There is a lot to learn when it comes to investing in websites and a lot of website investors wear many hats whilst also being quite skilled in at least one thing. Whether that be SEO, marketing, social media marketing, content creation, conversion rates, sales copy and a wide variety of specialty skills.
Though what is the one incredibly important thing a website investor must be good at?
Due Diligence.
Due diligence is the most important part of buying a website, or buying any business/investment for that matter. The better you are and the more rigorously you conduct due diligence on any website you are looking to buy is going to determine your level of success through with the investment.
As I mentioned before each online entrepreneur and website investor will have their own specialty skill that they are good at, whilst also knowing a broad range of online entrepreneurial techniques to build and grow their online businesses. Though a website investor must be good at conducting a fair and accurate due diligence towards any website investment they are looking at.
The scary thing about website investing is getting yourself into something you don’t know how to handle when becoming the new owner of a website business. For example if the website has faults, errors and quick fixes that need to be corrected that you never anticipated on having to deal with pre-purchase.
Say for example you are looking at a website to buy and you are great at optimizing a website to create more conversions out of the traffic it is already getting. Whilst you are heavily invested into researching and strategizing ways to improve the business once you become the new owner. You may (and quite often this happens) not pay much attention to another part of due diligence which is just as important if not more important than what you have spent more time on.
For example, you could leave little time to the financials since your strategizing optimization techniques and when taking over the business you may realize there are some expenses for the business you completely missed during your due diligence on the financials. Which is only going to diminish your return just as much if not more even after implementing your new optimization techniques to your new website.
This is just one way a website investor may drop the ball so to speak when it comes to buying a website. Which is why a website investor must be good at conducting a rigorous due diligence and check across many different parts of the business from SEO, marketing, financials, solid background checks on the owners, market and competition research, industry changes and all these types of things that could affect a website investor once becoming a new owner of a business.
Which is why it’s quite safe to say, above all due diligence is everything when it comes to being a good website investor. If you can pick up things others can’t you can either save yourself a lot of time, money and heart ache. Or on the other hand if you spot something others don’t you can create a lot more time and money for yourself too. The pendulum swings no matter what and it is up to you to judge it correctly in order to benefit from it.
