website flipping

This is Part 2 of the How to Flip Blogs, the Noobpreneur Way series - I’ll talk about how to create or buy blogs to flip and about the most important thing in blog flipping. This is not the end, yet, so stay tuned for part 3 - the last one :)

• How to Flip Blogs, the Noobpreneur Way - Part 1

How to flip blogs

From what I wrote before, you might notice a pattern that suggest two ways to flip blogs - create new blogs to flip and buy-hold-sell blogs.

Create new blogs to flip

If you are adventurous, you can be a serial entrepreneur-like blog flipper - create a blog, fill it with content, sell it - and repeat it all over again, and again.

There are many ways to do this - write the content your own, outsource your content writing, or create an automatic blog that pull other blogs’ content. It’s your choice.

Buy and flip blogs

You can actually buy existing blogs from online marketplaces, such as Sitepoint.com Marketplace, do the necessary improvements, and then flip them for profit.

This method, like real estate flipping, requires an eye for good stuff :)

But don’t worry - here’s the tip I have for you: hang in the marketplaces for a certain duration of time every day, and you ’suddenly’ grasping the right pricing ideas. You can also see what’s hot, as well as what deals are legitimate and which deals are priced to sell by the owners.

All in all, you’ll learn through time - so, don’t push yourself to hard if you can’t quite grasping the concept - give yourself time to learn.

What is the most important thing in flipping blogs?

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This is Part 1 of the How to Flip Blogs, the Noobpreneur Way series - just make sure you’ll be back for the next part, later on - only in Noobpreneur.com :)

Blog flipping market is growing rapidly, and you can see in the SitePoint.com Marketplace, blogs are all over the listing, both as established sites and startup sites.

Although this is a good sign for serial blogpreneurs - those that start blogs and sell them later - and blog flipper - those that buy blogs and sell them for profits, the latest trend is a bit worrying.

I have recently sold one of my blogs, too. And to say the least, it is indeed not a hard sell :)

I am a noob in blog flipping game, but I have been learning and gaining experience from my non-blog flipping career for 6 months - at least, I understand the basic of it.

However, I saw the decline in listing quality. I am not referring to traffic or other indicators, but I am referring to the ratio of high quality to low quality, that is in increasing trend, in my opinion.

Now you can always see either a totally new blog or an ‘abandoned’ blog listed on the marketplace.

Of course, new or abandoned doesn’t always mean a bad thing, giving the reasonable price tags!

Nevertheless, blog flipping game is still lucrative. Some people I know do wrote an ebook based on their experience in blog flipping, such as this how-to do blog flipping to achieve six figures income.

If you are interested in flipping blogs, please continue reading. If not, just continue reading - maybe you will be interested, eventually :P

New or ‘abandoned’ blogs vs. established blogs.

First thing first - you must get the knowledge of knowing the blogs’ status - are they new, abandoned, or established?

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I have finally sold one of my web property. All this time, all I do is acquiring websites to add to my portfolio.

I can’t disclose the details - yet.

But this first-time experience is really teach me a lot, because, in fact, it’s not as smooth as I thought it would be :p

The transaction is through Paypal, and as long as Paypal has a 60 days transaction cancellation period, I have to be worry for the next 56 days or so, because it’s easy to get refund using Paypal :)

I actually eager do transaction with escrow services, such as Escrow.com, but my country is not in their list :(

All I can say is that some minor details went unnoticed, and my buyer asked me to settle the problems.

Silly me - I should’ve checked the details not when I’m about to sell it, but when I bought the site 5 months ago! A newbie mistake, I believe.

Fortunately, the buyer is keen to work this out and not rushing to get a chargeback through Paypal.

I’ll keep you updated with the outcome.

The first lesson I learn in website flipping is: Triple check every transaction detail and inquire small details as much as you can to the seller. It’s better being annoying than sorry later.

Ivan Widjaya
Website flipping noob

I always love Yaro Starak’s flag blog, the Entrepreneurs-Journey.com.

I even more ‘attached’ to his writings due the fact that he is into web property investment (although he already sold some of his web properties, such as SmallBusinessBranding.com - to focus to his new online venture.)

I clearly inspired by his writing because I consider myself as a noob in this area - I currently have several web properties that one of them is the cash cow. I believe that just like the ol’ real estate, your intuition and experience in valuing a property is important.

Yaro, one of the pro-blogger (a.k.a a famous, authority blogger, on the Net) that invest in web properties, as he wrote in his article, never lost money on a website investment. Therefore, it’s a great way to cut your learning curve in web properties business by following his lead.

His latest article, How to Invest in Websites in Your Spare Time, is one of his articles that I’ve been waiting for long. You should check it out.

My favourite ‘insider’ tips from him, taken from the article I mention above, is as follow (summarised for the purpose of this blog):

Look for sites that grow organically

 

…My strategy has always been to find low maintenance sites, however it’s important to also consider the potential for organic growth…

 

I’ve advocated investing in forums… they tend to sustain themselves with little work beyond moderation… generally if you have a base of a few hundred regular forum participants (that’s daily participants - not just registered members), they will create content and bring in new readers without you needing to do anything at all.

 

…Buying established forums is great - creating one from nothing is challenging and time consuming.

 

Blogs can make good investments, especially if you are buying one with an established writer or a team of writers and an established readership… Blogs live and die based on continuous content and if you don’t find a way to keep the flow of new ideas coming, you might regret the purchase.

 

…If you find niche sites with a history of stable traffic targeting markets that, given things remain stable, should continue to grow with the natural growth rare of the Internet, then you may have found yourself a good buy.

 

I’ve stayed away from sites that sell products as their monetization method (like a site that sells an ebook) or sites that depend heavily on paid for traffic like Google AdWords… Niche sites that monetize with affiliate products are fine though since you don’t actually manage the products yourself.

 

…I always recommend you gravitate towards projects you have enthusiasm form and understand the model, so don’t follow my lead blindly - make up your own mind.

Great tips, huh?

Forums - THAT would be the next goal in my list :)

Ivan Widjaya
Do you Yaro? ;)

I’ve been interested in business flipping since this past few years - that is, all things related to buying and selling of businesses.

This time, I’m planning to buy a website or blog - preferably a blog - to start my journey as web property investor.

Why buying a website or blog?

To me, all related to the Internet is going to be big (actually, it is already big!). Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com is really influential in making me re-thinking about my business journey - web property IS hot and IS booming - unlike the real estate market that is already been saturated, web property business is in rapid growth.

How rapid is the growth?

Very, very fast! Typical to anything related to the Internet, website and blog’s value is rising rapidly.

I follow the website and blog flipping marketplaces at Sitepoint.com and Digitalpoint.com to see what and how more experienced people wheels and deals.

All I can say is that websites and blogs price tag is rising steadily - I used to see blogs priced as 3-4 times the monthly cash flow. Now, there are blogs sold at prices way, way over tenfold of their monthly cash flow. I’ve seen price tags ranged from a few hundreds dollar to tens of thousands of dollar. It’s getting hot in here!

What kind of websites or blogs am I looking for?

First of all, I prioritise on buying a blog. I look for blogs with strong traffic and, above all, strong readership. I look for high comment to post ratio, which indicates the strength of visitors involvement in the blog.

I always having interest in blogs that have niche topic. If it’s not possible, then I look for how-to-make-money-online kind of blogs.

I, of course, am buying my way into online money making - I look for blogs that actually make some money regularly. Not a particular amount, but I’d like to see blogs that make money from other source of revenues than PPC ads from Google Adsense and the likes.

I actually prefer blogs that make money from advertisers that pay for a certain period of time (i.e. monthly or quarterly) in exchange of displaying their banner ads on site.

I look to buy a blog which price tag is less than 10 times of the blog’s revenue, with three digits to low four digits price tag.

Will I sell my purchased websites and blogs in the future?

I will eventually flip them if, and only if, I have other projects that need a lot of my resources. As long as my portfolio performs well, I’ll hold to it as long as I can.

What caution should be taken prior buying and selling websites and blogs?

I do the following:

• Check buyer/seller’s background
• Check buyer/seller’s previous activities in the marketplace
• Check and validate what others say about the buyer/seller
• If you want to make sure about a thing or two, ask as much question as you can to the buyer/seller - being a noob is better that regret later!
• Don’t forget to check the price tag! Is it overvalued? If it’s undervalued, investigate the sites/blogs - undervalued sites/blogs are not always a good thing!
• Ask for term of payments you comfortable with, and negotiate on it
• Whenever possible, signing a contract or an agreement ALWAYS a good business practice

Well, I still haven’t buy any sites/blogs, but I’ve bid on some, and pretty close in sealing some deals. I’ll keep you posted on this.

Ivan Widjaya
Web property newbie

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