Using Appraiso To Spot Potential Website Sales Scams

Appraiso has been out for just over three weeks now and I am excited to say that we are approaching our 500th user! Our expectation for the first month was closer to 100 so this has been an incredibly satisfying few weeks. As our number of users has climbed as has the feedback we are getting from our users. One of the things we’re seeing people do more and more is using Appraiso to evaluate potential purchases on website marketplaces like Flippa.

There are some great web businesses for sale on Flippa and, just like any online marketplace, there are some scams as well. While seasoned website pros might be able to spot scams from a mile away, your average investor often doesn’t know. There’s nothing worse than buying a website you expect to make thousands of dollars a month only to find-out that the seller scammed you by presenting false information.

Appraiso is the first platform on the planet to offer website scam detection and it’s already helped a number of our users avoid potential website sales scams. Below is an example of a potential scam that Appraiso recently caught on Flippa:

Website Scam Detection

As you can see, this particular site BarginBids.com is claimed to be bringing in a whopping $14,245 with 10,000 unique visitors. The Appraiso scam detector takes over 100 factors into account when determining if there is a potential scam including things like the niche the site is in, the number of backlinks, the quality of the backlinks, etc.

In this case the revenue and profit are unusually high given the traffic level, niche, and quality of backlinks and Appraiso spotted it! An unknowing buyer could have bought this for $50,000 thinking that it makes $11K/month in profit so it would take less than five months  only to find-out a few months in that they had made a very bad investment. As you can see the seller doesn’t have proof of revenue or traffic in the listing which should also be a major red flag.

On top of scam detection Appraiso can also tell you if the domain name being used for the website may infringe on a potential Trademark. This is a major problem on marketplaces like Flippa where Trademark infringing domains are allowed (and even allowed to be featured listings) causing buyers to think these are reasonable investments. Many new website and domain investors don’t know much about Trademark law and what you don’t know, could land you with a six-figure lawsuit. Here’s an example of Appraiso catching a Trademark infringement on Flippa:

Trademark Infringement Testing

While many of you might look at this and say, “iPhone is in the domain, I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole” many new investors just don’t know. The Appraiso scam detector will catch these and display a warning to the user.

This is what Appraiso’s all about, while the website value and accuracy of this number if paramount to us, we also want to make sure our users are avoiding scams and legal issues as much as possible. It took us an additional six-months to build the scam detector, but we’re sure glad we did since it is clearly making a very positive impact and most importantly helping our customers avoid scams.

There are lots of great web businesses available on marketplaces like Flippa, the challenge is identifying the good investments and avoiding the scams. Appraiso can help you determine how much you should be paying for a site and also make sure you avoid scams so you can buy with confidence. If you haven’t checked it out yet, head on over to Appraiso.com, you get one free Appraisal per day so you can get started right-away!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton