Bought Some Cheap Sites Last Week

In recent months buying good sites in the $200-$500 price range has become a little more tricky (i.e. every month I seem to find fewer decent sites for sale) so just last week I ventured into buying a few sites which fell in the under $50 category.

Now many of you probably already know that sites in that price range are usually not my style. Under $50 usually means no traffic, no history and usually very little unique content. However in recent weeks I’ve noticed a lot of people emptying out their portfolios with old sites that simply didn’t work for them.

Hard Times

No one will deny that times are hard, sites aren’t selling like they used to and with this trend not looking to change you’ll noticed many webmasters taking a long hard look at what their carrying in terms of domains and unmonetized websites. Any fat (or excess) their portfolio is carrying needs to be shed, it’s time to throw it all overboard and salvage what you can!

With this scenario taking place I thought I’d take a closer look at what’s being thrown out and if any of it is worth salvaging. What I’ve been looking for are 1-3 year old sites, with good content but very little traffic and zero earnings.

The $50 Sites

These are sites that have not only been neglected but have probably been sitting with the same owner for more than 12-24 months simply doing nothing. Domain renewal time is looming and these webmasters just want to get rid of these sites so that they can avoid the $10 renewal fee.

Sure $10 isn’t much but remember that in most cases these guys have usually already renewed the domain a couple of times and with no returns over that time and cash reserves running low (in this harsh climate) it’s time to sell or ditch the site.

They’re looking to sell cheap (maybe around $10-$40) and in most cases if the seller doesn’t make a sale they’ll probably let the domain expire. With all this in place I’m sure you’re seeing the potential for a very profitable purchase.

The key to success with these $50 sites is knowing what to do once you get them. The previous owner obviously did nothing and wasted their potential, so what are you going to do to make the purchase profitable!

Well whether you’re scratching your head at this moment or have already begun contemplating the endless possibilites that exist when buying a new site I’ll make things simple by showing you what I personally did with 4 sites I purchased last month.

The Sites

So here’s a quick run down of the sites I purchased, and what I’ve done with them. Remember all 4 sites were less than $50 each and purchased within the last 4 weeks.

• Runescapecheatszone.com ($30) - (original sale thread) Ok a simple cheats site based on the ever popular Runescape RPG. What attracted me to this site was that it’s an extremely popular niche and one that I know very well. The tactic here was simple a) clean up the ad locations and colors (they were a little messy before) b) build some good backlinks to the site. Total time investment was maybe 1-2 hours consisting mainly of small touch ups and link building. That’s really all I did.
• Ironmanwallpapers.com ($20) - (original sale thread) I’m a big fan of wallpaper sites and always think they can do well. So when I saw this niche wallpaper domain (.com as well) I grabbed it. Funny thing was, no one else despite the release of Iron Man 2 (just recently) saw it as a worthwhile purchase. I approached the seller after his auction had expired and offered him his reserve of $20.I then paid someone to collect 100 fresh new ironman wallpapers (cost $7) and uploaded them. After I had enhanced the contnet I built a few link exchanges (nothing major) and that was it. Once again my total effort was maybe 2 hours, the guy that collected the wallpapers took 24 hours, so total turnaround time around a day and a half.
• computer-jokes.co.uk ($45) - (original sale thread) Ok this was a little more expensive but still under the $50 mark. What attracted me to this one is that the humour and funny jokes niche never really dies. It’s usually a solid performer and a great niche to get into even if competition is often very high.The other bonus to this site was that the site was well aged and sitting on a keyword domain (a weak one I’ll admit) but nevertheless it had potential. Once again the major effort with this one was building some backlinks and moving some of the ads around. Total time on my part probably around 30 mins.
• emuguide.co.uk ($45) - (original sale thread) Actually bought this site as a package with computer-jokes.co.uk and once again this site was aged with some niche and unique content. The site basically lacked backlinks and just needed some basic SEO love. I actually haven’t gotten round to doing this one yet, but when I do it’ll mostly be the same as before. Get some link exchanges and maybe this time add a couple more articles to the site.

The Results

Well the results are still coming in as I never expected any of these sites to start showing any major changes until at least 3 months, however at the same time I wouldn’t be posting this report if I hadn’t already seen some changes. So here’s a quick rundown of what’s happening and just remember that all of these sites were getting next to no traffic and had zero earnings before I bought them.

• Runescapecheatszone.com - Earnings for the last 7 days stand at around $1. Not great but then we’re talking about it having $0 earnings previously that’s a great start! Monthly earnings after the first month we’re looking at around $4. Again not bad considering I’v put in around 1-2 hours and only bought it at $30. I think this site with some fresh content might be worthy of hitting the $10-$15 per month mark, but we’ll have to see.
• IronmanWallpapers.com - Earnings for the last 7 days is $3.20, which isn’t too shabby considering I bought this one for $20. By end of the month we can expected income close to $12-$15, and for a $7 further investment plus 2 hours of my time I’d say that’s a success. The great thing about this site is that it will continue to grow in authority and search rankings, especially once it gets some listings in google images. I won’t be touching this site for a couple of months and will simply monitor it’s traffic and earnings maybe grabbing a link exchange here and there.
• computer-jokes.co.uk -Earnings for the last 7 days sits at $2.60 and it’s going up every week. Again remember this was a site that was earning $0 per month. Total investment so far has just been the 1-2 hours mainly spent on link building. My hope is that once some of the search engine rankings I’m pushing for kick in, I’d expect things to move forward quite quickly. Overall looking at $10-$12 by the end of the month and I only paid $40 for the whole site so once again some positive growth going on!
• emuguide.co.uk - Earnings for the last 7 days sit at $0, but then again I did say that I hadn’t started any work on this. I threw this site into the equation to really demonstrate that if you do no work and add nothing to a site it will stay exactly where it is. I purchased all the sites around the same time, all were earning $0 but this remains on $0 whilst the others are growing. A stern reminder that effort and the right type of effort has to be applied to make a site earn. I’ll report on this site next month after I’ve done some work on it and you’ll hopefully see similar results to what we’ve seen above.

Sub $50 Sites

So what have we learnt ? Well firstly you don’t need a lot of money to buy sites. I’ve clearly demonstrated that with a budget of less than $50 (the cheapest site was only $20) you can buy a decent website for flipping purposes.

On top of that if you look at the resources I spent on these sites after purchase, well all 3 sites combined only took up around 6-7 hours and $7 of my own money. That’s all that was needed to get these sites earning and arguably even the $7 I put towards paying the wallpaper collector guy didn’t have to happen as technically I could have done it myself (but simply couldn’t be bothered at the time).

The Future

Well one things for sure, I’ll be monitoring these sites over the coming weeks and seeing how they do. If all goes to plan they’ll all be earning at least $20-$30 per month within the next 3 months and to me that’s a success.

By now the above purchases which you can all verify by checking the original DP threads should remind you just how easy it is to buy sites for either flipping or portfolio growth! It really isn’t that difficult guys and the above experiment on my part should hopefully motivate you to replicate what I’ve achieved within your own life.

On that note I’ll draw this post to an end and prepare to head off to the gym knowing that whilst I’m working out, my sites are flexing their own muscles putting $$$ into my account. Fantastic really and once again reminding me why I love webmastering so much!

Launching My New Ebook

Ok so I was talking to a good friend of mine a couple of months back ( I’ll call him chris ) and we got talking about me launching an ebook showing everyone how I do all my site flipping with real tips, strategies and case studies.

A complete guide suitable for both newbies and people with basic to intermediate webmastering skills. Now despite me initially being too busy to really consider such a project, and despite my friend telling me it would be awesome and that he’d probably buy it when it came out (he was a fan of one of my earlier ebay related ebooks you see).

Bad Experiences

Despite all of this positiveness I was still skeptical and kind of put the idea to one side mainly due to my extremely busy schedule and that initially the idea simply didn’t seem worth my time. I value my time, I am an expert in my field and many will know that previous coaching and teaching projects crashed and burned due to people signing up with the wrong intentions and completely wasting my time and theirs. I really didn’t want to go through all of that again unless it was planned correctly.

So a couple of nights back I spent some time thinking about how this could work. How would such a venture benefit both myself and the buyer. Under normal circumstances I hate ebooks but when bundled as part of a complete package it can be a different story all together. Ironically that’s exactly what I offered when I launched my ebay training programme way back in 2006 (and that worked splendidly).

Good Experiences

When I was on eBay, my coaching programme gave not only a high quality ebook with tips and real knowledge but also offered a special membership that came with free templates and other downloadable items which were unique to my system and only available from me. These were items that I used in my daily business and that gave me the edge in making money online.

It’s from thinking over how I did things in the past and analysing where I currently was with my present activities that some ideas popped into my head. Ideas that may help me launch a new package focussing purely on website earning and flipping. A package that combines teaching and coaching with real life projects.

Ok so based on the above let’s take a look at what’s on my mind and what I might include in the package. Well for starters you’ll receive the ebook which in itself will be an eye opener, however alongside this knowledge you’ll be getting the following things.

Private Consultation

The first would include a special membership on my forums where you could privately ask me questions. A kind of private members forum where any posts you made would only be visible to me and you. I’ve always struggled with coaching type questions over MSN or the phone as it can often end up disrupting both my time but also not allow for a timely response to the questioner. I’m just one guy at the end of the day and a private yet, asynchronous method of asking questions and receiving responses may well be the way forward.

With a private forum all the questions are private, neither the public nor the general members would be able to see your questions which assures you the member complete confidentiality and access to me as a private resource. This in itself is a very valuable part of the deal i.e. private consultation with a subject matter expert.

Special Marketplace

The second would be access to a special marketplace where I’d sell projects all setup for someone to execute. Look at it this way, right now I have over 300-400 high quality domains all sitting in a list complete with keyword research already done, detailed plans and ideas for those domains already documented. The only thing that’s left is the execution. i.e. developing the site, writing the content and doing whatever promotion work needs to be done.

Most would be content sites so any free CMS like wordpress, joomla etc could be used (heck even static pages would work). I don’t have the man power to work on all these sites and every month this list of mine gets longer (6 months ago it was only at 200).

Selling off some of these projects every month for a nominal price helps me control this project list (and earns me some money too) whilst the buyer gets a well researched domain name, and a fully documented project packed with all the keywords the site needs to be optimised for and a list of suggested articles and features the site should have.

It’s All In The Idea

Basically all of the brainstorming and idea conception work is done for you and fully documented in a tidy 1-3 page document. All you have to do is add water and stir, it really is that simple!. Sure it still requires some hardwork but you don’t have to think anymore, all you need to do is follow the steps and execute what’s been outlined. For many it’s the idea that people get stumped on and when you have no idea, after a couple of months your enthusiasm dies too.

To me this is a great way of helping the reader who finishes reading my ebook get started almost immediately. They’re free of course to come up with their own ideas and go it alone but for those that want to do a few projects with a little hand holding that’s fine too. In fact experience has shown that going from a book (or ebook) to the real world isn’t always as straight forward as people think. Going from theory to implementation in the early stages can sometimes be a troublesome experience (even for the smartest of us).

Does the above sound good ? Ebook + Coaching + Real Projects == I’m earning money from the internet. Think about it!

Project Details

So if the above sounds good lets take a look at what I’m thinking of doing with these projects. Remember at this stage I haven’t really finalised what I’d charge for a project but here’s some sample prices and more details on what the buyer would receive.

• The Project Idea (extremely important because not all project ideas work out in reality)
• Researched Domain Name (you get the domain name in the price)
• SEO Keyword Document (written by me)
• Development Plans (written by me)
• Promotion Tactics (written by me)

That’s a full specification and would allow almost anyone to get stuck straight into the meat of the project. You’d know what articles to write, what software to use, what angle to promote from and have the added benefit of having me on hand to help you along the way. It’s basically what I give to my contractors to execute when I can’t work on a project myself.

Remember if I had the man power I would never sell these projects but my rate of discovery and acquisition is growing so much that I really have too many sites and new projects in the pipeline. Selling projects at a really affordable price and letting you reap the benefits may be a great way for me to liquidate my ideas and expertise in project seeding and for you to get into the whole website earning and flipping business.

Guaranteed Buy Backs

The whole concept suits not only my coaching abilities but my track record of picking great projects. In fact I’m so confident of my project selection abilities that I’d offer everyone that bought a project from me the ability to sell the project back to me if they didn’t get anywhere with it. The idea’s that I’d give are solid so if you went ahead and executed them properly you’d be making money.

If you made no money then you’re doing something wrong but even then because the project is sound I’d offer a guaranteed buy back rate of atleast 50% of what you paid. The reason I don’t want to offer you a guaranteed 100% buy back is because then you’d have nothing to loose and when someone has nothing to loose they really don’t put in the right amount of motivation and effort to get a project going.

In a perfect world I’d want everyone to never sell back a project but with this buy back guarantee you’re atleast getting some sort assurance from me that this is a project I’d gladly back with my own money. I’ve been asked to go 50/50 on many projects in the past and this is as close as you’re going to get in terms of doing a joint venture with me!

Project Prices

Prices would probably vary depending greatly on the domain and the sites potential but I’d say anything from $50 right up to $200 could be realistic price for projects. Remember this wouldn’t just be a random domain and half thought out idea. These would be projects I’m waiting to get stuck into myself but don’t have the time for. Projects that I myself have selected and vetted for success.

Not trying to sound arrogant or anything but I’m pretty good at both buying and coming up with new ideas so any project you took on would be a sure fire winner assuring you that with some work you’d come out profitable.

Still Just An Idea

Remember the above is obviously still in the planning and brainstorming stages right now but I’m extremely excited about what it’s going to offer. I feel it’s something different and something that isn’t really being done at the moment. I think it ties in knowledge, coaching and real life projects into a tidy little package. Those of you who might be interested in this whole scheme of things do leave me comments at the end of this post as to what you like or don’t like about the idea.

Like I said it’s still early days but I wanted to put the idea out there for everyone to see before I actually went ahead with it.

Site Flipping Tips For Newbies

Whenever I’m at a gathering and I tell people what I do for a living the first thing they always ask is how can I get into what you’re doing! How can I start flipping sites ? Where do I start ? etc etc. The questions go on but you get the gist of things. So for that reason alone I thought I’d put together a little and very brief (and I mean brief) starter guide on how to get started.

Webmaster Forums

First step is to get to know the main webmaster forums and choose one to hang out on. I would personally recommend digitalpoint (DP for short) for it’s pure activity levels and that people on there actually give away some really beneficial information sometimes. It’s not a classy joint that’s for sure, and certainly it’s got its fair share of shady characters but if you stick around long enough you’ll find some really cool, friendly and helpful people.

Another aspect to the site that’s not noticed by many is that it has a great mix of people starting out and those that are in the process of becomming successful. That blend of users makes it an ideal place to not only feel comfortable but also drive you forward with motivation. So check it out, follow the marketplace, monitor the sites being sold (on an almost hourly basis) and get a feel for how things work.

Other forums to check out include sitepoint, V7N and webmasterworld. Check them all out and choose one that you like.

Skill Up

So you want to get into websites but what do you actually know about how websites are built, how they work, and more importantly how you promote them. These are all questions you should begin to explore and for the most part you’ll be able to answer most of them by simply reading threads and hanging out at one of the major webmaster forums I mentioned above.

This step needs to be done slowly and you really need to enjoy your time doing the exploration. Take your time and just enjoy discovering new information and knowledge about websites. If at this point you’re not enjoying the work you may need to seriously question if this line of work is for you.

Types Of Site Flippers

So you’ve started to gather information and you’re getting comfortable with most of the key terminiologies mentioned on the webmaster forums. So the next step is to decide what angle you’re going to play the game from.

I broadly categorise site flippers into two categories, people that have the money and simply want to be managers. These types usually don’t have too much knowledge on the specifics of XHTML, CSS, or PHP code, they mostly don’t have any knowledge of photoshop or the other major graphics suites but will have an overall understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

If you’re looking to go down this path you’ll still need to learn about all the technologies used in the business but obviously won’t need know too much about using them (as you’ll be paying others to do the work for you). Now despite sounding like an easy path I have to openly say it’s not! This is 100% not an easy route into the game because although you’ll skip over all the technologies and the dirty hands on work your lack of knowledge in that department will need to be offset with a much higher understanding of costing and more importantly the marketing and SEO side of things.

If your personality suits this approach and in your life you’ve shown a track record for having been successful with detailed complex tasks with just general concepts and a high level knowledge then I’d say go for it. Otherwise stick to the next approach which obviously requires less money but takes longer!

So for all of you hands on types (just like me) let’s take a look at how to get started. Firstly you’ll need to master the technologies involved and the best place to start will be the front end technologies like XHTML, CSS, JQuery.

The front end technologies will be enough to help you build fully functioning profitable websites but for those (again like me) who want to go further you’ll need to step into the realms of PHP code and then eventually if you have the patience and desire to get a little artistic then photoshop and graphic design work would be your next stop. Those in essence are the core skills you’ll need in my line of work. Learn them, master them and become one with them!

Oh and for SEO, read around and experiment, I would normally recommend a book or even an e-book on basic SEO as it’s good to have when you first start to understand the theory behind it all. Once you have the basics the next step is to experiment and try to implement all of the various aspects of good SEO such as link building, article writing and other promotional means.

Give It Time

Once you have all of the above locked down, you’re pretty much ready to go full steam ahead but don’t rush it. Once you know what you’re doing and it could take anything from 2-6 months. Enjoy your new found knowledge and start small. Buy a site here and there and try to improve it, most of your early sites will probably be failures but you’ll most likely also pick up some good ones too. Learn from the failures and motivate yourself from the successes.

We all gotta start somewhere so just keep going. If it makes you guys feel any better it took me around 12 months to really feel like an expert site flipper and every month that goes by I usually learn a little more.

Good Luck

As always if you read this article and found it helpful or maybe want me to go into a specific area in more detail just drop me a comment and I’ll be sure to respond. I may even re-open my forums if I get enough requests for help and advice.

$300 For 30 Minutes Of Your Time

I was reviewing my portfolio last week and found a few sites I had purchased in 2009 which for some reason had gone under the radar. I bought the sites, moved them to my server and then for some reason didn’t touch them. One such site I had purchased was an aged teaching directory built with nothing more than static HTML pages and it instantly caught my attention. I went into analytics and noticed it was getting over 160+ unique visitors per day (almost 5000 per month). That’s decent traffic but oddly enough I hadn’t even embedded any adsense code on it.

What No Adsense !!!

Anyway with no adsense or any other adverts on the site I decided I might as well start adding the code now (better late than never right), and low and behold memories of why I did nothing to the site began to flood back. With over 35 static html pages I couldn’t be bothered to put up my adsense code. It would only have taken me 20-30 minutes to copy and paste the code into the site but at the time for some strange reason it just didn’t happen. Most likely I viewed the site in it’s then condition (I still haven’t done anything to it) to be an unlikely earner, hence not even deserving of 30 minutes of my time. I was going to spend that time elsewhere on one of my better sites! Oh how wrong I was!

I’m Bleeding Money Away

Long story short, I added the code last week and the sites been grabbing a steady $0.75-$1.00 per day. Not much right but over the year not putting my adsense adverts has cost me close to $270-$360. Put it this way if someone said to you give me 30 minutes of your time and I’ll pay you around $300. Would you do it ? Hell yeah, you’d be absolutely silly not too, so why didn’t I view this 30 minutes in the same way!

I’d most likely blame it on a complacent attitude on my part and maybe even an almost over confident type of cockyness towards the smaller site which just didn’t seem to have the gloss and shine of some of my other sites. Whatever it was I lost money and more than that, because I paid $100 for the site in the first place, 1 year on I still haven’t recovered my initial investment even though i should have got it back almost 3 times over.

Tips For The Future

So what did i learn ? Well firstly don’t spread yourself too thin, my inability to add the adsense was most likley because I was busy with other tasks on other sites. Secondly give every site a fair chance and when you buy one or develop one, at the very minimum add some adsense to the site, it doesn’t take long and in my situation could have stopped me from losing money that’s was supposed to be mine for the taking.

Final Words

Hopefully a good reminder for all of you (me included) that sitting on sites which you think are highly unlikely to earn is a big mistake. Get your ads up and see what happens. Don’t leave it to chance and a negative attitude. In fact it’s even worse that someone like me made a mistake like that since I actually have a really keen eye for sites that fall under that category (i.e. websites that are getting traffic but sit unmonetised). Doh! (runs off checking the rest of his unmonetised sites for easy money)

2010 Plans & Direction

Hey guys, it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog and for good reason. I’ve not only been extremely busy buying new websites (my total website count is now up to 150) but I’ve been spending huge amounts of time restructuring and reworking a large part of my portfolio.

All of this work combined with me moving into a new house made 2009 a spectacular year and 2010 is set to keep up with this rate of expansion. So to kick things off I’m going to spend a little bit of time talking about my strategy for 2010 as well some of the things I’ve been busy with lately. Hope you guys enjoy the updates!

2010 Direction

One of the biggest problems of carrying so many sites (despite the awesome income associated with them) is the time needed to keep them updated. 2009 in terms of content development and promotion wasn’t the best, it was always full steam ahead growth, growth, growth and some of my sites suffered which means 2010 has to be a year of restructuring and redevelopment of my existing sites.

Oh and with over 100+ undeveloped keyword domains just sitting there I’ve got no shortage of new projects sitting on the conveyer belt. I’m hoping to work through atleast 30-40 of these in 2010 (of which I’m probably already through 4-5).

Anyway thats what 2010 is going to be all about so let’s get stuck into what I’ve been buying both this year and what I picked up at the back end of last year.

Getting Into Anime

Ok the first site I want to talk about was one I purchased maybe as far back as 2008 but pretty much sat doing nothing for me until around the summer of 2009. It had maybe a few dollars worth of income trickling in but nothing special so it wasn’t until last summer that I spent some time redesigning it and pushing it forward as a mainstream anime news and forum community.

The site in question is animeMB and one that I purchased for around $200. With a full redesign and some clever marketing (all of which took around 2 weeks) I managed to bring the site and community together and traffic has since continued to grow daily. You’ll have to keep your eyes on this one because I think it’s set to get bigger.

Now one thing I like to do once I pick up a site within a niche is to try to pick up other related sites which can work off and grow from the main sites success. So Naruto Wallpapers was a purchase I made in January 2010. Costing me just under $600, it’s steadily growing and now brings in almost $110 per month. I’d say since I purchased the site (only 4 months ago) I’ve pulled in almost $450 meaning i’ll probably have recovered my initial investment in a month or two. Overall a really good purchase and one that’s set to grow.

Two other anime sites I purchased include One Piece Wallpapers and Bleach Wallpapers. Both doing well but not bringing in as much income as I’d like. It’s on sites like these (i.e. ones that are getting decent traffic but not enough revenue) that I really want to spend time on in 2010. These sites are not only under performing heavily but fixing them shouldn’t take too long.

Travel Network

I’ve never been too heavy on travel within my portfolio so just 2 months ago I decided enough was enough and started to work on a domain and site I picked up almost 12 months ago. The site in question is GoTravelGo (the name’s pretty catchy don’t you think ?) and was purchased with high hopes but ultimately sat out most of 2009 on the bench.

So to kick things off (last month) I finally found some time to complete a fresh new newspaper type layout for the site and added some fresh new travel content. It was a mixture of me writing articles and some article writers on my team writing up some well researched articles.

Obviously the whole project is still in it’s early days but I have a feeling this site will do extremely well thanks to it’s clean layout and high quality articles. Obviously I’m new to the niche so I’m probably not promoting it correctly right now but by the end of the year I’m expecting this one to be big.

Final Words

Ok so I’ve given you all a really short update on what I’ve been up to as well as some of the sites I’ve been working on over the past 12 months. Obviously the above mentioned sites weren’t the only ones I’ve been working on but they do at least give you an idea of what I’ve been doing (which I’m told many of you find interesting).

So for now so long and keep working on your little web empire. Just remember it doesn’t matter how small it is, over time it will grow and over time you’ll achieve the goals you’re aiming for!