Hey Everyone,
I recently caught up with a friend of mine and top marketer Ryan, we had a skype chat and he told me how to buy established websites and why it’s such a good idea.
I’ll be honest and say I’ve never done this before myself, but after talking with him I was amazed at how profitable this can be, and how it can help accelerate you into a niche. Like I said I’m no expert, so I’ll be organizing a webinar with my friend so he can teach you himself, but for this post I want to share with you some points I learned from him.
Why Buy Established Websites?
The first question is why would you want to buy an established website in the first place anyway? Well there are many reasons for this, and essentially you can buy anything you want. For example if you want to get into a niche, you can look at the sites ranking in Google for buyer keywords, and in particular look for the sites that need a some work, yet what they have going for them is their rankings.
What you can do is offer to buy their site and then you can fix up the site and you instantly have Google rankings for this niche!
Another thing you might want to do is buy a site for the email list it has collected. If you know that you could monetize an email list pretty easily, and regular leads are coming into this site all the time, then this can be another great reason to buy established websites.
Both these things are a little harder for the person selling their site to put a value on too, which means you can get a good bargain for it!
You can of course buy a website that is already making money too, but from what I gathered after the conversation with my friend on this topic, you can get better deals buying sites that have not yet reached their potential, and you can see clear ways to improve on them and as I’ll explain below you can offer a lot less to buy a site that is not making money yet, or atleast not much, but has ‘potential’.
Another cool trick I learned was that you can head over to the Clickbank market place and look for sites in a niche that has low gravity and preferably that has some rankings in Google, yet might have a poorly
done sales letter etc…stuff that you can improve on.
These sites are prime candidates for doing up and fast tracking yourself into the niche. Especially if the website has been around in Google for 12 months or more, as it makes the SEO much easier.
What Websites Should You Sell?
This next point is something I found fasinating, I asked my friend about an affiliate marketing site I owned and was considering selling.
The site makes about $2000 a month and is rankings for a product name in position one in Google.
I thought this would be a great one to sell, however my friend explained that although the site was good for cash, it would not be that great for selling.
I was kind of amazed, and then he explained that there would not be that much room for improvement or diversifying with such a tightly focussed site which is making it’s money by ranking for a product name. It if has been ranking for a general buyer keyword in the niche then it would be a different story, as the potential buyer has more scope with the site.
It made sense to me when he said that, after all their would be little room for improvement, so I have decided not to sell this site and instead keep collecting the cash.
How to Buy Established Websites?
You can also look for sites for sale over at http://www.flippa.com a website auction place, but I was informed that this is not the best place to buy, but is better to sell here as auctions tend to push prices up. So from what I know you are better to look for sites privately by contacting website owners yourself.
I don’t want to go into all the secrets I learned from my friend as I have a webinar planned with him next month, where he will go into more detail on how to do this like a pro. He told me one site he bought recently for $650 and three weeks later after tweaking a few things sold it for $3500, not bad at all, so stayed tuned for more about that.
That’s all from me.
Matt Carter
Related articles
Matt,
As a domainer, this is right on.
We appreciate your blog updates of useful and informative content.
Matt Carter Reply:
January 17th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Hey Cy
No problem, you’re welcome and thanks for stopping by and commenting on the post.
All the best
Matt
Hi Matt,
Another great post, I do enjoy your emails and articles. I am recently just getting back into the internet marketing thing. i tried w/o much success for the past 2 1/2 years. Fortunately, partially thanks to you, I have found the fire and drive once again. I have 2 sites so far, and plan on building daily. My focus right now are getting backlinks into my sight.
thanks again.
Amy
Matt Carter Reply:
January 17th, 2011 at 9:26 am
Hey Amy
Glad you have found the free coaching of mine had helped you. Also I removed the links you
left to your sites from this comment as I don’t want people copying your niches, remember
1000’s of people will read this post and your comment is at the top, so just protecting your
niches is all.
Keep up the great work!
Matt
Buying aged domains that have a PR of 3, 4 or 5 can be reasonably priced and will get you ranked in Google for a keyword. Be sure to check the domain you are buying has not been dropped and that the backlinks will stay.
Love your blogs Matt
Thanks for sharing
Neil
Matt Carter Reply:
January 17th, 2011 at 10:23 am
Thanks Neil
Great tips
Matt
I have purchased a website flipping course but did not really get started , however the interest remains . So I look forward to your webinar
Thanks
Some useful tips already, looking forward to the webinar.
Planning on selling sites rather than buying them for this year but the info has to be useful from the flip side too 🙂
Thanks for the always great content!
Thank,s Matt, I read something simular for a week ago.
I always learn somthing new from you. Btw I sold two Rapid Rewriter for a couple of weeks ago. I am i little happy for that.
Now I will try to sell many more, becourse that progrm are so good. Hope you can read my bad English.
Best whises from Sweden.
Ralph
Hi Matt,
I was just offered $3,000 for my best site. I really don’t know if I want to sell it as I’m just starting to implement some of your ideas and am seeing an increase in traffic and sales.
I’m looking forward to the webinar!
Amy
Robert Reply:
March 31st, 2011 at 11:50 pm
If you are being offered $3000 for your site, you can bet it’s most likely worth more than that. If it’s starting to generate an income, the question I would ask myself is “How long would it take to earn $3000 from the site if I kept it?”
If you hang on to it for 12 months, and your traffic and sales continue to climb, you will find that you have a pretty solid asset on your hands.
A lot of people make the mistake of going for the quick buck… you put time and effort into building your site, presumably you will be able to just let it sit there and be a stream of income for you while you create another.
Selling a site that is growing is giving away your time and effort… in my not so humble opinion.
Cool Matt,
Flippa is interesting site, altough I think hyped up at times.
I’m looking forward to your webminar.
Cheers
Alex
Of course it makes sense that you an manage to sell a site with a broad buyer keyword for a lot of money because ppl see potencial in it, rather then try to sell a domain with an specific name of the product because this domain doesnt let a lot of room to go and monitize rather then the name of the product keyword its that what you meant Matt?
What do you think about buying satellite domains , domains with high Page rank to help you rank on Google with other money domains? Just like a mini netword of your own im planning to do it what do you think Matt?
Matt Carter Reply:
January 17th, 2011 at 2:13 pm
Hi Guillermo
Yes that is what I mean, and yes buying high PR domains is a great way to do SEO for links.
Thanks
Matt
Buying or selling websites, is speculating, and it’s no so different from property speculating.
So you need to ask yourself: Am I looking to buy something run down, give it a quick make-over and flip it… Or should I buy something that already has tenants and an income I can expand on, by building an extension.
But that’s where the analogy ends, because unlike virtual real estate… you can’t simply move the property to a better neighborhood.
Hey Matt, like the analogy? -:)
Thanks Matt, that was some real info to be used! Thanks for the heads up!
Awesome post! Just great. These are terrific strategies. I think a lot of people overlook the fact that you get the website’s audience when you take it over. Many seem to only be interested in the backend, and the domain name. This is ridiculous, since the audience is easily the most valuable asset any website has!
Hi Matt,
This is my first comment on your blog.Thanks for your nice post.
Thanks Matts. This webinar is timely for me as I am looking to build backlinks to my site and build more websites. I have bought a course on domain flipping but I found it confusing. I am looking forward to the webinar.
Thanks
John
I’m looking forward to finding out more about this, i have always thought that would be a good idea but have never done anything about it. It would also cut out a lot of work that has to be done if you start from scratch
Chris
Useful information Matt, thank you.
Plymouth Roofer
Flipping site is great source of income, however there are many points we can do wrong. I´ll appreciate any tips and advices how to do it right. Thank you very much for your instructive posts.
Hey Matt,
Thanks again for teaching us new, exciting ways to make money. I never met an internet marketer that provides as much solid training for free than you my friend. I really appreciate it. Thanks again for the great information. I may give it a try if I think I can determine if it has all of it’s links and hasn’t been dropped before.
Best Regards Matt
Hi Matt,
Great article! I just bought a website (my first!) that’s full of content about buying and selling blogs, websites and domains. Please, feel free to link to me at http://www.buyingblogs.com. I look forward to reading more of your posts!
Randi
Hello Matt,
Once again, great information!
I would think, however, that just contacting someone to find out if they would sell their website would drive them to ask for a price much higher than their site was worth. I might be wrong, though.
I look forward to your webinar for further discussion.
Jhoe
Thanks Matt
I found this really useful. Still have lots to learn!
Jill
One bit of caution about Flippa: I was on the site months back and had been searching for quite a while and deep in when my computer was infected by a virus, and I do have virus protection (McAfee). It happened so fast. It costs me around $98 dollars to get it repaired.
Hi Matt,
I was really shocked after reading this post, because I thought that the site which is ranking number one for particular product, and also generating good amount of money, will be a hot cake and can be easily sold out!
But now I understood the real market strategy. Thank You soooo much for this informaive post……
Matt,
If you have a website that is making you about $400/month, how much do you think I could sell that for? Do you think I could get $10,000 for it? Right now, I’m desperate for cash and your opinion would help.
Thanks,
Jhoe
Hi Matt, I purchased your course and it is great, thank you. I also watched your webinar with Ryan Moran etycoon and I purchased his course, which should also give me access to his flip finder software, however he has not given me access to this. I have sent you previous emails, and also Ryan and I have not heard anything back, which is why I have checked out your blog to see if this also happened to other people.
Do you know what is going on? Can you please get back to me on this issue? Also for some reason I can’t log on to your Rapid Profit Formula site, as it does not recognise my password which I haven’t changed, do you know what the issue is there?
I would appreciate a response, thank you
Matt Carter Reply:
May 3rd, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Hi Tina
I will email Ryan now and copy you in so this gets sorted out.
Matt