Newbie's experience with first website flip

I get a lot of great info from WF and wanted to contribute my experience of a website flip.

I got the notion to do a flip from an email from a marketer. I followed his basic directions (which are included below) plus some info from the forum. I wasn't sure about the process working, but thought 'what the heck' I would try it. 3 days later, I made $50 on sitepoint.com. A ton of money - no. More experience under my hat - yes.

So this is what I did.

1. Checked out Sitepoint's marketplace for websites that were either purchased (u can still see these grayed out) or had a few bids. My thinking - if folks were buying those niche websites that increased my chances of success.

2. Did research on the keywords based on the niches I found to be selling. This was mostly so I could select a keyword rich domain name.

3. Purchased domain name with namecheap.com - keyword related domain of course. Pointed the domain to my hosting account.

4. Created a website using weebly.com. (Wordpress would work as well) The website had four pages. Home, Books, Products, and Videos.

5. I created my own banner using Photoshop. Very simple look - preschoolers can coordinate colors better than I can.

6. Added Adsense, Amazon affiliated books, Ebay ads for the product on ebay, videos from youtube and google video.

7. Wrote intro paragraphs on the topic on the home page

8. Downloaded site from weebly and uploaded to my hosting account (I already owned an account with hostgator).

9. Placed the auction on sitepoint with a buy it now (BIN) of $50. I made the auction for 3 days. I only offered to change the affiliate links and push it to the buyer's account.

10. Answered a few emails from interested buyers.

11. Buyer purchased it at BIN, paid for it via Paypal. (No matter how much money it is, it is always FANTASTIC to be sent money.)

12. I pushed the domain to the buyer's namecheap account and emailed a .zip file of the website.

From beginning to end the process was about 3 days. A few hours one day to make the site, the domain/hosting stuff takes a day or so, and listing the auction another day. My site sold in a few hours after I posted it up.

I did make two websites but one didn't sell. ( I also didn't base that site on what was currently selling.) The non-seller I'm using as an adsense site for myself.

So total I made $33 minus cost of domain name and posting sitepoint auction. It pales in comparison to some of the $3,000 in 24 hours posts seen here on the forum. However I was able to prove to myself this process can work and can make me cash in short period of time.

There are other techniques that can vastly improve on what I've done.

Hopes this help someone 'thinking' about doing a flip (or anything) and afraid to take the first step.