The internet is a tricky place.
There are so many different strategies to reach your audience, but you need to be careful that you don’t get lost in the mix.
The best way to cut through all of the noise and create an effective marketing campaign is by flipping websites.
Website flipping is a popular business model that has been around for years.
It can be an excellent way to make money online and it’s relatively easy to learn the basics.
If you’re interested in learning more about how website flipping works, then this article will help you get started.
The step-by-step guide will walk you through what website flipping is, how it works, and what it can do for your business.
What Is Website Flipping?
Website flipping is the process of buying or creating websites at a lower cost and then selling them at a higher cost to earn profits.
After you’ve created or purchased a site, your job is to keep it up and running so that it can continue making money.
Then once the site starts earning a certain amount of profit, you can sell it for more than what you bought it for.
Website flipping isn’t complicated, but there are several important factors that can make or break your business.
When done right, website flipping is an excellent way to create passive income online.
It’s also one of the best ways to gain financial freedom through entrepreneurship.
Website Flipping: To Buy Or To Build?
The website flipping business model has many different pros and cons.
One of the main advantages is that you don’t have to create a new site from scratch.
That can take months or even years before it starts making money, which means you’ll have to spend a lot of time with no returns on your investment.
Instead, you buy an existing site that’s already generating revenue.
You’ll need some online skills to keep it running smoothly, but it will save you a lot of time.
So that you can focus on other aspects of your business.
When done right, buying an established site can be one of the quickest ways to start making money with development.
1. Building From Scratch.
Creating a website is very easy in today’s era.
Building new sites from scratch requires very less time and money for development costs.
You can build a website, develop it well, make it valuable and then sell it for profit.
With current CMS technology like WordPress, you can start a website even without any coding skills.
All you have to do is install a good WordPress theme and your website is good.
Once you have your website built, make it valuable by implementing SEO, generating traffic and money.
This way you can attract potential consumers to buy your site.
2. Buying An Existing Website.
Buying an existing website is the best way to bypass all the bureaucracy of building and selling a website.
This is because you don’t have to build a website yourself and wait for it to grow, which can take weeks or months to see a return on your investment.
Instead, you quickly flip a site and start making money with it within a few months.
But there’s a catch here.
You may have to buy a website with huge money.
You also need to research the website to see if it is worth it.
You don’t want to buy a bad website at a high rate and sell it at a low rate.
When you have enough ideas on how to research a website, you can start buying and selling a site like a pro.
How To Flip Websites: A Complete Breakdown Of The Process.
The first thing you need to do before buying a site is research.
That includes looking for the best opportunities and taking time to compare multiple options.
To do that successfully, it’s highly recommended to gather knowledge on Flipping Websites.
It will give you an excellent starting point and show you how to find your niche and source potential websites.
Once you’re ready to start investing, there are some important steps that can make or break your business:
Step 1: Either Create A Brand New Website Or Buy A Prebuilt Website.
You can buy pre-existing websites from the internet.
It is very easy to build your site from scratch if you have prior development knowledge.
With CMS technologies like WordPress, you can easily create a website without any coding skills.
However, if you don’t want to build a website yourself, you can choose to purchase a site that is already built and waiting for new owners.
Also, make sure you are looking for a popular web domain name.
A well-branded domain name is going to be one of the main factors in determining how effective your business will be online.
In most cases, if your company name is unique and easy to remember, having a high-ranking website will give you an edge over your competitors.
The ideal way to find out what names are available is through a tool like NameBio.
Step 2: Make It Valuable.
Once you’ve got your domain name and hosting plan, it’s time to start building a website.
But before you do anything else you need to make sure that your website is valuable for users and search engines.
If both of those aspects are taken care of it will be much easier to generate traffic and improve site value with organic SEO.
There are many different ways to consolidate online information into an easy-to-follow package for readers, these are:
1. Improve Website Design.
You can do this without any coding skills.
If you use a site like ThemeForest it’s easier than ever to find free or paid themes/ designs that will work for your company website.
Depending on the type of product, service, and industry you’re in.
With just a little bit of design knowledge and some keyword research, you can easily create great-looking pages that rank well with Google, Bing, and other search engines.
2. Add Great Content.
Another excellent way to improve user experience is by writing original texts about topics related to your business niche.
This will make readers more interested in what your company has to offer.
And add extra value for organic searches too (in most cases).
The best part is that creating unique text won’t cost you much.
You don’t need to hire a copywriter or spend any money on outsourcing, especially in the beginning when your online earnings are low.
All you have to do is be creative and interested in writing or content creation.
But if you’re not an expert in this area then hiring a freelancer can be a great option. To make content marketing easier, We recommend using a WordPress Content Management System (CMS).
3. Do Proper On-Page And Technical SEO.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process that involves improving the visibility of a website in organic search results.
It’s one of the best ways to improve your site traffic and reach a wider audience online.
There are several on page SEO and technical SEO things you need to do to make sure that your website appears high up in Google searches:
- Use keywords related deliberately to your content titles, headings, ALT tags, URL descriptions, etc.
- Carefully choose unique alt tags for images on your web page because they’re also used by search engines like Google to decide which pages are relevant for specific queries (keywords).
- Tweak internal linking elements like footer menu items, breadcrumbs, pagination anchors, etc.
- Dynamically update every page with social media sharing buttons and popular posts.
4. Build Backlinks.
Backlinks are links from other sites that point directly to your domain name.
If you own a blog, website, or any other online reference page and someone places a link with your company’s URL on it then it will count as an external backlink for SEO purposes.
The number of high-quality backlinks for individual websites is one of the main ranking factors used by search engines like Google and Bing.
It’s also excellent for improving organic traffic and building social media exposure too.
To find quality backlinks you can use tools like Siteliner, Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, etc.
5. Increase Traffic And Social Media Followers.
As your website becomes more popular, you’ll need to spend some time promoting it through different channels like email marketing, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Linked In, Pinterest, etc.
Social media is one of the best ways to interact with clients and win their trust.
Once you have built up a following for your business on various platforms then you can start communicating about new products or services that are relevant to people who follow you online.
6. Generate Revenue From It.      Â
Once you have all the traffic, social media followers, and backlinks for your site then you can start monetizing it.
There are several ways to make money online from your website once your target audience is visiting your site on a regular basis:
- Sell products your own products.
- Monetize with Ads.
- Sell advertising space to other businesses.
- And many more!
Step 3: Evaluate Your Website.
Now that you have created a brand new site for your business, it’s time to evaluate its performance and see where you need to improve.
The best way to do this is by using keywords relevant to your products and services.
Then check how well they rank on different search engines like Google, Bing, etc.
1. Track Online Mentions Of Your Brand.
Monitoring enables you to find out what people think about your company online.
It can also show which media channels give you the most exposure and overall help attract more traffic and achieve higher rankings in SERPs (search engine result pages).
There are several options available when it comes to monitoring your brand mentions.
You can use free or paid tools like Google Alerts, Mention, Talkwalker, etc.
2. Follow Backlinks To Your Site.
You should monitor new inbound links for your website on a regular basis because they show where people think your content is valuable.
If you get lots of external sites linking directly to it then this means that other businesses and bloggers recognize the value of the information on it (and so will their visitors).
The more high-quality backlinks you get for your site then the higher the chances of achieving better rankings in SERPs too.
3. Look At All The Analytics Reports.
Once you get started with free analytics tools like Google Analytics (GA), you can get a better understanding of how people interact with your website.
Since GA provides in-depth statistics for any site, it’s one of the most commonly used platforms for businesses online today.
Step 4: Put it Up For Sale.
You might want to sell your site at some point in time after building it.
The most common reason for this is that you don’t have the time or resources to maintain it any longer.
Sometimes you might also want to sell your site because it’s earning a lot of money but you’re not interested in running a business anymore.
Selling any website for the first time is fairly difficult since you don’t have much experience with that kind of thing.
However, as long as you go about it properly then you should find a buyer within a reasonable period of time.
Here are some steps to help guide you through the process:
1. Create An Information-Packed Sales Page.
A great way to market your online asset for sale is by creating a dedicated page on the domain itself with details about who created it, why they chose that particular niche, what makes it unique compared to other websites, etc.
2. Include Lots Of Screenshots And Proof Of Earnings.
People are more likely to buy your website if they know that it’s making money and they can even see proof of its traffic and revenue on a daily basis.
You can include screenshots of transactions, ads, affiliate commissions, etc. so people don’t have to take your word for it.
3. Make Sure You Use HTTPS Everywhere.
If you want your sales pitch page to appear more trustworthy then be sure to add an SSL certificate (secure socket layer) on the domain itself too.
This is because web browsers display a green padlock in the address bar when visiting sites with this kind of encryption in place.
4. Use An Escrow Service For Payment Processing.
An escrow works like a third party between two different parties for a financial transaction.
In the case of website sales, it’s used for holding the money until you’ve transferred ownership to the new owner and they have confirmed that everything is working as expected with the site.
What Are The Best Platforms to Buy and Sell Websites?
If you’re looking for platforms for website flipping then here are some of the most popular options currently available online:
1. Flippa.
Flippa is the go-to place for buying and selling anything online from small businesses, large corporations, blogs, forums, apps, ebooks/software, YouTube accounts, etc.
What’s unique about this platform when compared to others is that it has an active community behind it.
Where members regularly ask questions or offer advice from their own experiences.
Flippa is my number 1 recommendation for website flipping.
2. Empire Flippers.
Empire Flippers are one of the leading platforms for buying and selling established digital assets.
They’ve been in business since 2013 and they typically sell websites and online businesses that are less than 2 years old.
The minimum price for a sale on this site starts at $1,000 but it can be as high as $300,000 or more depending on what you’re looking to sell.
3. MicroAcquire.
MicroAcquire is another popular platform for buying and selling established sites.
However, they don’t deal with too many small-time business websites since their focus tends to be on more prominent digital assets that are worth.
They only accept listings that include their asking price (no negotiation) and they use Escrow.com as the payment processor for all transactions.
4. FE International.
FE International is one of the world’s leading investment companies in the field of website flipping.
They offer a variety of products and services to their customers so they can maximize their online portfolios.
FE International operates with the goal of empowering people to do great things all over the world.
FE International was started with just eight clients but has since grown into one of the largest companies in terms of market share for investments related to website flipping.
5. Motion Invest.
If you’re looking to sell your website for cash then Motion Invest is another good option.
Their process is very simple and they accept listings at any price point.
The only requirement is that you have proof of earnings before listing the site for sale with them since they require it to be profitable.
However, the catch is that the earnings must be generated from organic traffic.
6. BuySellEmpire.
BuySellEmpire is a platform for buying and selling websites.
They have different policies depending on what the website is worth.
For example, to sell an established small-time business website (under $3,000) you’ll need to provide recent earnings i.e. bank statements or screenshots of transactions.
But if you’re looking to sell an established digital asset that’s valued at over $100,000 then all you need to do is fill out the form and they’ll contact you for more information before accepting your listing.
7. SideProjectors.
SideProjectors is a platform for buying and selling websites that target a specific niche.
They don’t accept listings without proof of earnings but the good news is they only focus on one type of website.
So it’s much easier to sell yours than if you were to list it with other platforms since you wouldn’t have to provide recent earnings.
If you’re looking for more general-purpose websites then Flippa, Empire Flippers, MicroAcquire, FE International, and BuySellEmpire are probably your best options at this time.
Just note that these sites aren’t always available for use since not all website sellers will agree to their policies when it comes down to it.
This means that you’ll need to do some research in order to find a suitable platform to sell your website on.
8. Digital Point Forum.
This is one of the leading forums for website flipping in terms of traffic.
It’s very popular with experienced website buyers who are looking to purchase sites that are already established.
The downside about this platform is that it’s not easy to find what you’re looking for unless you use their custom search feature or browse through all of the listings in their marketplace forum.
9. Freemarket.
Freemarket is a unique website selling platform that provides an online marketplace for finding and attracting motivated sellers in order to buy their websites at a fair price.
This market specializes in buying and selling sites that generate income so expect to find lots of listings here if you’re looking to sell yours.
Some Tips For Selling Websites Online.
Here are some tips for website flipping:
1. Niche Selection And Keyword Research.
Make sure that your website focuses on a specific niche, keyword, or type of traffic since you won’t be able to sell it without proof of earnings.
If you’re on a budget then you can sell first-page rankings with the use of Google Adsense and/or Amazon Associates Programs for monetization purposes.
You’ll need to prove that your website ranks on the first page of Google for a specific keyword/s or niche.
Keep in mind that it’s not acceptable to list with most sites if you’ve been using black hat SEO tactics to gain your rankings.
But since you’re not intending to sell your site unless you get caught this shouldn’t be an issue.
2. Use WordPress For Building Websites.
WordPress is easy to use and will give you the most flexibility when it comes to updates, article management, and hosting.
This is an important factor for website buyers because they want to know that they’re buying a good site with everything in working order.
3. Start With Simple Monetization Methods.
Avoid using spammy affiliate programs, PPC advertising networks, or pop-ups on your site since you’ll be hard-pressed to find buyers who are looking for these types of sites.
This means that it’s probably best not to sell websites with these techniques no matter how desperate you might be to unload them.
4. Build The Site For Users, Not Search Engines.
Keep this in mind since you’ll have a better chance of selling your site if you focus on providing high-quality content to real users.
If you can’t find a buyer within 6 months then this is probably the reason why.
Remember that content is king when it comes to growing your website so enter competitions, publish free reports, do guest blogging, and social bookmark in order to gain inbound links.
5. Create An Attractive Listing.
You need to make sure that you use quality images, bullet lists, screengrabs, and videos to show off what your site has to offer.
Keep in mind that you’ll need to send buyers who are interested in buying your website an email with your listing URL which will be published on the platform you’re selling at.
6. Maximize Your Earnings Through Your Website.
You should put some serious effort into maximizing your earnings so that you can sell sites for as much as possible.
Start by signing up with Google Adsense and Amazon Associates before creating new content.
Add a pixel to all of your outgoing links and make sure that your site is fully optimized for conversions.
7. Plan A Smooth Transition For The New Buyer.
The last thing that you want to do is leave your website unmonitored for months on end.
This means that it’s a good idea to provide new buyers with the login information needed in order to make updates and changes if necessary once a sale agreement has been reached.
8. Get Multiple Valuations.
This is important so you don’t leave money on the table when it comes to figuring out what your website is worth.
Use tools like WorthMonkey, WebSiteGraphs, and Evaluate to get feedback about what buyers are willing to pay for your site based on its earnings potential.
9. Continue To Run The Site Until The Deal Is Completed.
Keep in mind that you should only sell your website once you’re certain that everything has been transferred over to the new buyer.
Establish a point of contact for both parties during this time and make sure that you’re available through email, Skype, or social media if necessary.
Conclusion.
Selling a website can be difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating which is why you need to put some thought into it before listing your site.
After doing so then the next step that you should take is figuring out.
How much to charge for your site based on its earnings potential and expected return on investment for new buyers.
Remember that there are lots of reasons why someone would want to purchase a website such as generating passive income, learning about SEO/web development, or having complete control over monetization.
Keep in mind that it’s important not to get greedy when selling websites since you can land yourself in hot water if you do, especially if you’re using black hat methods to generate web traffic.
So always think of the future and what you would do if you found yourself in a similar situation.
Just remember that selling websites can be lucrative both short-term and long-term but it requires patience, dedication, and hard work to get them done.
Good luck!
