The Website Flipping Dilemma
There are no real limits to the amount of money that can be made flipping websites for profit. The only obstacle is time. For those willing to risk money to make money by outsourcing content for tens of websites at a time, the profits can be extremely substantial. But there is one question that ponders in the mind of all site flippers, and that question is: What is more profitable - to develop websites/blogs and sell them within days of creation, if not on the day of creation, or is it more profitable to keep and establish websites/blogs for weeks/months/years before selling them?
The reasons why this question arises so often are many. It comes from doubt that the time spent creating the websites is not generating the best profit possible, through inspiration of seeing a blog that is only a few months old selling for tens of thousands of dollars, or through that desire for instant cash. It all comes down to the personal status of the website flipper, such as whether or not they find it easy to have SEO done on a site or whether or not they have time to communicate readers of a blog they have established.
Obviously, there are both pros and cons for flipping new and established websites/blogs, so in order to come to the best conclusion on which type of flip is best I have listed out the pros and cons of each below.
The One-Day Website Flip
Pros
- Instant cash.
- No dealing with any questions from readers that will consume time.
- No time consuming tasks such as link building.
- They can sell for anywhere between $70 and $300 for a simple content blog.
- Only a low amount of articles need to be outsourced.
- The lower price can attract more buyers.
- No proof of traffic or revenue is required.
- No branding required, which means that domains can be content rich, which means higher bids.
Cons
- If outsourcing, because of no traffic or revenue, the profit after expenses can be little.
- There is no oppurtunity to take the website to its full potential on another level.
- The price will not exceed $300.
- Because the seller is dealing with a lot more newbies, the transaction process can become a hassle.
The Established Site Flip
Pros
- The website can achieve it’s potential, in branding, SERPS, traffic, revenue, design, and publicity.
- Prices are a lot higher.
- If the site is a blog and the owner forms a connection with the reader, the owner can release their own product which readers will buy, increasing revenue which adds a lot of value to the website. (Take a look at SiteFlipU.com and the release of the BlogFlippingBlueprint - Bryan ended up receiving an extra $30,000 for this).
- Being indexed and ranked can significantly boost the value.
Cons
- After months of work, many established websites may only sell for a few hundred dollars, only slightly higher than a one day flip which has no traffic, revenue or links.
- Time consuming.
- If the flipper loses interest in the site after a few weeks and it goes downhill, the hard work is put to waste.
- Expenses are a lot greater, especially if the owner buys SEO services or a custom design or something along those lines. (sometimes blogs sell for less than the price of the themes or scripts that run them).
After weighing up all of these pros and cons, in my opinion I feel that the optimum age to sell a site is one week after creation. This is because, one day flips have a much higher hourly working rate than established sites, but by leaving the site for a week to be indexed and by gaining some social traffic the value can be significantly increased without much work.
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A Sneak Peek Of The New Design
You may not remember but just over a month ago I won pimp my blog, which is a contest held by Syed Balkhi each month in which he rewards a commentator with a custom blog design. Well, over the past month I have worked with Syed to create a custom theme for this blog, and I want to know your opinion on the mock up below.
Sneak Peek Of The Design
Tell me what you think
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How To Run An Effective Case Study
Case studies are probably the most underused and underestimated forms of gathering a following of regular readers, gaining traffic and creating a lot of ideas to talk about. Their power comes from the sheer amount of interest shown from the possibility that somebody might just discover something new, or dispel a myth, and by following it, a reader will be the first to witness this advance and put it into practice.
Case studies are not only a good form of gaining loyal readers, but also make spectacular link bait and viral content, circulating around the blogosphere in the time it takes me to write this post and sending floods of traffic the way of the blogger conducting the case study.
There are 3 main ways in which you can improve the effectiveness and profitability of case studies: telling the world, following through, and publishing every single detail and result there is.
Tell The World
Don’t expect success of any form if you conduct a case study secretly. Let readers follow every step of the journey, so that they feel included in the case study and become more involved, leading them to be much more likely to subscribe to your blog for every update. Create a following before you start the case study, and make clear your intentions, so that readers will know what to expect and the following can grow exponentially along the way.
Follow Through
Once you start your case study, commit to it. As a reader, there is nothing worse then getting excited by an event only to be disappointed by a cancellation of events or a long wait. In order to protect your reputation, maintain your follower base and see results, commit and don’t disappoint.
Publish Every Single Result And Detail
Readers are interested in what you have to say. Don’t set them short of the results they have been waiting patiently for as they have followed your study. Give them every single statistic, observation and detail. Leave nothing to guesswork, and answer all questions. Readers will have a lot more respect for you if you help them out with all of their questions (after all, you are the expert, right?).
And remember, capitalize on the case study. Ask readers to subscribe to the blog on the first post in the case study so that they can get all of the updates and results that they are waiting for as soon as they are available. How can you resist revolutionary results?
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Speciality WordPress Theme Released
A few weeks ago I taught myself how to code HTML and CSS, and having been using WordPress for quite some time now I have a good understanding of how it works. The reason why I learnt coding is so that I could make my own WordPress theme to give away to everyone. Over the last week I have spent hours trying to get it right, and without further ado I present to you my very own Speciality WordPress theme:
Some of it’s features:
- A cool looking unordered list
- 3 column widgetized footer
- 3 boxes up the top for content and features you want to have visibility
- Simplicity
Enjoy, and tell me what you think of my first effort - I should have another one done shortly, which will be a more magazine style theme.
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Technorati Authority Is Manipulated Too Easily
Technorati is the bloggers choice for ranking blogs, allocating bloggers a ranking anywhere between 1 and a few million. The number of blogs are always changing. Most bloggers seem to get a kick out of seeing this authority ranking improve and spend a lot of time concentrating on improving it. But today I was just thinking to myself just how inaccurate the Technorati authority ranking system, and all other ranking systems, such as Alexa, are on a whole. Their algorithms have so many flaws and ways to manipulate the system that it seems like it isn’t always the good blogs with the best authority ranks, but instead the blogs with the most manipulative minds behind them (no offense too anyone, just making a generalisation).
Although their list of the top 100 blogs can hardly be manipulated, I have seen manipulated authority rankings ranging anywhere from the top 2k to the top 150k. It appears that in this range of blogs, few rankings are determined by how much free stuff they give away or how much paid promotion they have done, rather than natural, in content links.
Ways In Which Bloggers Manipulate Technorati Authority Rank
- Purchasing bulk blog posts on hundreds of blogs over different C-Class IP’s - Head over to the link sales section of DP and you will see what I am talking about. For around $100 you can make your ranking go from 1,500,000 to 40,000 very easily.
- Commenting on hundreds of blogs of which you get in the top commentators widget - This method is free. I have found that most bloggers don’t even realize when commenting that there is a good chance of them getting one Technorati authority point because they are in the top commentators widget. I feel that including the links in this widget is inaccurate as the linking is not controlled by the owner of the blog, but by the commentator.
- Distributing free items - By distributing free items such as WordPress themes and widgets that include a link back to your blog bloggers can gain thousands of links counted by the Technorati authority system, effectively placing some blogs into the top 2k list even though they may have very minimal presence or traffic.
It’s not just Technorati authority that I feel can be easily manipulated. Alexa is probably even worse.
Case Study
Variable 1. A blank domain name with no site and no traffic, it is simply visited by me once a day to check my stats of this blog on. Alexa Rank = 700,000
Variable 2. A functional soccer website averaging about 20 visitors a day since I have neglected it and never visited by me. Alexa Rank = 5,800,000
Can you see how dodgy it is… Whatever rank you want can be controlled by you.
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What I Get For Not Posting
As you might have noticed, I haven’t posted for over a week now, which is a time length I really didn’t want to hit. School is back and I haven’t had a spare second on my hand for the past week and a bit, so I’m trying my best. I do have some good news though: My IT knowledge has paid off, and I won the IT award. 
Take a look at some of my recent stats since I haven’t posted in a while.
CPanel Stats
Analytics Stats
I’m going to let the images speak for themselves (because I have an assignment to complete), but the moral of the story is: Don’t have large breaks of time in which you don’t post - it will hurt your blog (and I promise I’m never going to make the same mistake again).
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Get The Basics Right
I see them everyday… people seem to think that there are lots of secrets being hidden from public knowledge that will give them complete success online. Guess what… There are none. Some techniques are more advanced than others, but none are kept away from the publics eyes.
It seems that everyone wants to skip the basics and get stuck into the advanced techniques, with the mindset that this will earn them better rankings and more readers. If you just get the basics right and do those small one percenters than you will achieve far more success than diving into the deep end without knowing how to swim.
I admit, a few months back, I was the same as these people who thought that there was a quicker way to achieve anything. I achieved nothing on that site - it was a complete failure. Then I started this blog, and have only concentrated on the basics SEO steps, doing 301 redirects, having the correct permalink structure, building links, putting keywords in the title tag and using header tags to their full potential. And this blog now has very strong rankings in the search engines because of this, not because of some fancy unheard of technique.
What I am trying to get across is, don’t go looking for the easy way through. Do what you know well and keep at it, and you will achieve far more. Focus your efforts on improving what you know.
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I Won Pimp My Blog
All of the readers of one of my favourite blogs, Balkhis, will know that each month he picks an email subscriber who comments on his blog regularly and will redesign their blog for free, which is worth somewhere between $550 and $1,200.
Now, I never win anything, so I was over the moon today when I went and visited Syed’s blog today and saw my name there. I have been a reader of Balkhis for months and months now, ever since I was introduced to his blog through a thread he made on DigitalPoint forums and I subscribed right away. It just goes to show that blog commenting isn’t only good for traffic and link building :).
This means that very shortly, Otooo.com is going to have it’s very own custom design. It was just today I was thinking of having a custom design for my site.
Once again, I’d just like to thank Syed for this and encourage you to head over to his blog and check it out.
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