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Site Flipping is just like any other business opportunity in that it does require some work and some determination to be successful.  So obviously site flipping isn’t for everyone but for those who are determined to make it work you will see some great results and quite quickly.

Which brings us to the next benefit of being a site flipper.  Many online business opportunities require weeks and weeks of hard work before you start seeing results.  With site flipping you can see results almost immediately, you can start earning money very quickly which is a great motivation to keep on going and make more money.

One other benefit is the fact that you can be your own boss and can work from home and at your own hours.  There is a fantastic amount of pride when you are your own boss and have your own successful company and flipping websites can give you that.  Being able to work your own hours means you can work around the kids, work around almost anything and spend as many or as little hours as you choose on your business.  Obviously the more hours you work on your business the more money you will make.

Site flipping isn’t hard – I thought it was at first and that thought almost stopped me from doing it – I was pleasantly surprised when I tried it and realised it wasn’t as hard as I thought.  I’ve never looked back since starting my site flipping business and you too can become successful at creating and selling websites.

Click here to find out more about starting your own successful site flipping business.

Option 1:  Buy cheap websites, fix them up and then sell them for a profit.

Option 2:  Create new websites from scratch and then sell them for a profit.

So if you decided to choose option 1 and buy cheap websites to fix up, where would you go to buy those cheap websites.

Well, I have found the best 2 places for buying cheap websites to renovate are Ebay and Digital Point forum.  However, with both of these sites there are some sites that sell for good prices also, so to get a good deal you really do need to search to find those hidden gems.

Firstly, you need to look for sites that are selling cheap.  You need to keep in mind any fees that you are going to pay out along the way including the fees you will pay to relist the site for sale when the time comes to sell it.  Together with those fees and the asking price of the website, you need to ask yourself will you be able to change the website enough that it will make you a profit.

Secondly, you need to consider the time that you will need to spend on that website to fix it up.  It may need a complete makeover with a whole new look or it may just need some good unique content added to it.  It might already be a great website that just needs some article marketing or backlink building to build it up and bit and start making some money with it.

That brings me to the third point – do you intend to just do a quick fix up and sell it or do you intend to promote the site and have it earning money before going ahead and selling it.  If you can get the site earning an income then you will be able to sell the site for a much higher price.

I guess it all depends on what aspects of the process you are good and and which one’s you would rather not do.  Some site flippers will just fix up the site and make it look better and then sell it off, while others who are quite happy to put in the time to promote the site, will hang onto it a bit longer and make money from it before selling it.

Either option is good and it really is just a matter of personal choice as to what you want to do for your business.  The quick and easy fix up can still make money as long as you really do search for a good deal when buying your website to fix up.  You don’t want to fix a website up and not be able to make a profit from it, so you really do need to consider all the costs involved and how much time and effort you want to spend working on the site.

Choose wisely and good luck with your site flipping business

There is one way to get around this though and although with this method your income will still be less when you’re not creating sites, it won’t stop completely.

The way to have some residual income to keep coming in even when you take a vacation, is to build up a hosting business.  Whenever you sell a website you can offer your customer hosting.  To do this you will need a reseller hosting account which is about $25 a month, more once your business builds up and you have a lot of customers hosting with you.

You need to create a subscription system where your customers can host their new website with you and sign up for hosting and pay you monthly to have their website hosted with you.  It is completely up to you whether you charge $5 a month or $10 a month or somewhere in between.

Once you have more and more customers hosting with you, those monthly payments will gradually increase until you have a nice residual income.

For example, if you charge $10 a month for hosting and you sell 4 websites a week, so that’s 16 websites a month.  Just say half of those sign up to your hosting (you will likely get more than half, I’m just using low figures here), then that is $80 a month that those 8 customers will bring you ($10 each).

The next month you sell 16 more websites and another 8 of those customers sign up to hosting.  Those 8 customers plus the 8 from the previous month – now you are getting $160 a month hosting.

Can you see where this is going?  Every month when you sell more sites and sign up more customers, your monthly hosting income with grow and grow.  The more sites you sell each month the more potential hosting customers you will have.

Then when you do decide to take a couple of weeks off for a vacation, although your site sales will stop for those 2 weeks, your residual hosting income will continue.

To find out more about setting up hosting for your customers grab a copy of Site Biz Academy.

EBAY

Let’s start by taking a look at Ebay.  Ebay is my number one choice for selling websites.  It isn’t everyone’s first choice but it’s mine as it is the place where I have had the most success.  When you list a site for sale on Ebay you can choose to list the site for 7, 5, or 3 days I believe. Ebay use to have a 1 day option but I’m not sure that option is still available.  To be honest though, I wouldn’t want to list my site on Ebay for any less than 3 days.  Sure if you list for 1 day your site will be closer to the top in search results straight away, however as it is only listed for 1 day you are really cutting down the number of potential buyers that will see your listing.

I usually list my sites for 5 days and have found that to be the most successful for me as it gives long enough for enough potential buyers to find my listing and not too long that people will find something else in the meantime while they are waiting for the listing to end.

FLIPPA

Flippa is a very popular choice for site flippers for selling sites and many people have had a lot of success with Flippa (previously Sitepoint).  Flippa also gives you a choice of how long you want to list your site for and can have a listing on for just 24 hours.  With Flippa, your listings are seen on the front page when you first list them so the first 24 hours or so is when they will have the most exposure, so 24 hour listings on Flippa can work quite well.  Once again though, 24 hours is limiting the number of potential buyers that see your listing as you are only showing it to people that log into the site during that day.

WARRIOR FORUM

Warrior forum is great as it has a lot of members and so your listing will get viewed by a lot of people, however, many of the members here are more savvy than your general buyers on Ebay so you really need to offer a great website at a great deal to make a sale.  The competition here in my opinion is stronger only because it is a stronger buyer range that you are selling to.  With a listing on Warrior forum you can state whatever length you like for your listing.  You do need to be a paid member of Warrior forum to create a listing.

DIGITAL POINT FORUM

This forum is completely free to list a site for sale, although you do need to have a certain number of posts before you can list anything for sale.  This is a good place for starting out, although it doesn’t have as good a buyer range so you can expect to sell your site for quite a low price here.

Conclusion

So these are the main places for selling your websites and as you can see they all give you different options on the time limit of your listings.  I would recommend listing your sites for at least 3 days though and possibly 5 if you can as you do give yourself more exposure and increase your chance of a good sale.

When I am creating a new website, there is an extra step that I have now added to the process.  If I don’t do this step then the website is probably not likely to get indexed so it is important that this step is done.

If you go into the admin area of your Wordpress website and in the left sidebar menu choose ‘Settings’ and then ‘Privacy’ you will see two options.

Option 1: I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers.

Option 2: I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.

Previously option 1 would be the default selection and so you didn’t need to worry about changing this, but for some reason Wordpress are now making option 2 the default selection.  So if you don’t change this selection then the website will be blocked by the search engines.

I have no idea why Wordpress are making it so option 2 is default, it seems a bit silly to me but that’s the way it is, so when you are creating a new website you really need to go in and change the selection to option 1 to ensure that the website will get indexed.

Don’t forget to ’save changes’ and then you’re all set to go on with creating your website as normal.

Remember, you really do need to complete this step to do the right thing by your customers.  After all, every site flipping customer is a potential future customer if they are happy with your service and their new website then they may come back and purchase from you again.

As I have a site flipping business myself, why not teach my kids what I do.  So is it easy enough???  My son is 11 and to be honest I don’t think he could do it completely on his own – not just yet anyway.  I do think it is easy enough to start teaching him though but I will teach him in stages.

Firstly, he is going to learn how to create the templates that I use for my sites. I will show him how to create a template and then when I sell that site I will give him a percentage of the profit made.

A site flipping guide like Site Biz Academy is great for teaching site flipping, but probably too much information for an 11 year old to take in and follow.  For an older child, perhaps in late teens, that wants to earn money online, then it shouldn’t be a problem.

Kids these days know more about using computers than us grownups and a teenager could easily learn site flipping and have a successful business doing it.

My son will start of slowly at 11, I’m sure by the time he’s in his teens he’ll be doing it better than me   He has actually started his own blog about how he is going to make some money to save up for his PSP, you can see his blog at Kid Make Money.  It’s just fairly new, but he is willing to give it a shot and try and make some money online and offline – he wants this PSP pretty bad!

A Good Site Flipping Manual

The first thing I would suggest to invest in is a good site flipping manual so that you can learn everything that you need to learn before you jump into it.  If you go into website flipping blind then chances are that you will make mistakes that could cost you more money in the long term, however if you get a good manual and learn everything correctly then you will save money be reducing the chance of making costly mistakes.

Hosting

You will need hosting to build your websites on and you can either grab a hosting package with unlimited domains like Hostgators baby package, but with this package you wont be able to offer your customers hosting, you will need to transfer the website to the customers own hosting after the sale.

The other choice is to grab a reseller package, which is a little more expensive but you will be able to offer your customers hosting and then earn a residual income through your hosting income.

Click here to see Hostgators options.

Domains

To build your websites you will need to purchase domain names.  These can vary in price from around $2 a year for a .info name to $10 a year for .net and .com names.  You can often get deals with GoDaddy on domain purchases and if you look around you can often pick up some coupon codes to get your domains a little cheaper.

Listing Fees

You will need to pay fees to list your websites for sale and these will vary depending on where you list your site.  Flippa.com is a popular choice for selling websites and a basic startup site listing at Flippa will cost you around $20US plus a bit extra once the site is sold.

If you are selling on Ebay then costs can range from a few dollars up to $20 or $30 depending on what options you choose.  I will often use featured option which costs around $20 itself, but I don’t use it on all my listings.  I will only use featured on my shorter listings and the 30 day or more listings I wont use it.  If you have some sites as featured, your visitors to those sites will then see the other sites that you have for sale.

When starting out and on a limited budget then you might want to start with basic cheaper listings until you have sold some sites and can afford to use the featured option.  It is a risk, but I find it pays off 90% of the time as my sites will sell 90% of the time.  I always start my listings off at a price that will cover the cost of the site I am selling.

Conclusion

I know it can be difficult finding money to invest in a business opportunity especially if there are no guarantees, but unfortunately there are no guarantees in any business and with any good business you will have some cost involved.  Thankfully, I have found site flipping to be the most successful business that I have tried and the income I make by far out weighs the costs involved.

DSR rating is something that Ebay brought in about a year ago and it is a little different from feedback rating.  It is left at the same time as feedback is left, but this is the rating when your buyer gives you a rating out of 5 stars for different aspects of the transaction.

This DSR rating will affect where your listing is displayed in the search results and those with a high DSR rating will be displayed first above those sellers with a low DSR rating.  This is worked out on the DSR rating for the category that you are listing in.

When you first start selling websites on Ebay you will have a low DSR rating and so your sites wont show up first in the searches and this can result in a lower sales price for your websites.  If you stick it out past the first couple of weeks until you get some feedback and a DSR rating, then you will see your listings appearing higher in the searches and you will also notice that you will start getting a higher selling price for your websites.

So although your first couple of sales might be a bit low, believe me it is worth just getting rid of some sites at the low price to build up your rating and within a couple of weeks you will start seeing higher prices and better sales.

Once you have a good rating, it is just as important to keep a good DSR and Feedback rating, so remember to always provide your customers with good customer service and keep your customers happy.  You’re feedback does affect your sales and many potential buyers will read through your feedback comments before purchasing a website from you.  So good customer service is definitely a high priority in a site flipping business and if your customers are happy they will likely come back and buy from you again.

There are a number of ways you can do the after sales process and I suggest you find the way that is going to work out quickest an easiest for you.

The transfer process will also vary depending on whether you are hosting the sites on your own reseller hosting account or whether you are just referring your customers to a hosting company such as Hostgator.

Option 1 – Reseller hosting

If you are hosting the sites on your own reseller account, then the actual website doesn’t need to be physically transferred.  In this case, you just need to change the affiliate details – or give your customers instructions on how to change them – and then transfer the domain name through GoDaddy to the new owner.  You will need to have some hosting subscription payment buttons setup and follow through to make sure that your customer has signed up to the hosting.

I usually allow 7 days, after which time if they haven’t signed up to hosting I will suspend the website on my hosting and send the customer an email letting them know that the site has been suspended and that if they don’t sign up to hosting within the next 7 days the website will be deleted.   These are my terms, but generally I give them a little longer as sometimes things happen that can’t be avoided and they may not be able to sign up in time.

Option 1 – Other hosting

If you are not offering hosting, but are referring your customers to a hosting company, then you will need to physically transfer the whole site over to their hosting.  Usually I will offer the customers a deal that if they sign up to hosting through my link then I transfer their website for free.  If they sign up through another link or to a different hosting company, then I charge $30 for the transfer (I state this in my Ebay listing so they know in advance of the possible charges ahead).

The transfer process can be quite involved and seem a little difficult at first, but once you have done a couple it will get much easier.  The tranfser is basically as follows:

1. Save a backup file from the cpanel
2. Download all the site files
3. Change the nameservers to point to the new hosting
4. Install Wordpress onto the customers hosting
5. Upload all the files (except the config.php file)
6. Go into cpanel, then into ‘phpmyadmin’ and run the backup file
7. That’s it, check the website to see that it looks ok

Then you just need to change the affiliate links, or give your customer instructions on how to change them.  Then transfer the domain name to the new owner through GoDaddy.  I always wait until I have transferred the site before transferring the domain name, it makes it easier for changing the nameservers.

The Site Biz Academy manuals give complete, step by step, illustrated instructions on the whole transfer process.  Just remember that although it may seem difficult, it will get easier with a bit of practise.