Website Flipping Basics

Hi loybond,

You can flip all sorts of sites mate. They can be established sites that are already ranked, that have already got traffic flowing to them. That also have revinue.

Or you can sell a start up site that has no traffic and is not ranked. A nice product site.

These days it seems to be harder to flip blogs with 10 unique articles on them (aprently they used to sell alot easier),, I always outsource everything when I sell sites, the profit margins are way smaller but I only work part time online so time is a little hard to come buy sometimes.

Good luck though mate

Steve M

It really does depend on what type of site you want to flip, what selling price range you are aiming for and how much time you want to spend on the site.

If you do create backlinks, drive traffic and have the site earning some revenue then you will get a much higher selling price for your site. A site like this I'd suggest selling on Flippa.

If you didn't want to spend the time involved in doing all that you can create basic niche sites and sell them as soon as they are created. These wont sell for as high a price, but you can still do quite well with them, especially if you have some backend sales in hosting commissions.

Hi,

If you are talking about selling low in the $100 or less range then consider the URL your most important asset and selling feature.

If you create a site around a product and it has a "killer" domain name that relates to the product it's an easy sell.

.com is always best if you are selling to the IM market, however other dots work well for the non IM savvy crowd.

George Wright

Don't forget to factor customer support into your profit margin - your time is worth something, right?

Most of the people that you will be targeting with brand new niche sites are totally new at internet marketing - some of them won't even know how to use wordpress or even how to get a hosting account (or even understand that they need one). So, you might spend a great deal of time supporting them to get them up and running with their site and answering questions.

You might consider making some videos or having an ebook that shows them a bit about how to use the site, how to add affiliate ids and adsense etc.. This will cut down on the time you spend answering questions.

Lee

Read Michelle Adams' book, pretty basic stuff, but good nonetheless. I can churn out 4-6 sites a day, but does anyone know how long it usually takes to sell basic, new blogs?

Also, are these prices still accurate? $97 is a good price for a basic blog?

Hate to beat a dead horse but If you concentrate on the name it alone will sell for $97. The "site" is just gravy.

If you are asking have I done it. I have and intend to pursue it when I'm feeling better.

George Wright

I don't buy or create 2 or more a day. I concentrate on the really outstanding and flip it for a higher price. Just pm'd you two examples. The second one won't go for under $1,200 and it is fresh off the press with no traffic or revenue, but it does have a unique, never seen before ebook. I think if you turn out 2 or more a day for $97, a lot of them won't sell .... they're already a dime a dozen. I've seen very few that had domain names that were worth $97, much less the blog and content.

Would you not make more money marketing a product, taking 6 or 7 weeks to build that to a page 1 ranking on a average keyword and just sit on the conversions?

I sell brand new blogs in the under $200 range so about 90% of my buyers are totally green. For most of them it is their first site.

I think if you sold higher end sites or ones that were making money you would probably get buyers that knew the ropes, and, thus less time on support would be needed. I'm not sure though, maybe someone else will weigh in on this - perhaps all the noobies just buy my sites!

Lee

If you're asking me, I don't care for affiliate marketing that much. I market my own products, and often flip sites that generate revenue for much more than they cost me due to the revenue they receive.

I hear ya. I actually had a buyer who for the last two weeks has taken up so much of my time that I am actually losing money on the sale because I could have made like 3 more blogs in the time I have taken to support her!

You can flip any website that
will add value to a potential buyer.
That is the site is already making you
money or generating targeted
"free" traffic.

And that is the only way to remain
in business of selling websites.

I usually sell about 5 a week. I think the value in mine is the design and all the affiliate products and articles I add to it. IMHO, the design is the key - people want something that looks nice. It can take me 3 to 5 hours to make just 1 site since I do all the graphics work myself.

Selling new sites is a great way to get money when you need it, but when it comes down to it, it's really just a job.

Of course, it's better than a lot of jobs and you get to be your own boss, but at the end of the day, if you want to make more money, you need to make another site. Unless you get into driving traffic to the sites and getting them earning, I don't think you're going to get into the "big bucks".

I personally would prefer to keep all my sites and get them earning passive income, but I have to sell some off in order to pay the bills and to avoid getting a "real" job!

Domains are also important to me. I don't buy junk domains. I try to get .com's and if available, I buy the whole set of one domain ... the .com, .net, .info and .org and give them all to the buyer to protect his/her domain from cybersquatters.

I never just buy a cheap .info domain to sell a site. That and appearance or design are the two most important things to me for selling. Design isn't important when I'm buying because I'll buy a cheap site that looks like crap and redesign it and make a big profit.

Again, traffic and revenue are great and definitely increase your profits, but not necessary to flip sites.

As for hosting, I don't offer hosting with my sites, other than long enough to move it but I do make good commissions from referring my customers to hostgator. This is done naturally through our communications and getting the customer set up to receive the site.

I don't buy (or plan to sell) anything other than .com and .org domains.

Do buyers consider included hosting a plus? It would probably make it a lot easier for me to not include it, since I already have an unlimited plan with Just Host, and if buyers are okay with a move/transfer, that means I don't have to spend on anything more than the domain - 4 bucks!

sbucciarel, roughly what percentage of your buyers opt for the Hostgator hosting?

cashcow, the articles you include in your sites - are they unique, PLR, or pulled from an article site etc.?

I don't include hosting. I used to offer hosting on my reseller account for $4.99 a month, but I really don't want to have to be responsible for the hosting of a bunch of other peoples sites. There usually isn't a problem, but one customer was buying some kind of traffic and eating up a crapload of bandwidth - who needs that? So now I just set them up at hostgator. I try to send them through my affiliate link, but I must not be that good at it because I don't seem to be getting many commissions!

I used to do all unique content, but lately I've been using PLR. The unique content will sell for more money (all other things being equal, of course).

Lee

You can sell a new site but it is a lot harder than it used to be. I used to sell a day old blogs for as much as $199 but no one is willing to buy for $99 at the money.

You best bet is to promote the site a little and try to make some money then sell it off.

Doing some article marketing and using Angela or Paul's backlink WSO will help for traffic and revenue.

Thanks for the awesome post guys , Ive been hearing this a lot : "Michelle Adams blog and downloads" so where can I find it ?

Just made another sale ... $350 this time so it's been a good week ($1150 for two sites). This was another Flippa sale. As for transferring the sites, rarely I get a customer who is savvy enough to move it themselves, but mostly I move it. I don't charge for that, since I don't sell any sites under $300 ... it's included. I prefer to do it myself since having a n00b do it and having to fix all the errors is more trouble than installing it to begin with.

Sounds like a good niche, good PR, good backlinks. Can you do screenshots for an auction of the Adsense income? Never claim income that you can't prove. They're just going to ask for it anyway. Probably would help if you also did some posting and backlinking to restart the traffic. I've sold quite a few sites with those ugly Adsense themes because they get clickthroughs and the Adsense junkies don't mind at all that the site is not gorgeous as long as people are clicking through. If you'd like to pm me the link, I'd be happy to take a look and take a guess at what I would sell it for, but just off the top of my head without knowing how much Adsense and with diminishing traffic, I would say you could list it on Flippa for $350 BIN at least.

Why buy them when you can just create them from scratch for less?

When you say "build backlinks," do you basically mean sell the website when it has more traffic?

Loybond

I have just sent you a pm but if your still looking for ideas I have a free web flipping book.

Best Regards

Matt

I am so happy for you. Just a few tweaks and instant cash. I thought that site had a lot of potential. Now I know you can do it over and over again.

Hey Warriors,

I've looked through this thread and learned a lot thus far. I'm incredibly new
to the site flipping scene - actually trying to help a friend get his hands on
some quick money.

I do have a few questions, though:

1) How do you go about actually transferring the site? I'm not the most tech
savvy guy, but I do know the basics of FTP and all that jazz. Can someone
explain this a little better to me?

2) Is it possible to sell, say, a WP blog using one of the free themes given by
the WP site? Or do you typically have to create your own theme?

3) Where are the best places to put your site auction in order to see the
fastest response?

I appreciate any and all answers you guys can give me. Thanks in advance!

All the best,

Jesse Kemmerer
kemmerer.j@gmail.com

Absolutely true ... you don't need traffic or sales. I sell startups all the time.

As for the offline cold calling technique by Midas Man ... no thanks. I've purchased sites for $50 and immediately listed them on Flippa and sold them for $300. I can create a site in less than a day that will sell for that also. Or I can create a batch of sites and let some age and get traffic and sell them for double that. Or I can run a WSO and other advertising and make a few ebook sales and sell it for triple that or more. I make a good profit with the least amount of hassle and calling or mailing companies to me is a hassle.

One method that can be effective is sending them a certificate of purchase via the mail.

Now you have sent something tangible with the digital good.

We send mailing packages with anything over $5,000

I have a question. What do I do with those site that did not sell? Please advise. Thanks!

Hey guys,

I'm really enjoying following this thread but I'm a little confused about the site transfer process.

If you sell a site to someone who doesn't have hosting do they register the 'bought' domain (i.e the one you've just sold them) when they buy the hosting or will they need to register using a different domain name first?

Thanks,

Rich

They can register with the one they are purchasing from you. If I'm installing the site for them, I transfer the domain last, after the site is up and running. I change the nameservers to theirs, but don't push it until I see everything is working well.

I have a question that may seem like a dumb one... but how exactly do you set it up so you get the hosting referral, or the money from that?

I've sold my first site, about a month ago now, a PR 2 mini site with a some adsense revenue (didn't know about this at the time of sale) and decent traffic, ranking number one on google for 2 months... with bunch of unique content, and some extra files etc for $300.

I should have held out for more, but I needed the $$ Anyway, it's all done now but the buyer was a real time sucker... (knew nothing of their own information, and relied on a technician who conveniently would not respond to either of us) And I am still learning...

So in the future I plan on upgrading to a reseller account... but what is the best way to go about getting your hosting commissions?

FWIW, I think the term "flipping" is not appropriate for what you guys are describing here.

For the most part, what you're doing is some basic keyword research, picking good domain names, setting up a new site from scratch, then selling it to someone for a fair price.

In real estate terms, that's "building a spec home". The builder puts up a home on a lot that has no buyer in the queue. When the home is finished, it's sold by the developer. They make a bigger margin on it than if it was pre-sold, mainly b/c the sales price tends to rise while it's being built, although most of the costs have already been incurred.

And spec homes are cheaper than fully custom homes b/c the builder doesn't need to spend much time with finnicky buyers. They just tell their interior designer to pick out a nice complement of features and upgrades, and go with it.

OTOH, if you do happen to buy a crappy looking site, fix it up, then resell it, that IS a "flip". But most of the comments here seem to indicate that's the exception rather than the norm.

The funny thing is, I don't understand why people seem to think that nobody would be interested in buying well-designed spec web sites.

If you wanted to have a nice web site created for you, you'd have to find someone to make it. Then you'd spend a bunch of time discussing details like the niche, keywords, domain name options, hosting options, and all kinds of other things that most people find little more than distractions. And for the privledge of wasting tons of time on these tangential details, you get to pay a premium!

But, if you just cruise around some of these sites where people are selling brand spanking new sites they built on 'spec', you get the best of both worlds. You get a unique, custom-built site (hopefully), at a price way lower than what it would cost you to have something similar done under contract. And the best thing is ... you can move in tomorrow!

Quickie sites full of PLR and popular templates are a dime a dozen. They take 10 minutes to set up, and anybody who's been cruising the sales forums for any length of time can recognize them in 10 seconds.

I know someone who builds custom Joomla sites on spec and sells them for $400. But she says that the average buyer pays her another $1200 to add additional plugins and features to the site immediately AFTER the sale! Her sites look like DYNAMITE, and she could probably sell them easily at $1000 each. But, at $400, she sells them in less than 24 hours. And her net is often between $1500 and $2000 after she spends a couple more hours adding mods.

Anyway, I think that referring to this work as "flipped" sites is really disengenuous. You guys are building brand new custom sites from scratch and selling them at what might seem like a high price -- but it's in fact WAY LESS than what you'd have to charge a client who asked specifically for that site to be built. Personally, don't think I'd charge any less than $500, and maybe more. Seriously! There's a healthy market for this kind of thing!

Keep up the great work!

-David

i just advertise in gumtree for my website design service and it keeps me going.