My Idea - I'd like to build Niche Affililate sites and sell them on Flippa

32 replies
Is this an endeavor that can generate a decent income?

I'm thinking of niche sites, evergreen, like dating sites or travel sites.

I know this is not revolutionairy. Is it a solid business model? Can I sell these sites over and over once they are developed?

Please only respond if you have legit experience in this area.

Thanks for your insite.
#affililate #build #flippa #idea #niche #sell #sites
  • Profile picture of the author zdebx
    Selling websites? Unless you plan on selling sites which have produced some income in the last few months, selling sites especially the ones with no income, is NOT so easy.
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  • Profile picture of the author dad2four
    See that throws me. If I'm going to wait until a site has income......I'm not selling it.
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    • Profile picture of the author agmccall
      Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

      See that throws me. If I'm going to wait until a site has income......I'm not selling it.
      Then you will not be selling them for much money

      al

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    • Profile picture of the author mysterrio
      Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

      See that throws me. If I'm going to wait until a site has income......I'm not selling it.
      So, if you think you can sell sites that don't or are not making some income....I would rethink your plan. I can make lots of sites that don't make money. Now, on the other hand if you show me one that makes money...even a little bit, I can (perhaps) amp it up once I buy it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tom Addams
    Solid model.

    The heart and soul of the model is developing "income sites." And these sites need dependable, organic traffic, yielding proven income statistics that aren't about to diminish anytime soon. Anyone can put together a site. Not everyone can grow an income site. If you can, then it's a sturdy, viable way to make a living.

    Tom
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  • Profile picture of the author dad2four
    Tom/zdebx, I'm sure you know what you are talking about and I'll take your word for it. It seems "marketers" would be the ones to make the site profitable. Wouldn't they want a steady stream of sites to market? I'm just a mealy ole programmer so I haven't a clue about "making the money" all I nkow about it building sites. Tired of being the grunt under someone elses thumb. I want the hell out.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tom Addams
      Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

      Tom/zdebx, I'm sure you know what you are talking about and I'll take your word for it. It seems "marketers" would be the ones to make the site profitable. Wouldn't they want a steady stream of sites to market? I'm just a mealy ole programmer so I haven't a clue about "making the money" all I nkow about it building sites. Tired of being the grunt under someone elses thumb. I want the hell out.
      I'd avoid site flipping. The way to really work this model is outsourcing. You do that, you're talking very good money indeed, where you're developing and growing sites in a pretty much hands-off manner. Good, regular money. The other end of the spectrum is high-end development, where you throw 4, 5, 6, 7 figures into a project, only to sell it at the end. On that score, it's really very similar to offline property development. Instead of running the apartment block, you build it, sell it.

      I prefer to own my income sites. Keep them. And by the sounds of it, I think you will, too. If I were you, I'd browse through the different business models in this vicinity, and look at developing a business of your own, where you're growing passive and semi-passive income. The kind of income you can rely on to keep on flowing when you go on vacation, or just take the summer off to go fishing.

      Cheers,

      Tom
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      • Profile picture of the author dad2four
        Mr Tom, I wish you could know the amount of time I've spent researching all that you described and more.

        Years ago I built scrapers and autoblogging tools and generated a few adsense sites that still make money today. Even before Google slammed sites like that I decided to go no further creating frankenstein sites as I called them.

        I've used Craigslist to get clicks into clickbank and made a few bucks here and there but CL is such a pain to create massive numbers of ads in. Aside from that, it's blackhat so I elected to avoid that.

        I'm all for doing some importing and selling on ebay/ecommerce sites of my own. Try as I may I can't decide on a product no matter how much research I do. not sure I could weather the storm of a few failures before I succeed there.

        I've dug into ADWORDS/BING and CPA and this seems really cool but again, not sure I can weather the storm of failed campaigns before I figure it out. Seems like gambling to me rather than a business.

        I've worked long and hard to be a coder so it seems that the most logical thing for me to do is figure out a way to make money that way. Not freelancing, that's just trading time for money.

        I even built a site for a few marketers I met here on WF. It would make us piles of money they said. We have a starving crowd just chomping at the bit they said. In the end, I did my part and built the site, "they" did not come. We got very few subscribers and the sign-up pace was insufficient to support the business model.

        Heavy sigh. My inability to figure out something that makes sense for me has me paralyzed.

        It's painful in all honesty. Literally. Like a depression type of a pain.
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        • Profile picture of the author Tom Addams
          Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

          Mr Tom, I wish you could know the amount of time I've spent researching all that you described and more.

          Years ago I built scrapers and autoblogging tools and generated a few adsense sites that still make money today. Even before Google slammed sites like that I decided to go no further creating frankenstein sites as I called them.

          I've used Craigslist to get clicks into clickbank and made a few bucks here and there but CL is such a pain to create massive numbers of ads in. Aside from that, it's blackhat so I elected to avoid that.

          I'm all for doing some importing and selling on ebay/ecommerce sites of my own. Try as I may I can't decide on a product no matter how much research I do. not sure I could weather the storm of a few failures before I succeed there.

          I've dug into ADWORDS/BING and CPA and this seems really cool but again, not sure I can weather the storm of failed campaigns before I figure it out. Seems like gambling to me rather than a business.

          I've worked long and hard to be a coder so it seems that the most logical thing for me to do is figure out a way to make money that way. Not freelancing, that's just trading time for money.

          I even built a site for a few marketers I met here on WF. It would make us piles of money they said. We have a starving crowd just chomping at the bit they said. In the end, I did my part and built the site, "they" did not come. We got very few subscribers and the sign-up pace was insufficient to support the business model.

          Heavy sigh. My inability to figure out something that makes sense for me has me paralyzed.

          It's painful in all honesty. Literally. Like a depression type of a pain.
          Hey

          Apologies for not responding to this sooner. I've only just seen it. I'd be happy to give you free advice. That advice might then be a jumping off point where you can use WF or elsewhere to learn how exactly to take action on it.

          Cheers,

          Tom
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve B
    Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

    I know this is not revolutionairy. Is it a solid business model? Can I sell these sites over and over once they are developed?

    Dad2four,

    The fact remains, there are way more Internet marketers successful at creating and putting sites online than there are marketers that know how to drive consistent traffic and generate income from it.

    You can purchase all kinds of site templates in a given market, put them up on a WordPress platform, and have your web site up and running very quickly. You can buy bundles of niche sites for a song. They are being sold everywhere.

    The bigger challenge, and the reason people pay way more for sites that get consistent traffic and generate income . . . is because that's the more difficult chore and the one that eludes most people.

    I'm not saying you can't flip brand new sites . . . but if you choose that path you will have tons of competition and your income probably won't be much for each site - it may not be worth the time involved to create the site.

    Good luck to you,

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author winnermarketing
    Flippa offer the largest market in wich you can sell your site.
    the problem is that often you finish to sell off your work, especially when the site hasn't already a good income.

    However you can try in throught these alternatives:

    - Flippa
    - Sedo
    - Ebay
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  • Profile picture of the author Synnuh
    There's big money in it. It's the business model that supported me and my family for almost 4 years.

    Here's how I did it, though. Keep in mind I had a team of 22 virtual assistants towards the end.

    I would setup 10 sites at a time (usually a lot more every time lol)

    From those, 2 would really poke their heads up. I'm talking $100 per month in the first month.

    Those became "portfolio" sites. I held onto them, built out keyword strategies and went to work scaling.

    There would be a few (usually 3-5) that wouldn't make jack. Maybe $10 their first month. Those are the sites that got flipped.

    The sites in between were watched closely. I never made decisions on flipping or keeping a site unless it showed huge promise in the first month, or was at least 3 months old.

    Each month I'd shoot a handful of links at each of the new 10 sites. Then at the end of the month check their rankings and earnings. Regroup them into one of the three categories: #1 instant flip, quit spending money. #2 Possible flip / possible keep, go forward. #3 Scale that ******* and milk it.

    Flipping a handful of sites earning $10-$20 a month covered the expenses from building all 10 sites. Setup, content, links. You can easily fetch 10x earnings for a $20 a month site.

    After the mediocre sites were a few months old, it was time to dissect them. If I thought they could show promise either by jumping their rankings up a few notches, or by going wider in the niche, I would keep them and add them to my portfolio sites.

    If a site was earning more than a couple hundred a month, it could support itself and was worth keeping -- shooting $100 worth of links and content at it every month.

    If it wasn't, it hit the chopping block.

    ------------- #EmpireStateOfMind -----------------

    I didn't start this overnight. When I let my domains expire I had 450 of them sitting in my Name.com account. I lost track of how many I bought, built, and sold.

    The model is solid.

    Flip the sites quickly that show no signs of promise.

    Watch the sites closely that could be easily improved by going wider, or focusing your link building and jumping their main rankings up a bit.

    Keep your instant winners in your portfolio and guard them with your life.

    Here's a system you can use to quickly crank out dozens of sites a month, and a way to automatically build links if you have a budget. Your risk, your reward. That whole testicular fortitude, your business thing. Blah blah. Anyway.

    Find the keywords in Long Tail Pro. Anything under 25KC and more than 3,000 searches per month. The more commercial intent the better. Keywords with "best" or "reviews" in them are perfect.

    For content, get your required pages on the site, add (5) articles solving problems, another (5) reviews based off the Amazon sales page, a table comparing the top 10 best selling products, or an "ultimate" guide with adsense in it, along with a badass homepage that covered a few different keywords and stuck the visitor to it like glue.

    It's a personal choice but I don't stick Amazon affiliate links on the homepage. It's leaving money on the table, but I want to rank as easily as possible.

    For links, use The Hoth. It's $60 a month for a pack of 3 beefed up links and they work. $60 per month per site. That's why you need a budget.

    If you want to save the $60 per site and bootstrap it, get yourself FCS Networker, GSA Search Ranker, and some proxies, and go to town. Eventually build your own PBN to use for your 1st tier links, with FCS as your 2nd and GSA pumping your 3rd.

    To make money, KISS. Keep it simple silly. Use AdSense and Amazon.

    The more time you waste on each aspect, the less you make per hour.

    Sell your first few on Flippa to get a list of buyers. Then bail on Flippa as quick as possible since you're flipping lower earning sites and the fees eat up your profits.

    People don't like buying money making sites that were listed publicly either. You'll get 20x earnings to the right buyers in the right markets.

    And don't make the mistake of thinking only affiliate marketers or beginners are buying the sites. I sold quite a few to eCommerce sites, investors, bloggers, spammers, you name it. They all had different reasons for buying.

    Anyway, I'm rambling now. I hope you can glean something from this.

    Oh yeah, and don't expect it to last forever. Manage your money while you're making it.
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    • Profile picture of the author dad2four
      Originally Posted by Synnuh View Post


      ------------- #EmpireStateOfMind -----------------

      I didn't start this overnight. When I let my domains expire I had 450 of them sitting in my Name.com account. I lost track of how many I bought, built, and sold.

      The model is solid.
      So you completely dumped the model and moved on?
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve B
      Originally Posted by Synnuh View Post

      There would be a few (usually 3-5) that wouldn't make jack. Maybe $10 their first month. Those are the sites that got flipped.
      Originally Posted by Synnuh View Post

      Flip the sites quickly that show no signs of promise.

      A great lesson here for all of you that like to buy pre-developed sites that have no track record of revenue generation.

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author dad2four
        Originally Posted by Steve B View Post

        A great lesson here for all of you that like to buy pre-developed sites that have no track record of revenue generation.

        Steve
        Point taken.
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  • Profile picture of the author NeedBucksNow
    Good post and while this seems like a great idea to make a huge chunk of change at once, you are still trading all of the time and work that it took to build up a successful site in the 1st place. I think I would rather have a passive income that was bringing in a few hundred dollars a month from adsense, amazon, clickbank, cpas, hosting etc. Seems to me that you just need to have multiple streams of income and to be willing to put in the time that it takes to succeed online. This might take 1-2 years to really get on autopilot with free traffic from Google but eventually you'll be glad that you decided to stick with building it up. Best of luck and remember to just never ever give up
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    Anyone can make a site and sell it. But it's worthless without traffic and income.
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  • Profile picture of the author Synnuh
    yeah. Not by choice, though. I was way too aggressive with my link building. Using 60% exact match. It burned to the ground over the course of 5 months. That was in 2012 -- Google pretty much used my portfolio to figure out their algorithms lol.

    After it burnt down me and my business partner split ways. I went through a depression, lost another business, went through a divorce, and now I've spent 7 months testing, re-learning, and getting my offline business' ducks in a row before I jump back into rebuilding the empire.

    It's coming though.
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    • Profile picture of the author dad2four
      I just ran over and read your blog. Super sorry to hear all that. I'm sure you are coming back far stronger than you were before.

      Are you going to rebuild a similar empire? It sounds from your blog like you are on a completely different track now.
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  • Profile picture of the author Synnuh
    Yeah I am. Right now my time is going to the project that lands me the biggest bankroll the fastest.

    I put in 12-18 hours a day 7 days a week though, so I have to be able to move through a couple different projects or I get bored. I'm open to any arbitrage model.

    I definitely learned a lot from the mistakes I made. Round 2 is going to be huge.

    I'm building my offline consulting and learning email marketing (the blog you're talking about). It's only about a week old, so I'm posting what I'm working on each day.

    That happens to be scraping emails and sending out bulk proposals for services at the moment.

    My business is a mix of offline consulting, affiliate/email marketing (that blog), and another niche blog empire.

    My long term goal is to build 1 huge site around men, using subdomains as niche communities and then using niche blogs as PBN sites. That's still a couple years off, probably. Then selling ad space to millions of pageviews each month on my network. A boy can dream, right? That's going to take a hefty budget and a nice sized team to make happen.

    Here's a post I wrote about niche sites in 2015: How to build links to niche sites in 2015.

    I probably won't be posting much niche site content on there for a little while. It's a pretty hit or miss business model, that's why you've gotta setup so many to see winners, so it's kinda rough to really teach to people.
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    • Profile picture of the author dad2four
      Originally Posted by Synnuh View Post


      Here's a post I wrote about niche sites in 2015: How to build links to niche sites in 2015.
      That's a great post and definitely a big learn for me on strategy.

      What's the plan on revenue generation? Adsense/Amazon, seems I saw that was your monetization method the first time.

      I know you'll be focused on building the list this time around.

      Amazon would take some hoop jumping for me I'm sure. Last I checked Missouri is still not welcome to the Amazon affiliate party.
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    • Profile picture of the author dad2four
      Originally Posted by Synnuh View Post

      Yeah I am. Right now my time is going to the project that lands me the biggest bankroll the fastest.

      I put in 12-18 hours a day 7 days a week though, so I have to be able to move through a couple different projects or I get bored. I'm open to any arbitrage model.

      I definitely learned a lot from the mistakes I made. Round 2 is going to be huge.

      I'm building my offline consulting and learning email marketing (the blog you're talking about). It's only about a week old, so I'm posting what I'm working on each day.

      That happens to be scraping emails and sending out bulk proposals for services at the moment.

      My business is a mix of offline consulting, affiliate/email marketing (that blog), and another niche blog empire.

      My long term goal is to build 1 huge site around men, using subdomains as niche communities and then using niche blogs as PBN sites. That's still a couple years off, probably. Then selling ad space to millions of pageviews each month on my network. A boy can dream, right? That's going to take a hefty budget and a nice sized team to make happen.

      Here's a post I wrote about niche sites in 2015: How to build links to niche sites in 2015.

      I probably won't be posting much niche site content on there for a little while. It's a pretty hit or miss business model, that's why you've gotta setup so many to see winners, so it's kinda rough to really teach to people.
      I'm caught up now, sorry about the dumb question.
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    • Profile picture of the author discrat
      Originally Posted by Synnuh View Post

      A boy can dream, right? That's going to take a hefty budget and a nice sized team to make happen.

      Here's a post I wrote about niche sites in 2015: How to build links to niche sites in 2015.

      I probably won't be posting much niche site content on there for a little while. It's a pretty hit or miss business model, that's why you've gotta setup so many to see winners, so it's kinda rough to really teach to people.
      Synnuh,
      Thanks for sharing your story. Very interesting. I too got slammed back in 2011 with a lot of my Sites.

      But your Plan right now sounds like it is really headed in the right direction.

      Btw, I know this has nothing to do with anything but just curious.

      You are the woman with the pitbulls who could hold her own in weight lifting?

      Honestly, not trying to start anything but Iam just confused
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  • Profile picture of the author Drjoenjenga
    I have expertise and the experience you need to build such sites, I have even a positive feedback on flippa. If you have specific questions feel free to ask me.


    Originally Posted by dad2four View Post

    Is this an endeavor that can generate a decent income?

    I'm thinking of niche sites, evergreen, like dating sites or travel sites.

    I know this is not revolutionairy. Is it a solid business model? Can I sell these sites over and over once they are developed?

    Please only respond if you have legit experience in this area.

    Thanks for your insite.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10123143].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author dad2four
      Originally Posted by Drjoenjenga View Post

      I have expertise and the experience you need to build such sites, I have even a positive feedback on flippa. If you have specific questions feel free to ask me.
      Thanks Doc.

      How much of what goes out to Flippa do you produce yourself? How much comes from outsourcing? Are you creating your sites from scratch or are you flipping them? Are your sites lower value higher volume type sites or the reverse?
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  • Profile picture of the author Synnuh
    If I was starting over from scratch, Amazon and Adsense would be the way to go. So easy to monetize with. You can try Viglinks. I'd plan on moving away from them after a year or something, though.

    Starting over with experience, and really wanting to make money with them I'd be using them to build email lists and start sending out promotions automatically.

    And they probably wouldn't get flipped -- if you can hit send and make money, why get rid of it?
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    A lot of people are doing this already.

    Take a look at their ads on Flippa and figure out the winners.

    Reverse engineer your way to success
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  • Profile picture of the author FreedomBlogger
    I have tried selling sites on flippa before. Since I am good at building nice blog sites.

    But I was not able to find success there. As many mentioned here already, if the site is not receiving a nice daily traffic flow (organic traffic) - it will be very hard to sell.

    You would have to learn how to build up some daily traffic flow to the site - and then try to sell it.

    The site's traffic flow is one of the main things interested buyers look at - before even considering buying a site.

    If flipping sites is something you would love to do and are very passionate about - to make a living online - I would recommend you to learn as much internet marketing as possible. It will help you build up some traffic to the websites you want to flip.

    I hope this helps you man!
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  • Profile picture of the author n3o
    niche dating site is a good option you can work on
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  • dad2four, if you do choose to go ahead with it, are you planning on using expired domains so you can take advantage of their history?

    I think you should, as long as you can find the right ones for your niche. Just make sure that you really do your homework on each one before you start building the site b/c what you don't know can definitely hurt you. Always look into: Moz stats, Majestic stats, Wayback snapshots, SPAM, geo location history & keyword history.

    I'd suggest using a domain crawler that grabs all that info for you, lets you compare a bunch of sites at once and offers high quality sites for a lot less than those highway robbers over at Go Daddy. You'll want to make sure to rebuild the site with its archive files as well - crawlers like domainreanimator (dot) com will actually do that for you.

    Hope it works out for you!
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    • Profile picture of the author lemonseltzer
      Originally Posted by RockStarMarketing View Post

      dad2four, if you do choose to go ahead with it, are you planning on using expired domains so you can take advantage of their history?

      I think you should, as long as you can find the right ones for your niche. Just make sure that you really do your homework on each one before you start building the site b/c what you don't know can definitely hurt you. Always look into: Moz stats, Majestic stats, Wayback snapshots, SPAM, geo location history & keyword history.

      I'd suggest using a domain crawler that grabs all that info for you, lets you compare a bunch of sites at once and offers high quality sites for a lot less than those highway robbers over at Go Daddy. You'll want to make sure to rebuild the site with its archive files as well - crawlers like domainreanimator (dot) com will actually do that for you.

      Hope it works out for you!
      Burt's talking about his own website domainreanimator here.
      Rebuild the site with it's archive.org files ?
      You're not talking about using other people's written work, right ?
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnRios
    I have seen that type of sites being sold as turn-key business, so i am pretty sure that once you'll get a hang of it, you will start seeing sales
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