Today Sheryl over at http://workfromhome-internetbusiness.com/blog/my-first-successful-website-sale writes about making her first successful website flip. Congratulations Sheryl, keep it going! A lot of people think that website flipping has some magic to it or that you just list your site for sale and the next day it gets sold. That’s entirely not the case.
Just like a real estate agent you should always have more then one flip going at a time. While you are waiting for one site to sell you should be working on getting another website ready to flip. It’s important to keep the “pipeline” full because some websites will take 2-3 weeks for a buyer to finally get interested in. And sometimes it may take listing the site 3-4 times before a buyer finally takes the bait.
I say takes the bait because listing websites for sale is what I call the”fishing” process of website flipping. You list a website for sale in a bunch of different spots, which is just like a fisherman using a multiple poles out in the water in different spots all around the lake. The more poles you have out in the water obviously the better chance you have a of catching a fish. Realtors do this all the time except their listing houses and using newspapers instead of online marketplaces (Some use online classifieds).
The flip side to the fishing process is what I call the “hunting” process. Again I borrow this method from website flippings nearest cousin, house flipping. The hunting process is where the real estate agent is actually going out trying to find the buyer on their own. It’s a key part of website flipping that most everyone leaves out. When hunting for a website buyer you should look to competitor websites and vertical markets first.
The reason we do this is because the first person that’s going to want to buy your website is most times your biggest competitor. That’s because they’d rather buy you out and gain more exposure then take the chance of you or a new buyer coming in and taking their customers away from them. Then you go to your vertical markets, for example if you were selling a site that was about how to catch fish. Then you might approach someone who has a site that sells fishing lures or a site that advertises fishing boats for sale.
Website flipping works and people are making lots of money online from home doing it. The key is to learn the SYSTEMS of a successful flipper and follow them almost to a “T” the slightest change can literally kill a deal. Of course I recommend joining “SiteFlipAcademy.com” but feel free to shop around.
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“When hunting for a website buyer you should look to competitor websites and vertical markets first.” - Just wanted folks to read that again…
#1 “When Hunting” - Do hunt… get out there and speak UP!
#2 “A Website Buyer” - You will only need ONE!
#3 “competitor websites” - They have money, they may not have your skills. Sell it to em and the trump them again ..oh Evil!
#4 “Vertical Markets” - Build the shuttle sites (GolfShoes.com) and sell them to the mother ships (Golf.com) - They will buy it just to control the links.
…A ‘Flipping’ great post Justin.
JD French
May 28th, 2008