Buying A Domain From SEDO

Last year, I had to register to SEDO to be able to make an offer on an domain. The owner and I did some testing and I concluded that the domain, for me, was not worth it for the price he was asking. Also, the Canadian dollar took a beating around that time and did not want to invest that much money. Yes, I'm missing last summer 1:1 exchange rate. ;)



Once the testing was done, I made an offer based on the traffic he was sending from that domain.

The seller also had another related domain with half the traffic for sale but not making that much per day from SEDO parking. I made an offer and he accepted(day 1).

I had to enter my PayPal information to be paid when parking domains but also when buying the domain.

Once the seller agreed to my price, SEDO sent me an email. From there, I had to first pay the SEDO(escrow) and select the registrar.

Day 2


I had to send info to switch registrar.

Day 3


Got the authorized code to transfer registrar.

Day 4


All the transfers were done and the seller was paid a few days later.

For the first domain, they did not transfer the domain to my chosen registrar for some reasons. It could had been me too. But, I needed to wait 60 days more to do redo the transfer. The second domain was okay. If you have the same registrar, it's faster.

I since done other transfers because it's fast and secure. When I sold one of my domain, I had to pay a 10% fee for the escrow service. This way, I'm protected.

The aftermath

After I taking possession of both domains, I noticed I was not getting the traffic I got from the stats from SEDO that the seller sent me on one of them. I was only getting 10%. How could that be? Why the major drop? Did he mislead me? One thing for sure, I was mad!

Up to that time, I never got any troubles with the seller based on the previous testing phase. I sent an email to the seller since I paid for x amount for the traffic.  I offered him 2 options: explanations or partial refund based on the traffic I was getting.

But if he was dishonest, I was also ready to out him in public for being dishonest. Reputation is hard to gain but easy to lose. However, that was my last course and I wanted explanations first since he was honest before. Thus, I gave him a chance to explained himself.

My email was not received well and he did not like the tone. After reading my email, I admit I was a little too  direct. "Screwed me over" reflected the feeling I had at that time. Plus, I was accusing him of being dishonest when using those words.  But, I could had posted to my blog while never giving him a chance to give me his side. After that, I apologized and I was more diplomatic when choosing my words. Before that first email, I did asked a few questions but he never really answered all of them properly while answering others correctly.

He offered explanations and he pointed out a mistake I had made when receiving the incoming traffic. Yes, I admit, that part was my fault. After I made the modifications, I was getting the right amount of traffic.

I received 2 more replies later on. In the first reply, he accused me to be the dishonest one and that it was his last reply. The second reply, a few minutes later,  was that he was going to contact everyone that was sending me traffic to that domain. I never replied to either of those replies.

The lesson: Choose you words carefully. For both of us, English was not our first language. Maybe I used word that was more misinterpreted on his side.

Dealing with existing traffic

For those curious, I was only processing domain.com/index.html?uid=9999 when I should had process domain.com/index.php?uid=9999.I had only seen the .html

When you setup a site, you should check the 404 errors more carefully. With all my previous pre-owned I had bought, I never had that situation like this one.

Dealing with SEDO traffic

SEDO will give you the traffic they actually count as traffic. When domains are parked, they will show ads thus sending traffic is against the TOS.

Both domains are still receiving a lot from many traffic exchange services thus SEDO is not counting them. I can't do anything about it either since it's it's not from me. I do get regular traffic from backlinks too.

Also, SEDO will show the total hits for the last 30 days. So, if the domain was added yesterday, SEDO will show that total in the "last 30 days". If you see a low amount, it could be higher than that.

With those 2 domains, 95% is non converting crap traffic. At least, by using a few NB offers, I was able to almost double my money within 3-4 months from those 2 domains. I must mentioned that the second domain did not convert well. But, I took a gamble and I won this time.

Conclusion

Buying domains with pre existing traffic from SEDO or other services is good IF you can know where it comes from first. If you are lucky, the traffic is not being manipulated in anyway.

Otherwise, you might be stuck with a high priced lame duck. If it happens, you can always build links to get better targeted traffic but you will need to be patient until Google counts them.

Now, I check the traffic but it's not the major stat I look at. I check the number of backlinks, name, what it was used for and.... if it's in my budget because both were more than what I pay for pre-owned domains.   ;)