Website flipping is one of the best side hustles to make money online and it can provide you with the opportunity to learn digital marketing inside out as well if you’re an active website flipper. This online business opportunity is a step ahead of domain flipping and you can do both concurrently if you’re willing to work smarter.
In this guide, you’ll discover how to buy and sell websites
for profit. This online business model is commonly referred to as virtual real
estate (VRE) investing because it is similar in many respects to the physical
real estate business. However, there are many factors which you’ve to consider
when you want to sell your website without getting disappointed in the end.
Many years ago, I enrolled in several courses both on domain
investing and website investing to have an inside scoop of how it works. To
tell you the truth, the profit potential of flipping domain names and websites can
be astounding.
You can build a website from scratch or simply buy a website
for sale from the marketplace and sell it for profit later. Either way, you’ll make
profit if you can improve the earning capacity of the site and prove to your
potential buyer what he stands to gain after he has acquired the web property from
you.
This is why, as a flipper, you’ve to take note of everything
about your website including analytics, assets, costs incurred, time spent, etc
which can be associated with the web site as you manage and maintain it before
you decide to sell.
For simplicity, you’ve to picture a domain name as the bare
land on the web where you can build a website or create a blog while the
website or blog itself is the house which you’ve to build on the domain.
If you own a good domain name and it is in a good location
or neighborhood (i.e. niche or industry), you can make tidy sum of money from
selling the domain alone without even building a website on it.
However, if you’re able to improve on the fortunes of your
domain by creating a website on it, you can command more money when you decide
to flip the website with the domain. Like I said before, there are several
variables which will make a website or blog to become more valuable to a
potential buyer to acquire.
For a valuable domain name, you’ve to look at the following characteristics
or factors:
- Length of the domain in characters and words. The shorter, the better!
- Age of the domain
- Passes the radio test
- Not prone to misspelling
- Easy to remember
- Easy to pronounce
- No trademark infringement
- Memorable
- Pronounceable
- Keyword targeted
- No hyphen or numbers
- Distinctive or brandable
- In high paying niche or industry
- Trending or evergreen
- Etc
For a website for sale to become valuable to any potential buyer,
it must possess digital assets that can be utilized to produce more income when
the new owner decides to tweak or makeover the site.
Some of these business assets include:
- Average monthly revenue and profits of the site
- Age of the website domain
- Authority backlinks to the website
- Targeted email list of subscribers
- Dynamic and aesthetic design or theme of the website
- Search engine rankings of targeted keywords and phrases
- Volume of unique and high-quality content published
- Owned but transferable website licenses, apps and software
- On-page search engine optimization (SEO) and internal linking structure
- Reliable website analytics and metrics to evaluate traffic sources and variables
- The growth potentials of the website
- Domain authority
- Etc
With that said, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of website
flipping business.
What is
Website Flipping?
Website flipping is buying and selling of websites for
profit usually at arm’s length transaction. You can build a website or create a
blog from scratch, optimize it for SEO (search engine optimization), regularly publish
high-quality content on it, monetize the website, drive targeted traffic to it,
consistently make money online from the site for any reasonable number of
months or years, and sell it off for a lump sum to a willing and able buyer.
The business idea here is to consistently make money with
the website and make it profitable before you sell it to the new owner. On the
other hand, you can also research websites for sale in popular marketplaces like
Flippa.com and in a preferable niche market of your choice, buy and revamp it
to improve its earnings before you resell at a profit.
Flipping websites successfully comes with skillsets and
practice over time. And the best way to get good at it is to create a blog
website from scratch and scale it up to become a profitable asset to any
investor who is ready to purchase such website business.
Personally, this online business opportunity of creating a
blog website from scratch has helped me to learn digital marketing while trying to promote my blog to sell later down
the road. As it were, I may use this blog site as another case study to
demonstrate to beginners how to flip websites for profit if I decide to sell it.
Places to
Buy and/or Sell Your Websites
There are several marketplaces to sell a website and make
money on the internet. But the most popular sites I’m familiar with are:
- Flippa.com
- EmpireFlippers.com
- MotionInvest.com
For you to sell your website or blog quickly, work on these three
(3) major things:
- Consistently increase free targeted traffic to your website especially from search engines with on-page and off-page SEO duly taken care of,
- Grow the average monthly revenue and profits, and
- Publish consistent and high volume of unique and high-quality content on your blog website.
I’ve seen a lot of site flippers selling starter or turnkey
websites successfully. What is usually included in these starter websites are
registered domain name, web hosting set up, nice-looking website template or
dynamic blog theme, and high volume of content ready to be monetized.
It all depends on the strategy you wish to adopt in your
site flipping journey. As a beginner, it’s highly recommended that you start a
blog and make money from it to learn how to drive free targeted traffic from
search engines. Website investors usually prefer web properties with search
engine traffic as the major source of visitors.
This website flipping strategy will help you to know what to
look out for in a site when you are ready to buy and flip from the open
marketplaces.
For you to create a blog and make money from it, all you’ve
to do to get started is register a domain name and purchase web hosting from a reliable company that supports WordPress hosting.
The ongoing tasks are regularly creating and publishing content optimized for
SEO, monetizing and then driving free search traffic to your website.
Website flipping for beginners is not rocket science but
common sense. You can sign up with marketplaces where people regularly buy and
sell websites daily. Continue to observe and analyze websites that were sold
and why it sold. It will help you to figure out exactly what potential buyers look
out for in a website or blog before they bid and buy.
Also, if you build a blog from the beginning and take care
of everything including on-page SEO, internal linking structure, link building,
monetizing your blog, building an email list, blog promotion, and so on, you’ll
have hands-on experience on key metrics to focus on which are crucial to fast
blog or site sale.
Flipping websites is interesting if your site has been
consistently earning monthly net profits (not necessarily revenue) for six (6)
months and above and still growing. This is because ROI (return on investment)
is an important factor for buyers to consider when investing in a website.
Website Valuation
Methods
There are various metrics website buyers put into
consideration to value a website you want to sell. Personally, I focus on
generating consistent monthly net profits especially from affiliate marketing,
Google AdSense, digital products sales, etc for at least 6 months.
With this consistent income, I can comfortably value the
site at 30X to 40X its net profits. So, for a site generating $350 per month in
net profits, holding all other factors constant, you can expect to sell it between
$10,500 and $14,000.
You’ll be able to command more money from your website sale
if you own an email list, have apps and software licenses that are
transferable, good and optimized website template or blog theme, ranking on
SERP (search engine results page) for money keywords, and so on.
Build a
Website Versus Buy a Website
For me, I’m more comfortable building a website or starting
a blog from scratch and selling it. Because you cannot be diligent enough to
scrutinize and evaluate a website for sale before you buy, many investors have
got their fingers burnt by investing in dud website businesses.
But as your experience grows, you’ll be able to sift the
chaff from the wheat in the marketplaces. It takes time, patience, experience
and practice to get it right. There are websites you’ll buy and before you know
it, all the sources of traffic will dry up.
In conclusion, you can hustle and earn online from home with
website flipping business if you’re willing to do the work.
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