<aside> 🔓 This is a preview from my course "How To Buy An Online Business". Get early access (incl. videos) to the entire course for $19.
</aside>
Unfortunately there are bad people out there who will try to scam you or anyone else who does not recognize obvious red flags.
In recent years scammy sellers got more and more professional, as more money is entering the market. So please spend some time on understanding the methods scammers use.
The article below summarizes some of the more common scams quite well:
Common Flippa Scams and How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off
Already when reading a listing on one of the common marketplaces, look for the following red flags:
When a seller uses overly sales language ('auto-pilot', 'passive income' etc.) I get cautious. No website is passive, earning money without work is nearly not possible.
I found a listing in which the seller claimed a website age of 4 years, while later in the text the traffic stats only showed up for the last two years. An additional check via Ahrefs confirmed that the page indeed only had traffic in the last 2 years. An obvious red flag.
You can not verify the existence of the seller by doing a quick online search. Ideally you will find profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook that confirm that the seller is actually legit.
If the site is very young and/or the total revenue too small, it can be faked very easily.
Just imagine the seller just used his friends or even his own duplicate accounts to fake a few hundred euros of income each month.
Did other people already spot red flags for you? Did the seller respond well or not and even deleted comments? Especially on Flippa the comment section is very helpful - on shady listing buyers are quite ruthless in spotting faults.