Flippa: Buy and Sell Websites

Website flipping is an stand-alone approach to making money online, and a reasonably good one at that! Coined from the phrase “flipping burgers” which usually refers to a ‘low-status minimum wage’, flipping websites is a hell of a lot easier than being a short order cook.

The idea is quite simple and once you master the process, it’s just rinse and repeat…

1. Find a niche (preferably with products attached).
2. Find keyphrases with some traffic and low competition.
3. Register a domain name.
4. Get some easily transferable hosting.
5. Build the site; html, css, or upload a content management system or blog.
6. Align the keyphrases into the site architecture.
   • Main keyphrase/theme.
     • Category keyphrases/themes.
       • Article keyphrases/themes.
7. Check list of the SEO basics of building a website.
8. Do some external content syndication and backlink creation.
9. Wait for Google to rank your website for some of the target keyphrases, so you can prove the value of your website.
10. Sell the website.

Where and how do you sell it?

This is where Flippa comes in, or should I say WILL come into play. You see Flippa is the new home of the most proven and tested places to sell a website online. Flippa has a look very similar to Ebay and will charge a 5% success fee, which can be allocated to the buyer when listing the auction. Additional fees will be charged for; listing featured $29, listing highlighted $5, listing in bold $5.

Sitepoint Marketplace (soon to be Flippa) was built on a very old school but popular (pre web2.0) forum. It was one of those services that just happened because a strong community of webmasters existed. Still a great place to buy and sell websites. There is/will be some resistant from sentimental users of Sitepoint to move to Flippa, but my main business model is Product review affiliate sites and creating information products, not flipping websites. So I like the new look, feels and style.

Here are a few factors that will increase the price of a website:

• Domain Name
  • length
  • presence of valuable keywords
  • age
• Unique visitors per month
• Page views per month
• Uniqueness of the content
• Uniqueness of the template/theme
• Monthly revenue
• DMOZ Listed
• Google PageRank
• Alexa Rank
• Pages indexed by Google
• Incoming links Google
• Pages indexed by Yahoo
• Incoming links Yahoo

Flippa.com is in beta (at the time of writing this post), if you need any more advice on buying and selling websites and domain names, here’s a few links to steer you in the right direction.

» DotSauce.com with Mark Fulton
twitter.com/DotSauce

» Website Flipping Home Study Course with Amir Rimer
twitter.com/Amirimer