10 Things to Keep in Mind When Buying a Website
Average people think that blogs earn mainly through advertisements, and while they are right at some levels, it is important to realize that there are also other ways to earn from blogging. You can sell things, or help others sell, and, most importantly, you can sell your blog itself.
You should know that this comes into the liking of Flipping, a popular method of earning quick-cash, and commonly seen in real estate parlance. But this practice can also be applied to blogs and websites, and it can be pretty lucrative too.
Buying and Selling Websites
I know, I know. You have either of these questions in mind right now:
Why the heck would someone buy a website?
This can be a pretty astute question, but the answer is simple. People buy blogs to earn money.
Let’s expound with a few cases:
Say, you are an Internet entrepreneur, and you want to start a blog, or a website business. The first thing you’ll do is to register a domain, right? I mean, that is a good move. But a great one will be leveraging on domains and websites that already exist.
Why? Well the answer is SEO. Search Engine Optimization relies on a lot of factors, one of which is domain age. If the domain is old enough, and has been linked to different websites using optimized keywords, it will be easy for it to be found in search results.
The difficulty, however, is starting from scratch. A newly registered domain will have, at the very least, zero backlinks, and lower PR and DA. This means, you have to build everything from the ground up. That is, you have to write content, do link analyses, and reach out to related websites with higher ranks than you have and ask them to link your website to one of their pages.
And, as you can imagine, this will take lots of effort.
However, in case you bought a blog, that already has reputable search engine stats, you will save months, if not years, of effort because you’re basically just building and patching from an already established domain.
In addition, website buyers scout for potential blogs to earn passive income. Usually, these are the people who take a look at blogs that are earning, but not consistently updated, and they buy them so they can paste their ad codes instead, and start earning passive income.
Why flip a website?
Now, if you are on the other side of the scale, you may be wondering, why would someone sell his website if it’s already earning? The answer, again, is pretty simple.
In the past years, I’ve managed a couple of blogs earning hundreds of dollars every month. It was mostly passive in nature, but I eventually decided to flip these websites. I did it for two reasons: first is that I could no longer manage the sites as I had my eyes on other ventures, and two, I needed quick cash.
The reasons of other sellers will most likely be the same. Being unable to manage a blog becomes difficult in the long run, as you lose some of your audience as time passes. And, if you think you will find it difficult to monetize the site any further, you can start auctioning it.
Some even consider flipping a career. They build and grow sites, both in content and traffic, and then, after a few months, sell them. Most of their buyers bite such cheaper deals because three months of traffic is still pretty significant.
Some Tips
Now, if you see yourself as a website flipper, or if you are interested in taking on this opportunity, let me give you a few tips:
Tip 1: Research with Growth in Mind
Some people may argue with this, but I think, flipping a website that is just about to explode in traffic is better than buying a website that is already exploding with visitors. As a potential website flipper, you have to keep in mind that foreseeing the growth of the websites you sell or buy is an advantage.
Imagine, you could buy a soon-to-be-famous website for a cheaper amount, and wait shortly for it to boom. You spend less for more.
Here are few things you need to keep an eye out for:
- Evergreen Content – niches with evergreen content have no expiration date, and will keep on generating traffic.
- Rank Improvements – by taking a look at the analytics of a website, you should be able to create patterns in the improvement of the site in terms of revenue, SEO rankings, and traffic.
Related: 15 ways to optimise your evergreen content strategy
Tip 2: Know your boundaries
Before venturing into flipping, you need to ask yourself a few things:
- How much time and money do you have?
- How much are you actually willing to invest?
You need to put some serious thought into this, as it will remind you when and where to stop. If you want to invest $ 10,000 on flipping, you need to ask yourself if you really have an abundance of money to spend.
As you know, flipping may be a gamble as there are a lot of factors that come in play as time passes by.
Tip 3: Know where to go
Of course, there are a lot of ways to make transactions like buying or selling a website. However, there are marketplaces for flippers that allow you to both be secure and convenient in flipping.
The dividends these website require may vary but you should also remember that quality should always come first. If you sign up for a zero-profit website, would you be able to sleep well at night knowing the marketplace you just listed your site to does its best to keep ill-minded people at bay?
So the essence of this tip is: list your site (or buy websites) in marketplaces that are actually trusted by others who came in before you. Websites like:
Flippa
Flippa is actually one of the most famous flipping marketplaces to list your website. Overall, Flippa has an excellent customer support and actually helps you sale virtual properties. Because it’s linked to Analytics and AdSense, you can make good decisions on how much a listing really coss. Plus, the marketplace is buzzing, with buyers and lookers just waiting for the next internet venture to be listed.
The only downside is that Flippa requires you to pay for more exposure, which means you still need to bill out some dollars in order to even list your site into the featured pages. This, along with other things like logo uploading, and scheduling of auctions can be pretty good points of improvement.
Overall, I recommend Flippa because it helps you buy(or sell) smartly.
Freemarket
Freemarket is Flippa’s main competitors. The marketplace goes toe-to-toe with Flippa as it has a fairly reasonable commission of five per cent. You can also list or free, and will take you less money to get featured.
However, Freemarket opens difficulties in communicating with potential buyers. This prove to be challenging, especially because, as much as possible, you want a sale.
In addition, the marketplace also makes its users unable to cancel listings, which, in my opinion is a big deal breaker.
Tip 4: Know how to make purchase decisions
This is one of the most important tips in this article as purchase decisions can prove to make or break your flipping investments. This is why you should be following strict guidelines one what makes a website worthy of being bought.
- Traffic – is the traffic good? Is it consistent? What channels are performing well? These are a few questions you should be thinking when looking at the analytics http://www.dropmining.com/data/the-data-driven-guide-to-website-flipping/ of a website. Sometimes, high traffic ratings are a fluke, and would last for a few weeks. Others, get traffic from shady and spammy-looking sources. So you should keep an eye of these things.
- Seller – do you trust the person selling the website? Does he have previous experiences in blogging? Well, you have to do research on your own for this part. You can do Google searches about him, and if he is what he says he is, you should be able to find him easily. You can also contact the people who previously bought sites from the seller to get some feedback. I know this is a lot of work, but it’s a work that you need to do in order to put your money in the direction you want.
- Rationale – why is the website being sold? Is it because of some black hat hullabaloo? Or is the niche dying? You have to keep track of these possible red flags as well.
Tip 5: Know How much to Offer
After filtering websites you actually want, it’s time to make a bid. A secret in being successful in this stage is to learn to keep the offer as low as possible, and build up to get the focus of the seller. For example, they are listing a website for $ 5,000 price http://www.siteprice.org/, you can start bidding at least 50 to 70 per cent of the asking price.
Why would you do this? Well, it’s a good business strategy, as you would be able to get a lower cost in case the seller approves, or you won’t go over the limit you set for yourself on your first bid. Doing this will give you more room to compete with other bidders, too.
Tip 6: Transact Properly
After haggling, and coming up with a good deal that both parties like, you would be transacting the transfer of both the website and the payment. Now this is the time to become an a little bit scared, as you will be transferring your hard-earned cash to a person you haven’t seen before, but know that there are methods to successfully facilitate this:
- If you’re not sure what to do, have the seller help you. Naturally, these people are tech-savvy and would be more than willing to help your move the files, and the domain to a server you will be providing. Be sure to ask. If you can’t do it, ask for their help. It’s part of the transaction, in a way.
- Use Escrow. Sites like Escrow.com https://escrow.com/ helps you minimize the risks of online fraud as a third party, in that case, Escrow, collects the funds online once the terms have been met.
Tip 7: What to do after?
The answer to this question would be start working on your site, of course. But to be honest, putting work, isn’t enough. You have to channel your effort to the area where it is more needed.
Does the website need more SEO tweaks? Or does the content need updating? These are just a few places you can start working.
However, if you don’t have the time, or the skill to make these tweaks happen, it is best to outsource. You can always hire a freelance writer here and there to do the work for you.
Tip 8: Plan for Reselling
In the event that you realized you wanted to resell the website, you have all the right to do it. I mean, it’s normal for flippers to actually re-sell what they have bought, of course, for a better price.
Once your website has increased in traffic steadily, or it has met your profit goals, you can get more what you paid for it, and resell. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve had it. What matters is when are you going to resell it.
You know you should re-sell a website when:
- You’ve exhausted all techniques allowable to optimize traffic and revenue.
- You calculated the comparison of how much you will be earning if you sell it sooner than later.
- You feel it’s the best time to do so.
- Your site loses traffic due to SEO algorithm updates (and it’s time to abandon ship, sorry)
Tip 9: Master the selling techniques
Now, as a website flipper, you have turned into the one who buys to the one who lists. And this is important as well.
The ideas that govern the selling of any online product will most likely apply to your website, as marketplaces will give you more exposure and chances of a transaction rather than advertising it on social media.Just be patient with the people you are transacting with, and remember the things you, as a seller wanted.
- Proof of earnings and traffic
- Answer questions properly
- Be sure to entertain lower offers
Tip 10: Rinse and Repeat
After reselling, it’s now time to go back to the beginning, and start researching. Remember that in the course of the cycle, you will realize that you have, and you will still be, making mistakes. Keep these mistakes in mind, and continue building up revenue for yourself using websites.
Make sure to invest the revenue you got to better analytics, and better website turnarounds as this will help you gain more income as the time goes by.
Conclusion
Now, I wish you a good ride. Flipping is an exciting venture, and a pretty lucrative one, if you think about it. So learn from every transaction, and pick up strategies from both the sellers and the buyers as you would be changing into these roles from time to time.
