5. Website Flipping: Buy and Sell Websites

Part FIVE of the 10 Ways to Make Money Online Series

By now I assume you have already downloaded and read the special report by Jimmy D. Brown that we’re discussing in this 10-part series. If not, click the link above to see the original post and download the 30-page report.

The 5th method that Jimmy discusses for making money online is website flipping, or to buy and sell websites for profit. See pages 16-17 in your PDF. Jimmy suggests one of two models, or a combination of both: creating and selling websites, or buying websites to resell…

Whether you create the websites yourself, or buy them cheap at various places online, you will earn a much higher return by investing time into the profit potential. A website that is already monetized, getting traffic and proving it’s earning potential will command a much higher selling price.

Spend a few months building the content, traffic and income – and then you can sell the site at a much higher price. Since the site is pulling in traffic and a profit (even if it’s a small profit), it commands a higher price because there’s proof that it’s profitable. People are now buying into proven profits rather than profit potential. (page 16)

The general rule of thumb for the price point is 12-months earnings. So if the site is earning $100 consistently every month, you can sell it for around $1,200.

Let me just stop there and make a confession: I’ve never sold a website, or purchased a website with the intention to resell. I’ve browsed the listings, and I’ve watched a few people go through the process, but I have never actively participated in this particular method of making money online.

That’s one of the great things about writing this series from Jimmy’s 10-point report: getting to explore methods and topics that I wouldn’t normally bring up for discussion here on ClickNewz. I think it is incredibly useful in helping us all to expand our vision on the opportunities available, don’t you?

Here’s my line of thinking:

If I have a website that is fairly new, say around 90 days old, and consistently making $100/month… I don’t say to myself, “I could sell this today for $1200!”.

My mind doesn’t work that way. Instead I say, “I could triple the earnings on this site easily by investing some time into it now, and earn more than $3,000 over the next year.”

Not only could I tweak the site until it’s running at it’s full earning potential, and let it continue to run and generate passive income on the side while I work on other projects… but that little site has even more potential for me in the long run. As it becomes more established in the search engines, it also begins to have link value among other things.

Now this could be considered smart thinking, or it could be completely flawed.

If you know yourself well enough to realize you’ll leave that poor little site sitting on the back burner and never really do anything with it, you may be better off selling it to someone who will.

How many people have websites, or even just domain names, sitting on the back burner? That would be 99.9% of us, I’m sure . That being the case, it’s like eBay: it makes sense to “clean house” and put the cash back into what you are actively working on in your online business.

I can also see where Website Flipping would be an ideal model for the person who has high energy in the start-up phase, but has discovered they have zero follow-through on any project they start. If you have half a dozen low-profit website projects scattered around, but fail to follow through on any of them to substantial profit, this may just be the perfect online business model for you.

It’s also worth pointing out that you should always consider selling over just deleting a website or letting a domain expire. I have seen this happen so many times over the years, and it always stumps me. Keep in mind that one man’s virtual junk is another man’s virtual treasure

I’ll close this post with some helpful resources on how to buy and sell websites, and open this up for discussion in the comments. You can right-click on each link to open it in a new tab or a new browser window.

Resources:

I’d love to hear your thoughts, or your personal experiences if you’ve dabbled in Website Flipping yourself.

Best,