Category: Web Site management

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Finally, Flipping the Site For Maximum Profit

So, you are ready to flip the site? Good. The site is on the web, probably three or four months old, has a ton of links linking to it, is bringing in some very nice amount of money each month ($50 is nice when working with this). Good. Now comes the fun part and the part that really gives you gratification. You’re going to sell it.

This is not really that hard to understand; however, people tend to get duped and sometimes lose out on some money when doing it. There are two places that I strongly suggest selling your sites. The first is Digital Point and the second is Site Point. Each has its benefits and each has its cons. However, it’s your decision to pick which to use.

With Digital Point, you’re going to get people very interested in your site very fast. If it is bringing in ANY money each month, they’re going to pay from 10 months revenue to one year revenue and that’s it. So, if it brings in $50 a month, they’ll pay anywhere from $500-$600. That’s nice; however, the site, arguably, can be worth more if the content is good.

That leads me to Site Point. On this site, people are willing to invest more for each site. I have seen some sites sell for 24x revenue; however, that can be rare. Try and push for 16 or 18 months. The downfall is that they charge $20 per listing, so it can get very expensive and begin to chisel away at your overall earnings.

Once you have sold it, transfer the domain name to their domain company and get the site off your FTP. Congratulations, you have just flipped a site and you have a nice chunk of change in your hand. However, for the amount of work you probably did and the time you spent, the money might not seem like an all that great amount. So, here’s what I suggest.

If you are working on a Monday-Friday time schedule, each week, dedicate time to making five sites. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday write the content for the sites. Sure, it can get very tiresome writing so much content; however, you will get all the content writing done fast. Get the sites up at the end of each of those days. Use the same steps I described in the previous posts.

Now that the sites are up, spend Thursday and Friday promoting the site and building links for it. If that is your ONLY job for those two days, you’re going to be able to get a lot done. You’ll be able to submit to directories for each of the five sites (that may take two hours) and you’ll be able to really do some blog commenting. Basically, you want to consolidate all the work in chunks so you are as effective as possible.

Do the same thing each week and, after a few weeks, you’ll have an array of websites. Once they are bringing in a comfortable amount, sell. One note, though. Although I suggest waiting for $50 a month, you can wait for $10 a month or even less. However, I really suggest that if you can wait for it to get to $50 a month or even more, do it. The gratification at the end will be much greater.

So, there you have it. This is my step by step method in creating a site for the sole purpose of flipping it. It’s a lot of work; however, the reward is great. If you have ten sites that are bringing in $50 a month, that’s $500 residual income. If each site sells for $500 (10x revenue), that’s $5,000 a month plus that $500 residual income. Not bad, huh?

However, please remember one thing. This is not a full proof method. It does take experimenting and sometimes, sites just don’t work. If a site is not working, keep trying, but don’t waste too much time on it. After a while, just say, “Whatever” and start a different site.

All in all, this works. It’s what my friends use and, when I do it, it’s what I use. Try it out for yourself and see if you can replicate it. Perhaps you’ll find even more success. Hey, you may make a living from it. You may not. But, regardless of whether you do it for some side cash or for a business, I wish you the best of luck. It can be irritating at times, but it can be very rewarding.

You won’t miss any of this four part series on Flipping a Site if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now.

Jacob is an avid guitar player as well as a biology major in college with hopes of becoming a professor. When not blogging on The Webmaster Blog, he is over at his political opinion blog.

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Monetizing the Site to Flip It

Alright, alright, so now you have the site and now you’re promoting the site and getting traffic to it, whether it is organic or not organic really not mattering. But, the important thing that I am sure you want to know about is how to monetize the site. I am going to be honest and say that monetization is not just throwing up an Adsense ad and calling it a day. It can be very difficult to monetize a site; however, if you experiment, you can definitely start making money from the site.

Since we are playing around with the idea of a website about the Solar System, I am going to tell you how I would monetize this. If you can think of other ways, that’s fantastic. It is those that can be creative that will make the most money. So, for a Solar System website, you’re probably asking me what to use.

First and foremost, please go ahead and slap up an Adsense ad. However, play around with the colors. If you are getting moderate traffic, play around with the colors and the placement to see which is going to bring the best clicks. Try and place the ads near the content since that’s where the reader’s eyes will probably be. This will give you a CPC means of earning.

Sign up for Clickbank or Commission Junction or any of those and try to find a product that has to do with space. Perhaps promoting a DVD collection about space or something might get you some good affiliate sales. Sure, you may not make much from it, but if you can start getting more and more traffic, this could really help.

Another alternative to this is to use Amazon.com and their affiliate program. Although with the Solar System idea, it won’t make much, the nice thing about it is that they leave a cookie so that if I were to click on an ad on your site and then I buy something else on their site after you directed me to Amazon, you still profit. So, if you’re promoting a book and I buy a 50” TV, all the better for you.

Finally, sign up for John Chow’s TTZ program. I suggest doing this because even if you don’t make a sale, you make money because that’s another CPC. However, since it is products, that can bring in some money for you. Once again, it’ll probably be books and movies about space. It may not bring in much; however, we’re not looking for much.

In the end, what you are looking to do is try and make the site earning about $50 a month. If you can get the site to earn $50 a month, you’re going to definitely bring in a lot when you sell it. However, that’s the final step…How do you sell it? How do you really make the site bring in the most when you sell?

You won’t miss any of this four part series on Flipping a Site if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now.

Jacob is an avid guitar player as well as a biology major in college with hopes of becoming a professor. When not blogging on The Webmaster Blog, he is over at his political opinion blog.

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Developing and Promoting a Website to Flip

I talked about how you could create a website using a free WordPress theme, a .com domain name, and some relatively simple content and then flip the site to make a profit. Sure, you can do it that way if you are looking for very fast satisfaction; however, if you have patience and want to try and make more money for the sale of the site, what you can do is develop it and promote it. The content is there and the site is ready to earn…It just needs your help.

First and foremost, I don’t advise you to spend a ton of time promoting the site. It really is not worth it because you’re going to be making a ton of these sites, chances are, and if you dedicate so much time to promoting one site, it will defeat the purpose. These following steps are things that I strongly suggest you do to try and get traffic to your site.

First and foremost, submit the site to about twenty five directories all on the first day. If you can, find directories that allow you to deep link so that you can link to your articles. Pick keywords that are not overly competitive. Therefore, if I wanted to link to the Solar System blog, I might use the anchor text: Learn the Solar System or Our Solar System. I want to rank for those words so that in a month or two, I can start getting search engine traffic.

Consider buying traffic. If you pay very little for traffic, it will come to your site and then, they may click the ads on the site. This is called arbitrage and it is argued that it is an effective means to profit. However, some consider it falsifying information, so I don’t suggest it unless you are in that sort of a mood.

Submit the articles to StumbleUpon over a period of a week. Don’t do it all at once because they’ll think you’re a spammer and that’s never good. Since it’s a blog, also use Blogengage to get some traffic. You want to try and get as many social marketing sites to send traffic to you. Traffic can mean quite a bit of money for you and it looks great when you are selling the site.

Spend about thirty minutes a day just commenting on blogs that are in the same niche as you. If they allow the “do follow” tag, then you’re going to be getting some fantastic link juice which will just mean more rankings for you. This will send traffic to your blog and, as well, send the bots looking for you so that you can get better rankings.

In the end, we want the search engines to like us. Sure, having the other traffic is nice; however, those that are going to most likely click on the ads are those that come from the search engines. Find them and you are going to make money. Develop and promote the site the correct way and I guarantee that you’ll start really making money. But…How?

You won’t miss any of this four part series on Flipping a Site if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now.

Jacob is an avid guitar player as well as a biology major in college with hopes of becoming a professor. When not blogging on The Webmaster Blog, he is over at his political opinion blog.

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Creating a Site to Flip It

When it comes to the practice of building and flipping sites, there really isn’t all that much to it. However, that’s not to say that the task is as easy as 1-2-3. Alright, perhaps it is as easy as 1-2-3. Or maybe 1-2-3-4. That’s what these next four posts are going to be, a step by step method in which you can build, develop, and then flip websites. Rather than trying to make a website huge with profit, what your sole purpose is that instantaneous gratification. You don’t care about making $100 a month from your site. You’re just looking for that nice check that says “here’s what we consider the worth of your site, let me buy it from you.”

If that’s you, allow me to lead you on a four part journey that will, hopefully, allow you to find that success that you are hoping for when it comes to flipping sites. What I intend on doing is educating you on the creation, development, monetization, and then flipping of the website. So, first and foremost, let’s talk about the creation of the site.

Contrary to my post about picking a topic that you are interested in, when it comes to flipping sites, what you really want to do is just create a site that brings in some decent money each month. Therefore, the first thing you want to do when creating it is pick a topic that you know you can cram out ten or fifteen articles for, but also a topic that has enough ways to monetize it. Don’t pick something so far out there that there is no way to profit from it; no one will buy it.

Once you have picked the topic, sit down and open up Microsoft Word or Wordpad or just take out a notepad. You want to figure out what to write about for each article. So, let’s say that I was going to do a website on the Solar System. I would write down: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and then whatever else might be included in the solar system. I have what I want to write about all prepared.

Now comes the more difficult part. You want to write about each of those topics. If you are not that great of a writer, that’s alright because you can find someone to write the content for you for relatively inexpensive. Although I argue that the content should be exceptional, some people argue that as long as the keywords are thrown in there correctly, there is nothing to worry about. I like to make the content as high quality as possible. One thing to remember is the need for unique content. Don’t take PLR (Private Label Right) articles. You want unique content.

Now that your articles are all done, open up a program that you can create a logo in. You want to make one that has the solar system in it. Simultaneously, go to WordPress and find a theme that you like. If you are not all that great at creating templates like me, you’re going to want to find something that is free right here. Take it and then create the logo around the color scheme of the WordPress theme. Try and find a theme that offers places for advertising since you’re going to want to monetize the site as best as possible.

Upload the articles, try and find some pictures for each of the articles to make it a bit more interactive (and nicer), and then get the domain name. Well, getting the domain name and the hosting should be your first step; however, I mention it at the end because of how important it is. I want this part to really stick in your head. Get a domain name that ends in a .com. Some say that getting .info domain names is fine; however, I am a firm believer in getting a .com ending. Sure, it costs more money; however, if you buy in bulk, you’ll save. So, get your hosting and your domain name, put the site up on the web, submit the articles and voila, the creation of the site is done.

Once the site is created, you’ve accomplished the first of four steps in creating a content site for the purpose of flipping. It might seem like a lot of work; however, if you can focus and dedicate two or three hours of time, you can make the content necessary. For me, writing those X number of articles would probably take me an hour and a half; however, I am a fast typist. That’s why I suggest hiring people so that you can get more sites ready and made in faster amounts of time. However, that’s up to you.

You won’t miss any of this four part series on Flipping a Site if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now.

Jacob is an avid guitar player as well as a biology major in college with hopes of becoming a professor. When not blogging on The Webmaster Blog, he is over at his political opinion blog.

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Bloggeries: A Directory for Blogs

In our continuous efforts to try and increase the ‘findability’ of our blog, sometimes, we do things that don’t make a lot of sense. We submit to random, back-alley directories. We waste so much time buying advertising on blogs that just won’t help us. And, we try out very best to comment on blogs, only to find out that the blogs we’re commenting on really don’t get much traffic. What, oh what, is a blogger to do?

Find Bloggeries. Bloggeries is a directory that specializes in blogs. While other directories have sections for all different kinds of sites, Bloggeries took that extra step and focused in on one thing: a blogger’s desire to be found. And, with a page rank of six and an Alexa of 87K, it’s definitely a site that could be beneficial in your growth to be found.

First and foremost, allow me to comment on the structure and design of the site. Although I don’t really like green for websites (just my own preference), this site does have a calming feel to it and keeps my eyes from growing cataracts. Right on the home page, in the center of the site, we can see a list of each of the sections. For example, there’s a section for science blogs, political blogs, humor blogs, just to name a few. That is exactly the place to have the sections; it makes their customer’s blogs easier to find.

On both sidebars, there are a series of different places you can visit on the Bloggeries’ website. The left sidebar includes the submission button, an affiliate button (which I will touch on later), as well as links to the many different resources Bloggeries offer. They have definitely created a directory that offers everything. Your one stop to being found.

Now comes the question everyone is probably asking. How much do they charge? It all depends on what you want. If you want a featured listing, which is found at the top of the category that you pick, it costs $49.99 annually. Is it worth it? Arguably. It depends if the niche is very populated and you want to get right to the top. However, if you don’t need to be on the top, the other form of getting listed is the regular link, which costs $29.99 once. For that cost, you get your link there for life. Not too bad a deal, if I do say so myself.

To suck you in, they argue that by getting a link from here, you’re increasing your chances of getting indexed because they consider themselves an authority directory. Back when Google went to war against link sellers, they said that authority directories that sold links would still carry weight IF there was a definite screening process. If you didn’t just approve any old blog, you’d still have the ability to carry link weight. Obviously, Bloggeries passed this. Furthermore, they offer much more in your submission. You can get a link right to your RSS feed which is definitely beneficial. Moreso, you get 3-5 deep links. The deeper you go, the longer the reader will stay.

There are numerous other resources found on this site. They have their forum, their recommended blog hosts, and their free WordPress themes. Overall, Bloggeries really is the one stop spot for all your blogging needs. However, one final question must enter your mind before forking over $30 to get a listing.

Is it worth it? Are you blogging to make money in the future? If so, I recommend signing up. Now that I’ve found it, I intend on submitting all of my blogs to the site as well. They’re authority links and we need those to become found. Should it be your only means of promotion, though? It shouldn’t be your first. However, put it on your list of ways to increase your ‘findability.’ It can’t hurt. Try Bloggeries.

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How Not to Lose (Too Many) Visitors When You Move Your Site – Part 2

In the first part of this new series I wrote about three ways to redirect visitors to a new site. Today I’ll show you that there are also off-site ways to guide your audience towards another destination.

Using various tools to keep in touch with your visitors

1. Update newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your visitors. If you usually send email alerts to let them know about fresh site content, it’s obvious that you may as well send out a special alert informing everyone about your site’s new address. In case you still haven’t set up an update newsletter, I strongly recommend that you start working on it right now.

2. Forums are great for community-building purposes and also to make a site stickier. Depending on how successful a forum is, it may become more popular than the site it originated from. If you currently use a free webhost for your site or blog, make sure to host your forum on a third party (even if it’s a free one too). Never have both your site and forum hosted by the same free webhosting company. This way, if you need to move your site for reasons that are beyond your control (e. g., your site’s webhost suddenly goes out of business), you’ll still be able to use your forum to communicate with your visitors and let them know about the changes.

3. The same principle can be applied if you keep a site and a blog simultaneously. Do not host both of them on the same free webhosting provider, even if this recommendation appears to be less practical. Use your blog to inform your visitors about your site’s new address and vice-versa.

4. Don’t forget about the sites, forums and blogs that you know your visitors usually read. Update your signatures, leave comments linking to your new URL, sign guestbooks when available… But please, don’t go overboard with those. You don’t want to become a spammer, do you? If you do, all you will manage is to lose your visitors for good.

Can you think of other ways to leverage online tools and communities to direct a site’s visitors to its new address? Feel free to share your tips by leaving your comments on this post.

Did you think I was done with this series? Think again! I want to help you retain and/or recover as many visitors as possible. So I’m going to offer some additional suggestions in my next article. Get it as soon as it’s published by subscribing to our blog.

Karen Zara has been involved in Internet-based projects since 2002. One of them is Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.

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How Not to Lose (Too Many) Visitors When You Move Your Site – Part 1

One of the biggest problems about using free webhosts is that in case you decide to move to a paid one, you may lose some visitors in the process. Don’t despair though. There are several things you can do about this.

Redirect your visitors

1. When a webmaster or blogger reveals their plans to move from a free site to a self-hosted, paid one, they’re often told to use 301 redirects. You may click here to learn more about this method. As you’ll see, the main problem about it is that most free webhosts won’t grant you access to your .htaccess (infamous pun intended). And if you’re a non-technical type, the whole 301 redirection thing will look like a nightmare to you.

2. You might go for a meta-refresh HTML tag instead. This one is much easier to do and I’ve used it myself several years ago. The problem is that several years ago I didn’t know this practice might get me into trouble with search engines. At that time I didn’t care anyway, because my site’s traffic was almost exclusively generated by my networking efforts. If that’s your case as well, or if for any other reason you feel that search engine traffic isn’t so important to you, here’s the code you must place on your homepage, inside the HEAD tags:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://example.com/">

Replace 5 by the amount of seconds a visitor should wait before being actually redirected to the desired address (represented above by “example.com”). Also make sure to include on your homepage a brief message telling your visitors that your website has been moved and that they’ll be automatically redirected within so many seconds. Include a clickable link right below this message, so people can use it if they don’t want to wait and/or if the redirection fails for any reason.

3. Short URL services are yet another option. You could promote the short URL instead of the actual site address, so that your visitors would always be able to find your site, no matter where it’s hosted. The main issue about such services is the fact that by masking your pages’ addresses, they may hinder search engines from indexing your site. Besides, many spammers make use of URL redirection services, giving them a bad reputation that could hurt you in the end. For instance, when leaving a comment on a blog, you might have it marked as spam if you include a link generated by a short URL service.

If you still want to try an URL redirection service, at least make sure to always use your site’s real address when promoting it or building links for it. Display the short URL somewhere on your site (preferably on the main page) and explain to your visitors that it’s an alternative address that they should save for emergencies, i. e., in case a sudden move is needed, they won’t lose sight of your site (another infamous pun intended).

Would you like to suggest any other ways to redirect visitors to other URLs? Do you want to share any tips or links to helpful services and tutorials? Leave a comment, please.

Redirection isn’t the only way to avoid the loss of visitors when you change your site’s host. I’ll show you other alternatives in my next post. You won’t miss it if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now.

Karen Zara has been involved in Internet-based projects since 2002. One of them is Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.