Flipping websites can mean any number of thing, you can achieve this by acquiring a website, growing it’s traffic, finding new avenues of traffic to push to the site, search new ways to monetize the site or just keep it as is and sell it to someone with a greater want of the said site. One way of starting off is to get moving brokering sites, I have always been one to realize that the best way of learning any trade is to simply jump in, I did that with sales, I did that with domains and I’m doing it with websites.
So where to start? If you’re really into the idea of getting in the website arena it takes a bit more than the average person knows, you can’t just go out, acquire a domain and site and expect to make a nice flip. A basic understanding is needed of website development, therefore you‘ll need to do your three months of homework and tinkering around with backends and HTML, I know it sounds like a bit of work and no fun but the only other choice is hiring a team to assist you and even then you’re losing money already and don’t understand what’s going on half the time. Do yourself a favor and do the homework, even if you do choose to pickup a team of Indian Webmasters.
Next you will want your first experience, this will be important for gaining some experience, you will want a domain that means very little to you but is aged and keyword heavy for whatever industry you choose. Which reminds me, pick an industry that is not too competitive and where you can see some results. Do everything to this website, start a Facebook page, throw adwords at it, update a new Twitter account based around the topic and purchase followers, buy content and do multiple updates a day, start a forum and run a newsletter, do everything and anything that has to do with building a name for the site and traffic. Do this from scratch and you will start to get an idea of what it takes to create, build and sustain a website, this is true experience and one that any person flipping or brokering websites needs to know.
After this you should have some better working knowledge of the industry and where your strong points are, if you’re not discouraged then I would recommend purchasing a first successful website. Get in there and get your hands dirty, figure out what makes this website tick, if it’s a forum what drives the writers, if a blog what are the readers really coming back for? All of these things are imperative and could mean a successful or failure in your flipping momentum.
Last look at monetization, how is the website currently being monetized and can it be done more accurately? Are there underutilized pages where ads can be placed, can you get signups and if these already exist how can you better make money off the newsletters? Website flipping is like Real Estate flipping in the sense that you can take a website, spruce it up, make it look shiny and sell it at inflated prices but now you can place more billboards on your front lawn where foot traffic glares. Awesome right?
Use these recommendations as a starting point but keep in mind each of the paragraphs above deserve their own research. Don’t just go into this blindly, you can end up wasting time and money just as easily as with Real Estate.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for good websites to purchase you can signup to our newsletter for weekly sites for sale or go to the homepage and contact us directly. Our number is 703-763-4800.