Wow, interesting what you posted in your newsletter about the "Web Sites for Sale" category frequented by Armand Morin.  I looked at several listings in this category.  Ever since I studied Stomping The Search Engines, I always look at Google Page Rank. I just can't help it. Hehe. So here are some thoughts.

> Very few, I mean VERY FEW of these sites had any Google page rank. Most were 0/10.  Zero, Ziltch, Nada. According to what I've studied in Stomping, this usually means one (or more) of three things. 

 1) The site was established around or after the last Google Dance Page Rank update (which I think was around early July or thereabouts).

 2) The owner has never done any linking SEO work on the site.

3) The site was established, but has been blacklisted by Google. None of these are terribly positive aspects when considering buying a "going concern".  There were a few notable exceptions and some of  them took great care to adverstise the fact they had page rank, 

example: http://cgi.ebay.com/PR6-CREDIT-WEBSITE-NO-RSV-INC-PROOF-Avg-5-000- hits_W0QQitemZ7551316160QQcategoryZ46687QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://www.CreditCards1by1.com/ Google Page Rank 6   mmm-mmm Good!

 So anyway, that is my 2 cents.  I suppose I would pay a few bucks for some of these PR0 sites, because you get the design and presumably functionality already in place but I probably would need to determine why there is no page rank (would not want a Blacklisted site!).    Also the next Google Dance is due soon.

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Thanks for sharing, Ross and you're right - Armand himself says you're not going to find high PR and flourishing sites for a paltry sum of money. What he's looking for, in fact, are exactly those people who don't know what we know about Page Rank and how to optimize a site. The truth is that most folks know nada about marketing. Those of us who know anything at all are way ahead of the game!

Here is one of Ross's optimized sites:

http:www.mysilkplants.com