4 Steps To Making Money By Flipping Sites

August 28, 2009 by Elizabeth
Filed under flipping sites

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4 Steps To Making Money By Flipping Sites

Every website is an asset. Some are worth pennies while others are worth thousands of dollars. Most marketers build their sites from scratch and develop them to generate an ongoing income. Others buy and sell sites quickly, generating their income on the spread. This is called site flipping. In the same way people buy and sell houses, you can flip websites for a profit – sometimes, an enormous profit.

The good news is that site flipping is incredibly flexible. You can treat it like a full-time business or use it to generate cash flow to fund your other online ventures. The strategy will be around as long as people monetize their traffic. Even better, it’s not nearly as difficult as you might think. Today, I’ll give you a 4-step blueprint that you can use to start flipping websites for a profit.

#1 – Look For Bargains

Most novice “flippers” find sites by visiting webmaster forums, eBay, and popular marketplaces like Sitepoint to hunt for bargains. This can be effective; it’s not uncommon to find desperate owners willing to accept $50 for a site that you can quickly flip for $100. The drawback is that these places are crawling with other people looking for the same bargains.

There’s nothing wrong with getting started at places like eBay or Sitepoint. In fact, doing so can be a valuable education. However, you’ll uncover better deals that yield more profit by taking a different route.

Consider what buyers want (after all, you’ll eventually be selling to them). In most cases, they’re looking for aged domains, developed content, backlinks, Pagerank, and even an established forum. You can find sites that meet this criteria by using Google, Yahoo! Site Explorer, and little elbow grease. Once you uncover them, contact the owners to ask whether they’re open to offers. Keep in mind that everyone is open to the right price.

#2 – Develop The Site

A lot of flippers buy and sell sites without adding an ounce of content or development to them. You can generate cash flow through this type of arbitrage, but you won’t make nearly as much money as you would if you were to add more value to the site. For example, create high-quality articles, engaging videos, and a blog.

Also, you’ll be surprised by how many websites ignore basic SEO methods. The owners are often completely unaware with regard to how to do it. Integrate a few easy on-site search engine optimization strategies like unique titles, H1 tags, and internal linking. That will make the site friendlier to spiders.

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#3 – Optimize The Site For Traffic

This step is what separates mere brokers from true online real estate developers. Let’s suppose you’re not interested in making a quick sale. Instead, you want to hold onto the site and optimize it further to develop search engine traffic (good call). You’ll need to spend some time building in-bound links. The links should point not only to the home page, but also to the category pages and lower-level pages (assuming a basic silo structure).

Links gain traction as they age. That means you may need to wait a few weeks or months before flipping the site. But, with the right optimization, you can flip a $50 site for thousands of dollars as traffic volume builds.

#4 – Focus On Monetization

Knowing how to monetize your traffic plays a key role in flipping a site for maximum profit. Here’s why: experienced online real estate developers buy sites based upon a multiple of monthly revenue. Every industry is a little different and dozens of variables contribute to the multiple. For example, a website that generates revenue from commissions on acai berry offers will sell for a lower multiple than a general weight loss site. A website with a long history of Clickbank sales will sell for a higher multiple than a relatively new site.

If you’re just flipping a $50 site for $100, this will be irrelevant. However, if you want to buy, develop, and sell online properties for a substantial profit, this is critical.

The last step to flipping sites is to find a buyer. This is a huge area that can involve using specific marketplaces as well as brokers. It also involves writing “descriptions” that truly sell the merits of the online property you’re moving. We’ll get into this area in more detail in a future post. For now, realize that there is an enormous opportunity to generate income by buying, developing, and selling websites.

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