My Day

After spending the last 2 or so years trying to buy a condo which I finally found a couple months ago I learned a lot about the negotiation process (after many failed offers).  Here are a couple things that I think could be used to negotiating the purchase of a website or domain (if you aren’t already using them).

Time Sensitive Offers (BUYING) – One of the things that I picked up that I thought could be applied to the affiliate industry is the use of time sensitive offers.  Basically what I mean by this is putting in an offer, but telling the person your offer expires in X # of hours.  This way you put the pressure back on the seller to either accept your offer (if it is the highest at the time there is a good possibility this will happen) and risk losing it, or holding out for a better one.  Typically if you come in around the amount they are looking to get, but a bit lower usually you will get the site you want and save some money doing it.  I find that far too many people on PAL and other forums have the worst approaches to both buying and selling their sites.  People post offers in a thread (which is now visible to any other potential buyers) and give the seller an endless amount of time to make a decision.  For me personally if I am going to commit to a purchase I want to know if I have it almost immediately, which is why I like using this approach.

Offer Conditions (BUYING) – Another thing that could work with purchasing websites (like they do in Real Estate) is putting restrictions or conditions on your offer.  Almost every real estate deal will have some kind of condition on the offer, so why not do the same with virtual real estate (or domains).  This way you can come in with a good offer and ask the seller to take the site off the market if he accepts, but also give yourself some time to do some due diligence on the property you are buying to make sure there is nothing funny about it.

Holding Back Offers (SELLING) – One common tactic used in the real estate market is to hold back offers.  Basically this means you set a sell date, and allow everyone to present their best offer anonymously.  This can create bidding wars back and forth as the seller will then usually try to work with the top 2 offers on price.  Sure, its annoying as hell from a buyers standpoint and it might discourage some, but this could also lead you to making a lot more on the sale of your property than you had planned.

Anyway, I am sure there are some other things and I didn’t really plan to write this post so most of this is off the top of my head.

Life Update… Well I have spent the last month or so getting settled into the new condo.  It has been a ton of work, but its pretty close to done now.  Just need a couple more small things.  Other than that I have been trying to get some other projects going that I have been working on for a long time.  One is a men’s magazine kind of site that is a cross between Forbes and AskMen.com.  Another one is a Casino Site that I will post more about once it is complete.  Then I have a few more sites that I will be developing further down the road which include a real estate site, a local furniture store site and a site about local restaurants.  I am really just trying to dabble in a bunch of different industries to see what works and what doesn’t.  I also hired a writer that is helping me get many of these sites ready.

Here are a couple of pics of the condo that I think I promised in the last post:

The View:

My Workcenter / Dining Room

Guest Bathroom:

View of most of the place (there is a new sofa now and the dining table is now white glass):

Kitchen:

Affiliate Tip:  I don’t think I have ever really posted many good tips on how to make money for a while so, here is an easy one.  Scour around for domains that have some good keywords in them (I know all the really good ones are gone, but if you look for ones with lower search volumes or find dropped ones its possible – preferably generic with things like “online” “poker” “review” “code” “bonus”, etc. in them).  If you have to spend $50-$100 to get a pretty decent domain.  Then get someone to build you a decent template that you can reuse for several sites (this will be the most expensive part but it is a one time cost and the more you spend the more you will get in return).  You should be able to get something decent for around $400.  Write around 25 pages of good content (the more the better) and add it to the site.  You should instantly be able to flip that site for around $2000 or more depending how much content is there on your $500 investment.