Buying an established website can be a great way to jump start your new internet business for three reasons.

It is important to note the difference between an established, developed website and a cookie-cutter site that is simply a copy (in design and content) of the original domain. Established, developed websites that are good to buy will be at least one year old and offer a good selection of content. Cookie-cutters that are not worth your time or money are often very new and their content and design are duplicated all over the web.

One of the top reasons to consider buying an established website is that it already has traffic flowing in from various sources. As an internet entrepreneur you know that traffic is vital to the success of your new business. If you buy an existing site with an existing flow of traffic then you do not have to start from the bottom and build up from there. You can use that existing traffic to grow your fledgling business faster and bigger than you could starting from scratch with a brand new domain name and site.

Hand-in-hand with the existing traffic flow, you will benefit from the previous owners search engine marketing efforts. An established website will possess back links and listings in various search engines and directories. These will not only add to your traffic but will also make it easier for your improvements and marketing efforts to reap greater rewards. A new site can take weeks or months to get listed in many directories and search engines. It can take months before a new site is given any type of recognition or ranking. However an established website has already paid its dues (so to speak) and so you will not have to wait. Not only is the domain name itself listed, but usually a good many subpages have also been indexed by various search engines.

Finally, an important and often overlooked benefit of buying an existing domain is that many of the good website names have long been taken. However, once you start searching the marketplace you can often find not only a domain name that reflects your target audience and keywords but also an established website that has been search engine optimized for those keywords as well.

If you are just starting out and looking to establish your own internet presence then you should look into buying an established website to give your new web business a jump start in terms of traffic and search engine marketing.