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Flippa Website Flipping

by PaulintheSticks
20 replies
I've seen a number of WSO's that talk about building and flipping websites for profit. So far, I've built and listed 2 sites and lost money on both.

So I invested in a WSO that of course claims to have the solution. The gist of this model is to pick a profitable, high demand niche such as weight loss; outsource the writing of about 30 high quality articles for about $.018/word; find quality creative commons images (free) for each article; put it all together in a nice looking Wordpress template; create social media pages for the site and use them to drive traffic; then sell the site (without any revenue) on Flippa at a nice profit.

After looking through Flippa, I see very few article sites that are selling for much money. And the ones that do, are generating revenue.

Would love to get any thoughts. Do you think this is a viable model? Have you tried this? What has been your experience?

Thanks.
#flippa #flipping #website
  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    Be careful of revenue information at Flippa. Do a search about such revenue claims. There are many legit sellers on Flippa but there are also many horror stories. Also, pay attention to the domains of the sites being sold. Do a search for them using SEOQuake. Some yield very interesting patterns...
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  • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
    In order to sell a site on flippa, it's GOT to have proven revenue. Sites generally sell for around 10times monthly earnings, and you're going to need several months of earnings to show before people feel compelled to buy. Just my experience...
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    • Profile picture of the author PaulintheSticks
      Originally Posted by Marketing Fool View Post

      Just my experience...
      Thanks for the feedback. I've seen a few sites selling for quite a bit without revenue but they either had a great domain, high pr or lots of traffic.

      So you've tried to sell sites with and without revenue and the ones without revenue didn't make any money?
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      • Profile picture of the author Marketing Fool
        Originally Posted by PaulintheSticks View Post

        So you've tried to sell sites with and without revenue and the ones without revenue didn't make any money?
        Yes that's correct.

        Sure there are certain circumstances where that rule doesn't hold...but generally speaking, yes your site probably needs revenue to sell.

        I've tried selling what you would consider good domain names with 3 even 4 PR but no revenue to speak of...and received not one bid.
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  • Profile picture of the author momtraders
    2 ways to earn with flippa, 1- outsource sites at LOW build costs. Sell at reasonable cost. Some buyers are looking for a quick buy were they can fine tune the site and make it a residual property with small easy edits.

    2- Sell site with profit, this one calls for an aged site. 6 months or longer. The biggest peice of advice for this one, use a rinse and repeat setup that works. IE build site, get regular traffic, get site to earning a steady $5/daily. This can be achieved in less then a week. Then ask $1500 fair price for site, sometimes depending on monetization type you can fetch higher profits.
    If you use both methods then you will find great results.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Motson
      Originally Posted by momtraders View Post

      2 ways to earn with flippa, 1- outsource sites at LOW build costs. Sell at reasonable cost. Some buyers are looking for a quick buy were they can fine tune the site and make it a residual property with small easy edits.

      2- Sell site with profit, this one calls for an aged site. 6 months or longer. The biggest peice of advice for this one, use a rinse and repeat setup that works. IE build site, get regular traffic, get site to earning a steady $5/daily. This can be achieved in less then a week. Then ask $1500 fair price for site, sometimes depending on monetization type you can fetch higher profits.
      If you use both methods then you will find great results.
      This: IE build site, get regular traffic, get site to earning a steady $5/daily. This can be achieved in less then a week. is very misleading.

      If you were able to get a site to earn you $5/day and do it in less then a week than why not just make 100 of these sites in 100 weeks and have $500 a day in revenue?
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  • Profile picture of the author momtraders
    Paul I would be happy to look over the 2 sites you listed and give you some advice on how to get them to sell.
    Remember, if it doesnt sell the first time, it can always be approved upon, and relisted.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
    I would apply discernment with regards to many of the revenue claims. Ask yourself, "Why is this person getting rid of it, if it so valuable?"
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    You're trying to sell something of little to no value.
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  • Profile picture of the author wakeforce139
    What Marhelper said is very true - figure out who the person is and why they would be trying to get rid of this "amazing money maker." At the same time, I know a lot of the people selling on there do have legitimate causes for getting rid of sites. I am debating in my head selling an ecommerce site making $1000+ a month because I just really am not into it and I don't want to put in the work needed to automate it more or improve it. So either I hire someone to do it (which is still work), let it ride as is, or try to get a decent payday for it.
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  • Profile picture of the author lotsofsnow
    It is possible to sell sites that do not make money.

    It is not really possible to sell sites that have no value.

    If a site is not making money it has to have other values. One of the values could be a good amount of traffic. Another value could be a good rank in the search engines.

    Another value could be a really nice or clever design or layout.

    If you want to receive money for a web site you have to give value in return. The value can be profit or something else but you have to deliver value.
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  • Profile picture of the author dean20653
    When selling a site with content, How do you pass the content? If I had xyz.com monetized with the to 5 way (Adsense, Amazon, etc etc) and it;s hosted on my account How does "the buyer" take over? I only know how to push domains from godaddy to godaddy! lol
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    • Profile picture of the author mediamarket
      Lately flippa sites qualitys are horrible so be careful when your bidding on a site, make sure you do your research so you don't buy a dud.
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  • Profile picture of the author wakeforce139
    Dean -

    You would have to give them a copy of your files and database. There are several ways to do this depending on your hosting and if you have cPanel or not, etc. They would then upload this onto their own hosting and FTP, edit the database details and bada bing bada boom they are pulling the same info you were but from their own source.

    Unfortunately most of the people buying on Flippa are new and don't know how to do the upload part so they often expect the seller to be able to do it for them. This is a decent guide on how to do it: How to Move a Website From One cPanel Host to Another
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  • Profile picture of the author TrafficFlow
    If you have a good site with verifiable traffic it probably will sell although not as high as a site with revenue. The real question may be whether the course you bought provides a viable plan for generating social media traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gambino
    That sounds like a lot of time and effort to build something of very little value. I'd recommend building something of value.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    Most sites on Flippa that don't have traffic or revenue don't sell for very much. Get some traffic and/or revenue going if you want to make a good profit from the sites you build.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kitottile Rheingold
    Is there a way to check if a seller's earnings claims are true? What sites or resources do people use to check?

    Thanks to momtraders for this piece of info - how long does it take to you to get to #2?

    Originally Posted by momtraders View Post

    2 ways to earn with flippa, 1- outsource sites at LOW build costs. Sell at reasonable cost. Some buyers are looking for a quick buy were they can fine tune the site and make it a residual property with small easy edits.

    2- Sell site with profit, this one calls for an aged site. 6 months or longer. The biggest peice of advice for this one, use a rinse and repeat setup that works. IE build site, get regular traffic, get site to earning a steady $5/daily. This can be achieved in less then a week. Then ask $1500 fair price for site, sometimes depending on monetization type you can fetch higher profits.
    If you use both methods then you will find great results.
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
      Banned
      Originally Posted by dean20653 View Post

      When selling a site with content, How do you pass the content? If I had xyz.com monetized with the to 5 way (Adsense, Amazon, etc etc) and it;s hosted on my account How does "the buyer" take over? I only know how to push domains from godaddy to godaddy! lol
      You need to transfer both the domain and site files and database if there is one. Instructions here: http://domainingdiva.com/transfer.pdf

      Originally Posted by Kitottile Rheingold View Post

      Is there a way to check if a seller's earnings claims are true? What sites or resources do people use to check?
      Here's a guest post I did on Flippa on due diligence
      Guest Post: the Domaining Diva on Due Diligence | Flippa Blog | The Home of Web Entrepreneurs

      Years ago, it was easy as pie to sell startups if they had a little unique content and were attractive. I sold them regularly for $350 a pop. Those days have been over for a good while.

      Hit the Recently Sold tab on Flippa and you can see what kind of sites sell and how much they go for.
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  • Profile picture of the author mogulmedia
    Once upon a time you caould make good money selling "starter" sites with no traffic or value. However Flippa got shot of that by increasing fees and squeezing all profit margins so it's no longer viable.

    They wanted high-quality, money-earning sites with value and these "spam" sites many people were making a killing on...
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