How To Buy A Good Income Generating Website
I recently succeeded in achieving a long time goal: buying a website that was already making an regular income and doubling it's income in a week. I've been trying to do this for a while and have come close but this one was right on the money so to speak. It was an Adsense site, and by optimizing the ad units a little I started seeing the clicks go from about $0.05-$0.50 upto as much as $1.20 per click very fast just by getting some goood anchor text backlinks. Admitted the income isn't great, but it was just so easy and profitable.
I almost exclusively buy existing websites now rather than creating them from scratch. It just makes the job of getting into the SERPs and traffic that much less frustrating and I've found it is usually pretty easy to increase a site's income quickly. I'm not talking about buying fully optimized sites. I do a lot of work to find a new site and have to sift through hundreds of sites before I find one that has potential. I then negotiate directly with the seller rather than just bidding on a site like flippa - although these sites make great research tools.
In celebration of achieving a recent milestone I'm pretty excited and thought I'd share a few things I've learned in the last 12 months about buying sites. So here's my top 10 tips for buying profitable websites:
1. Do thorough research!! This is the key to everything. You need to know the site and seller are legit, the traffic is real and any income claimed is actually correct and consistent. You also need to know the seller is trustworthy and I've found if they will readily give you access to their stats this goes a long way.
2. Get to know the seller. There are often a lot of things you'll learn from speaking to the seller directly, including ways to increase income. I've spoken to heaps of site owners who said they were planning on doing this or that but just didn't get around to it. Just get on Skype and have a few long discussions about the site. Find out when it was started, why, where the content came from, why they're selling and whether they are going to be available if there are any problems in the install or down the track.
3. Traffic = money! Consistent SE traffic = easy money. You can almost always convert targeted organic traffic into dollars, but if you buy a site that makes its income from a seller's email list then you're going to struggle once that source of traffic is cut off.
4. Look for 'set and forget'. Adsense blogs are good this way. You don't need to update newsletters, answer emails from customers with problems, pack and send goods and maintain accounts with suppliers etc. Stick with digital products if you want it to be easier.
5. Look for poor optimization. Things like Adsense sites with the ad-blocks below the fold, colours not matching the theme, no ad block in the content etc
6. Make sure the content is unique and there is a lot of it. Some of the best success I've had with improving existing websites is where there is heaps of content, but only average rankings in the SERPs because of no backlinking. A couple of months of just bookmarking and writing articles and things tend to start improving.
7. Get a good low rate credit card dedicated to buying websites. The card I have is a low rate (11%) mastercard with 6 months interest free on purchases. This means on sites earning $100 a month profit I'll pay about $700 upfront on credit and then in the next 12 months I'll have earned $1200 income and paid $50 interest. I don't know about you, but I'm happy to spend $50 to earn $1200 every day of the week.
8. Negotiate a discounted price upfront with the seller and be willing to walk away from something that is just the 'normal price'. There are plenty of website owners who just want to get a few dollars to invest in something else after they've lost interest in a project. These are motivated sellers and they'll often take only 3-4 months of profit just to get it off their hands.
9. Sell sites you lose interest in and start to neglect quickly. I had a site in the dog training niche that was making $50 a month when I bought it but took a lot to maintain the traffic (I was still making some mistakes at this point and have since learned to stay away from niches that are competitive in the SERPS). Problem was I lost interest in the site and it wasn't long before it was earning NOTHING and I couldn't sell it to save my life. Sites have value as long as they have income and traffic. If you lose interest sell before this disappears.
10. Learn SEO. The way I've been able to increase the income and value of my portfolio the quickest is through SEO, particularly backlinking and getting authority. If you can get organic SE traffic you'll make more money and it will be somewhat set-and-forget.
I almost exclusively buy existing websites now rather than creating them from scratch. It just makes the job of getting into the SERPs and traffic that much less frustrating and I've found it is usually pretty easy to increase a site's income quickly. I'm not talking about buying fully optimized sites. I do a lot of work to find a new site and have to sift through hundreds of sites before I find one that has potential. I then negotiate directly with the seller rather than just bidding on a site like flippa - although these sites make great research tools.
In celebration of achieving a recent milestone I'm pretty excited and thought I'd share a few things I've learned in the last 12 months about buying sites. So here's my top 10 tips for buying profitable websites:
1. Do thorough research!! This is the key to everything. You need to know the site and seller are legit, the traffic is real and any income claimed is actually correct and consistent. You also need to know the seller is trustworthy and I've found if they will readily give you access to their stats this goes a long way.
2. Get to know the seller. There are often a lot of things you'll learn from speaking to the seller directly, including ways to increase income. I've spoken to heaps of site owners who said they were planning on doing this or that but just didn't get around to it. Just get on Skype and have a few long discussions about the site. Find out when it was started, why, where the content came from, why they're selling and whether they are going to be available if there are any problems in the install or down the track.
3. Traffic = money! Consistent SE traffic = easy money. You can almost always convert targeted organic traffic into dollars, but if you buy a site that makes its income from a seller's email list then you're going to struggle once that source of traffic is cut off.
4. Look for 'set and forget'. Adsense blogs are good this way. You don't need to update newsletters, answer emails from customers with problems, pack and send goods and maintain accounts with suppliers etc. Stick with digital products if you want it to be easier.
5. Look for poor optimization. Things like Adsense sites with the ad-blocks below the fold, colours not matching the theme, no ad block in the content etc
6. Make sure the content is unique and there is a lot of it. Some of the best success I've had with improving existing websites is where there is heaps of content, but only average rankings in the SERPs because of no backlinking. A couple of months of just bookmarking and writing articles and things tend to start improving.
7. Get a good low rate credit card dedicated to buying websites. The card I have is a low rate (11%) mastercard with 6 months interest free on purchases. This means on sites earning $100 a month profit I'll pay about $700 upfront on credit and then in the next 12 months I'll have earned $1200 income and paid $50 interest. I don't know about you, but I'm happy to spend $50 to earn $1200 every day of the week.
8. Negotiate a discounted price upfront with the seller and be willing to walk away from something that is just the 'normal price'. There are plenty of website owners who just want to get a few dollars to invest in something else after they've lost interest in a project. These are motivated sellers and they'll often take only 3-4 months of profit just to get it off their hands.
9. Sell sites you lose interest in and start to neglect quickly. I had a site in the dog training niche that was making $50 a month when I bought it but took a lot to maintain the traffic (I was still making some mistakes at this point and have since learned to stay away from niches that are competitive in the SERPS). Problem was I lost interest in the site and it wasn't long before it was earning NOTHING and I couldn't sell it to save my life. Sites have value as long as they have income and traffic. If you lose interest sell before this disappears.
10. Learn SEO. The way I've been able to increase the income and value of my portfolio the quickest is through SEO, particularly backlinking and getting authority. If you can get organic SE traffic you'll make more money and it will be somewhat set-and-forget.