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.
Expensive Domain Names: Where Are They Now?
Type in some premium, million dollar domains into your browser and take a look at some of the pages you will find. All of that wasted potential in so many parked pages and single page sites with ugly designs and no earnings.
But what about those they have had a high price tag on them in the past? What happened to all of those brilliant plans for these premium domains? Below are the sale prices and current statuses of some of the most high profile domains online.
1. sex.com – Back in 2005, sex.com sold for a whopping 14 million to someone who knew the trends of the internet and where the money lay. The potential of this domain is just so huge, you have to wonder what the owner is thinking. How can a $14 million domain with an opportunity to easily make millions each year be developed into a one page site with links to other sites? We all know how big this industry is, and it’s almost a crime not to use this domain name.
2. fund.com – Sold only months ago in March this year for an extremely healthy price of $9,999,950, just short of the 8 figure mark, fund.com I am glad to say is a developed site on the niche, you guessed it, funds. However, it is a shame that it isn’t very successful, with an Alexa rank outside the top 500,000. Their investment in the name seems to be taking a very long time to recover in profit.
3. porn.com – Finally! A site actually earning substantial profits on a domain name that almost guarantees success. It gets heaps of traffic with an Alexa rank of approximately 5,000 and probably has a 6-figure profit each year. The domain cost the current owners a hefty $9,500,000
4. diamond.com – Another site using its potential. Diamond.com is an online diamond jewelry store getting good traffic (alexa rank of 62,000) and is probably making a six figure income each year. Diamond.com was sold for $7,500,000 back in 2004.
5. beer.com – Sold for $7,000,000, beer.com is now a fully developed and established blokes website. It has an alexa rank in the top 100,000 (approximately 86,000) and has a very nice design/layout I must say.
6. casino.com – Another fully established and profitable website, casino.com, on a domain that also almost guarantees success, is an online casino site receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors each day and definently making huge profits, probably the biggest profits of all domain names listed here so far. Once again, I really like the design. Casino.com sold for $5,500,000 back in 2003, so this domain has age.
7. korea.com – Sold over eight years ago on New Year’s Day 2000 for $5,000,000, korea.com is also a fully functioning premium website about everything happening in Korea I assume (I don’t speak Korean). Korea.com receives the most traffic of all domains listed so far, with an Alexa rank of approximately 3,000 and recently that rank has moved to almost 1,000.
8. asseenontv.com – I know what you are thinking… How the hell did this domain sell for $5,000,000. I too am still in awe at this sale that occurred back in 2000. However, it is all about branding and use of the growing tecnology for promotion, as this domain has done quite well for the owners. It sells items that you can see on those pesky long advertisements on television and I am guessing here but think it might be a network. Anyway, it receives tens of thousands of visits each take and makes a great annual profit.
9. shop.com – Shop.com was sold for $3,500,000 back in 2003 which I think wasn’t a bad deal considering the growth of online shopping recently. As you might have guessed, shop.com is a huge online shopping company/service that receives hundreds of thousands of visits each day and must generate huge sales. I think I see a trend emerging here with these premium domain names.
10. wine.com – wine.com was sold for $3,300,000 in 2003 and is now the leading online wide retailer, offering services of shipping wine to all around America. I’m not to sure that I like the design but the site itself is successful, bringing in tens of thousands of visits each day and generating great profits.
Seeing how successful most of these sites are, it really makes me wonder what the guy who owns sex.com is thinking by leaving up a page with basically nothing on it. I noticed a trend of how the successful sites don’t rank for the keyword in their domain, but are successful because of the type in traffic. The successful sites are also those who have turned their domain into and online company, giving themselves and online identity.