There are a lot of places to sell a website, but some are definitely better than others. While my biggest sales was through an ad on Craigslist, that was for a “business” that had been profitable for over 6 months, rather than a site built specificlly for flipping. For flipping, I find Sitepoint Marketplace to be the best venue; Digital Point is also very good. While the sheer volume of site flipping on Ebay is very high, it is not the place to get your best offers.

It’s been said that writing a listing for your site is similar to writing a sales letter in IM, however there are other considerations to keep in mind. Professional site buyers aren’t sold on a traditional “features & benefits” pitch. Generally speaking, this type of approach suggests the seller is an amateur, sale isis my venue of choice, and many of them will simply skip over sales-heavy listings.

With so many sites being listed, your listing headline is extremely important. Statements like “Huge opportunity!” or “Huge potential” are counter-productive. A serious buyer will most likely skip right over this kind of hyperbole. Serious buyers are looking for revenue, traffic, and unique content. This is what you want to get across in your headline. Don’t exaggerate, but give buyers a reason to read your listing. Listings such as “Profitable Niche Membership Site” or “Niche Site Selling Unique Product” will get a lot of clicks.

Once a buyer is reading your listing, you want to be brief and to the point. It’s imperative to provide traffic and revenue screenshots. Be sure to spell out everything, including any negatives. Buyers will find out anyway, and skirting negatives will hurt your credibility. If your sales or traffic were the result of PPC advertising, be sure to list how much was spent.

leaving out important details forces a buyer to move on, or post a question and maybe not return.

Pricing your site too high will is a common mistake. It is natural to think your site is worth more than it actually is, so it’s important to use some basic guidelines. The most common way to price a site is by using a multiple of earnings. The ‘usual’ formula is 10-12 times monthly earnings, but of course there are mitigating factors.

New sites and, those with very short histories, generally won’t command the same multiple as a site with a longer track record, however a newer site has the benefit of showing a much sharper trend upwards.

A good rule-of-thumb for sites newer than 90 days old is 6 times monthly earnings. In an auction format such as Sitepoint, you can list a ‘buy it now’ price, but you are better off simply setting a ‘reserve’. Your particular site or niche may be just what a particular buyer happens to be looking for, and this will help you avoid leaving money on the table.

To summarize: Website flipping can be extremely lucrative. Create a site, generate some sales & traffic, and you have a valuable asset you can sell. Create your site with a buyer in mind. Build it on it’s own domain. Install Google Analytics immediately. Write down all your expenses.  Make the site as “independant” as you can. Revenue, traffic, and unique content are what sells; focus on at least two of these. Avoid hyperbole in your sale listing, include all pertinent information including negatives, but be brief and to the point. Include ‘proof’ of traffic and sales.

Perhaps the most common ‘mistake’ when building a site to flip is to build it from a seller’s perspective. This almost guarantees a less-than-ideal sale.

All the decisions should be made from a buyer’s perspective: what niche to enter, monetization method, etc.

There are generally two types of buyers - “business buyers” who are looking to buy a business to run, somewhat like a franchise buyer, and “portfolio buyers” who are looking to add to an existing ‘portfolio’ of sites. Both of them however want a site that requires as little care & feeding as possible. The closer the site is to ‘Autopilot’, the more potential buyers there will be.

For this reason, sites that require physical fulfillment, as in shipping a product, are harder to sell. An exception to this is a product sales site using dropshippers - sometimes.

The ‘best’ monetization methods, therefore, are advertising and digitally-delivered products such as ebooks or software. Membership sites sell well, however concerns over attrition will limit the number of potential buyers. Also, if membership fees are paid through Paypal, it means the membership must re-sign up after the sale, which will almost certainly reduce membership considerably.

Although unique content is potentially one of the most valuable assets, when building a site from scratch, traffic and/or revenue are the main concerns. Pay per click (PPC) is a viable option since it lets you generate traffic and sales almost immediately. Just be sure to keep records of PPC spending.

Generally speaking, you will want to have at least 3 months of performance before selling. While newer sites do sell, price is significantly lower for a site with too little history.

Avoid putting too much of “you” into the site; anything dependent on you reduces the chances of an optimal sale. This includes content unique to you, such as a newsletter or blog, and vendor accounts that require industry-specific qualifications.

Make sure everything is easily and legally transferrable, including licenses or vendor agreements, and entirely legal in terms of content and images.

Once you have a site that can be easily moved and transferred, and you have at least 90 days of at least some verifiable traffic and sales, it’s time to find a buyer.

Part 3 will look at where and how to flip your site, pricing, and other considerations.

(EDIT: Matt Mickiewicz, one of SitePoints founders, stopped by to point out “Approximately 36% of the auctions on SitePoint’s Marketplace end with a winner being declared.” See comment below).

Website flipping can be extremely lucrative - just not the way most new “flippers” are going about it. Here is Part 1 of a 3-part series on successful flipping, how to build a site to flip.

While flipping may seem like “buying & selling a business”, there are important and subtle distinctions. Flipping generally implies that the site was developed expressly for the purpose of reselling it at a profit. This is different from “buying & selling a business” where the main objective is the actual business.

The most important factors in making a website valuable, either to sell or buy, are traffic, revenue, and unique content. In fact, any two of those three will equal success.

If a site has traffic and revenue, for instance, there will always be buyers for it. With traffic and unique content, there will still be buyers who know how to monetize the traffic. Content and revenue? Buyers who know how to build traffic. You get the point.

Building a site to flip is not too much different from building a site to keep, but there are some important things to keep in mind.

When you are flipping a site, it is imperative that you show ‘proof’ of your stats. The very first thing you should do, therefore, is install Google Analytics on the site. You will not get a buyer simply by stating how much traffic your site gets; you must be able to post screenshots.

Never build a site on a sub-domain. Whatever links or Pagerank you get will not be able to be transferred - unless you transfer the top-level domain with it.

Also, keep a record of all your expenses. Buyers want to know what it costs to maintain the site, which means hosting, how much you might have spent on PPC, etc.

When building a site for flipping, you must of course consider how it will be monetized. The 3 main methods are product sales, advertising, and membership fees.

The method you choose will depend a lot on your niche and how you plan to generate traffic. For instance, it may be lucrative to generate traffic via Pay Per Click (PPC) to a product sales site, while the same method will likely prove unprofitable for an advertising model (”Adsense Arbitrage”).

In part 2 of this series, we’ll look at setting up a site and generating traffic.

After many years online, after many failures and some successes, I have refined my “formula” for generating traffic. It works, it’s repeatable, and it’s sustainable.

Before I lay out my plan, let me say a few words about methods. There are plenty of methods for generating traffic that require investment, such as Pay-per-Click, or PPC. They work. I use them. In fact, much of my business is based on PPC (I am Google Adwords Certified, and manage over $100,000 in Adwords spending). But it isn’t cheap, let alone free, and unless you have bottomless pockets, it isn’t sustainable either.

There are also plenty of “Black Hat” methods. I’ve tried many of them, and some work spectacularly well. However, aside from ethical questions, few of them are sustainable. If your efforts aren’t repeatable and sustainable, you will forever be chasing the “next big thing”. That isn’t a plan for long-term success, and it isn’t what this blog is about.

My “Free Guaranteed Traffic Formula” simply combines what we know works into a step-by-step plan of action. Your success will be directly proportional to the amount of time and effort you put into it.

In a nutshell, I combine article marketing, blog commenting, and social bookmarking. While each of these techniques is a strategy unto itself, when combined properly they become “force multipliers”. In other words, the overall effect is greater than the sum of it’s parts. I should add that simple, basic on-page SEO of your website or blog will further multiply your results. Simply optimizing your title tag, meta-tags, and keyword targeting will radically improve all of your traffic effort.

Free Guaranteed Traffic Formula

For traffic building, here is the ‘formula’ that I currently use:

• Daily article submission to Ezinearticles.
• Daily article submission using Unique Article Wizard (UAW takes your article, walks you through creating 2 additional ‘copies’, then ‘blender-izes’ them to produce hundreds of ‘unique’ article combinations, and submits them to hundreds of article directories. It’s extremely effective for inbound link-building).
• Daily StumbleUpon submission (different page each day).
• Daily Onlywire submission (different page each day).
• Daily Digg submission (different page each day).
• Daily blog commenting using Comment Kahuna (comments on 3-5 different blogs each day).

This ‘formula’ is extremely effective, and though it looks daunting, actually takes me less than an hour each day. The bulk of the time is the Ezinearticle article, and the UAW submission. I’ve reached a point where I can bang out a pretty decent article in about 10 minutes.

I should mention that I use a ‘formula’ for my Ezinearticles submission as well. This is something you all can do to radically improve your article marketing results.

First, I look for the ‘most viewed’ articles in the category I intend to submit to. This can be done by searching Ezinearticles by the keyword you are targeting (I should point out that you should ALWAYS be targeting a specific, individual keyword or keyword phrase for each article you submit).

I then ‘copy’ the article that is the ‘most viewed’ article. After all, there is a reason it is ‘most viewed‘, and this will help move your article up. (By ‘copy’ I don’t mean an exact copy. I mean using a very similar headline, and very similar content. Basically, I modify the headline just a bit, read the article, and then write one that says something very similar).

Next, I will SEO the article. I can’t over-state the importance of this. You should be thinking of your articles as one-page ‘mini-sites’, after all, that’s what they are.

Optimizing your article is very straightforward. Just follow these steps, and your article will do FAR better than it would otherwise:

1. Keyword as first word in the title.
2. Keyword in the first sentence of the summary.
3. Keyword as first word of the first sentence of the article body.
4. Keyword interspersed another 4-6 times throughout the article body.
5. Keyword as the anchor text for a link in the article.
6. Keyword in the first sentence of the last paragraph of the article.
7. Keyword as the anchor text for a link in the resource box.
(5 & 7 are to give you a better chance of having a link with the keyword as anchor text even if your resource box is striped out)

If you follow the above ‘formulas’, you will begin to generate traffic, it will build steadily, and your SERPs ranking will improve steadily.

Guaranteed.

Got some traffic tips, suggestions, or improvements on my  “Free Guaranteed Traffic Formula”? Post ‘em here!

Here’s how to get your keyword article to the top of the heap, while providing serious, long-lasting benefits:

First, go to Ezinearticles and look up your subject based on the keyword you are targeting. Find the article - the article with the most views - and copy it. There is a reason this article is the most viewed.  By “copy” I mean use the same headline, slightly modified. Read the article and write one that is similar. Not exactly, but close.

Next, you’re going to “SEO” your article, meaning optimize it for the search engines. SEO’ing an article is simple and straightforward. Here is everything you need to do:

1. Begin the article title with your keyword.
2. Begin the article summary with your keyword.
3. Start the first sentence of the first paragraph with your keyword.
4. Include the keyword 3-5 times through the article.
5. Include a link in the next-to-last paragraph, and use your keyword as the “anchor” text.
6. Begin the first sentence of the last paragraph with your keyword.

That’s it - your article, which should be extremely close to what your already know to be the most viewed article, is almost certainly better optimized.

Submit the article. You’re done.

Lather, rinse, repeat…

Here’s a new, interesting, and (potentially) free method: dictate it over the phone!

There’s a new Website called “Copytalk” - http://www.copytalk.com - that lets you call up and leave messages up to 4 minutes long. Shortly after you leave your message, it is transcribed and emailed to you.

The cost for a full subscription is $79/month, which is actually a huge bargain, but you can get a one-week ‘trial’ account free!

Want to write an ebook without doing any writing? Once you’ve chosen your niche or topic, create an outline. This can be as simple as:

Introduction

“Topic” definition.

3 points about the “topic” - point 1.

3 points about the “topic” - point 2.

3 points about the “topic” - point 3.

Conclusion.

Resources.

Now you have a basic outline. You can expand it by taking each “topic point” and further breaking it down into 3 points, etc.

Call up Copytalk. With your outline in front of you, simply read the outline header and talk about it for 4 minutes. You can rehearse this if you are uncomfortable ‘winging-it’ over the phone. Do this for each of your outline headers and sub-headers. In just a few hours, you’ve dictated your ebook!

Depending on how fast or slow you speak, each 4 minute message comes out to about a page. Using the outline method above, you’ve now created a 15-20 page ebook - your own info-product!

Xsitepro version 2 has been promised for nearly as long as we’ve been using version 1. Well, it has arrived. And the wait has been worth it. Here’s a time-saving tip: If you don’t already own Xsitepro, buy it. If you own it already, upgrade it.

I’ll write an extensive review of Xsitepro2 in a few weeks, but for now, suffice it to say the program is the easiest yet most powerful web site development and management software available at any price.

If you don’t already own Xsitepro, the price is $297. If you are upgrading and have purchased version 1 within the last 6 months, the upgrade price is just $127 - and if you upgrade within 30 days, by June 20th, it drops another $30 to just $97.

You can see the Xsitepro2 feature set or order Xsitepro2 here.

As an example, I created a short video to promote an interesting CPA offer that allows someone to make a $3 donation to charity in return for filling out a brief survey.

I’ve read many forum posts about using Youtube to promote CPA offers, and seen a lot of good, and bad advice. The two most important things to consider about using Youtube to promote CPA offers are the CPA’s TOS (Terms of Service), and the offer itself.

Few CPA offers will allow you to promote their offer directly on Youtube, or other video sharing sites. The easy answer: create a sales page for the offer, and use that URL in your video.

Secondly, but perhaps even more important, is the offer itself. You have to target your audience properly. Using a comical video to promote a credit report CPA offer may garner plenty of views, but your conversion rate will be extremely low.

You should also take advantage of Youtube’s automatic description hotlink - if you begin your description with a URL, Youtube makes it a hyperlink.

Tracking is important as well; I’ve put Google Analytics on the offer page that the video points to.Youtube can be a tremendous source of traffic, providing you use it properly.

Lastly, once you to to the trouble and expense of making your video, remember that there are many other video sharing sites. Leverage your investment by uploading your video to as many appropriate sites as possible.

Well, there’s a new one, and while I don’t expect them to overtake Paypal anytime soon, they are giving it a shot. And there’s reason to think they may do well.
The company is called RevolutionMoneyExchange, and their MoneyExchange is what their putting up against Paypal.
Among the reasons they may gain some ground that others couldn’t is that their are a US, bank-based, and FDIC-insured financial institution. (BTW, even Paypal isn’t FDIC insured!)

Ok, that’s all well and good, but here’s the good stuff: They’re offering $25 for every new account sign-up until May 15th. Flat-out $25 ‘gift’. No fee to sign up, no obligations, you don’t have to wait to get your $25.

And, they’re offering $10 for every account referral. So, I get $10 if you sign up, you get $25 for signing up, and you can then get another 10 bucks for every referral you make.

Here’s the link:

RevolutionMoneyExchange

That’s it. Easy, straightforward. Go ahead and sign up, get your twenty five bucks, send a few friends, get a few bucks more!

Let’s first talk briefly about what page rank is and isn’t. Pagerank is a number, from one to 10, that Google calculates to provide a very rough sense of the general popularity of a website.

By popularity, I don’t mean traffic. I mean popularity with other sites, as measured by back links. A high PR site does not necessarily get any more traffic than a low PR site. Where it is most helpful for Internet marketers, is in offering a little credibility for the site, but most importantly for “flipping” or selling the website. All other things being equal, a PR-3 site will sell for more than a PR-1 site, but probably considerably less than a PR-4 or PR-5 site.

So how do we get a PR-3 site by tomorrow? Simple. We buy one.

Page rank attaches to the domain name, and not the web site. And we can buy good, relevant and worthwhile expired PR-3 domains for as little as $10 or $15.

Go to Freshdrop.net. Select the .com. .net, .org, and .info names only, and PR-3 and higher. You will see dozens if not hundreds of PR three domain for sale beginning at $10.

You can even search by keyword, finding domains that have a particular keywords in them. In fact, you will find so many worthwhile high PR domains, you may well end up spending far more time and money they are than you intended.

Freshdrop will even tell you how old the domains are, older domains being better, and what sort of back links they already have.

If you want to be really slick, go to the Way Back Machine, see what used to be on that domain, and put something similar on it. You will find Google picks it up right where it left off, getting most of the link and ranking love that it used to have. Then, over the course of a few weeks, slowly migrate the content over to what ever it is. You want to do with the site.

You now have a high PR site, with lots of Google link and ranking love, and it cost you maybe $15!