Website flipping is a pretty simple concept: a ‘flipper’ buys a site at auction, works on it to improve traffic and boost search engine rankings, thereby raising the profile and value of the site which can then be sold on for a profit or retained as part of a portfolio.
With start-up costs minimal (internet connection and as little as £20 to buy a first site) and potential earnings often as high as six figures for a year’s worth of work, flipping is quickly becoming the obvious choice for SEO experts wanting to work independently and flexibly from anywhere in the world.
The recent successes of Youtube and Myspace have done much to raise the potential rewards for such work (they sold for £884m and £330m respectively) but profit margins are high even on a smaller scale, with many £10 sites re-appearing on the same auction sites only a couple of hours after being sold, often for a few hundred pounds.
With this in mind here’s a few tips for would-be flippers:
- Be careful of overinvesting in large projects early on – especially if working alone. There are risks involved with site flipping and by starting with a few smaller sites rather than one large one, they can be minimised.
- Be wary of certain dead-end sectors – different sites will gain varying degrees of value with boosted traffic. Certain sites, such as ebook seller sites (the information is nearly always available elsewhere for free), often represent a poor investment.
- Do consider holding onto a succesfully flipped website – some sites might have the potential to develop even further, it would be a shame to let the next Youtube go for only £20,000 and then to see it later sell for £200m…
- Do use trusted auction sites which guard against scam websites. Sitepoint.com and eBay are good places to start. If unsure about the value of a site you are buying or selling click onto dnscoop.com for a free valuation.
- Always stick to ethical SEO techniques – turning a quick profit with black hat techniques might work in the immediate short term, but will greatly hurt any chance of future profits once found out.
- Do consider the advice offered by Google on succesfully implementing Adsense (their adserving programme) or indeed any of its competitors (such as Adbrite). The key is effective balance between content and advertising, without alienating users by over advertising.
- Do follow new developments in flipping – the whole sector is still in its infancy with barriers to entry low and the possibilities nigh on infinite. Blogs such as siteflipu.com are a great place to learn new tips and swap ideas.
Beyond that the web is your oyster – with hundreds of thousands of sites available for purchase, often for as little as a few quid, the possibilities are endless. Whether a full or part-time activity, website flipping has great incentives for those yearning for a change from the office routine or indeed those wishing to work hard and earn handsome salaries. Whatever you choose, one thing is for certain; the barriers to entry for this kind of work will never be as low as they are now…
parameters that may affect site valuation:
- Current Pagerank: PR 5
- The total number of pages that contain links to www.etondigital.com: 84,000
- Current AlexaRank for www.etondigital.com: 199,563
Dejan Levi
