Website flipping

Flipping Websites: Everything You Need to Know

flipping websites

Flipping is an old concept. It is all about buying a product, sometimes renovating or improving it and then selling it to someone else at a higher price. It can prove to make great profits and all that it needs is some skill and creativity.

Indeed, the process is relatively easy. You can follow a step by step approach to set up a website flipping business and soon you should be able to become successful.

If you are new to the concept of website flipping and want to get some detailed information about this business idea then read on!

What is Website Flipping?

website for sale

Website flipping, as the name implies, is all about buying an existing website that is likely not running at the moment for some reason, improving its appearance or more likely its content and then selling it on. Note that the sale price will almost certainly increase if you are able to increase the traffic on the website.

Higher traffic generally means higher selling price and it can be much higher than what you paid for the original website if you are able to increase the traffic by a significant amount.

This is how flipping websites works.

And the great news is that to make it work, you need not necessarily have in-depth coding knowledge, nor does it always demand advanced technical skills. Just a few basic skills can help you take a website and flip it for a tidy profit.

How to make money by flipping websites?

website metrics

Firstly, it is important to recognise that website flipping is not something that could bring you a fortune from day one. It takes some time to understand how things work; once you know the ropes and learn how to attract buyers you can start making decent profits.

If you are thinking of branching out in this business model, it is good to follow the right tricks and tactics. Below we have listed a few important tips that you should go through before you jump in and buy a website.

Choose your website wisely:

If your goal is making money through website flipping, undoubtedly you need to choose the target website carefully. It is best to find a website that is already receiving some traffic, then you just have to improve it to increase the existing traffic. The process will be much easier than working on a website that needs to create traffic from scratch.

For example, you could add new sources of potential revenue onto the site. You might sign up to some advertising networks and boost the possibility of profits that way. Maybe you could build in some affiliate offers to improve the value of the site.

Explore the background:

If you find a website that meets your criteria, you should check its history carefully. Even if you find it linked to a certain niche, it is better to do a thorough investigation. There are so many online tools that can help you to check potential details about the website. Eg ahrefs do a backlink checker so you can see the number of backlinks your target site has. Some other useful tools include:

DomainTools.com: allows you to see the ownership history of a domain and other domains owned by that owner.

BannedCheck.com: tells you if the site has been banned by Adsense.

OpenSiteExplorer.org: a free tool that allows you to view a site’s links and could allow you to identify ‘dirty’ links.

Doing the research will help you to understand how well it was performing in the past and how much effort you need to put into making it attractive for the potential buyer.

If you find it was operating more like a fake brand site, phoney website or empty page site, it is better to leave and move to the next target. Experts recommend only going ahead with a website that has a good history and maintains some reputation on the search engine. You can then build on those foundations and make further improvements to increase traffic or income. In order to make flipping websites profitable you need to focus in on the real gems if you possibly can.

Boost website appeal:

website code

Many people feel that there is some special trick or tactics that can help entrepreneurs to boost the overall appeal of their website if they wish to sell it. But some of the criteria used to value a site are: revenue stream, backlinks, high-quality content, and a good theme.

When you are working on website flipping, you may need to look for some reliable theme marketplace. One of the widely recommended solutions is ThemeForest that sells premium themes for WordPress websites. However, if the website which you are building up is not designed using WordPress, you can find some other theme template options on Squarespace and Wix. It is possible to customise these themes with ease and make the website look more visually appealing. Other than this, you can change website colours and backgrounds as well.

Visuals are important but you will need to work on content as well. Try to create some articles with relevant keywords for the niche. That may help you to achieve a higher rank on search engine results.

If you are not interested in handling everything yourself, you could even hire a freelancer and let him work on some parts.

Eg you might recruit someone to redesign the visual side of the website while you work on improving the backlinks. Yes ,backlinks play an important role in generating more traffic to a website by boosting website rankings on the search engine results.

Estimate worth of the website:

Obviously as you are trying to earn a living from flipping, this is the most important aspect of the process. In order to decide the bidding price for your website, you should first try to estimate its actual worth.

If you have been in the business for a long time, you may already be aware of the market trends. But for a beginner, this estimation might be a little challenging.

Note that when you sell a website, you are actually also selling a domain and content. You need to combine the cost of all these elements and then check how much profit this website can make per month. For instance, your website provides you £500 per month, which means £6000 per year. Typically a website generating this sort of revenue would attract a price somewhere around £10000-£30000. Empire Flippers (one of the largest marketplaces) suggests that websites typically sell for 20-60 times their monthly income.

Flipping Websites: Where to list your website for sale:

Once you have decided on the selling price for your flipped website, you should put the website on sale online and see what sort of offers you receive for it.

There are many platforms that you can choose to sell a website. Some of the most popular options are FlippaAfternic and the aforementioned Empire Flippers. You could start with a fixed price or set up an auction for the website. Although identifying the best selling point may be a little tricky for beginners, but you will learn it with time.

If you are in a hurry to sell the website, you can just set the price and make it available on the marketplace. However, if you think that website has huge potential, and it can get a higher offer, you can just start with the auction.

Time to start flipping websites:

contract

Now you have gone through all essential details about website flipping and are aware of the considerable profit margins as well. But it is also important to mention that this business can sometimes lead to losses as well. Hence, you should be very careful with your efforts.

It is better to start slow and learn market tactics. There is no point in trying to make a 6 figure income instantly; you should probably start with a cheaper option in order to learn the ropes and possibly build up to more expensive sites as you begin to understand the process better. It is possible to make great returns but as with any online business it requires skill, dedication and some startup capital.

With the right attitude and strategies you can definitely enjoy an income from flipping websites. So, brush up your graphic design skills, improve your content development strategies, and target a good website to start with.

James.

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