Aaron I think it's a great idea. If for anything else, certainly it's a valuable learning experience on what does and doesn't sell. And if it churns a profit which allows your idea to grow and expand, you can't go wrong :)
The trick of course is to find those blogs with a good niche, and a future.
:)
Peter T Davis
· 3 years ago
Buying websites in general, that are underpriced, doing some "renovating" and reselling (much the same way real estate investors 'flip' houses) can be very lucrative. It's certainly not for the weak of heart, as you can easily lose your investment as well as make a killing. A good rule of thumb is to buy a site that has good traffic, but has not been "monitized" (meaning, the past owner has not done well with earning revenues from it). Give it a track record of a few months of solid earnings, and put it on the block at one of the active website selling markets (Sitepoint, Digitalpoint, etc). I'm sure you'd be successful at this Aaron.
Jason
· 3 years ago
Flipping sure sounds like real estate to me too. As with real estate, it would probably be very lucrative with the right know how. Finding a tight, high-traffic, niche would be important. So go for it!
Things to consider... The higher the current traffic, the higher the sale price. On the low end, you have good information and no traffic (high intrinsic value, lower price). This would be your fixer upper where you'd need to build readership. In the middle, I like Peter's advice for a non-monetized site. It seems to be a peacefully nestled between the established mansion and the fixer-upper.
Aaron
· 3 years ago
Thanks for the insight, Peter and Jason. It's valuable. Since I've never done this sort of thing (and still might not), it will be a learning and growing experience for me. I should find someone who would let me do this for them without buying the site... Just to try my hand at successfully monetizing it. I'm doing enough experimenting on my own, but it would be an interesting process to try to do it for someone else and see how lucky I can get.
Peter T Davis
· 3 years ago
Yea, I'd lend you a site to practice on, not sure I have a suitable one though. Dunno if you saw this post, http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/02/20/website-val... a few days back, it's got some interesting points about placing value on websites.
If you do go the buy a site to flip route, I can't emphasize enough to focus on getting a site with decent traffic (and not fake traffic either!) and don't pay so much attention to the PageRank, content, and all that other stuff that people play up to increase the sale price.
Beth
· 3 years ago
I've recently been keeping my eyes out for websites or domains that I can "flip". Blogging seems like it could work for you since its your niche.
I don't think its a bad idea if you have a good model to follow. Just make sure your model is profitable obviously.
Aaron
· 3 years ago
Hey Beth! :-)
I've been following Darren Rowse and some of the others in this niche pretty closely. Though Darren doesn't buy to flip, he's obviously got the "making money from a blog" part down pat.
All Comments
The trick of course is to find those blogs with a good niche, and a future.
:)
Things to consider...
The higher the current traffic, the higher the sale price. On the low end, you have good information and no traffic (high intrinsic value, lower price). This would be your fixer upper where you'd need to build readership. In the middle, I like Peter's advice for a non-monetized site. It seems to be a peacefully nestled between the established mansion and the fixer-upper.
If you do go the buy a site to flip route, I can't emphasize enough to focus on getting a site with decent traffic (and not fake traffic either!) and don't pay so much attention to the PageRank, content, and all that other stuff that people play up to increase the sale price.
I don't think its a bad idea if you have a good model to follow. Just make sure your model is profitable obviously.
I've been following Darren Rowse and some of the others in this niche pretty closely. Though Darren doesn't buy to flip, he's obviously got the "making money from a blog" part down pat.