Explaining how to purchase a website, transfer its ownership, and guarantee your rights

Although creating a website is not difficult when you follow the right steps, making the website successful may require a lot of effort and time, which is why some people consider resorting to purchasing an existing website instead of creating one from scratch. But because buying a website is often expensive, it must be done correctly, and that is why in this article we will introduce you to the motives for buying a website, and the ways in which you can find a website that can be purchased, in addition to how to transfer ownership of the website from its old owner to you while guaranteeing your rights.

Explaining how to buy a website correctly, what is meant by it?

By purchasing a website? Buying a website means paying for an existing website with all or some of what is connected to it, including the domain name, site files, design, and content, in addition to benefiting from future visits in the same way that the current website owner benefits from it, or in any other way you want. The process of purchasing a website can include any type of website, as you can buy an online store, a blog, a website for a company, etc., and the process of purchasing a website can be part of a larger process such as purchasing a company represented by a website, where ownership of the website is transferred to the new owner of the company, regardless of whether it is another company or a person.

The process of purchasing a website differs from the process of purchasing a domain name only, as the latter does not include purchasing hosting, content, or the ability to benefit from future visits (unless it is done through the domain). Rather, it represents the process of obtaining a reserved or non-reserved domain for use in your currently existing website or that you are creating. Motivations and benefits of buying a website There are many reasons that could prompt you to buy an existing website instead of creating one from scratch, and more than one reason can come together. The most prominent of these reasons include the following: The desire to make money quickly is one of the most important motivations for purchasing a website 1.

The desire to start making money quickly is creating a large number of websites with the aim of making a profit from them by selling physical or digital goods such as electronic stores, or by displaying advertisements on them or through affiliate marketing, such as personal blogs or information sites. But building a website from scratch does not allow you to start making a profit in any of these ways quickly, as you must first obtain a good number of visitors by promoting the site, and this requires time, unlike when purchasing a website that makes a profit and has a good number of visitors and customers. 2.

Benefiting from visitors and customers: A website may have a customer base and visitors who have the same qualities that your business’s visitors and customers need to have. In this case, you can buy that website and benefit from its visitors and customers to make them customers for your business. You can do this either by making changes that suit your business on the site after purchasing it and making the site a showcase for the business, or by promoting your business through the site, or in any other way that you deem appropriate and that enables you to benefit from visitors and customers. 3.

Saving time and effort Since purchasing an existing website does not require a lot of time or effort compared to creating a website from scratch, one of the most important reasons why anyone buys a website is to save time and effort. If you buy a website instead of building one, you will be able to take advantage of the time and effort that would have been consumed in the building process in order to improve the website you purchased and keep it on the path to success. The risks are lower when purchasing a website compared to creating one from scratch 4.

Reducing risks and ensuring success The process of purchasing a website is not without risks, but the process of building a website has greater and greater risks. Sometimes, even with a good and comprehensive plan and its proper implementation, the website does not succeed after it is built, while in most cases it is easy to maintain the success of an already existing and successful website. The first period before taking the job or site and putting it at the beginning of the path to success is the most difficult and dangerous, because it is the most ambiguous, and it is not possible to determine before its end whether the work will be successful or not. Buying a website will avoid this stage, and therefore many potential risks.

5. Acquisition of a competitor or expansion. A website can be purchased in order to expand quickly or to acquire a competitor and neutralize its impact on your business by closing it permanently or incorporating its activities into your business. An example of a recent purchase for this purpose in the Arab world is Hassoub’s acquisition of the Picalica store in order to expand its work. The company was not among the competition in terms of digital product markets, but it quickly became one of the strongest Arab companies in this field.

There may also be other reasons that push you to buy a website, such as obtaining rankings for certain keywords that are very important for your business, but if your motivation is different from what we mentioned, then you will of course know that you need to buy a website, so we will content ourselves with the reasons we mentioned and move on to explaining how to find a website to buy. Ways to find and buy a website: There are several ways through which you can find a website to buy it, but there are two main ways. The first is through specialized websites that play an intermediary role between the website seller and its buyer (website markets), and the second is through communicating directly with the website owner. Buying a website from an online market. Website markets or websites specialized in selling websites work in a similar way to multi-seller online stores (eBay, for example), as they allow anyone who owns a website to display it there, and enable anyone who has a desire to buy a website to browse the offered sites and purchase them.

There are many online marketplaces where you can find a site to buy it. Although there are few Arabic sites that offer the possibility of purchasing sites, this will not pose any problem, as you usually find Arab sites on display in foreign markets and you can buy whatever you want from them. The most popular sites through which you can find and buy a website include all of the following: Flippa: It is a popular online market through which you can buy or sell various businesses online, including websites, domains, and smartphone applications. The site provides powerful tools and features for searching sites available for purchase, such as the ability to filter by location and price, and allows sites to be purchased immediately, or through tenders.

The interface of the Flippa website for buying and selling websites, Empire Flippers: It is one of the most famous and best markets for buying and selling websites. It is distinguished from many competitors in that it fully verifies the sites before accepting their listing to appear to potential buyers, which means that all the sites and applications listed on it for sale are authentic with the guarantee of the team working on the site. The site lacks some filtering features, but it allows you to filter by specialty and price. The interface of the Empire Flippers website, which is one of the best HVIPS website markets: This website is one of the few Arab websites that includes a section dedicated to buying and selling websites.

Through it, you can browse a wide range of Arabic sites available for purchase, and you can use filtering tools that are useful to speed up access to a site that suits what you want. Some of the sites offered in the HVIPS market for buying and selling websites. There are also many other sites specialized in buying and selling websites, such as SideProjectors and Transferslot, but most of them are difficult to find Arabic sites, so if you are looking for an Arabic site, we advise you to adopt Flippa because it provides the ability to filter by site, or one of the reliable Arab sites. Buying a website directly from its owner In addition to the possibility of purchasing a website through specialized websites, there is another less professional method that can be adopted, but it is nevertheless effective in many cases, which is the possibility of purchasing a website directly from its owner by speaking with him and agreeing on the details of the purchase process.

There are many ways in which you can talk to website owners who want to sell their websites, including through online forums where you may notice someone’s desire to sell their website through their posts, or by obtaining contact details with the website owner through their website itself, or in other ways. However, it should be noted that purchasing a website in this way is not easy due to the lack of an intermediary or guarantor party, and it is preferable to seek the help of an expert to purchase a website in this way, in order to ensure that you do not fall victim to any fraud or deception. Criteria for evaluating and choosing a website to buy Now you know where and how you can find websites to buy, but you cannot buy any website that its owner offers for sale, as you must make sure that the site is suitable for you, and be careful to study a group of important aspects related to it, which contribute to informing you of the extent to which the site is compatible with what you want, and the extent to which the site is compatible with the requested price.

The most important criteria and aspects that must be considered and evaluated in any website before purchasing it include, for example and are important but not limited to, the following: Domain value: You must take into account the authority of the domain of the site you want to buy, and determine the extent of the domain’s compatibility with the project in which you want to invest the site. You can find out the domain authority by using specialized tools such as the Website Authority Checker tool from ahrefs. Power of appearance in search results: Check the site’s page rankings in Google search results, and make sure that the keywords it ranks in match what you want to use the site for.

This information can be provided by the site owner themselves, or you can get an overview by using the Ubersuggest Keywords by Traffic tool. Number of visitors: This criterion is one of the most important criteria that determine the price of the website, which is why you must be careful to know it and make sure that the number of visitors to the website is appropriate for you. You must also make sure that the visitor characteristics are appropriate for you.

It is preferable to obtain visitor information from the site owner, but you can also use tools that help estimate and know it, such as Website Traffic Checker from ahrefs. Website design and planning: It is important to know how compatible the current website design is with what you want to benefit from it, and you must also know the extent to which the website is customizable, because most of the time you will need to make modifications and customizations to the website to make it more suitable for you. Content quality: It is necessary to evaluate the content included in the site, and it is also important to ensure that the content is compatible with what you want to use the site for. If you are purchasing a blog to integrate it with your commercial site, you will need to ensure that the blog topics are well related to the products and services you provide on the site.

Method of building the site: The method of creating the site plays an important role in determining its suitability for you. If you are accustomed to using WordPress to manage the site, it will be inconvenient in most cases to purchase a website that was built and managed using another platform. Revenue: Knowing the revenue and profits of a website is important, especially if they want to buy it for profit. You can ask the site owner about the profits he makes from it and the methods he uses to make profits from the site. You can also estimate the site's profits using specialized tools, but it is better to adopt the first method, because the tools usually give inaccurate numbers.

There may also be many other criteria that must be considered when choosing and purchasing a website, and if you do not know the most important thing that you must take into consideration in your case, it is more appropriate to hire an expert from Khamsat or an independent person to examine the site and evaluate its suitability for you. Steps to purchasing a website and transferring its ownership After finding a website to purchase through one of the specialized websites or in any other way, you will need to transfer ownership of the website from the old website owner to yourself. This process is not difficult, but it includes many steps that must be implemented correctly, which are: 1.

Transferring domain ownership There are two ways through which website domain ownership can be transferred. The first method is by receiving the account data at the domain company from the old owner of the site, then changing this data to become your own. This method is easy, but it is not always suitable, as it can be used if there is only one domain associated with the account.

If there is more than one domain linked to the old site owner's account, or if he does not want to give up his account, you will then have to transfer the domain from his account to your account. The domain transfer process differs between different providers, and it is preferable for the owner of the old website to contact the company and ask them how to transfer the domain to you if he does not know how to do so. The process of transferring a domain from one account to another with the same provider is usually easy, as it only requires clicking on the domain transfer option in the domain administration panel, then entering the email of the new owner, then confirming the completion of the ownership transfer process several times, but the process of transferring from one domain registrar to another may be a little more difficult, and may cost some money.

2. Transferring ownership of hosting or files and databases The second step in the process of purchasing a website and transferring its ownership to you, its primary purpose is to obtain all the site data so that you can use or modify it in the way you want, whether to integrate it into another site or otherwise. Site data can be transferred from the old owner to the new owner by sending the hosting account data so that the new owner can access the hosting and change the account data in accordance with it (personal data, email, etc.), but this method works if the hosting only hosts the site you want to buy.

If the hosting includes more than one site, the site data must be transferred to the hosting of the new owner of the site. Hosting companies usually provide a free or paid website migration service to the hosting, and you can rely on this service to transfer the website to your hosting after purchasing it. For more information about how to transfer a website from one hosting service provider to another, and about the available methods that can be relied upon, you can review our comprehensive article in which we explain the various aspects of this topic (Explaining moving a website from one hosting to another in the correct manner).

3. Obtain login data to the control panel. Most websites use content management systems, and you must obtain login data to the control panel of the content management system for the site, in order to be able to manage it. You can access the content management system control panel using the hosting account, but it is easier to obtain login data from the old owner.

After obtaining the login data to the management system control panel, you must change the password, email, and rest of the administrator account data to what suits you, and then delete all other users who you do not want to be able to access your site’s control panel. 4. Providing access to third-party software. Many websites use external software to add new features and options to them, and when you purchase a website, you must obtain ownership of the software and external accounts associated with the site.

The process of transferring ownership of the program or external account may be easy and requires nothing more than obtaining login data and changing some options. But the process of transferring ownership can sometimes be more complicated, as is the process of transferring the site's Google Analytics. If the old owner does not want to give up his Google account because it is linked to other services, you will need to transfer the site to your Google Analytics account. 5.

Obtaining any files related to the site Any website owner has many files related to his site, and when you buy a website, you should request access to these files. The most important files you should request include: Website logo in open source format. Custom code that was used on the site.

Backup copies of files before modifying them. The images used in the website design are in open source format. The old owner must also send you all other files available to him related to your new website, whether you request them or not, as you may need any of the website files in the future.

How can you guarantee your rights when purchasing a website? A marketplace may facilitate the payment process and delivery of a website by guaranteeing the rights of both parties (buyer and seller), but if the marketplace does not provide this guarantee, or if you found the site outside of a marketplace, you can use a reliable site that helps guarantee the rights, such as Escrow.com. This site works based on a simple idea, which is that it keeps the price of the product (the site in this case) as a credit after you make the payment process, and after the seller delivers the product to the buyer and the buyer confirms that he received the product completely and satisfactorily, he transfers the amount paid by the buyer to the seller.

Thus, we conclude by introducing you to the benefits of purchasing a website, and ways to find a website to purchase it, in addition to how to complete the purchase process and transfer ownership of the website. We would like to point out in conclusion that the process of purchasing a website may have a severe impact on you financially, so if you are not sure that you are able to carry it out yourself, perhaps hiring an expert to help you complete it is a wise act that will avoid running into problems in the future.