Site flipping, or simply the buying and selling of websites, has become a profitable way of earning from the Internet. Similar in many ways to real estate buy-and-sell businesses, flipping sites basically involves the same processes and methods: finding a site (house) to purchase; negotiating and completing the sale; adding value to the site (house); and finding a buyer and sell for a profit. Of course, in addition to business acumen, one needs to be Internet-savvy to go into the business of flipping websites.
Finding a site means looking online and scanning the web for prospects. An easier way would be to focus on specific niches and using related keywords in the search engines to limit searches to the targeted market (you shouldn’t limit your views to the first page returned by the search engine, as there may be gold buried in the less optimized pages).
Once you find an interesting site, you now need to assess the value of the site using factors such as host domains, traffic, stability, potential, the amount of work needed to turn it around, and other site-specific aspects. Numerous research tools are available online to help the buyer get good valuation figures.
After you have assessed the site’s value, you can now contact the owner and make an offer. If the owner tells you that the site is not being sold, or that they would get back to you as soon as they made a decision, you should keep the communication lines open while you move on to your next prospect. One pointer you need to keep in mind is not to cite prices on your first contact, as the owner might consider it ridiculously low that he’ll just ignore the offer, or up the price way too high to scuttle the negotiations. The negotiation may be quick and easy, or a protracted one requiring more patience and determination. If both parties come to terms on the price and other details of the sale, you can now have a contract drawn to finalize your purchase.
After buying the site, you now need to improve it. You’ve already decided during the assessment process the strategic improvements and add-ons needed to be implemented: updating the design, repositioning and resizing ads placement, search engine optimization, the works. Still, that doesn’t preclude any last-minute changes; you may want to add value and competitiveness to the website.
You may want to keep the site for a while as it slowly builds traffic and revenue, or sell it as soon as the improvements are in place. Either way, you can start the selling process by putting up a Site for Sale notice on the site or by listing it in the many marketplaces or forums on the Internet. However, before doing so, you need to go over the assessment process again, using the same tools as before but this time taking into consideration the improvements and better potential of the site, to get a reasonable selling price. You should also prepare the records for the site, such as statistics, proof of revenues, domain ownership – the very same things you required when you were buying the site.
Site flipping is a great way to earn some revenue. Indeed, due to the relatively undemanding work and high profit possibilities, some people have made the speculative market of website flipping as their primary way to earn a living.
