Site Flipping
June 14, 2008 Posted by ScottPhelpsIf you scan through the television dial long enough you’ll likely find a program dedicated to flipping houses. In these shows you’ll be introduced to someone who finds a bargain on a run down house and envisions what the house could be like and what it might be worth on the open market.
They spend many hours cleaning, fixing, painting and bringing in new products. In some cases the ‘flipper’ spends more time and money than they thought and make a slim profit or none at all. However, there’s always those moments when a house flips for a huge profit. It is not unheard of for a ‘flipper to see a $30,000-75,000 payday when the house sells. This is above and beyond expenses.
You’ve probably read some about the idea of website flipping. Some people look at developing an ecommerce website and then selling it to someone else. Maybe you can get by with calling this approach flipping, but I want to talk about buying and flipping a business website that already exists.
Here’s what often happens – an individual has big dreams for a big idea and they execute that dream passably. The idea languishes when they lose their inner drive and purpose. They don’t really want to ditch the idea because it does provide income, just not enough to get real existed about reimmersing themselves into the guts of the dream.
Most of these businesses are not going to put a sign on their homepage saying, “Hey, I don’t really like this site anymore. Do you want to buy it? Dirt cheep.” Potential and existing customers would jump ship and any consistency in business would fade away.
You can make money online by flipping business websites. You might find a business that has a great domain name, but isn’t performing well as a business. Don’t get hung up on the idea of crashing someone’s dream. Find a contact email and propose dialogue on a potential buyout. They could tell you to take a flying leap or they could begin the process of negotiation. Either way the only thing you are out is a little bit of time in research and email inquiry.
Some online businesses just don’t know a lot about proper web design or marketing. If you can spend some time revamping the website to be SEO friendly and giving it a pixilated facelift you may see the overall value of the site improve to such a point that it has tremendous resale value.
The reason many individuals see this as a valid form of moneymaking is that they, too, will lose interest in any one site after a period of time. They want to get in, fix problems, improve the overall track record of the site and then spin it off to someone else who will likely find the improved site a bargain.
Everyone has their own way of determining the value of a site that they want to flip. One way that may make some sense is to offer the value of the last six months online sales plus twenty percent. That may seem like robbing the blind, but the owner may be more interested in seeing their idea succeed in the hands of someone else than failing on their own.
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Learn to Make Money Online and Make Money From Home at MakeMoneyFacts.com with online entrepreneur Scott L. Phelps.
21 Responses to “Site Flipping”
99% of the websites on the market are not worth their price or even your time. Flipping sites is all about finding gems. But the return on investment can be much higher then in real-estate. I’ve seen people quadruple their money in six months.
You don’t need to find a gem to make money flipping.
Prices they are on the market for doesn’t mean you have to buy at that price either 😉
I have been considering a bit about selling Bloggin-Ads (of course your ad will stay), but I’m just not sure about it now 🙁 It seems like I may be able to sell it for a good sum, but at the same time, it may fail horribly since a lot of buyers are aware of all the fakes lately.
-Mike
Hey Mike,
I have seen you grow your blog from the beginning, you have done a great job so far, you and your wife! I hope you stay in it!
Site Fliping Is A great Idea Great Post Tyler I Plan On Filping Some Small Sites I Own
I’ve flipped 2 websites already. Starting my next already. I love the online business. Some say I am an “guru” but I feel I have a lot to learn. Maybe when my income online brings in $1,000+ a month ill agree that I am a so call “guru”
…the owner may be more interested in seeing their idea succeed in the hands of someone else than failing on their own.”
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve sold 3 web properties in the last 12 months alone for this reason alone.
P.S. JC above is a comment spammer. You might want to delete that one.
I barely can maintain my own blog and yet there are people that do this for a living, my congrats to them.
@Ryan, nice catch! (JC the spammer, don’t they ever learn?)
Great post I loved the pancake image 🙂
Yeah I liked the pancake image as well, lol, that was a great combo
Flipping blogs is a lot of work, much less flipping entire websites. Definitely can make some big paydays if you know how to do it effectively though! Thanks for the post, very informative and I loved the image you used haha 🙂
Those thing can be useful when you doing it good.
I have heard of it ! it is rather difficult though to make a good profit
Its not hard to make money improving sites.
[…] Is site flipping the right call? – Tyler Cruz […]
Is the rule to take 10 months revenue a good rule for determining price?
Hi DakBid Directory:
There are a number of variables when it comes to determining price for a site. I just spoke to a website broker this week and he said that revenue is the most important factor of course. Use the link below for more info:
http://www.buysellwebsite.com/exchange/determine-value.htm
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Learn to Make Money Online and Make Money From Home at MakeMoneyFacts.com.
wait wait…i don’t get the pancake image…
actually, i’ve started sight flipping myself. unfortunately, i wasn’t very smart about findng the right sight, and so find myself put in a ton of time to make the site worth even what i paid for it initially. now i know better…but man, that was a tough learning curve
I flip sites all the time and its a great way to make some extra cash.
Flipping of websites has become somewhat ubiquitous like flipping of houses in the real estate market. One might label websites as forms of real estate that are not set in concrete but in visual form.
This is a nice introductory post to site flipping, I too enjoyed the graphic of the pancakes, laughed at them when the page loaded lol.
Although I believe the “six months online sales plus 20%” price rule would make it hard to find a seller(if you set your mind at that) because they would likely not want to part with it for a low amont, however, at the same time it’s essentially a buyers market and the majority of places you would think to look to purchase sites are saturated with low prices(mostly because the site’s are crap) bringing down the potential value of worthy sites. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try and sell at what you value it at personally, just it may be harder.
I believe the correct value is 3 years of profit, however I doubt very much I’d ever find a buyer for that much, unless I got really lucky or my site was so big that I could sell it to a large corporation.