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Flipping websites is becoming a booming business here on the Web. Lots of people are building sites with a view to selling them as soon as they've got some reasonable traffic numbers, inbound links and page rank and there are definitely people out there who are eager to buy those sites.

Of course it's a case of caveat emptor ... buyer beware ... because those inbound links and nice traffic numbers can disappear not long after the sale has been finalized. So think long and hard and do your research before you jump in and buy a site that was built for flipping.

Important factors to consider
However there are plenty of other websites out there in the marketplace that are for sale but were never built with the idea of flipping them. These are sites that have been around for a few years or more and come with plenty of genuine inbound links and plenty of traffic too.

These are sites that have been built by people who no longer have the time to maintain them or want to move on to bigger and better things. Over the last few years I've sold a number of my own sites for similar reasons. They've been link lists that I've taken years to develop and, from one point of view, those sites and similar ones that other people might have for sale are an excellent investment.

All the hard work of establishing the site has been done. The traffic, the links, the bookmarkers and the age are all there and now all a purchaser would have to do is maintain the site and look at new directions that might work for the site. So why am I now sounding a faint warning signal?

Other factors
Whenever anyone has purchased a website from me they always consider those important factors that I mentioned in the last paragraph and they really are very valid factors when it comes to buying an established website. But there are some other factors that people don't seem to consider and they are just as valid as the traffic numbers, links etc. and that's where you need to be careful.

Time
One of the most important factors that most people don't consider is the time it might take them to run the new site that they're thinking of buying. Do they really know just how much time it will take out of their day to run the site? Sure they're getting a functioning site ... one that may even be run by a script ... but that doesn't mean that it's going to run on auto pilot.

Link lists especially need daily work done on them to maintain them and to keep the surfers coming back for more so do you have spare time in your daily schedule that you can devote to the new site?

And then there is the time it takes to change all the sponsor links that might appear within a site. Even a small link list should have hundreds of sponsor links that you will need to change if you buy such a site. Do you really have the time and patience that you will need to change all those links?

Of course, if you've bought a mid-sized link list you're looking at taking even more time to make all the changes so that the sales go to you and not to the previous owner.

Niche knowledge
So you've bought a great site that gets heaps of traffic and ranks well in Google for a number of very important terms. It's a niche site that has lots of surfers' trust so you're really on a winner here ... but do you genuinely understand the niche?

Do you know what it takes to hold that trust and to keep your surfers happy or are you going to blunder around and make changes ... even minor ones ... that are sure to drive your surfers away?

Return on investment
Are you really going to get the return on your investment that all the important factors are suggesting? Shoemoney tells the story on his blog of a mainstream website that was generating revenue of around $2 million each year through sales of a product. After all costs were deducted the net income from the site was about $115,000 a year.

Now that's not a shabby amount but there was a catch. The business was taking the owner around 77 hours a week to run and that works out to be an hourly rate of $28.72 ... on which you would then have to pay tax. If you've been around this business for a while would your gross hourly rate only be worth $28.72?

There are lots of things to consider if you're thinking of buying an established website. Sure, traffic, bookmarkers, search engine placement etc. are all important factors that need to be considered ... but there are plenty of other factors you should be considering too.