DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES
The information presented herein represents the views of the author as of the date of publication. Because of the rate with which conditions change, the author reserves the right to alter and update their opinions based on the new conditions.
This report is for informational purposes only and the author does not accept any responsibility for any liability resulting from the use of this information. While every attempt has been made to verify the information provided here, the author and their resellers and affiliates cannot assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional.
One of the easiest ways to make quick cash is to sell one of your websites that is generating consistent income. Some people wonder why you would want to sell a site that is doing well and earning an income on autopilot.
Personally, I think why not? If you need a quick cash injection for another project, or to buy yourself something nice, then there’s no reason why
you shouldn’t.
The income from selling sites has helped me clear debt, go travelling, outsource new projects, and put down a deposit on a new house. I certainly don’t sell as many sites as I used to, but I still do it occasionally, and my sites sell EVERY time.
So what’s the secret to success with site flipping? Traffic and revenue. A site that is making consistent, autopilot income (and has been doing so for a number of months), will ALWAYS sell. Maybe you won’t always get the exact price you want (depending on the market), but it will sell.
Unfortunately, out of courtesy towards my buyers, I can’t reveal the URLs of the sites I have sold. However I will tell you some of the details of a site I sold recently.
About The Site
As I said, I can’t actually tell you the URL of the blog (also it was written into the contract that I wouldn’t disclose the URL).
I just wanted to show you a screenshot of my Escrow account though as proof:
Instead I’ll tell you a bit about the blog itself, and how you can flip your sites for a four figure payday. The site in question was only 10 pages of content (not including the compensation disclosure, the privacy policy, contact page etc.).
It was a review of one specific product that was getting about 5000 searches per month. The site was making approximately $1400 a month (and had been for the previous 3 months) and got about 2500 unique visitors per month.
Most of the visitors came direct from the search engines, and a few came from
2 articles I had submitted to Ezinearticles.com.
Some people will tell you that you should get 12x monthly income (in which case I should have asked for $16800), but sites based around just 1 product generally don’t sell for quite that much. This is because the product could have a name change, or it could be withdrawn from the market, and there’s not much the new owner can do about it if the product name is in the URL. Also, because the site was already ranked on page 1 for its main keywords, there wasn’t much room for development or increase of income.
This particular product I was promoting was still fairly new (had only been on the market for just over a year) so I was lucky to be one of the first affiliates that promoted it. Therefore I had top 3 rankings for the product name itself, and the keywords ‘product name review’ and ‘product name scam’.
Also the site wasn’t even a year old so it didn’t have a huge amount of history.
I used Escrow for a safe transfer of the site (I recommend using Escrow if you’re selling sites worth over $1000). With Escrow, your buyer will likely ask for an inspection period. This is a period of about 3-7 days where the buyer gets a chance to check the site out, and verify that it’s earning the income the seller claims.
Selling Your Site
Although there are a number of places you can sell your blog I have always found Flippa to be the best. Flippa has a lot of serious buyers (some with serious money to spend!) and most sellers are fortunate enough to never encounter a problem with selling a site there.
Before listing your site for sale I recommend you browse through the Flippa Marketplace to take a look at other people's listings. Particularly, take into account the listings that are selling sites similar to yours – take a look at all the details that are being given, the headlines, the questions that are being asked by potential buyers, and the listing format.
To sell your blog you will need to sign up for an account if you don't already have one. Next you click on the green 'Sell Your Website' button on the top right to start creating your listing.
Now all you have to do is fill in each section of the listing. Make sure your title and subtitle are catchy and informative enough to grab the attention of potential buyers. Squeeze as much compelling info as you can into the title – mention words such as ‘profitable’, ‘1st page rankings’, ‘autopilot’ etc. (if they apply), and of course mention how much the site is earning monthly.
If you haven't sold a site before just keep your reserve price and your minimum bid similar to those of other sellers selling blogs like yours.
Make sure you provide screenshots of everything that would be of interest to your potential buyers. That includes traffic (whether you are using Google Analytics, Statcounter, Awstats from your hosting cpanel, or some other stat counter). If you have made any money with an affiliate program such as Clickbank, or with Adsense include those screenshots as well.
To create a screenshot I use a software called SnagIt from Techsmith, however you can create screenshots just as easily for free.
To create a screenshot follow these steps:
1. Open up the window that you want to capture e.g. your Clickbank account stats.
2. On the top right of your keyboard look for a key that is labeled Print
Screen/SysRq. By pressing this key an image of the entire desktop (a snapshot of the screen that is open) will be placed on the Clipboard.
3. Next open MS-Paint (usually found under the Start Menu).
4. Create a new image, then click on 'Edit' and 'Paste' to add the screenshot that you just took. Using the MS-Paint tools you will be able to resize the screenshot, cut bits out etc. as required.
5. Click on 'Save As' and save your screenshot as a JPG or PNG.
Now it is ready to upload to your Flippa listing.
Once you have created your listing make sure you are on hand to answer questions (log in to Flippa regularly) – you may get questions posted at the listing, or you may receive private messages. Answer all questions in a professional and timely manner, giving potential buyers any extra information that they require. Generally, if your listing was detailed enough in the first place you should get very few questions (and hopefully a quick BIN).
Selling Tips:
1. The larger the price, the longer the auction should be. Generally an established website should be listed for as much as 30 days. I find 5-7 days is fine for sites that are selling for less than $10,000.
2. Always set a BIN price. You may be lucky enough to have a few buyers
that are very keen to get their hands on your site and will have no problem paying the price you ask for. When choosing a BIN price look back at previous listings and find out what price other similar sites sold for. It’s better to err on the high side rather than making your BIN too low – you can always reduce the BIN after the listing has started.
3. Always set a reserve price. This gets potential buyers to bid higher and
higher until the reserve is met. Without a reserve price you may end up having to sell your blog way below what it's worth. For instance you may
have set the minimum bid at $1 – but what if you only get one bid at $1? Don't risk it!
4. Learn to be a good copywriter. The more detail you include in your sales copy, the better chance you have of getting a good price. You need to show buyers exactly what your sites $$$$ potential is. Check out other people’s listings and make sure yours is as good (if not better). Make your layout as clear as possible with headings, point form etc. Video sales page are very popular these days, so you add a video of yourself talking about your site, logging in to your affiliate account etc.
5. Start with a low minimum bid. This will attract buyers to at least start off
the bidding process and increase interest in your auction. As long as you have set a reserve price you won't be in any danger of losing your site for a price below what it's worth. A lot of sellers start off with a minimum
bid of $1.
Transferring your blog
The one thing that many would-be blog flippers struggle with is the actual transfer of the blog to the new owner. In truth, transferring Wordpress isn't quite as straightforward as transferring a html site (where you just zip up the files and email them to the new owner where they can be just ftped to their hosting).
Most buyers WON'T know how to do the transfer, and the few that do will probably prefer that you do it anyway – so you really need to know how to transfer the blog before you put it up for sale.
There are a few different ways to transfer a blog. The most popular way is to make a back up of your blogs database which can be imported into the new owners hosting. Most people find this a bit tricky the first time they do it, but once you’ve done this a few times it will become easier.
When you’ve sold your site you should obtain the following information from the buyer:
• Whether they want to do the transfer, or whether they would prefer you
to do it.
If they want you to do it you’ll need: Their hosting nameservers Their cpanel login details
Their Namecheap username and authorisation code (if your domain is registered at Namecheap)
1. Export (back up) your WordPress database
Log in to your domain cpanel (found at www.domain.com/cpanel) and locate phpMyAdmin (usually found under the ‘Databases’ section).
In phpMyAdmin, select the name of your WP database (on the top left hand side).
Click on the Export button on the top navigation menu.
The default settings are probably already correct, but just in case, make sure you do the following:
click on ’select all’ and ‘SQL’ from the Export menu
select ‘add Drop Table’, ‘add Auto_Increment value’ and ‘enclosure table and field names with blackquotes’ from the Structure menu
select ‘Complete inserts’ and ‘Use hexadecimal for binary files’ from Data you can leave all the other values at their defaults
Once done, choose “Save as file” and this will save and download your WP
database .sql file to your desktop.
2. Intall WordPress on the new owner’s hosting
When you are done with the above, you will need to log in to the new owners hosting (you will need to obtain their cpanel details), set up the domain on the hosting, and install Wordpress using Fantastico.
4. Download ALL WordPress files & folders
This is pretty straightforward if you know how to use any of the FTP softwares for upload and download. I use Filezilla (free download). Just remember that you need to download ALL your WP files & folders including those plugins and themes folders.
5. Update the nameservers
Log in to your Namecheap account, and update the nameservers so that they point to the new owner’s hosting. It may take a few hours (or more) for the domain to propagate, so you won’t be able to proceed with the transfer until this is done.
6. Import the database
Here’s the easy part. Since you already know how to Export via phpMyAdmin. You just need to reverse the process by choosing the Import to upload your .sql file and you are done.
7. Upload the files and folders
Upload all the files and folders to the new hosting, and visit the site to make sure everything is working okay.
8. Push the domain to the new owners account
If your registrar is Namecheap, just log in to your account, and push the domain to the new owner’s account. Here’s a video that shows how:
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And that's basically it – you've transferred your blog!
Maximizing Your Blog Flipping Profits
1. If you are building a blog with a view to eventually selling it make sure you do your research before choosing a niche. It's very important to check Flippa to see what niches are actually selling well. If it's a hot niche you WILL get buyers but obscure niches will generate a lot less interest.
2. Stick with unique content for your blogs. Although PLR blogs or those with syndicated content do sell, the profits are usually less. The more unique content, the higher price you can charge.
3. Don't be afraid to try outsourcing the articles and promotion for your sites. You may feel that this will decrease your profits, but remember in the long run it can actually increase them ten fold.
4. Take care choosing your template – a site with a professional looking template will always sell for a lot more than a cheap looking one. Blogs with magazine themes always sell well (Google 'Free magazine wordpress themes' for some free templates), however it might be worth investing in a developers license for a premium theme.
5. Add an opt in form to your blog and provide the buyer with a free PLR or Resell Rights ebook that they can give away to build a list. Aweber is the most popular autoresponder and only costs about $19 per month (you can get it for just $1 for the first month).
6. Try raising the price of your sale with 'sweeteners' – for instance you could offer some bonuses to whoever pays your BIN price. Bonuses could consist of free hosting, a Squidoo lens or Blogger blog, extra articles for the site, social bookmarking submission, article submission and so on.
7. Build a list of your own. If you're serious about blog flipping and want to turn it into a business you should build a list from the beginning. Most site flippers still don't do this, but if you can collect the emails of your buyers (and potential buyers) they will come back for more if they like your sites. Keep your list updated by sending them a quick email any time you are listing a new site. Once you begin to build a reputation as a serious blog seller and gain some good feedback it's likely that people will start contacting you to order custom sites.
8. Don't forget the possibility of making money on the back end. Selling sites is great, but if you want to make some extra cash you might want to offer some extra services to your buyers. This could be more articles for the site, offering to set them up with hosting or an autoresponder (using your affiliate link of course), or doing some promotional work.
9. Wait for pagerank – If you are selling established sites (after a few months of promotion and keeping the site updated) having a PR1 or PR2 can greatly increase the value of your site.
10. Add videos from Youtube or pictures from Flickr. These will enhance the
'look' and interactivity of your site.
11. Set up a Twitter account and get some followers. Include the Twitter account with your sale. You can also include Facebook ‘Like’ buttons and other social media features.
There are so many more things that you can do to enhance your site, and if you can come up with something that sets you apart from your fellow blog sellers then you are on to a winner. The more professional looking and the more interactive and useful your blog is, the more buyers will be beating down your door looking for your latest sites.
Although you may decide to build your blogs into a long term business, it's important at the same time not to get too attached to them. Remember, you might sell a few of them down the line – whether you decide to keep them for
3 months, 6 months or a year or more. The longer you keep your blogs the
more valuable they will be. You might even decide to sell a number of blogs as a 'business'. Can you imagine what you might earn if you sold 10 websites to one buyer? You could potentially earn a serious five (or even six) figure sum. Remember, a good way to get repeat customers is to build a list. Create a squeeze page for buyers (and potential buyers) so that they can receive alerts whenever you post an auction. Eventually, once you have a large enough list you can sell directly to your list without ever having to bother with Flippa fees. A quick email to your list and your site could potentially be sold within minutes!
Conclusion
For many people, the major advantage of using a site building system like WordPress is that they do not possess the HTML skills to create a website in the ‘old fashioned’ way. However, because of WordPress, it is no longer necessary to have those skills to be able to produce a stunning looking and highly effective website.
Also, because there are literally thousands of plug-ins available, whatever you want your site to be able to do, it is almost certain that you will be to find a suitable plug-in that will enable you to achieve your objectives.
Basically, you can create your blogs in a matter of hours rather than days. After that, all you have to do is generate some traffic, get a small trickle of income and within a few weeks or months, you can list your site for major profits. Wordpress makes it easy to create a solid online blog flipping business, and if you really wanted to you could create a full time income in just a few short weeks. This is an exciting opportunity for anyone who wants to take advantage of it, so why not get started today? Once you've created your first few blogs
you will find that the whole process becomes very quick and easy - you've nothing to lose and a lot to gain.
