AP 0618: If I Buy a Website, How Does the Transfer Process Work?

AskPat 618 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 618 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

We have a great question today from Charles but before we get to this question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is Active Campaign. Active Campaign is an advanced email marketing, marketing automation and sales CRM platform that features a simple and easy to use interface. You can visit activecampaign.com/askpat and see firsthand how an integrated, automated marketing and sales platform can revolutionize your promotional efforts. You can sign up for free for a 14-day trial right now, no credit cards needed. There's no training fees, there's no contract, and pricing is accessible to any size business. So, activecampaign.com/askpat.

Now, here's today's question from Charles.

Charles: Hello, Pat. My name's Charles. I live in Sugarland, Texas. My question is related to buying websites. I currently have a website for my service based business and I did most all of it on my own. I even created a separate niche site that I'm still currently working on. Anyway, I would like to buy a website, maybe a couple websites, but what's stopping me is the transferring process. I'm unclear on how that works: transferring the files, transferring the domain name. If it's got affiliate marketing or AdSense, transferring those things over as well. I know some of the things are pretty basic, but I'm still a little unclear on the actual process. Especially if the seller cannot assist in that part. Any help's appreciated. Keep up the good work, man.

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up Charles, thank you so much for the question today, I really appreciate this. I've bought a couple websites in the past, and the transferring of stuff is always definitely the most intimidating part.

The first thing I would recommend is that if you're purchasing websites, you definitely want to go through an escrow service. If you buy sites through something like—what is it called—Flippa.com. If you buy a website through there, they also have a third party escrow company that they work with where you put the money that you pay for that website into that escrow service, which means that the person who's transferring everything over should get it to you first before you can then release that.

What that third party thing does, obviously, is just make sure that everybody's safe and if there are any disputes, that money isn't just lost forever. Which, I've also heard many horror stories of people paying for websites and then not getting access to everything, or not even getting the websites that they paid for at all and the person just kind of runs away and, your loss.

That's not good, so Flippa.com is a great website for buying and flipping websites if you want to check that out. But if you go through just a private party, you, again, go through an escrow service just to make everybody feel safer. I think that's the best thing to do.

Now when it comes to transferring stuff over, that's always the hard part. A lot of times people will not know what to do, and you might have to walk them through the process. Where you could go is that hosting provider, and see if they could offer any help, too. There might also be some FAQs or other knowledge-base type stuff that that particular web host that they are on, might have to help you as the new owner. And that can also help you instruct that person on what to do next.

Sometimes it's the domain, sometimes the domain and the host is on the same company, sometimes they're on separate companies if it's, again, for example, on Go Daddy, there's information on there that you can give to that person to give you a code—a special code—that then you put into your account on Go Daddy, which then transfers over and then that person has to accept that transfer. Again, it's a pretty intimidating process, but just take it one step at a time.

When it comes to other accounts that are involved, like affiliated marketing accounts, you're going to have to go to each of those different places where you have those affiliate relationships and just start a new one. That's essentially what you're going to have to do. So you reach out to them. You could even mention, if you get a contact with somebody there at those companies, who that blogger or that person who's transferring that website over to you, they already have a relationship with them. Well you're going to need to create that relationship and start fresh with a new affiliate link and all that stuff and just make sure everything on the website is linked to through your account instead.

Same thing for AdSense. You're going to have to create your own AdSense account and you're going to have to put in your custom links there. Now, there are some strategies you can do. I think if you go into the back end or wherever your website code is, you might be able to just change the ID of the AdSense owner. That way you don't have to go in and just start from scratch, but you can just change the ID owner. That way, the funds get transferred to your account and not them. Or the clicks get reported to your AdSense account.

So that's how I'd go about it. It's like you said, these are basic things but there's a lot involved and you just want to make sure that you get all you bases covered. The one thing I would say, Charles, before you buy websites, is that you do your due diligence on those websites and on those trends related to those niches. You've got to also ask yourself, “Well why is this person selling this website?” You want to make sure that they're legit, and the website's legit.

Back in the day when I was buying websites, I really had to watch out with people who were just creating these websites from scratch and getting them a ranking really high in 60 days of Google. So they were very attractive, they get a lot of traffic, but then after the transfer the SEO juice isn't there anymore because they linked those sites that were linking to that site to some other site that they wanted to sell, and then your rankings drop and you kind of just lose out on that money.

So, be careful, do your due diligence, but also use an escrow company for the money transfer just to keep everything safe and everybody happy. In terms of transferring, again, just make sure you get everything into your own name and you sign up for those affiliate programs, you sign up for your own AdSense account, and just make sure everything's changed over.

Charles, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate it, wishing you the best of luck and want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you so much.

And for everyone else out there listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there, on that page. Now, to finish off, here's a quote—a great quote—by Karl Pearson. And he says, this is a short quote, but it's a powerful one, “That which is measured, improves.”

Cheers, take care, I will see you on the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.