Looking to buy an established tube in a specific niche (DM for which - not tipping my hand publicly). Requirements: real age, real traffic that isn’t 90% one dying referrer, a clean-ish content situation, and a seller who’ll do escrow and a proper handover. Budget is ready and I can move fast for the right one. Not interested in day-old auto-generated tubes with a traffic graph that looks like a hockey stick from last week. If you’re quietly thinking about selling, reach out.
I might have something adjacent to your niche, will DM. For anyone watching this as a template: a WTB post with a clear budget range and clean requirements gets far better replies than “looking to buy tubes, send offers.” Sellers want to know you’re real and fast before they share anything sensitive.
Digger, when you get to due diligence, pull the server logs if the seller will share them, not just the analytics dashboard. Dashboards can be curated. Raw logs tell you the real referrer mix and whether the traffic is bot-inflated. Learned that one buying a tube that turned out to be half junk.
“Budget ready, will move fast” is also what every time-waster says, so - Digger, no offense - be ready to prove it too. The good sellers are as suspicious of buyers as buyers are of them. Escrow protects both sides, use it.
fair hit. so here’s me proving it: i close through escrow only, i’ll show proof of funds to a serious seller once we’re past the tire-kicking, and i won’t ask to see your books until i’ve shown you i’m real first. the time-wasters show up on my side of the table too, i just want the few people with a clean tube to know i’m not one of them.
not tipping the niche is fair, but be ready to prove funds fast. sellers with a clean tube get a dozen vague dms a week and bin most of them unread.
Raw server logs are the due-diligence step that catches the fake-traffic sellers. Analytics can be dressed up, logs are much harder to fake convincingly. If a seller won’t hand them over, you already have your answer.
fair hit, but the real tell between a buyer and a time-waster is whether they’ll show proof of funds and sign an nda. talk’s cheap on both sides. the ones who move to paperwork are the ones who are real.
quick update for anyone following: had a couple of real conversations, one looks promising. running the log check on the traffic like people said here. still open if you’re sitting on a clean niche tube, but the logs aren’t optional.
lurking on this because i’ll be on the sell side at some point and the buyer side is useful to see. the log-plus-nda standard both of you are describing is pretty much how i’d want it to go.
logs, proof of funds, nda. between the lot of you this thread basically laid out the whole due-diligence checklist for small tube deals. worth saving before you ever wire a cent.
good to see someone actually running the logs instead of just nodding along. the sellers who get twitchy about sharing raw logs tell you everything. real traffic has nothing to hide in there.
i buy and sell these for a living, and a seller who wont hand over raw server logs is telling you the traffic isnt what the dashboard says. that alone is reason enough to walk.
one thing i’d add: get the seller on a live call before any money moves. text only deals hide the most. ten minutes tells you whether they actually run the thing or are flipping something they don’t understand. and use escrow, every time.
showing proof of funds up front is what got sellers to take me seriously instead of treating me like a tire kicker. cuts both ways, a serious buyer proves funds, a serious seller shows logs. anyone who won’t do their half is telling you something. escrow or walk.
good to see the log check actually happening instead of everyone saying “source?” and moving on, me included. server logs, not a screenshot of an analytics dashboard anyone can fake in ten minutes. if a seller balks at read only log access under NDA, the traffic isn’t what they claim. the ones with real numbers are happy to show them.
if you’re selling, tanya, get your logs and numbers clean and exportable before you list. the deals that close fast are the ones where the seller can hand over verified data without scrambling. the ones who take three weeks to produce a log dump kill their own sale.
good to hear real buyers showed up. i’m about to sell something adjacent so this whole thread is a free checklist for me. i’d rather do the slow due diligence with a serious buyer than close fast with someone who ghosts at escrow. saving all of this.
logs, proof of funds, nda, yeah, and id add the archive and backlink history as the fourth leg when the domain carries the value. logs prove the traffic, proof of funds proves the buyer, the nda protects both while the data changes hands, and the domain history proves the asset wasnt built on a burned or penalized foundation. a seller who balks at any one of them is telling you which part wont survive a look.
the log check is the one verification thats actually hard to fake. screenshots and dashboards can be doctored, but raw server logs cross-referenced on a live call are the ground truth of who visited. the people who get burned almost always accepted a nice analytics screenshot and never asked to see the logs on a screen-share. verify the traffic from the logs, live, or youre trusting an image anyone could produce.