Subham
I’d go for 2, because it’s safe and long term.
I was trying to sell a site built on early decision (ED), The buyers considered is as risky investment and offered a multiple of 18x (for which I sold) because they’re indeed risky.
All they need is one single update to vanish from the search results.
On the other hand the sites that you acquire (fresh) with a decent link profile are slow to rank, but once they get shown up, things are much easier, I sold one 3 years back at a valuation of 45x, the site still ranks and graph has a growth-like trend._👍1
Kelvin
Do you want to learn or just want to make money?
If you want to learn : #1.
If you want to make money : #2 , then get an operator.
Sahu
i'd go for 2. auction domain can be hit or miss. but in #2, you are getting a nicely money making website. also, you can flip that anytime._👍2
Bill » Mario
, if this is your first site then why don't you just go at it from nothing?
All I know about you is that this is your first affiliate site, so many assumptions are being made. I don't know what your internet marketing, or web development backgrounds are. But building your first affiliate site will force you to think about a lot of things.
You can, and should get help along the way. But you'll learn a shit ton along the way. The things you learn will help you in the future to not only run this site, but if you decide to buy others it will help you to sniff out bullshit a lot faster.
I'm not going to lie, most of the sites people try to sell in this group are pure shit. The amount of people interested is insane too, so I'm sure that drives the price up. Knowing what to look for, and what to look out for will safe you a fortune in cash, but also time.
You don't need to buy some 5k domain either. If you wanted to buy an aged site, there are some sites which will sell one and you will get a running start, but you likely won't be far behind by buying a $10 domain.
I'm building up a site now fresh on a $10 site. The site is aging as I'm having the content created. I have just hit 110k words, and the content should start getting moved onto the site this weekend. It does take time to get content written and revised and edited, so don't worry if your site is new.
Good luck._👍3

Harry
I don't mean any offence, but if this is your first site then I think spending that kind of money will result in a very high chance of failure.
If you don't know the ins and outs before buying a site, you could get badly burnt. For example, do you know what to do if the site loses its keywords in an algorithm update? If not then you will be the proud owner of an expensive but useless website.
Also you can get decent domains for way less than 5k. That just shows how much you don't know, (I don't mean this in a rude way).
If you really have that sort of money, I highly suggest you just research your niche, buy a simple domain and either write of outsource your content and try to build links yourself.
It will probably fail but you will not have wasted so much money.
Once you have spent some time learning the ropes then you can research further about auction domains and buying sites etc, but please don't spend that money before you even know what you are doing._👍3

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This may satisfy you: Monthly Budget for Building Backlinks and Creating Linkbait Content
Ken
Buy a new domain for $10. Build a site on it.
Use the rest of your budget to run traffic to it… google ads, etc.
Optimize the ads and traffic as you go.
Find influencers in your niche and pay them to showcase you. Spending 30K on a site is nuts if you are brand new to this.
Ranking can take a long time and also your ranking can be gone overnight at Google's whim.
Paid traffic makes that a moot point._👍2
Mario
^✍️ Wow thanks for the amazing input so far everyone!
Sorry if I wasn't clear. Not new to digital marketing or SEO, run a mid sized agency specializing in medical/legal niche only, and retaining about 30 clients.
Also own 2 (and counting) rank and rent sites that are rented out for 2.5k each..
Also, absolutely no offence taken to any comments as I'm here only to learn. And I do consider myself a big time NOOB!!_👍3
Gregory
Buying a site making money is the fastest way to grow the net profit faster, it has all the benefits of the expired domain plus proven money maker. However, I usually don't recommend for newbies to buy sites under $50k, especially if you're going private as that is where most scams lay. But also because a website that is around $50k is likely getting most of its traffic from just 1-3 pages, which is quite risky if you don't know what you're doing. Obviously many people buy in this range and do fine, just be careful. If you're brand new, buying an aged powerful domain and learning the basics of content planning and backlink building will probably be more useful to you, even if the website doesn't become successful because now you likely have more of a handle on the skills required to make a site you acquire succeed._👍7

Asjad
Auction domain is usually hit or miss thing, on the other hand buying existing site generating revenue has more probability to grow.

JayYap
I’d go with #2. SEO is risky no matter which route you’ll take.. at least you’d be making some money and the site is already proving that it can rank.
As with #1.. you’ll have to find out if it ever ranks or not… a few months from now._👍1
Kamal
Option 2 👍 Because you know what all you have done for your website and you know how much safe your website is in Google eyes.
Sumit
I'd go with the 1st option and if I'm dropping 5K then my target revenue would be more than 5K/mo. So you should reduce the budget of the domain and invest more in content and links.
Also, this option is best if you want to learn building from scratch too. As if you purchase an existing affiliate site then it won't leave much space for learning and gaining experience at first._💟1

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