Happier Abroad Forum Community

This site: http://www.sitepoint.com has the "marketplace" section. If you go there, you will see ready-made websites that generate revenue. The marketplace is divided into 'established' websites and 'premium' websites. The former are inexpensive while the latter cost more. The one one acquires such websites is by bidding in an auction style and winning the auction. Not all websites are OK, one needs to ask many questions before one bids.

Having a money-generating website is the ideal way to make money while enjoying life in the wide blue abroad. It frees you from restrictive regulations for foreigners and does not make you a a threat to local businesses. It also keeps you mobile and not tied down to some restaurant somewhere.

There are drawbacks, also, as websites have no equity and there are many potential problems, but if you are persistent and careful and do your homework, this can be an excellent way to finance your future dreams.

You can also check Digital Point's forum:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=24

Lots of sites for sell there too.

This kind of business is risky, there are many scammers with fake accounts, and people selling sites with fake revenue data. You need to be very careful. Also, many of the products are not "timeless" and only valid for few months to couple of years. After that, technology marches on and the product becomes obsolete. You have to put in the effort to update the product, or pay someone to do it for you.

A great idea of course. And it's something I'm doing right now too. But even if you manage to get only a side income from a website, you can still supplement your income with freelancing jobs like in the ones I posted before. Here they are again.

http://myseoblog.net/2008/04/07/lists-o ... nce-sites/

The best ones I've heard, are these:

http://www.elance.com

http://www.getafreelancer.com/

I heard of a guy who came to the Philippines with only $200 in his pocket, but now makes around a thousand dollar a month doing freelance work online, while living with his girlfriend.

momopi wrote:You can also check Digital Point's forum:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=24

Lots of sites for sell there too.

This kind of business is risky, there are many scammers with fake accounts, and people selling sites with fake revenue data. You need to be very careful. Also, many of the products are not "timeless" and only valid for few months to couple of years. After that, technology marches on and the product becomes obsolete. You have to put in the effort to update the product, or pay someone to do it for you.

So, how should one be careful? How does one guard against rip offs and all?

ladislav wrote: So, how should one be careful? How does one guard against rip offs and all?

To start with, I'd look at site content logevity. Examples:

* Content about a popular TV show: good only while TV show is popular. i.e. if you bought or developed a popular site for CSI fans back in 2000, it's still good in 2009. But if the site was for "Who wants to marry a multi-millionaire", the show never made it beyond episode 1 and your site would've been long dead.

* Food recipes: you'd be up against very established & popular sites like allrecipes.com, but at least you know the same prime rib recipe is still good in 10 years. In other words, the raw content doesn't really expire, but you still have to add new content regularly and promote the site.

* Cracks/un-bricking for Xbox/Playstation/PSP/etc: only good until next firmware release that blocks the crack.

* Video games: content usually has very short shelf-life. Once the hype of a new game dies down, so does the traffic.

* Templates/software for blogs/forums/etc: Possibly only good for current version of the software. There are exceptions, such as LiveJournal, which is popular enough to force users to stick to Apache v1.3.x. For templates/themes, an update is almost always required with each major release:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrade_1.2_to_1.5

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The second thing I'd look for is site content originality/authenticity. Did the seller copy the content from someone else? This part is more complicated as not all content is copied from the web. If you buy a recipe site from someone, and later find out that he copied everything from several cook books, you might be looking at a copyright lawsuit where you (the current owner) will be held responsible.

There are other content legality issues. For example, running a web site like voyeurweb.com requires a lot of balls, you can almost guarentee lawsuits are flying in on regular basis. If you don't have lawyers for kahonas, it's not the right business for you.

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The third item I'd look at is profitability. Anyone can fake traffic or dump few hundred dollars in google adwords to prop up traffic/sales. How do you know the seller is not a rip-off? Unlike Ebay, there usually isn't a user feedback section, so you have to talk to the seller personally and verify as much as you can.

Ideally, you want the site to sell products that you control and requires little or no physical inventory. Some examples:

1) Software/ebook downloads or membership subscription
2) Physical product or service (i.e. wedding planner)
3) Profit from web ads

If you can setup affiliate sales where others do the promotion and sales for you, that'd work too.

Ladislav,
So did you find an online business to buy on sitepoint.com?

There's something I don't get though. If an online business is profitable, why would anyone want to sell it? An online business generating residual income is the perfect deal. Who would give such a thing up and sell it for a one-time fee?

I hope you find one though. Having a portable income gives you a freedom that a job or local business, which ties you to one geographic location, can not. And at your age, you should be enjoying your life with little stress and following your bliss, not working hard everyday.

Life is precious, and you should not spend it being a slave.