Over the years I have seen hundreds of failing Internet businesses, and it is a real shame to see people let this happen to their business. But you know what is worse?
When first time rookie investors come in and get their hands on a failing internet business that simply can’t be brought back from the dead.
Sure you can buy a failing internet business, with the hopes to bring it around. But are you prepared to spend not just a bucket load of money repairing it but a bucket load of time too?
I know personally as a website investor that I certainly don’t want to take any part in that and I am sure you wouldn’t particularly want to either.
Which means, when it comes time to looking at which internet business is going to be the safest and wisest investment for you. You need to keep your eyes out for the many reasons why most websites for sale are in fact failing.
So I have taken some time to list 5 key things to detect in a failing internet business that you should steer clear of.
Declining traffic
Almost everybody knows that the traffic is the life blood of the business, and you really need to ensure that the traffic coming to the website is stable.
Often decent internet businesses will have some ups and downs in traffic just like all businesses. However if you can see a decline in traffic month over month where the seller can’t provide you a reasonable explanation for why the traffic is in a down trend. You should really question the quality of the businesses before investing.
For example maybe the traffic is trending down because the business is seasonal and the off months have less visitors, or the last 2 months they may of had a sale where traffic was up as apposed to the average monthly traffic figures, and many other similar reasons to these.
So f the seller can’t explain to you why the traffic is dropping, you can quite clearly see that it’s a failing internet business to begin with.
Website design
On top of declining of traffic, if a website is very poorly put together or designed should I say. It is clear that those website users are going to find it hard to navigate and may even second guess why they are even visiting that website in the first place.
So if you are looking at a website to invest in and the overall layout and design of the website is nothing more than a confusing mess that not even you can work your way around. How do you expect the customers to know what to do?
This is a sure sign of a failing internet business in which you may need to walk away from right away.
Poor SEO maintenance
If a website has poor SEO the result of that is usually declining traffic. And we all know that when traffic declines so do sales. Which means when looking at websites it is absolutely imperative to do some due diligence on the SEO of a website to determine if the SEO is quite poor.
Maybe the seller has been using quick fix/Black Hat SEO tactics (which are frowned upon and penalised) or it’s possibly they are simply not keeping on top of the SEO with regular maintenance. Where if you find these things happening throughout your SEO due diligence research, it is obvious that you should steer clear.
Un-valuable products/service
You may come across some websites that have an amazing design, the website looks clean, crisp and user friendly. It may even have some great SEO techniques that have been put in place.
Although if the products they are selling or the service they provide are nothing more than average. This can say a lot about the business, and if the products are average, the business must be average at best too.
So do your research into their products and services, read reviews, see what their fans, follows and customers are saying about them on social media. And if it is not looking good, this failing internet business is one you can collect dust on the marketplace.
Zero engagement
I have seen many internet business tick all the boxes, from a killer design, a lot of traffic coming in, the SEO is on point and it looks as though it has a lot going for it.
But the seller has let the ball drop in one very important area. Which is having great social media channels where they are engaging with fans, clients and providing an insane amount of value.
You can see failing internet business get left behind in this department because they are not keeping up with the times and heading to where most of their clients and fans are. Which is on social media and they should be engaging with them even via blog posts and forums too.
If there is a website out there that has not got a gripping, fun, and valuable aspect of high engagement online over blog posts or social media, I am sure you can see the failing aspects of it right there.
So whilst these are 5 important aspects that failing internet businesses have, there are also many other things you need to look over when investing in online businesses. Which is why you really need to educate yourself in investing in online business before looking to make money online this way.
I myself am really passionate about this subject and dedicate a lot of my time to teaching people more about buying online businesses for passive income.
