PR Web Elite

….and start selling a business opportunity

The inevitable backlash has started and it’s ugly out there!

A number of forums and blogs I read are all crying  poor over the fact that start-up websites no longer sell on flippa.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now. This was an arbitrage chance and it was a time of jump in first, make the best of it and more importantly, end up the other end with results to see it.

Selling websites with little traffic and zero income no longer attract buyers and sellers of these sites are pissed!

What we’re seeing now is a huge pendulum effect. It really has swung the other way and there has been a massive adjustment in the market.

Websites that had bought for $350, now hardly sell for over than $30!

I feel sorry for people that have tried to build a businesses around selling these sites, banking on it being viable long  term. People have quit jobs, invested money in business ventures, teaching programs, all based on selling sites that the market will never want again.

Heck, I was annoyed when it ended and I knewit was on the way.  It really did just fade away over night. The pendulum swung back so quickly that heads are still spinning, wondering what the hell just happened.

Now that the river has dried up, disappointment has quickly turned to frustration and anger.

Guess who is bearing the brunt of this anger? FLIPPA!

Wow, Flippa is the why my football club hasn’t won a final in over 56 years!!!

It’s not flippa’s fault, or anyone’s for that matter. Selling start-up sites was never a business in the first pace. I feel empathy for people that have attempted to build a businesses based on selling these sites, banking on it being feesable for the long haul.

The good news is that now we can take all those skills we developed pumping out site after site, learn a few new ones and start trading websites of real  lasting value that will sell for 5 times more than we were getting previously.

I’ve made a few of these sites myself lately and I can’t even get them onto flipa, as buyers on my mailing list snatch them up. (you do have a buyer mailing list, right?)

I went to a BBQ the other day and a mate was asking me to tell him how I made money  flipping websites online.

He couldn’t get how it was possible to really build and then sell a website. He assumed I was selling one of those pyramid schemes. So I grabbed the number one BBQ stationary - the pen and napkin - and I detailed out the complete method for him.

Selling websites all begins with research. Get the first step wrong and everything else is generally a waste of time. If you want to begin from scratch, you must get a market. I recommend you check out Market Samurai, or if you do not want to spend any cash at this point, Google’s free keyword tool works fine.

The first thing to do is decide on a market - anything that you wish - and just send that label into the software. The results you hope for are below 60,000 competing pages and at the minimum 100 searches a day. That way, you know that you are not in a highly competitive market where you might struggle to get results, but here, there is the right amount of interest to make some gains.

The second step is to use around three related keywords to go with your primary phrase. This will assist with site traffic and to have your main keyword to get higher and faster in the search engine results.

Next register your main phrase as a domain. Use a host service like godaddy or hostgator and begin with finding if the dot com is available to register. If it isn’t available, try putting a suffix or extension to your domain name, such as blog or site. Let’s say you go looking for shoes but shoes dot com was not available, try shoesblog dot com etc. till you find a combo that works for you. Dot com is still the most valuable of domain extensions, but if you can’t come up with anything good, then move on to dot org. I don’t usually drill down any more to dot info or the other extensions.

When you register your domain, you then need hosting for your site. This is where your website will sit and you can usually purchase hosting from the same provider that sold you the domain in the first place, particularly if you utilise one of the sizeable hosting companies.

Now, you have to make a website. I suggest you build your website with Wordpress, and the quickest, most efficient way to create a Wordpress blog is by using Wordpress Direct. Wordpress Direct is fast and totally basic to utilise for both setting up and developing your sites.

When your site is up and ready, you will have to have some content. To start, find six or so YouTube videos about your market. You can find them from inside Wordpress Direct. For each video, write about 100 words of a description for the post and that’s your original content.

The next thing is to let that Google and any other search engines know your website exists. The quickest way to do this is by use of social bookmarking. Submit your sites to sites like Digg, Mix, Propellor and Twitter. This will make the search engines see your site and let the world know it is there.

As part of the installation process, you install both Google Analytics and Google Adsense. Google Analytics will track all the numbers of your site and the latter is the adverts that visitors click on your site and this makes you money. Both of these may be located with a normal Google search.

Now that you are up and running, you need visitors to move you up the search results to the first page of results, where the fun starts.

This is a two part process and it requires fresh content and backlinks. Content is easy; it is you posting articles, putting up videos and other content to your site on a regular basis. Backlinking is the process of getting other websites linking back to your site. It’s essentially like a site telling Google that your site is good and that Google has to show others that they must go to your site too.

Now, when it comes to trading websitesflipping websites,the simplest method of acquiring backlinks is by leaving pertinent comments on blogs and forums that are related to your market.

You simply have to repeat this strategy for three to six months and you could have a site that is now ranking on the first page of search results and getting you a couple dollars each day at least.

You would be ready to sell your site on flippa dot com.

I’ll let on all about trading websites] over dessert, it’s time to return to the BBQ!

Trading Websites and Why Flippa is not Ebay

Before selling websites on Flippa, for quite a lot of traders our internet auction
usage would have been by way of eBay. There has been quite a lot of argument and misunderstanding
about the truth that Flippa, though not dissimilar to appearances, is a bit
different to  buying and selling on eBay..

The most obvious dissimilarity between eBay and Filippa is that in using eBay, buyers and
retailers get a good understanding regarding the value of the items they put up for trade.

Lots of buyers and even sellers go to Filippa questioning “What in all honesty is trading on this site actually worth?”

With eBay, when you are a buyer you can read the amount that the goods are worth and you log on and
enter the bidding process with the aim of winning the auction at a price you
know would be cheaper than retail, or if it is a collectible item, a price
that you think is right.

*The whole trading websites marketplace is so sophisticated that buyers and notably
inexperienced buyers possess less than adequate appreciation of what a site is worth and
how to figure out the selling price.*

Let’s say as an, you are selling latex blow up dolls with eBay. Both
buyer and seller already have a general knowledge of the doll’s cash value. The
seller will decide the starting amount, often a reserve with no ceiling or “buy it
now” price and let buyers take it out in the bidding process.

On the other side of things, if a seller on Flippa is listing
latexrubberdolls dot com, many buyers don’t know of how to value the website is
and look to the seller for answers, who in turn usually has no kind of idea of what
his website is worth.

I’m mainly talking of lower to mid tier sites in this article, as top end sites
generally draw buyers that understand the market and how much a site is worth,
or in the least, should understand. There is still a lot of emotional investment when
buying and selling pages, which can certainly work for you as long
as you can remain unattached (to the site, not the doll).

I read about sellers tending to complain continuously by likely buyers wanting the reserve price or a “buy it now” price when it isn’t given. The
frustration stems from the eBay method of doing things, where the buyers
get a good notion of the price the item is worth.

With Filippa, potential buyers of low to mid range trading sites should have an understanding the amount the
seller is asking for the website and then the bidding “war” shows which buyer can take it at
lower than the BIN price.

I’ve evaluated an amount of sites that have no reserve, no BIN auctions and buyers don’t know the price they should have to pay and in most of the cases, the webpages have
sold for a lower price than I expected.

The top outcomes I’ve found have come from auctions that offered a BIN price and
no reserve. Taking away the reserve and permitting the bidding process a ceiling price allows
buyers the reassurance to get a “bargain”, because there was no reserve, but they understand that they can jump in and get the bidding process at the BIN price if the
bidding gets too hot for them.

When flipping websites , offering a bin
price for lower to mid level pages further helps offset the angst
a few buyers find stemming from Filippa’s policy of furthering auctions if there are bids
put in the countdown hour.

That policy grants sellers a period of time to look over every bid and avoid any “junk”
bidders ruining the bids.

You certainly should find the value of a trading site as as to ensure that in selling you
can achieve the top amount for a site and alternatively in buying you want to have the knowledge to find the many undervalued bargain offers available on each day on Flippa.

In promoting a web site, one of the most critical things that has to be done is to discover paths to boost up traffic to your website. There are a large amount of extraordinary paths to promote traffic to your site ( like website flipping, using keyword backlinks, selling websites, and so on ), enabling you to get more and more prospects every day.

Search engine optimisation ( or S.E.O. ) is the best way for you to attain increased traffic. This would allow you to to get the best search website results, maximizing the amount of visitors to your website. Getting your website into search sites is also something that may be done. This will help you get hits each time a related search is being carried out.

Additionally, you can drive traffic on your internet site by enlisting it on web directories. This could again increase the flow of traffic as you will get it direct from these directories. You'll also drive traffic to your website by making use of links. Ask other websites to link to your own website for a special discount on some of your products. You may even opt in for link exchanges to realize increased traffic. You can also pay money and purchase links to your site from average sites that have advertising space.

You may form a group with related websites. You can publicize pages of other group members while in return they also publicize your website on their pages. This could promote all of your websites at the same time pushing up your traffic. Publishing your site will not only help you achieve gain traffic, but make it more recognized online too.

Sending emails the traditional way to your present and possible clients is also something that can be done. You may have offers and promotions that will promote folk to go to your website. This is another acceptable way site marketing. You can also sell offline by putting up your Universal Resource Locator (URL) in newspaper adverts. You'll also print out leaflets and put them in stores that sell related products. You may also purchase banners and hang it up for publicity. Such strategies are needed to be employed so as to take your website to folks who are offline.

If you're still trying to gain traffic to your internet site, you can give away spare items and do some website flipping, use keyword backlinks, selling websites, and the like. These are few of the surefire methods of boosting up your internet traffic while enticing more and more visitors in the process.

The process of selling a website for profit can often be a very intensive one, requiring weeks or even months in some cases. Hiring a website broker to help you with your venture can alleviate a lot of the stress related to flipping a website. What they provide and what they charge can vary between companies, but they almost all offer you the same basic services.

What Does a Website Broker Do?

While different companies may have different services to offer, they will all take care of the sales process for you. Negotiating the with the buyer, setting a price, making the sale and receiving the funds will all be handled by the broker. If you are working with a company that takes a more hands on approach, they may do a valuation of your site to determine its value. Then, they might give you advice or assistance in altering the site so that it reaches its potential. If you are unfamiliar with what drives a site's value up or how to execute the changes, hiring a broker to work with you can be a vital step in making more money out of your site flips.

How Does the Listing Process Work?

Before you decide to the process, you ought to know that the industry average commission for a broker is 8-12% of the ending sale price. A typical listing agreement will run for up to 120 days, but most sites sell in about half that time. A site's value can range a great deal from about 6 months of its revenue to over a year of its revenue. If you have a site which has been profitable for years, you can expect an even higher selling price. Since the actual sale is handled entirely by the broker or their company, you shouldn't have to do anything more than cash your check. Remember  that not all website brokers are the same and they may offer different services, but all of them should give you some peace of mind knowing that your sale is in capable hands.

What are the Benefits to Using a Broker?

Brokers have many different benefits to offer you. Primarily, you can expect a lot of convenience from using a broker. Besides handling all the sale or purchase work for you, they also offer you some additional security in that a company is handling your transaction and should require a non disclosure agreement to protect your personal information. Possibly the most important benefit is the chance to get expert help on boosting sales for your website flipping business. The extra money you can make with a website broker's help can often more than compensate for the sale fee they take in the end.

When marketing a site one of the most important things that must be done is find ways to increase traffic on the site. There are many various means to growth traffic on your web site (like website flipping, using keyword backlinks, selling websites, etc.) enabling you to get more such visitors each day.

SEO is one of the greatest ways through which you could achieve increased traffic. This lets you to get better search engine results, accretive the amount of visitors to your site. Getting your web site listen in favorite search engines is also something that can be done. This will step-up your hits whenever a related search is carried out. You could also list your web site in directories in addition to this. This will once again increment the flow of traffic into your site as you will get traffic instantly from these web directories.

You can also increase traffic to your site using links. Ask other sites to link to your site in interchange for a special discount on some of your products. You could even opt in for link exchanges to accomplish increased traffic You can also pay money and purchase links to your site from common websites that have advertising space. You can also form a group with connected websites. You can publicise pages of other group members while they advertise your web site on their pages. Your site traffic will be increased thanks to all these methods. You can also publish your internet site which will not only increase traffic to your site but make it more recognized as a result of publishing your site.

Sending emails the old fashioned way to your existing and prospective clients is also something that can be done. You can have offers and promotions that will promote people to visit your site. This will also gain sales, making it a very effective way of marketing your site. You can also use merchandising that is not on the internet. You can put up your URL in paper adverts. You can also print out leaflets and place them in stores that sell similar products. You can also buy banners and hang it up for publicity. These methods are required in taking your web site to people who are offline.

If you are still struggling to increment traffic on your site you can give away free items and do some website flipping, use keyword backlinks, selling websites, etc. These are some of the surefire ways of increasing web traffic while attracting more such visitants to your website.

You can get your hands on different resources about selling websites online on the internet and I’m sure most, if not all of them, would recommend Flippa and Warriors Forum as the best sites for that. There’s certainly truth in such advice, but keep in mind that these are not the only sites that you can go to. Believe it or not, in some cases going to other marketplaces like Craiglist is your best option. Here are 4 valid reasons why selling websites through Craiglist can also be a good idea.

Contact

Craigslist may be chalked up as disadvantageous since it tends to work on a local level, but this can also be a positive. If you are selling a site that appeals to local business, or one that is designed specifically for a local niche market, you have the advantage of being a close contact for the buyer. A phone conversation is a much better way to gain the business confidence of a buyer, something you’re not likely to have if you’re selling on a huge anonymous site.

Free Use

While the big mainstream sites might be considered safer or more prolific for selling websites online, keep in mind that they are not free. The companies running these sites expect to generate income as well. And they make that money off of you. Listing sites or being a member can mean paying fees or membership payments. Craigslist is a free site and doesn’t take a percentage from you for listing or selling, nor does it cost the buyer anything. And if you fail to sell a site the first time, there isn’t any penalty for relisting.

Simplicity

For someone who knows his way around the site, selling websites through Craiglist could give an edge because this marketplace allows the seller to design and create their own ad as they see fit. Other sites don’t give as much creative freedom to people who have their sites listed. It’s harder to stand out when you would have to make do with a generic template that all other sellers use.

Better Visibility

If you are able to implement SEO techniques the right way, Craiglist can give your ads a good boost in the search engines. In many instances, you can even get better visibility from a listing in Craiglist than in other marketplaces solely for site flipping.

When you are selling websites online, don’t limit your choices to just one or two marketplaces. Depending on your target buyers, sometimes it also pays to explore other avenues like Craiglist. It doesn’t entail any costs and is so easy to use. By using Craiglist in website flipping, you certainly have nothing to lose and everything to gain especially if you’re targeting local businesses for your site.

The best part about website flipping is finally making the sale. You already take every step to maximize profits along the way, buying sites at the best price and optimizing them properly, and the selling process is no different. There are steps you can take to sell your site for extra or, at the least, get you sale some more visibility and appeal to potential buyers. Instead of your listing blending in with the other generic ones out there, there are some things you can do to help your site stand out a bit more.

An Eye-Catching Title

Your listing title is your first and perhaps best chance to shine among a horde of other sites for sale. Let’s face it. A site listing for “Website about Losing Weight” would hardly get a second glance from possible buyers, just because they really can’t see anything new there. However, if you have something like “Website Shedding Light on Groundbreaking New Weight Loss Techniques,” you sure have a better chance of standing out from the rest of the pack. In addition, the site feels like something that was created with a lot of energy and creativity put into it. Buyers would want to believe that some of that enthusiasm would show on the site.

Cut the Fluff!

Buyers aren’t interested in hearing about your individual information or what inspired you to use the color scheme on the front page. It’s not personal, it’s just business. They want to hear how much traffic the site gets, where it ranks on search engines and how much it makes in a month. The details in the sale listing are where you load the potential buyer up on exactly what they want to know without forcing them to sift through a bunch of other information. It’s okay to be short and concise here. While your title should be flashy, the details of the sale can be as simple as a few bullet points.

The Proof is in the Pudding

Or in this case, the proof is in the pictures. Just as you wouldn’t buy a car based on a single exterior photos, don’t expect a buyers to lay down their money without seeing everything. A picture of the major pages and important aspects of the page are great. Even better is a video of you navigating the site and showing them exactly how it works. You can find websites out there where you can host video so not having a working example of the site in operation is inexcusable.

While some of this advice may seem rudimentary it is information that many people overlook when they list their site. Whether they have grown complacent or just don’t understand the value of a good listing, you can take advantage of it and build a superior listing. When selling websites you want to stand out from the crowd so you will draw more attention and more possible buyers boosting the value of your listing substantially.

Most Internet marketing solutions are provided by special professional services that assist businesses with the optimization of web sites on a constant basis. Depending on how much work is involved, the prices can vary between $100 and $5,000 or more. Taken outside the context such sums seem like a small fortune, but any web developer should analyze the profit chances that come along with the investment. Otherwise, the money-effort and the whole Internet-business effort is not worth it. You can start from a comparison of service before you decide on what kind of Internet marketing solution you’re going to use (such as website flipping, having backlink systems, etc.).

The companies that offer extensive marketing consultancy also need their clients to be satisfied and make money, because this is the clear indicator that their techniques and strategies are working in the direction of prosperity. The client brings a business model, and a team of experts has to find the right Internet marketing solutions to make it work. The budget planning part we’ve mentioned above would thus be included in the first stages of integrated strategy building. However, besides the paid form of the service, one can also take advantage of some free Internet marketing solutions too.

Presently, there is an abundance of tips, tricks, strategies, informative articles, tool reviews and so on that help the smart investor choose between Internet marketing solutions without paying for specialized consultancy. The bad part about it is that one needs to filter all the information, constantly monitoring the changes in market business trends and making the modifications on the business structure so that the profitability rate remains high. Only the best-trained can put together disparate Internet marketing solutions and develop them to make good money out of them. This means that the majority of companies and corporations have special teams of marketing qualified personnel or higher competent services to take care of this kind of business management.

All in all, the ultimate truth is that the Internet remains a jungle, and only with professional guidance and lots of hard work will one succeed into getting a share of the big gold promise of the electronic market. Regardless of whether you develop your own Internet marketing solutions (such as website flipping, selling websites, finding backlinks for your site, etc.) or you contract a professional team to do so, the right way to appreciate the business success is through standard performance. If there is more money coming out of it than going in, then you must be on the right path!

Can blog and website flipping really earn you money?

You may be surprised to learn that, yes, selling web sites and blogs (web logs) may make you a reasonable, and even very lucrative annual income, provided you are aware of what you are doing, that is. This is a way to make money from online that is only just beginning to be recognized as such, although in the past many people have successfully sold their sites or blogs. There has been so much information about building websites successfully, whether to make money from Google Adsense ads, or from affiliate deals where you send traffic to a product sales page, and if they buy something from there, then you receive a commission.

Without a doubt, there are good ways and bad ways to build a website, and plenty of variations in between. Likewise there are many different ways to go about flipping blogs and websites, and there are now several courses about it that teach you how to achieve this in great detail. It is not just a case of advertising your blog on eBay, and then waiting for any bids to come in offering you some amount of money for your blog or site.

No, selling a website or blog has become something of an art. In many cases, it is necessary to educate those interested in buying your site, as to why yours is a good blog or website, pointing out the various advantages of owning your site, whether it is because it it already gets a lot of traffic and can easily be monetized, or is already monetized.

Or perhaps the topic of your blog or site is currently very popular, or may be it is a site for an event coming up soon.

There are thousands of websites out there, for all sorts of different topics and niches, containing different information, and while there are some are very pretty and visually appealing, that is not necessarily going to fill your bank account with cash.

Some blogs or sites are put together to educate us all, others are informing events that will take place, or reports of those that have already happened. Other sites are put together to advertise other people’s physical products or infomational products, or as review sites or blogs, comparing a number of products, with affiliate links on them all in the expectation of selling something.

Yes, there are many different types of web sites and blogs, and many things to look at when you are selling, or buying a web site or blog. It is not just enough to write accurate information on a website or blog. There has to be traffic to a website, or at least the promise of traffic to it, unless you want to spend time writing articles to attract interest, or intend to pay for traffic from MSN, Google or Yahoo search engines. All these are valid ways of getting traffic to a site and therefore getting income from a website.But, what will work well for one site, won’t necessarily work well for another.

You definitely can make some money from flipping or selling blogs and websites, but you do have to have some knowledge about websites and blogs if you are to receive a true reflection of their worth in any payment you receive from a purchaser.