Website Flipping

When you buy or build sites with the intention of flipping them within the very short-term, it pays to keep your costs as low as possible.  Since the price of new, barely-indexed blogs and informational websites usually go for very low (think $75 to $200), your profit margin will depend greatly on how well you can keep your costs to the bare minimum.

Here’s the rub: if you skimp too much on your new site, it will show.  A stock free template, makeshift logos and PLR content just won’t cut it anymore – you’ll be lucky to sell those properties at cost.  The trick, then, is to give your site as professional treatment as you can, while keeping a tight lid on your spending.

Let’s look at the things you’ll likely need to spend cash on when building new sites:

Logo.  For the purposes of a quick flip, your logos must cost well below industry standard in order to keep you profitable.  Your best chance is to hire an offshore designer or local kid who can give you bulk, original graphics for $10 a piece.  You’ll actually find many takers for this – as long as your order is in bulk.

Scripts/Widgets.  The more experience you get, the more familiar you will be with useful functions and features that add tremendous value to new sites for flipping.  While you can buy scripts at nominal licensing costs, it will pay off more in the long run if you commission custom-scripts that you can use over and over across all sites you create.  Pay once (even if it’s a little expensive), use many times over – can’t beat that.

Templates. Instead of buying a premium template for every site you create, it’s better to just acquire a couple of flexible designs and have a low-rate designer tweak it for every site you make.  There are many designs out there where simple changes, such as a new logo, new icons and different color schemes, can make a huge difference, almost making it look unique.  After the initial investment on a flexible template, you can just hire someone to put in an hour’s amount of work to change the CSS and such for cheap.

Content.  When you’re building a new site, content can make a huge difference.  Personally, I like to use a bunch of second-rate rewritten PLRs (that you can get for ultra-cheap), propped up by 2 or 3 well-written and original content (that you actually pay decent money for).  If you design your navigation right, you will be driving attention to the good content and making the site look packed by inclusion of the second-rate stuff.

You can get everything needed for a quick flip with Justin Brooke’s new Website Flipping Starter Kit; 25 blog themes, 4 pre-made sites, 5 PLR products, 500 free graphics, traffic software, & video training.  So get to it.

Brett

Finding a website to flip isn’t that hard. A quick look at popular webmaster forums like Sitepoint and DP are guaranteed to turn up more than a few sites available for cheap that you can easily sell for over twice the cost of acquisition.

If that’s all you’re going to do, though, you’re not going to maximize the inherent profitability of the business model. Sure, picking out a $25 site, tweaking it a little and letting it simmer for a few weeks before turning it over for $200 is a good way to make a small profit. However, it’s neither going to make you rich nor is it a real foundation to a sustainable business.

Experienced website flippers always go beyond “cheap” when looking for properties to turn around. They also don’t restrict themselves to places where websites are normally traded, such as webmaster forums or auction sites like eBay, where competition can prove fierce. Instead, they turn to search results and other avenues, evaluating websites to go after based on their merits and potential.

Finding those sites that are not on the market but may be available requires you to really search deep into the web. The more familiar you are with a particular industry, the more likely you will be able to scope out those under-performing properties that hide within its confines.

Big sites that show up in the first page of search results for that industry are obviously out of the question – they’re too expensive and well-managed on their own that changes you put in may actually be detrimental to it. What you’re looking for are those niche properties that have received some actual attention from their owners but are now being neglected for the most part. Maybe they’re good sites that are badly-optimized, content sites with no structure or decent products that weren’t given any promotion – if they actually carry some value but could use a little more work to make their mark, they will be your target acquisitions.

Take some time and go beyond the typical sources for websites to buy and flip for a profit. With a little work and patience, you can chance upon some real treasures.

-Brett

ps. if your interested in getting started or bettering your website flipping skills I highly suggest site flip academy

Shopping For Websites: What Makes Them Valuable

When evaluating whether you want to flip a particular website, you want to look for certain qualities that will make it a potential hit. Many times, you’ll come across sites with one or more of these factors going for it, with its owners simply unable to capitalize on them.

1. Backlinks

Despite all the  pages upon pages of SEO advice written across many books and blogs, nothing still helps a site up the search rankings better than solid backlinks.  When evaluating a site for a possible flip, check its backlink profile.

If it has many links from social media, adding an authority link from two or three popular and respected sources in its industry will probably be enough to turn it into a goldmine.  The more natural and authoritative links that it already has, the more valuable it should be to you as a potential site for flipping.

2. Pagerank

While many now discount the importance of pagerank, there are few metrics as easy to see that will give you good indication of where a site is at in Google’s graces.   People still pay good money for pagerank too.

3. Community/Users/Subscribers

An existing audience makes a property extremely valuable for any site flipper.  Whether it is a blog with RSS subscribers, a forum with members or an ebook sales website with a mailing list, having built-in users you can leverage right from the get-go makes a site brimming full of potential.

4. Professional Work

Check the layout, the design, the backend, the scripts and other tangible components that comprise the actual website.  Are they professional-grade or low quality patchwork?  Do the articles and databases look like they can be worth a decent amount?  Is it running some custom scripts or CMS that can be worth a good amount on its own?

5. Domain Name

How valuable will the site’s domain name be on today’s market?  Is it brandable and memorable?  You might recognize a site’s name to be related to a popular brand, for instance, on a totally different niche.  If you can buy the site, you can easily overhaul it to  serve that market and sell it for much more based on the name’s value alone.

If you are interested or want to learn more about website flipping check out Site Flip Academy