Questions To Ask Before Flipping Your Website

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business people

Flipping websites is really about the process of buying websites with hidden value, fixing them up, and then selling them later for a profit. The buyer is happy because they have a new site, the seller is happy to turn a profit, and the user gets a better site. Everyone wins!

That said, there are many instances when flipping a site is a really bad idea. Figuring out if you should keep your site for the long term depends your goals among other things. In some cases it’s best to hold onto your site and just keep improving it over time.

Here are some questions to think about when deciding whether or not to sell your site:

  • How profitable is the site?
  • How much work is it to run the site?
  • Was the site created only to make money?
  • Are you using the site to establish your brand or online presence?
  • Did you put the site together for fun?
  • Can you leverage the site into something else?
  • Is the site in question making money in an evergreen niche?
  • Is the site fad?

If you just want to make a quick buck flipping your site then go ahead! If the site is holding you back, taking up too much time, or you need some money to move on to bigger and better things that by all means sell the site!

However, a better strategy is often to really invest in your website and build it out really well. Add real value to it. Work hard on it. This will increase your revenue on an ongoing basis as well as dramatically increase the valuation if you choose to sell down the road.

The key is to always be adding value for your users no matter what you do. Make your site faster, add better content, add the features your users want.

Best Place to Buy and Sell Websites

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Best Place to Buy and Sell Websites

There are loads of places where you can list a website, but the question is, how do you know which is the best? With forums, auctions and dedicated site flipping marketplaces, each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Using a Forum as a Marketplace

Digitalpoint, Webhostingtalk, Namepros are examples of popular forums that have sections dedicated to buying and selling websites. From here you can execute the whole transaction and you can also get your site appraised by the community for free. In general though, using a forum is a great way to get interest for a site, but it doesn’t afford either party anything in the way of protection as the transaction is entirely between seller and buyer.

Using an Auction as a Marketplace

eBay is the main example here and as more and more people use eBay, more and more people find out that it’s perhaps not the best tool for the job. Whilst you can successfully flip a site with eBay, it does nothing in the way of verifying any information, other than listing what you provide. As a result, whilst eBay does offer some level of protection, you are still largely responsible for what you buy.

Using a Dedicated Flipping Site

Flippa is the best example of a dedicated flipping site. It is one of the best places to go and because it’s the most popular you really can gain some valuable market insights. The site is highly reliable and they also can authenticate data such as traffic stats to provide some level of safety. By using a site such as Flippa you can take advantage of escrow services which afford both parties some degree of protection. The community on Flippa is knowledgeable and helpful in preventing scams and other fraudulent activity.

Perhaps another option not many people think of is selling the website directly. Many people simply advertise a website for sale on the site itself, but you can often get a lucrative deal by marketing your site to other sites in the same niche, suppliers and even business associates. After all, a good website is worth its weight in gold, and selling your site to someone that’s familiar with it is a lot easier than selling it to someone that’s not.

Whilst many of these sites have their own weaknesses, the reality is that they do work for selling websites. If you are careful when it comes to buying and selling, if you shop around you can find some really good deals simply because some people haven’t heard of the more popular sites such as Namepros and Flippa.

Do your research thoroughly and don’t walk into deals blind. Know exactly what you’re getting in to and don’t become a victim. Whilst you should always be careful, there are loads of bargains out there, you can find a profitable site for yourself, or a lucrative opportunity for resale. When it comes to selling however, save your site for the best marketplaces and make sure you get as much exposure as possible.

Flipping Websites vs Flipping Domains

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Flipping Websites vs Flipping Domains

Flipping websites and flipping domain names are both profitable ways to make some money online. While the concept is similar the actual practice of flipping websites is quite different from flipping domains.

Flipping websites is usually a longer-term and more profitable endeavor. On the other hand domain flipping yields less in the way of profits, but it can be quicker and requires less technical knowledge than flipping websites.

Spotting a valuable domain name is not easy. Here are three things (among many) that domain buyers should consider: the domain age, domain length and also domain extension. If you’ve got a domain with less than four characters, then you are onto something that will sell to someone. In fact every single four letter domain combination has been registered in the .COM tld.

As the internet gets more and more popular, good domain names are becoming harder to find. As a result it’s next to impossible to register a new domain name that really is exceptional, so instead if you want to flip domain names you should consider looking at drop-lists for names that are about to be de-registered.

Drop-lists are filled with thousands of domains that are about to be ‘dropped’ from the registrar’s database, as a ‘domainer’ or domain flipper it’s up to you to go through the list and separate the good from the bad. Look at page rank, domain age and back links to discover whether or not the domain’s worth anything, but be aware that there are also many other people doing exactly the same thing.

Once you’ve found some profitable domains it’s up to you to place back orders. If you’re lucky you may just win the domain, but more likely than not someone has already beaten you to it. A good domain name can sell for a small fortune and in the past domains have sold for millions. It all depends on what people are willing to pay.

Regardless of what people say, flipping works and it can generate a substantial income if you can show commitment and passion in this highly expert field. It’s not for beginners or those that think they can make a lot of money in a short period of time, so before you start flipping anything make sure to know your market, because it can be a very expensive investment if you start to make the wrong mistakes.

The bottom line for any form of flipping is that they can all be profitable. It’s simply a case of knowing what people are willing to pay for an item.

Can Flipping Websites Be a Full Time Job?

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Can Flipping Websites Be a Full Time Job

Flipping websites involves a lot of work, and if you know what you’re doing and you work very hard you can make a decent income. After all it’s just like working as a web site designer, SEO consultant and internet marketer. In fact it’s a fusion of the three jobs, and if you can do them reasonably well, you can be assured that you have an opportunity to make a consistent income from buying poorly designed / optimized / marketed websites, improving them and then re-selling them for a profit.

The secret to website flipping is knowing exactly what a sites worth and more importantly, how long it will take to get a return on your initial investment. Remember that the investment you make is both a financial one and it is also time based.

When you’re thinking of turning website flipping into a full time income, the first thing you should do is work on it as a part time hobby. Build up a collection of short-term flips, longer-term flips and also sites to keep because they generate a good passive income. There is no reason to flip a good passive income website is there?

The golden rule of online business and Internet Marketing is passive income. As a site flipper you will get the opportunity to buy and sell sites that have this as the primary goal. Spend the time to build your own personal portfolio of the best performing earners so that there is always something making you money.

Getting good at site flipping isn’t difficult and after a while you will start to realize how much time it takes to get a site into shape, and most importantly you’ll know if a site is worthwhile. Remember, $30 an hour for 30 hours a week is a lot better than $15 an hour for 60; so don’t fall under the spell of online business, keep track of your hours and treat it like a real brick and mortar enterprise.

If you can make a success out of flipping websites then you can also market your services and experience to other people. Internet marketer’s long for the abilities of someone that has the skills of a good site flipper and as time goes on, those high ticket-price websites won’t look so scary. Whilst a $10,000 dollar website sounds like an insane prospect at first, you could soon be turning that into a $50,000 website.

Can you make money flipping websites? The answer really depends on the person. It’s like anything really.

If you can commit yourself, show passion and enthusiasm and exhibit creativity in your work, then you can certainly start to make a regular income from flipping websites.

Website Valuation

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website valuation

Selling websites is a tricky business because surprisingly, up until recently, not many people valued them as tangible business assets. Instead, they thought that something which could fit on the size of a CD couldn’t actually be worth a great deal…

These days, websites are amongst some of the most valuable business assets a company can possess. Many companies wouldn’t even exist without their website. Think Google… Websites valued at anything from a nothing at all to billions of dollars!

When it comes to knowing your website’s value, how do you calculate it? Do you workout the time you’ve spent in hours developing it? Do you base its value on how many visitors it gets? It’s actually very complicated, and it depends on a number of factors. One rule of thumb is the more valuable a site is the more difficult it is to value!

Looking at the monthly profits is an important aspect of figuring how much your website is worth. One of the best rough calculations you can do in order to get a rough appraisal is to calculate the monthly profits for the past three months, then multiply by three + the age of your site. i.e. if my website generates $10,000 a month in profit and is 4 years old then I’d want to sell for $10,000 *(3+4) = $70,000.

But that’s just a general metric. It’s important to take into account other factors such as how many daily visitors you get. Chances are you’ve not went to great lengths to monetize your site, in which case, you can ask more based on the monthly visits. A good way to calculate is to add $1 for every hundred visitors your site gets, but remember to work this out based on an average over a reasonable period of time so you’re not basing you’re sites value on inaccurate information.

One of the other most important aspects of selling a site is its domain name. Usually domain names have separate value and it’s important to get a domain appraisal before you start to sell. In some cases, the domain can be worth more than the website, so take this into account when selling.

Ordinarily speaking, domain names need to be aged i.e. a few years old and they also need to have quality extensions. This means .com .net and .org. If your site is based on a .info domain then this will reduce how much you can ask, because .info domains and other ‘novelty’ domains are neither valuable nor attractive.

But the bottom line in selling a website for sale on the internet is that it is only ever worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. Don’t think because you spent 1,000 hours working on it that a site is worth $5,000 dollars because whilst it may very well be worth that much, it could also be worth less or alternatively more.

Don’t make the mistake of selling yourself short, and most importantly, don’t try to sell your site for more than it’s worth. If you can’t get a good price, hold on to it for a bit longer, because someone will buy it, eventually.