Question: Hold on to or sell/flip my big AdSense money-maker sites?

[John Williamson]

Guys, I've been going back and forth on this for a while and want to get some opinions on the matter. I've heard many respected gurus and others here on the Forum say that as soon as you get some proof of earnings you should flip your Adsense site. My thought has always been "why would I want to sell a site that's bringing in consistent daily revenue?"

But I did think of another angle last night. Considering the fact that our Adsense accounts could get deleted any day and our niche sites could get slapped or de-indexed altogether, it does make some sense to consider flipping a site. But would it be worth it in the long run?

I don't want to throw out exact figures since it's against Adsense TOS but I've got one site that brings in about $15/day consistently. That example would mean approx. $5,500/year.

I understand that there's no definite answer but I would love to get some insight and perhaps some potential earnings math (I'm a big numbers guy) to compare the 2 models. Thanks in advance.

- John "Grandpa" Williamson

[InitialEffort]

Generally you want to flip sites when they are making between $100-200 per month. When you get above those amounts it becomes harder to find qualified buyers assuming you are going to use Flippa.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by InitialEffort

Generally you want to flip sites when they are making between $100-200 per month. When you get above those amounts it becomes harder to find qualified buyers assuming you are going to use Flippa.

I'd say just the opposite is true. You don't care about "qualified" buyers.
You want buyers. You will get many, many more buyers at $1,000 a month
than you would ever do with $200.

I know. A lot of you flip sites in that range. I hear you. Just rebutting
the logic in that reply.

Check flippa.com for some real-time stats.

Paul

[InitialEffort]

I guess I'd disagree, it seems like it's harder to find a buyer willing to pay 10-15X revenue at $1,000 income per month, whereas there seem to be many willing to pay 15-20X when it sits in that $50-200 per month range.

[seobro]

The problem is that many people do not have $20,000 in cash money. They could maybe afford $500 for a $50/mo site. Also, there are many reasons why a person might want to dump a 50 dollars per month adsense site, but at thousand bucks a month get real, as that one is a keeper for sure.

It would have to be a case where you have a hard time explaining why you are getting out of the biz now. For example, many have bought a site promising a thousand dollars a month and they get zip.

Folks prefer to risk 500 to 20,000 and most have been burned before so this is nothing new. I would prefer to build up a good name. Then people will have more faith in you. Right now my faith in flippa is near zero.

[HenryCorbett]

Originally Posted by John Williamson

Guys, I've been going back and forth on this for a while and want to get some opinions on the matter. I've heard many respected gurus and others here on the Forum say that as soon as you get some proof of earnings you should flip your Adsense site. My thought has always been "why would I want to sell a site that's bringing in consistent daily revenue?"

But I did think of another angle last night. Considering the fact that our Adsense accounts could get deleted any day and our niche sites could get slapped or de-indexed altogether, it does make some sense to consider flipping a site. But would it be worth it in the long run?

I don't want to throw out exact figures since it's against Adsense TOS but I've got one site that brings in about $15/day consistently. That example would mean approx. $5,500/year.

I understand that there's no definite answer but I would love to get some insight and perhaps some potential earnings math (I'm a big numbers guy) to compare the 2 models. Thanks in advance.

- John "Grandpa" Williamson

Hey John,

In my oppinion mate, I would keep it.

It might get knocked off in a month but on the
upper hand it may go for 10 years. Considering the costs
for a website is only pennys really, Its seems like youve got
a good little investment there.

Unless of course you have to constantly be working
on it to keep it going, then thats different.

Either way I guess it comes down to what position your in.

[arizona1]

Sell it and do it again. Getting paid 10 to 15 months is a sweet deal. You eliminate all of the risk of the site losing ranking or account getting banned. You don't have to upkeep the site and you can use the cash to do the same thing over again and again.

[arizona1]

More evidence to sell your sites. In the flippa auction below some four month old sites sold for 17+ months of revenue. That is a huge windfall that eliminates the risk that the sites will fall in the rankings. Then just create more sites. There is huge demand for adsense moneymakers.

http://flippa.com/auctions/103445

[Dellco]

Flip it if you can pump out sites with ease.

Hold it if you can't.

My $0.2

[webdango]

My suggestion is that examine your business model and decide what you want to do. And that might depend on your skills.

If you can reliably build income earning sites over and over again, building and flipping is a VERY good model. As mentioned above, it eliminates the risk (or one risk anyway). Build a site, get it up to $100 a month and sell it for 1200 - 1500 and walk away.

That's one model.

The other model is to build sites and keep them in a portfolio of Adsense earners. The risk here, of course, is that they might not always be Adsense earners.

It's almost exactly like stocks. Buy and hold or sell, make a proft, and walk away (and don't look back).

Personally, I'd probably just keep building mainly because I have had a few bad experiences selling already built sites. Sell a site making 100 - 200 a month to someone who doesn't know what they are doing, they change something or add crappy content, site tanks, and next thing you now you're hate mail getting letters from their lawyer.

Now selling domains, that's a sweet biz there.....

Boil it down to it's essense. You're sites dfon't make money because of Adsense. They make money because you can get them ranked and drive traffic. Once you have that down, there are numerous ways to monetize beside Adsense (if you ever go canned).