomorrow and see if I can
get something out of this.

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maxbrown
I've browsed Flippa a good amount, though I've never been inclined to make a
purchase.

Honestly, the reason I wouldn't have purchased this is because there's only
one month of proof (if the proof is even real, although that would be a PITA
to fake). He probably told you just by that fact that it isn't a sustainable
business. (You can't say it makes $600/m if it _maybe_ made $600 in one month)

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sagacity
Thanks for sharing - I guess this will be useful to many who will visit this
thread in times to come.

The seller said on the auction:

> I also don't have the time to manage affiliates and implement marketing
> strategies for this site anymore.

I'd have treated this as _warning_ sign #1. This explains probably why

> it always took the seller forever to answer my emails and finally transfer
> the site

> Is there anything else I can do beside swallowing up the loss and try to
> promote the site anyway?

The site _does_ look to be well-designed and SEOed - if you have a handle on
the deliverables, I'd suggest promoting it.

As a last case scenario, you can at least try to cut your losses by putting it
back on the auction (mentioning all the facts) and see what it can fetch.

HTH

~~~
paolomaffei
Not sure how much the site would get re-auctioning it today, even if rankings
for "ebook design" went from #5 to #1-2 I feel like I can't mention fake
revenues like he probably did so the price of the site would probably be <
$500

~~~
sagacity
If you're not going to do anything further with it, or, if it (the site) fails
to do anything for you:

<$500 > $0 :-)

~~~
paolomaffei
Right perhaps I can still do $100 a month with that with some promotion... so
I'd keep it rather than sell for $500. But I'd totally sell it for $1600 eheh

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coryl
Are you buying traffic / promoting the same way he was? (was it ever
effective?)

Have you changed anything with the site?

~~~
paolomaffei
As far as I know he was buying backlinks with an external service and he
claims the site is still signed up with that, so yeah the same way I guess

and no, I haven't changed anything.

~~~
btmorex
He says in the listing that he was buying social media traffic @ $5 a day so
maybe you could try that.

In all honesty though, you're probably just going to have to take the loss.
Better due diligence would be asking for 3+ months of revenue figures and
google analytics data (even get the login to the account). The fact that he
"couldn't get google analytics working" would have sent up red flags for me,
because how do you develop that site if you can't paste a couple lines of
javascript. Also, about the revenue, it's way to easy to sort of pump and dump
sites like this or even fake traffic/revenue. You really need a real track
record, not 30 random days of data.

~~~
paolomaffei
I have no idea what that buying social media traffic @ $5 a day is, and he
won't tell me.

------
ohashi
Lesson learned. I haven't actually sold/bought through flippa but anything
substantial I would always do through Escrow and confirm numbers.

