Finding That Perfect Website To Flip
Website flipping always seems like a great idea, with many expert “flippers” trying to tell you how easily and quickly you can flip a website for massive profit.
The truth is, like any other business, you’ll need to invest time/money or other people’s expertise to add value to any asset you buy, whether it’s websites or broom handles.
However, flipping websites IS a lucrative investment opportunity for those that know how to spot an underperforming website that caters for a profitable market…and that is selling a decent price.
The sites that make the best investments are usually the ones that have been build by a marketer with eyes bigger than their calender…in other words, websites that started out great, got some traffic and sales but the owner moved onto other things which looked juicier and had more potential.
The funny thing is, this is what a lot of marketers end up doing which means there is always a fresh supply of websites out there that are ready for the picking from bored webmasters.
Where they were unable to carry the site forward is where you stand to make the most profit, providing you are able to do what they won’t or can’t do themselves.
It’s just like any business really…you provide something that other people need but can’t get for themselves, then sell it at a price that the market dictates.
The great thing about site flipping is that you can always keep improving the site and just like a fine wine, you can expect the value to increase automatically for every day that passes automatically!
So essentially, you will need to look for websites where the owner says “they haven’t got time to look after this site”, or generally sites that are getting traffic (and earning even just a small amount of cash).
The sites which are getting traffic and making some money will usually cost more, so it depends on your budget. However, if you prefer, you can simply buy a site that is fresh out of the box and use your own skills to drive traffic and sales for the site…at which point you’ll then be able to turn around and sell that site for 12 months worth of what it is earning right now, which in many cases would equal a few thousand dollars.
If you’d like to know how to flip sites for maximum profits, even starting on a low budget with few skills to your name, you really should check out the brand new course called Site Rush. This is a course which shows you all the pitfalls and hidden goldmines to site flipping, so that you can get started on the right foot and without having to risk all of your own money…
If You Are Intersted in Site Rush then please read my full review first here –> Site Rush Review
4 Secrets To A Perfect Site Flip
Website flipping is a strategy that is growing daily in popularity. There’s no denying it’s one of the most lucrative and accessible investment opportunities in the world right now. It’s also a game that can be played from small time bedroom investors with a few bucks to spare, through to a totally broke investor who has some of the right skills to do the work themselves.
But before you get involved yourself, you should follow these basic tips so that you don’t make the major time wasting mistakes that lots of new site flippers make…
Tip #1: Pick a good Niche market
The niche market your website is in will dictate how much traffic is out there for you to attract, how many people will buy things in that market and ultimately how valuable your website will be to future investors. After all, you wouldn’t buy land and build a palace in the dessert would you?
Tip #2: Is there existing traffic?
Before you buy your first website to flip, it’s much easier to work with a site that has existing traffic. This is not essential, but will give your efforts momentum and will allow you to test new offers and sales copy out on the existing traffic so you can make faster progress without having to rely on getting traffic beforehand.
Tip #3: Is there existing money flow?
When you buy or sell a website, the ones that can demand the most cash are the ones that are making the most cash, obviously. Therefore, it’s far better to acquire a site that is making at least a dribble of income so that you know money can be made. Equally, you’ll have an easier time selling the site at a later stage if there is a history of money made from the site.
Tip #4: Flipping still requires selling!
When you come to sell your site after the work is done and the value has increased, you will still need to provide a genuine reason why you’re selling the site and must be honest. People will be suspicious of someone selling a site that is making money and getting traffic, so you need to provide proof, on the form of screenshots, PayPal account earnings, traffic stats or whatever else it takes to show the potential buyer that your site is legit. You will also need to sell the idea of owning the website and really show the buyer the benefits for owning the site in the future (such as income potential, growing market, easy maintenance etc).
These are the core aspects of buying and selling websites for profit, but you should know that whilst website flipping is really fun and profitable, it also requires either money, skills or a solid plan to make it work for you.
If you’re prepared to follow a plan, then the one I recommend is a new site flipping guide called Site Rush, because it shows you all aspects that most articles and free reports don’t even think to tell you, let alone know themselves. Site Rush deals with 3 distinct levels of site flipping based on your available capital, your skills and your time dedication. It also takes you from basic quick flipping on a daily basis, right through to advanced, multimillion dollar site flipping strategies…
If you want more information on flipping websites then read my Site Rush Review
Why Website Flipping Is Growing in Popularity As A Way To Make Money Online
Site flipping is fast becoming the business model of choice for many online marketers these days.
Some don’t get it, whilst others just can’t stop making money with it.
Site flipping is much like property investing, but the risk is often much lower and there is always a global market to sell your assets onto at any time (a market which is growing daily too).
There are 2 routes you can take when getting started. You can either buy an established website that has existing traffic and is already making money, or you can buy a fresh new website that is nothing more than a fancy template and cool domain name.
It all depends on your starting budget and skills. If you have a few hundred bucks, you could buy a website that has content and some traffic coming in already, then look to make improvements to the site to increase the traffic and the sales, thus enhancing the site’s overall value for resale.
Alternatively, if you’re strapped for cash, you can simply aquire a site that is less than $100 for example, then use your own skills and knowledge to boost the site’s performance, thereby increasing its’ resale value.
Buyers will be looking for 2 things:
- Does the site get targeted traffic?
- Does the site make any money?
There are other aspects which a buyer will be interested to know too, but these two are the crucial aspects they will want answers to.
Essentially, if you can increase either the traffic or the sales (or both) from a site you have purchased, you can then expect to be able to resell the site for more than you paid for it.
The whole idea of site flipping is about calculating your costs and quick turn around. If you get too attached to your “baby”, you’ll find it hard to sell…which, if it’s making money for you anyway, then it’s still a win-win situation, unlike real estate where the money is only made after the sale.
It’s like living in a property you’re renovating to sell on, and getting paid to do decorate the walls…
If you’re looking to get started in site flipping the right way, and you want a fool proof way to start making quick profits without the “renovation” aspects, then you might want to check out Site Rush
It’s a comprehensive guide to site flipping that is designed on 3 different levels, depending on your income and skills…
Read my Site Rush Review Here
3 Tips To Selling A Website For More Money
Flipping websites is definitely a lucrative business model and is possibly one of the safest ways to invest your money because it is so controllable and flexible. Unlike the stock market that can jump around from minute to minute and the housing market than is either too expensive or completely bottomed out (like it is today in 2008), website investing is a marketplace that is much more stable and full of rabid buyers.
But whilst many talk about finding a website for sale and actually buying it, what many don’t mention is the work that is required in actually adding value to the site. After all, if you can’t add value, there is little chance you’ll turn a profit.
So let’s look at some of the first key areas you need to focus your time (or a freelancer’s time) on.
1. Improve Existing Revenue
If you’ve bought a site that is already making money, you’re in a better position from the start. Take a look at what is actually generating the revenue and replace that with higher paying ads or even your own direct affiliate links or your own products for higher profit margins. If your site is not making any money at the time of purchase, it’s time to test a few ad placements and affiliate links for related products or services.
2. Enhance customer retention
Does the existing site capture email addresses? Does it have an RSS feed or newsletter service? Does it have social bookmarking buttons so that people can share your content easily across the web? If it has none of these, then add them right away! If it does have these features, try to look at how your visitors are interacting with these features and try to improve on it.
For example, is the newsletter being ignored and nobody is signing up? Are people bookmarking your site? Heck, are people even sticking around for very long at all? If not, you need to consider getting better content up ASAP and provide more value and entertainment for each visitor.
3. Boost the traffic
If you bought a site that is already getting some sort of regular and reliable traffic, all you need to do is go and get more of it. The beauty is, you should already know where the traffic is coming from, so you know exactly where to go and get more of it from! If your site is not bringing in any traffic, you’ll either need to start paying for it or better still, go out and start marketing your site. There are a million and one ways to bring traffic to your site, many of which are included in a guide that I recommend later on in this article.
Conclusion
All of the information you need to tackle these three points above comes from tracking your visitor’s activity. You can do this for free using Google Analytics. You will need a Google account, but it takes less than 10 mins to set up and get running with their excellent free service. The analytics code they give you will tell you everything you need to know about where people are coming from to find your site, what they are doing when they reach your site and a whole host of other data that can give you the info you need to conquer these 3 crucial tasks of flipping a site for maximum profit.
If you’re confused about getting traffic, boosting the revenue or keeping more people from leaving or never coming back to your site, then you might want to learn more about this guide to successful site flipping. Here’s a great review on it: Project Archimedes Review
7 Tips To Making Money By Flipping Websites
Website flipping is fast becoming the must own business of 2008-2009. There is so much potential with investing short term in websites…by sprucing them up quickly so that they are more valuable to put back on the market.
The other appeal is that there is a never ending demand for websites that can be created from a neglected site or even a brand new domain, all of which can result in huge returns in your investment, with many people experiencing returns of 4x the price they bought the site for.
So the question is, would you spend $1 to get $4 back? Let’s find out how to get started…
It might sounds daunting at first, but in reality anyone can do this. It all begins with research however, so make sure you follow these steps and then seek further advice as you move along the process:
1. Establish a budget that you can afford.
Look for sites in Sitepoint.com and Ebay.com and try to find a site that is within (or below) your budget. From here, you can begin to do proper research on the site for sale. If you’re interested in the website, you must also check that there is a demand for its contents; otherwise you’ll never get much traffic or sales. You can check demand by using Google’s free keyword selection tool. Simply take some related keywords from the site and put them into Google’s free keyword tool and see what sorts of search numbers come up. If you’ve got a large amount of people searching on these keywords every month, then you’ve got potential traffic for this site.
2. Check where the traffic is coming from
You can also check out where the seller is getting his/her traffic from already. It is generally better to invest in a site that has steady and reliable traffic from solid search engine listings instead of them relying on writing dozens of articles and paying for traffic to keep the numbers up, but there are exceptions to this rule.
3. How is the site performing or underperforming?
Apart from traffic, you’ll also want to see how the site is making money and retaining it’s’ visitors:
- Does the website have a newsletter?
- Does the website run adverts, if so how and with whom?
- Does that site sell a product?
- What is the site’s revenue for the month?
Essentially, you are looking for a site that is in the early stages of making a lot of money but one that the owner has dried up on or ran out of time with (or who simply cannot see the potential themselves!).
For example, they might run a newsletter but not be promoting products. They might be running adverts that only pay pennies when they could be paying dollars per click (or even per impression!).
4. Check screenshots and the site’s entire history
Most sellers with provide upfront stats of the site’s traffic along with screenshots of proof of earnings. Although these can be fake, it’s a starting point. What you are looking for is any drop off in traffic or revenue. This could be a reason why a seller is actually selling in the first place, which leads us on to…
5. Why are they selling?
The next step is to get in touch with the seller and ask why they are selling the site. Many sellers will have an immediate answer or may even put the reason in their auction listing. This helps to understand why they would give up a perfectly good, high potential website. The trick is to avoid telling them that they have a money pot on their hands or they might change their minds about selling it!
6. Any support?
If you’re not comfortable with the technicalities of transferring a site, check if the owner is willing to provide support. This might also come in useful even if you are technically able. It’s always nice to know that you’re not going to run into any problems after you’ve handed over a sum of money, no matter how big or small.
7. Is the seller legit?
Another thing that is really important to check is whether the seller is actually genuine and not a fly by night scammer. The best way to do this is to use a reputable marketplace such as eBay or Sitepoint.com who both run buyer/seller feedback scoring systems along with identity verification to boost buyer confidence and avoid fraud. The other option (which is highly recommended) is to use Sitepoint.com’s free website sales contract to further cover yourself.
Conclusion
As you can see, if you use a little common sense and flow a system then it’s not hard to find hidden gold that is selling for peanuts online. Hidden gold that just requires a little shining and restoring on your side, before you resell the site at a huge profit.
It is not uncommon to resell sites at 4x or more the value you bought them, even in very short time periods such as 3 months (or less). Sometimes it will only require one small tweak here and there are the site can be making twice as much revenue as the day before…and that’s not hype.
There are of course a few other aspects to look out for when flipping a site, which you can learn more about below, plus you will need to know the best way to fix up the site and resell it for maximum profits in order to make this business really rock for you. Here are 2 That I recently reviewed:
