I’m sure that by now, many of you have seen one of the numerous tv shows airing almost every night about handymen buying a house, making some upgrades, and selling it a short time later… and often making scads of money in the process. While applying this process to websites probably won’t make you rich, it is a great way to start off your online business. Though the risk is still there, you can manage that risk by taking over a site (often for less than the cost was to set it up), make some changes, do some marketing, and then turn around and sell it!
What makes it a great way to get started?
For starters, it’s a great way to learn the business in a controlled manner; when you start from scratch, you have to come up with your own idea. You have to find a designer and a coder to build the site, and once your site is ready, you have to learn how to market it. Often this can become a very daunting task, especially when you’re all starry-eyed and looking to get rich quick because of some blog post. It also can be very affordable to get started; in every case where we’ve flipped a site, we’ve bought the site for less than $150, built it up into something that earns a few bucks a month, and resold it for double + the income earned while we owned the site ourselves.
Generally, the point I’m trying to make is that rather than spending $1000 and learning the business the hard way, you can learn things on the cheap that you can then apply to your own ideas. Also, if things go bad, it’s pretty easy to sell a finished site - even if it has no traffic or earnings - for around $100, so your risk is minimal.
How do I get started ?
It’s quite easy, all you have to do is start frequenting some of the popular webmaster forums such as sitepoint, webhostingtalk and dnforum. Each of those sites has a very active marketplace where, on occasion, you can catch a diamond in the rough - or if you’ve got the coin, a real money maker.
For the most part, it’s a game of being patient and watching what comes up. I would recommend checking each of the above forums twice or more per day, just to get the jump on anything that comes available. It may take a day, it may take a month, but something inevitably will come available - and when it does, you have to be ready to jump.
Can I really make money flipping sites?
That’s the big question: when you get started, your gains will likely be rather small , depending on how hard you work at it… and depending on just plain luck. I would say that if you do your research, you should be able to make at least 100% return on your investment, but it really depends on the type of site you’re working with. Basically, people will buy one of 4 things:
1. A great idea
2. A nice design
3. Traffic
4. Earnings
If the site you buy is a great idea, then all you have to do is be a good sales person to turn around and flip it. If a site is ugly, then all it may take is a nice design done cheaply by a freelancer. If a site has lots of traffic, then all you have to do is come up with a better way to earn money off the site, and lastly, if the site is already earning some money, then really all you have to do is drive more traffic there to increase the value.
Is website flipping safe?
Yes and No. I would compare the online marketplace to the wild west of the 1800’s: there really is no law or recourse, particularly for small transactions, which is why we recommend only risking money you can afford to lose - especially at the start! Essentially, you are sending money to people in other countries who may not even own the website - so if you don’t ask the right questions, or take the right precautions, it can be dangerous.
But that question takes us into part 2, which will be posted later this week. It will tell you how you can protect yourself, and what questions and information to ask for! Keep checking in…
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Flippin’ is an interesting concept, and I would say that it certainly can work, but you really do need to be very clued up at what you are doing. SEOing and the likes must be top notch!
April 3rd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Not necessarily. All you have to do is find one aspect of a site that can be improved. If a site is earning $500/month and you are able to increase the earnings to $750/month through more efficient ad placement, then you have just improved the value of the site by 50%. Sell and profit!
I don’t agree that you should be looking at $100 - $300 sites. There’s not really any gains to be made on something like that. Even if you are successful in turning a 100% profit, you have to take into consideration how much time you spent making those gains. If you make $300 flipping a site, but spent 15 hours buying, running, fixing things, and then finally selling, you’ve only made $20/hr. For many people this isn’t even better than having a job. I would say that flipping doesn’t make sense until you are looking at sites that cost over $1000. Then if you can double up for 15 hours of work, it makes a lot more sense to take on the risk.
April 4th, 2007 at 7:14 am
We have bought sites for < $200, put almost no work into them (less than an hour) and turned around and sold them for double the cost.
Easy way to generate more captial.
April 4th, 2007 at 7:51 am
The purpose of the article was more geared towards new comers, to me fix and flipping on the high end of the scale is to risky for someone getting started however if you start on the low end you can get your feet wet even if you don’t make alot of money to start off.
It allows you to start meeting freelancers who you can use in future projects without having to go all or nothing right out of the gate.
When Dave mentions that we’ve bought sites for under $200 and made 100% ROI I should mention we sold them several months sometimes a year later, currently our only fix and flip we still own is www.articles-4-free.com we bought it for around $125 last spring and it earns us $35/month after our changes and has a good ammount of traffic to boot, I wouldn’t be suprised if its worth $500 right now.
Granted once your fully into online business, dealing with sites so small isn’t worth your time, I agree totally with that and its part of why we don’t buy sites very often for resale, Dave tells me about a site and if its not worth a few grand and making a couple hundred a month I don’t want to get involved.
April 4th, 2007 at 11:35 am
It is very profitable when you know how to do it. That is ‘WHEN’. Usually, it requires much effort to revamp the site and tweak it to make it attractive over the long run. It’s definitely not for just about anyone. You must have alot of commitment.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I think to actually earn money online and be successful in just about anything you have to have a lot of commitment. It’s very rare that success just hops in your lap and makes you fabulously wealthy.
You especially need a lot of commitment when trying to make an online business. As Jay mentioned, he wrote this post for the beginner and that’s why he suggests cheaper sites to start. Low risk to see if it’s right for you, as opposed to buying a site for several thousand dollars right at the start.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Hey guys, just discovered your site. I am sucking your feed from now on.
A little tip: Why don’t you make links between your articles? I mean especially this one. You end with saying that part 2 covers more, but then I have to go look for part 2. Luckily there is a “related posts” link not too far under the article, but I discovered that while I am typing this comment.when I finished reading the article, my first move was to look for part 2.
Just a suggestion. Keep up the good work.
April 13th, 2007 at 7:17 am
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April 13th, 2007 at 7:19 am
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April 13th, 2007 at 7:21 am
That’s a great idea Rehuel.
As you can see, I’ve added in the links to the other posts :)
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:06 pm
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