In this post, you will learn how to flip websites for profit. There are two ways that you can use to begin. First, you can start a website from zero for a few dollars, build your site, and sell it. Second, you can buy a website that makes money, improve, and resell it at a higher price.
Flipping websites is a 100% legit way to make money on the internet. It can work for everyone who has some patience. The earnings of a website can vary because of the different aspects of each niche and your execution.
However, if you keep building a site, the chances are that you will start getting some traffic sooner or later. Then, you can monetize the traffic. Almost every website that makes money can attract buyers in online marketplaces.
1. Build A Website From Zero and Sell It
Choose A Niche
Before you start a new website, you must know your niche. A niche is the group of people that you will help with your website or just the site’s main topic. For example, a website that helps people lose weight is in the weight loss niche.
You can keep it simple and check your interests. Make a list of your hobbies and things you would like to talk about with your friends. Anything can be good enough to get started. Once you find something you like, choose it. Even if your first website doesn’t get great results, you can build more websites once you learn the process.
Buy A Domain Name and Web Hosting
Building a website is quite simple these days because you don’t need to handle any technical tasks. You need a WordPress site where you can add content. The content will attract visitors, and then you can find a way to earn money.
Before getting started, you need a domain name and a web hosting provider. A domain name costs $10-$15 per year, and the web hosting a few dollars per month. There are packages with big discounts when you are committed for a long time. From the different places you can begin, I would suggest Bluehost because it has quality hosting and gives a free domain name.
Once you choose a package, you can install a theme and have a website in a few minutes. Every simple theme is good enough to begin. You don’t have to worry about the design in the beginning because you need content on your site first. However, many themes allow you to edit the colors, the sidebar, the structure of the website, etc.
After the installation, you can delete the default pages and posts and start adding your content. They are example pages that don’t add any value to your website.
Find Content Ideas
When you install your site, you have zero pages and posts. A good starting point is to find different content ideas that you will turn them into posts. The posts are visible on the blog roll while the pages are static. For this reason, I prefer to create blog pages, but pages are fine as well.
You can make a list of ideas based on questions of users in your niche. There are forums and social media profiles in every niche. You only have to visit them and find these questions. Q&A sites can help you to find your target audience too.
The questions can become the title of your articles or edit them to look a little better. Then, you can research other sites with similar content for information and keep notes. A simple way to make your articles easier to write and read is by breaking them down in subheadings. Each subheading can describe a different aspect of the same topic.
Questions are a simple way to get started, but there are two more options.
You can check the content of other websites in your niche or find keywords. If a competitor creates content about a topic, you can write your opinion as well. You can add more value or give a different perspective on the same topic.
Keywords are words and phrases that people type on search engines to find information. You can use keyword tools or the auto-suggestions of Google. The problem with most keywords is that other websites already target them so that you will have some competition.
Write Content
The next step is to write and publish content. You can get each content idea and fill it with content. Most articles must be more than 1000 words, but you can create huge articles with a lot of information in some cases. You can decide based on your competition and the topic.
The content must be interesting and actionable. So, writing content without making sense is not helpful. If you can add more details or information on a topic, you must do it.
You don’t have to write every piece of content by yourself. It’s easy to outsource your writing tasks, but you must be able to review the work of a writer before outsourcing it. You can hire a few writers on Fiverr. It’s ok to split your projects in multiple writers or work only with one. You decide how to manage your business.
Monetize Your Blog
If you publish 10-15 unique articles with more content than 1000 words, you can apply for Google AdSense, which is a program by Google that allows website owners to put ads in their content. It is the easiest way to monetize your site, and many website owners make money with Google AdSense.
There are no guarantees they will accept you, but they allow you to apply as many times as you want and send you an email to let you know about their decision. You can choose other ways to make money from your website like affiliate marketing, selling your products, other advertising programs, build an email list, etc.
Decide To Sell Or Keep Your Website
When a website starts making money, it is worth 20x-30x your monthly profit. We estimate the monthly profits with the average earnings per month of the last year. If you earn $1,000 per month on average, you can sell it for $20,000-$30,000.
The benefit when you sell is that you can get a lot of money and reinvest them on multiple websites. However, keeping a website have benefits as well. You can keep earning money every month with a little maintenance or by outsourcing your tasks. It’s a type of passive income, even if it takes some work in the beginning. It’s possible to keep growing your site and your earnings to sell higher in the future.
There is no wrong or right answer here. You need to develop a strategy and do what you like. Some people build a portfolio of niche websites to generate passive income.
You can own multiple websites with no limitations. Another option is to build and sell fast for a quick profit. While you can find multiple marketplaces on the internet, Flippa is one of the best options when it comes to buy and sell websites.
2. Buy A Website That Makes Money and Flip It
Buy A Website
This method is easier, but it requires a bigger budget to get started. It’s easier because you don’t have to build the website from zero and follow all the starting steps. You can get a website that already has some profit, add more value, and sell at a higher price.
You can earn money while you add more value. For example, if your site makes $100 per month and bought it for $2,000, you will get back a big part of your investment from the monthly earnings alone or reinvest these earnings to add more content and improve your site.
In both cases, we can agree that a website that already makes money is a better option than websites that don’t make money. You can buy profitable websites on Flippa.
Each seller reports traffic and profit. Flippa allows you to search for websites with only verified traffic and earnings. These options could minimize the risk of a bad purchase. Keep in mind that the site’s value is 20-30 times the average monthly earnings of the last twelve months.
Lastly, you want a clear plan on how to improve the earnings of your site. Buying is not enough. If you don’t add value, you will not be able to sell higher. You can add value on a website in the following ways:
Improve The Technical Parts Of Your Website
Many websites have a poor design or slow loading time, but they get traffic. Of course, you can increase their traffic and rankings on search engines by improving these technical parts.
You don’t have to be an expert to figure out that the design is bad. A good web designer could do a great job without a big investment. For cheaper solutions, you can buy a good theme that shouldn’t cost more than $100 per year and remove any ugly images or videos.
When it comes to the loading time that affects your rankings and the user experience, a good theme can improve it as well. You can also optimize the size of the images, and do regular tests on Google PageSpeed Insights to find any problems.
Improve SEO
Many bloggers and website owners can write great content that will eventually get ranked on Google even if they don’t know anything about SEO. So, they publish content and earn money. Their content is valuable because Google loves unique and quality content.
If you buy a site with traffic and no SEO, you can boost the traffic by doing some on-page SEO. You can install Yoast SEO or any other similar plugin with basic SEO guidance and follow their keyword placement instructions. Go to every page or post of your website and add more keywords. Of course, we assume that you will not harm the readability of the content.
By adding keywords in the right places, you can improve your site’s rankings on Google. If you are in the second or third page of Google, you go to the third page without any other improvement.
Build An Audience
You can build an audience on social media for your site or build an email list. Strong social media profiles and email lists are worth extra money even if they can’t generate more revenue yet. Many website owners don’t care about social media because they focus on their content.
Building an audience takes some work. You need to publish content regularly relevant to your website’s content and share with them every new update. At the same time, you don’t want to be too pushy with your promotions because building trust is a big part of the process.
When you reach the point that you can get enough traffic from social media or an email list, you can advertise it as an extra feature to potential buyers.
Add More Content
Websites get traffic based on their content. People visit them to find information about topics they like, and search engines crawl the web for more content. The easiest way to add more value and get more visitors is by adding more posts and pages.
The first step should be to check the existing content and improve it when possible. You can correct grammar mistakes, improve readability when there are problems, add internal or external links, improve the length, and add images. All these improvements are helpful when they add more value to visitors.
Then, you can add new content. If you don’t want what to write, you can find a few keywords, turn questions of your target audience into articles, and add internal links.
Increase The Profit
Many people don’t know how to monetize their websites properly and get the maximum from their efforts. There is only one way to increase profits right away. You must test alternative monetization methods.
For example, if a website earns money only from Google AdSense, you can consider adding affiliate links in some pages with traffic. If you promote relevant products, you can expect an increase in your profits from the first month.
If someone focuses only on affiliate marketing, you can increase your earnings by adding Google AdSense. You can test your different options and find the best combination for your website. There are other advertising programs that you can test and different affiliate programs.
It’s quite easy to improve the profits of websites with only one income stream. You can add extra options for your visitors and get results in a few days or weeks.
Hire Writers and Other Freelancers
A website will need more content and other tasks to work properly in the future. Potential buyers consider the amount of effort that they must put. If you have already hired the right people, you eliminate one of their main blocks.
For example, you can show them the writer that you buy content for your website or find a writer for long-term projects. The same applies to virtual assistants, SEO specialists, social media managers, etc. Finding the right people before you sell can increase the interest and the price. The good news is that most websites are fine with one-two writers.
Sell It
You probably need to wait for a while until these improvements pay off. The right time for selling depends on your needs. The value of a website is 20-30 times bigger than the average monthly profits of the last year. It means that the more you wait, the more money you will earn from the sale if you keep adding value.
Your potential buyers will request proof of traffic and earnings. So, make sure that you track the traffic with Google Analytics and take screenshots of your affiliate programs. If you choose to sell through Flippa, you can start the price low and put a reasonable reserve price to attract more buyers.
Conclusion
These were two ways to flip websites for profits. As you can see, websites have more main parts that are the content, technical aspects like speed and design, SEO and social media accounts, and monetizing methods. You can add value to any of them to increase the total value of the website.
The safest way to get started is by building a website from zero and learn how they work. Once you sell it, you can reinvest that money to build your business.