Website Flipping Again
You're here: AIM Home » Internet Marketing » Website Flipping Again
I received quite a few comments about my Flipping Websites post, that showed disbelief about the success you can have with this money making strategy.
Yes, when you want to flip websites, you have to be careful and yes, you have to know what you’re doing. But isn’t that the case with any business?
Anyway, one of the positive reactions came from Thomas C. Gajdjis.
Thomas started business online in 2003 with a successful computer and computer parts business. Since then, he has moved into online marketing, online business mentoring and affiliate income programs earning good money at home and not shipping products.
One of his posts on blog flipping on one of the best Internet marketing forums has garnered over 19,000 views! His best earning strategy to date is blog and website flipping.
Thomas offered to write a post about his website flipping business. I accepted immediately to show you how someone can succeed. I don’t endorse his business, since I’ve never used it, but it seems he’s quite successful.
Here goes.
So many people have asked me what blog or website flipping is about that I decided to write an article that details what is involved in an easy to digest manner.
Blog or website flipping is very hot right now. Part of this can be attributed to recent articles in high profile newspapers and financial magazines. Another reason is that almost anyone can make money doing it. I decided to try it out and am happy I did. Here’s what is involved it website/blog flipping.
Basically website flipping is a process that involves finding a website that has potential and purchasing it, fixing it up and then selling it for a profit. That was too many steps for me so I decided to shorten up the process a bit to make it simpler and easy to do.
The result is what I call blog flipping. First off, we build our own website instead of buying an existing one. Second, I decided to use the blog as the website platform of choice.
Why did I choose blogs instead of simple html-based websites? Here are some of the most important reasons for choosing the blogging platform:
- Setting up a blog is quick and relatively painless.
- There are many free themes available to dress up your blog and increase its resale value.
- There are many free plug-ins to make your blog interactive and user-friendly.
- There are free plug-ins tob monetize the blog and optionally to grow a customer list.
- It is really easy to update the blog with new content. This is important for the sale as non-techie business people want product, not hassle.
- Search engines love blogs.
Once you put the blog up and install the plug-ins and theme(s), you need content. I personally like to write, so I write the content for my blogs.
There are other ways of getting the content you need. A simple method to getting content is to search for your topic on popular article directories (ezinearticles.com is one) and publishing that content on your blog. Be careful to observe the article directory’s terms of service.
Another popular method is to hire a writer. There are many writers out there who will write content for you at a great rate. These writers hang out at webmaster forums, Internet Marketing forums, etc. Ask for a sample of the author’s writing first.
Once you have at least 15 to 30 articles on your blog you have two options. If the site is less than 30 days old, you can sell it as a turnkey website over at sitepoint.com.
I prefer to promote my websites before selling them. If your website is older than 30 days and has traffic and income, then you have a much more valuable commodity. Established websites can sell for thousands of dollars. It is well worth your time to get traffic to your new site before selling it.
Regardless of whether or not you want to sell your site immediately or down the road, you list the website for sale and after getting paid, you transfer the site to the new owner. That’s all there is to it and you can repeat the process over and over for more income.
I created a new weight loss blog as an experiment to prove to myself that this is a profitable, viable, repeatable business model. I have a free write-up of the experiment here: www.blogflippingfool.com I also created a paid version that shows you how to build a business by flipping blogs. All my resources are included and I actually expose my 5 favorite niches!
As you can see, Thomas is quite successful flipping websites.
How about you?
Any experiences to share?
Post them below.
Related Articles:
- How To Survive Recession
- Your Online Marketing Umbrella
- How To Find Niches To Market
- Magic Ingredient To make money online
- 875+ Million Online Shoppers - Time For Your Own Free Online Shop!
- Do You Make This Disastrous Mistake Creating An Online Business?
- The Revenge of the Internet Marketing Zombie
Tweet
Other Bookmarks that you can use now!
I have done this in the past. It’s a fun hobby, but I don’t know if anyone could make a living by doing it.
The one thing that I did notice however was that the more content on the site, the more it sold for. Having unique content on the site that fits with the site’s niche really affects is sale value.
Once I learned that rule (the hard way) I started outsourcing my article needs out to content providers like Informative Post. I had 3 sites that I couldn’t sell for the life of me, but when I put 20 articles on each, they all sold for more than all the other sites I sold in the past.
Please learn from my mistakes! lol
Interesting post. I’m thinking of trying it with one of my personal sites. Will let you know if it’s successful. – Terri
Are you flipping just the domain name or the theme and contents as well?
As a general rule I’d agree with the comment above… website flipping is a great way to earn an additional income but it’s tricky to take things onto a new level and earn a lot of money.
However, I do know of one established company whose business model is based around website flipping so it can work with a little finance behind you.
I have been doing website flipping for a year before on just a single niche but the sales were just very minimal. I wanted to do those niche websites to flip but I can’t figure out what’s the best niche to choose.
http://shaneenclarke.org/
I believe is not worth the effort. If I build a website, I invest time, money and patience in it.Not to mention passion. Selling it after a few months for a few hundred dollars is not my type. I prefer developing it further and have a decent income each month, and maybe then, move to a new website.
Just my opinion
Probably not so profitable in the current economic climate though I suppose? Or maybe people would rather buy off the peg than have something developed? Could go either way.
Francis
I have a blog which is in the alexa top 100k and a google page rank of 4. Have around 75 posts and with too much work with my other sites I have been neglecting it. After reading this post I am now planning to give selling it a try.
What kind of price we can expect for such a site?
Thank you in advance !
It’s an interesting concept – my concern would be how sustainable it is. I have no question that you can achieve good results initially – because you focus on high value, low competition niches.
But as you do more and more sites, you begin to run out of these niches and have to go for ones with higher competition and/or lower clicks.
So although you might make $3k per month for the first few months, that level of income will soon shrink.
No hard data to back this up: but it’s typically the pattern in businesses where you have a repeating model. The problem is always that naturally, the first few you do are the easiest/most profitable – but that the later ones are much harder and less profitable. So you can’t extrapolate early earnings out in perpetuity.
Best regards
Ian
http://www.lighthousebc.co.uk/articles
I am not a subscriber to this blog flipping idea in which mostly teen bloggers are involved these days. The point is the profit margin – I doubt if the profits are reasonably good when compared to the efforts put in to get it up and running, get a PR and some traffic.
A few blogs such as The University Kid with 1000 subscribers are up for sale for a while now and nobody is coming up with good prices.
Thanks so much for the great post! I’ve been reading about website flipping and I’ve not been able to really ‘get’ what it was all about. Frankly it sounds like a ton of work- but then, if you could outsource it quickly and cheaply it might be profitable. I’ll have to read your writeup of the weightloss blog.
Thanks again!
-Susan
@Clara I’m flipping sites.
NOTE:
For all the nonbelievers: check out J.D. Swanson’s flipping videos
At present i am new to the topic but gained a lot of information that may be useful in future..Thanks for updates..
You hear a lot about ‘website flipping’ these days. I’ve been sceptical about the possibility of making more than pocket change with this, but maybe I should look into this.
Very informative and interesting info, thank you so much. This could explain the offers I’ve started to receive to buy out a couple of my sites! Great job explaining this – appreciate it so much.
I really doubt the validity of this post. I run dozens of sites and have had offers to by several of them. When we start negotiating they want to spend $1K- $2K. These are sites that generate a few hundred a month in revenue and could easily do more. There is no way I’m going to sell them for what I have in them.
I agree. I checked the flipping sites thing when I saw a thread on DigitalPoint. It seems that there are people doing a site in a day, adding tons of content (articles) + a video + a poll + RSS + adsense + automatic things and get some kind of page ranking quite fast. They can sell in the hundreds and actually make a living of it. It’s something to think of to make some extra $$…
Cody
I started building sites using Xsitepro to flip a while back and the very best place to get top notch free content is Public Domain. Especially government sites. A lot of government content is often free to re-use on your sites. You just have to know where to look!
I have rights to an ebook on the business of Site Flipping. If you’re interested you can grab it here.
Cheers!
Patrick Forbes
I am thinking of flipping blogs and selling them. You had some really helpful tips there, thanks.
You have any idea where to sell these blogs? On Ebay?
Or is it better strategy to just build them for yourself and promote affiliate products?
Thanks
http://johnssonsblog.blogspot.com/
This was a very informative article. Are you using primarily new domains or do you buy pre-owned domains at freshdrop? Some people feel that the risk of ending up in the Google sandbox is minimized if you purchase a domain that is at least a year or two old although it is sometimes tough to get one that has the keywords you want in the domain name.
With regard to Google loving blogs, I agree completely. Anyone who asks me about building any sort of business online alwasy gets that recommendation from me. Start with a blog.
Thanks!
Joe
Switching to these many business at a time is not a joke but you get succeeded in it..I too need inspiration from you to get into the work efficiently…
I agree with you 100%. Flipping websites can be VERY profitable. I have a friend who purchased a website, built it up and sold it in Dec. for over $100k. So, I’m a believer.
Anna
http://www.wallstamps.net
I got more information about ‘website flipping’ from this article post.It’s Very useful and interesting information for increase our income through online marketing. Thanks a lot. Nice post keep it up.
http://www.uptrendhits.com
What i found that has been a success for me, is not to have too many projects at once. i see people pick up 10 websites once and then they burn out, and don’t know why they can’t improve the websites.
Stick to one project at a time.
http://stocktonhomesforsale.net
For me there is a simple rule:
-Buy website
-Pimp design
-Work on it’s Pagerank
-Sell
Hopefully make at least a 20% profit, although I have not yet tried simple buying and selling websites!
its not always buying and selling of websites gives you success work on it promote it and see what you can expect from the website you have started.