How to Make Money by Flipping Websites

How to Make Money by Flipping Websites

For our next money making venture, we will look into one of the most profitable ventures on the web. Some of you might know what is involved in flipping websites while others are wondering if this is similar to flipping real estate. The answer to the latter is yes. Flipping websites is comparable to flipping real estate – just look at a website as virtual property.

Website flipping consists of four steps:

1. Buy a Domain

2. Add a website to the domain

3. Add content to the website and get traffic to it

4. Sell the domain and website for a huge profit

One of the best things about flipping a website is that you can incorporate affiliate products and Adsense onto the website while you are growing it in popularity. This will generate even more money while you are waiting for it to build to a high enough level to sell.

Advantages of Website Flipping

As mentioned, website flipping can easily be compared to real estate flipping. The difference is that instead of buying real land and selling it at a higher price, you are buying virtual land. Domains are in essence the real estate of the digital world. Here are some factors that makes website flipping so profitable.

Low Cost

It costs only $10 a year to register a domain. As you can see, the risk factor is almost non-existent.  The only other expense would be a hosting account – but you already have one. All that’s required is to post some content for search engines and then wait. The higher the website ranks on search engines, the more money it’s worth.

Generates Passive Income

While boosting the value of a website, you can use it to generate passive income. Some examples would be to utilize affiliate marketing, join networks, sell eBooks, post Adsense ads – the list goes on.

Learn While you Make Money

Why pay to learn when you can learn while getting paid? Flipping just a single website will teach you new and valuable lessons. Some examples include search engine optimization, social media, link building, and internet marketing. These are things that millions of people all around the world pay hundreds (if not thousands) to learn.  The longer you flip websites, the better you will get at it.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Flipping your First Website

Finally, we get down to the nitty gritty. Flipping your first website can seem like a daunting task if you’ve never done it before. As I’ve mentioned several times already, look at it as if it were real estate:

Domain = Property

Website = Home

Ranking = Value

That’s the easiest way that I know of to explain this to you. In essence, you will be buying a brand new domain (aka. the property). You will then build a website for that domain (aka. building a home on the property). Finally, you will increase the value of your overall property in order to sell it for the highest amount possible. For real estate, you would be forced to depend on several outside factors like growth of neighborhood and the value of the surrounding property. With virtual real estate, you are the one who will ultimately determine the value of your domain and website. This is determined through the quality and volume of traffic. Let’s start at the beginning:

Step 1: Choosing the Niche

Naturally, you will need to determine the niche you want to base your new website on. For your first attempt, it’s best to stick with the same niche that is used on your main website. The reason is because you’re still in the learning process. Don’t put too much weight on your shoulders.

Step 2: Choose your Domain Name

Use the same process that you used to determine the domain for your first website. Just make sure you name is catchy and not something too generic. After all, you will be selling this at a later date. This time, you should be more concerned with your keyword phrase being in the domain itself. 

Step 3: Hosting for the Domain

Since you have unlimited hosting on your account, just set up the domain on your own hosting account.

Step 4: Building the Website

Find a great WordPress theme and install it on your new domain. Use WordPress because it is the most popular choice and you want to cater to others, since they will be buying it later. Try searching for other websites related to your niche to see what the competition has to offer. This will give you a good idea as to the theme to use. Once you have installed a WordPress theme, you’re ready to add content.

Step 5: Add Content

Just as you are continuously doing with your main website, add high quality content to this website. Utilize the same strategies as your main. The part that some people have trouble with is balancing two websites. Just keep in mind that your main is a long-term endeavor while the sooner you can flip your new one, the quicker you will be able to collect a huge payment. The best way to maintain a balance is to plan on adding new content to your main about once a week – maybe even bi-weekly. All other time should be spent putting content on the website that you’re flipping.

Flipping your first website will be the most difficult. Once you finally sell your first, you can use some of that profit to outsource the work. Once you make it to that point, you will start seeing big profits. Furthermore, the workload will decrease over time, allowing you the opportunity to focus on other ventures.

Step 6: Monetize the Website

Even though you are planning to sell this website, there is no reason why you shouldn’t monetize it while building traffic. Not only will it give potential buyers added incentive to purchase the domain, but you will generate income while waiting on an acceptable bid. It’s a win-win scenario and perhaps one of the best things about flipping websites.

Step 7: Put the Website up for Sale

Although many wait until the website starts generating a profit to post it for sale, I believe that this is best done early on. Once you have a website up and a few posts, go ahead and put it up for sale. This gives it more long term potential and more time for individuals to notice it.

Step 8: Finalize the Sale

Finally, it’s time to cash in on your hard work. Once you have a buyer, you will need to transfer the domain to them once payment is received.

You’re done!