Buying Forums

[mikelowrey]

I am interested in buying forums, is there a "Website" commonly known for people to sell their forum?

Any advice you can provide? Thank you.

 

[RickM]

You can try flippa.com - it's pretty much the universal website buying/selling place.

Having done it myself in the past the only suggestion I'd have is check every single claimed statistic is real before buying. Seriously, it's way too easy for people to fudge statistics on Flippa - never trust screenshots claiming revenue and traffic.

 

[mikelowrey]

Thanks @RickM ! is there a way to be make sure everything is legit?

 

[Brent W]

Sign a NDA and get access to their Google Analytics. Other than that, any financial data you can get ahold of and verify.

 

[mikelowrey]

@BamaStangGuy good idea! thx for bringing it up!

 

[CallieJo]

The last time I checked Flippa (days ago) there were about 25 listings for forums.

One of the issues I see with the ones that are selling is that most of them are dead forums.

There is one that boasts a lot of posts. But in further digging, the majority of posts are hidden in a sub-forum and is full of old news articles brought in from rss feeds.

Some of the other ones I looked at you could tell that the forum has been dead for a while even if there are a few new posts.

Check who is online for several days to see if there's activity. Check dates on a lot of the posts. Check if the stats match what you are seeing and how they add up and where most of the posts are made. Check the members list and see when the last time the top posters logged in.

Other places for buying forums:
forums.digitalpoint.com
freemarket.com
And domain auction websites.

 

[Brent W]

We have bought forums that have turned out great and those that didn't from Flippa. Our two success were http://www.fordforumsonline.com and https://www.aspiescentral.com/

 

[mikelowrey]

@CallieJo Thx for the tips! @BamaStangGuy that is really awesome! I think I should change the topic to invite others to show their experiences.

 

[digitalpoint]

Other places for buying forums:
forums.digitalpoint.com
freemarket.com
And domain auction websites.

Side note - we just rolled out a ton of changes to our site/domain marketplace... You can see some examples of stuff for sale under the new system:

https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/weddingideaplanner-com.259158/domain
https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/buyshares-com.259330/domain
https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/yumm-com.259415/domain

 

[Alpha1]

Side note - we just rolled out a ton of changes to our site/domain marketplace... You can see some examples of stuff for sale under the new system:

Cool to see. The main thing I am missing is keywords / tags and the possibility to watch such tag. Rather than browse advertisements every once in a while (which I dont do often anyway) its much easier to just get notified when a site in your niche has been posted. Flippa has this. DP should too.

 

[Digital Doctor]

its much easier to just get notified when a site in your niche has been posted. Flippa has this. DP should too.

It surely would drive traffic to DP and could significantly improve the selling price of domains.
Great idea.

 

[digitalpoint]

Yeah... There is still stuff to do (hence the beta tag on it), auction watching, a couple additions to the searching/filtering, keyword alerts, etc.

 

[RickM]

Alerts would be immensely helpful. I've tried setting them up on Flippa but never seem to actually get notified of things. Their system's so damn buggy.

 

[Fred.]

I don't trust most of the stuff on Flippa

Nice update Shawn Looking good.
I would also love keyword alerts.

 

[RickM]

I don't trust most of the stuff on Flippa

How come?

As long as you filter your search and don't take a sellers word for it (i.e request proof of everything) its not an issue, and you'd be doing the same on any marketplace.

I've found if you do something as simple as setting the minimum domain age to 1 year and the minimum income to $100 it strips out a ton of the cheap/crappy sites.

 

[Fred.]

How come?

As long as you filter your search and don't take a sellers word for it (i.e request proof of everything) its not an issue, and you'd be doing the same on any marketplace.

I've found if you do something as simple as setting the minimum domain age to 1 year and the minimum income to $100 it strips out a ton of the cheap/crappy sites.

Because there are a lot dead or websites or websites that had serious problems on there. Like a penalty from google or something. Or at lest it looks like that.
But why can't Flippa request better proof before they can post?

That's right that's the way to do it to filter all the crap.