Gold Rush
Site Flipper
Thank you for your purchase!
I am going to show you two ways of how I flip websites for profit!
- BUY AND FLIP THE WEBSITE
Visit flippa.com to see what websites are for sale. We only want to look at new starter sites, so we select 'Starter Sites'. The reason we choose starter sites is because:
- They are much cheaper investment than established sites
- There is more room for improvement, therefore we have benefit from a higher profit margin when we come to sell it!
We are looking for a suitable site that we can buy, improve, then sell for a much higher profit. Things we want to look for when buying a new site are:
- Is it in the specialised niche? Is that niche a big enough market or is there ere a lot of passion and demand within that niche? You can either go for a niche that has a large enough market to be able to target where you can generate a lot of sales and interest, or you can go for a smaller market but target are much more passionate and dedicated where their interests are much stronger
- Is the domain name attractive? A domain name can attract attention in two ways: either through curiosity or the name makes it clear as what the website is about
- Does it already have something to offer? The website may already have products or services to offer or it has content that draws audiences. Or it may be an empty website with just a domain name and design
- Does it already have a marketing campaign? Does it already generate traffic naturally via SEO or through paid campaigns. Naturally traffic tend to make the website more expensive
- Has it already generated sales? If yes then the website tends to be more attractive but you are more likely to recoup your investment much quicker. If the website is already generating income every month then the purchase price should be around 20x the monthly income. If you are able to purchase a website for less than 20x its monthly income then you might have got yourself a good deal!
- Has the seller sold another website previously? If a seller has sold previously and received positive feedback then you are more likely to be buying from a reputable seller
You do not need to satisfy all the above requirements to get yourself a good deal. It's enough to perhaps satisfy 4 of the above requirements but you have to consider each website on a case-by-case basis.
We searched on the Starter Site listings and found a site of interest: clevergiftz.com
From what we can see from this listing and by visiting the website:
- This website is 2 months old
- It is an e-commerce store with products already listed
- The store appears to already be set up, including payment system
- The store looks attractive, professional and easy to navigate
- The domain is clear as to what the website is about
- The seller has 9 previous transactions and received 100% positive feedback
- There does not appear to be a lot of marketing done for this website
- The current price is $195
- There are already 22 bidders for this site
- The gift buying niche is a very popular niche where repeople are always interested in buying gifts for others. And throughout the year where people love to buy gifts for birthdays, Christmas and on special occasions, this niche can be a good investment!
Given this information above, this site appears to be a suitable purchase. The price is reasonable given that the site is ready out of the box. Not much marketing has been done which is why the price is a bit lower. There are already other people interested because they can see the potential of this site.
Once we purchased the store, where we make our profit is by adding value to this site. We can add value in the following ways:
- Improving the site
- Improving the marketing
If you have the time and dedication to really add massive value to the site then go ahead and improve both the site and marketing. However, here we want to keep things simple and have a process that we can add value quickly and flip for a profit quickly, and rinse and repeat that same process to generate income every month!
We need to focus on where we can make the highest profit margin in the shortest space of time. How we do that is identifying the biggest area of improvement.
We can certainly improve the website but as we can already see, the store is already up and running, all the basic functions are set up and it is fully listed with products. There is not a lot of room for improvement in the shortest space of time.\
However, we said that there is not much marketing for the store which gives us an opportunity for make huge improvements very quickly!
So the marketing will be our focus!
Remember to get details of the suppliers from your seller so that can order the stock for your store.
If we want to market the store and attract interest quickly, we need to focus on a sub-niche within our gift niche. You can search around for ideas. We chose to look at the categories being offered in the store already. One of those categories is Housewarming so this would be a suitable sub-niche to focus on for the following reasons:
- People are moving homes (either buying or renting) all year round
- Products for homes are suitable all year round, for any occasion. We are not limited by seasons or occasions
- There are more variety of gift ideas for homes and housewarming
- Gifts for houses and housewarming have a very wide price range, it is possible to focus on more expensive gifts for higher profit margins
Now that we have established our sub-niche, we need to consider a) which platforms we will market on, and b) which audience we will target on those platforms?
In terms of platforms, the obvious ones spring to mind is social media. We can also target forums we our target audience can be found.
For the our audience, we want target:
- People who care about their homes
- People who are looking for gift ideas
We just need to focus on the above and no need to add more campaigns because we want to keep things simple so that we can add value and flip for a profit quickly!
Now we know who is our audience, we need to join groups and communities where they can be found.
With a simple search on Facebook we came across groups related to gift buying and home decoration. Already these are groups that we want to be in and we want to connect with its members. We had found groups that had 1.5k posts a day so naturally we want to join those groups because they are the most active and its members are more likely to buy from us.
You should search around on Facebook for idea home or gift related themes.
Other ways that you can target your audience is through:
- Instagram: create your own profile and every 1-2 days, post around 3 images of gifts. Also start following profiles related to gifts and homes and its members will start to notice your content and follow you
- Google and join gift and home related forums/communities. Get to know its members so that they become familar with you
If you want more ideas, here is a video on ways to get traffic to your store for free!
In the beginning when you start to joining Facebook groups or other online communities, or create an Instagram profile, it is important that you do not sell anything yet! No one wants to buy anything if you start promoting immediately. You need to provide value and content first and establish a connection with your following. Start by sharing content, whether it's articles about the top 10 best gifts for housewarmings, or just videos or images of the gifts themselves, make sure that you are providing free content first. You can of course simply Google for articles and images and YouTube for videos. You can even write your own posts about gift suggestions. And do this consistent. When starting out, I would maybe spend 20 minutes every day doing this for at least 2 weeks.
After 2-3 weeks then you can slowly start to promote your store. But do it very slowly at first, so may be you provide free content every day and promote twice a week. the increase it slowly to 3 times a week, then 5 times a week. Then one promotion for every 5 free content.
When you are promoting your products or store, make sure that it relates to what you are sharing. For example, if you want to promote wooden keepsake boxes, maybe you can find articles or videos that discussion why you need to have a keepsake box. Or you can write your own article or post on the value of having a keepsake box to store you valuable items that contain memories. When you do share your content, then you can promote a link to your wooden keepsake box and let them know that you have this item in stock.
By providing free content first before promoting and selling products, you are building long-term trust in your store and people will buy from you again. And if your store can attract interest this way, you will increase the value of your store and be able to sell it for a higher profit margin!
If you follow this strategy, then no doubt that you can be generating at least $1,000 per month in profit! Based on this, when you do decide to flip it on Flippa, you will be making a huge profit on that flip.
Remember, the value of a website can be sold for 20x its monthly income. If the site is generating $1,000 per month then you can quite easily command an asking price of $20,000!
Case Study
Previously, we bought a website that listed and sold tech wear. The asking price was $500. When assessing the site, we decided in the following:
- The store looked attractive for the low price
- The store was 2 months old
- The seller had already put in merchant systems in place including payment so we didn't have to do it ourselves
- Techwear have grown veru popular in the last few years, especially in the area of health and fitness
- There was not much marketing done for the store. The only marketing was email marketing but the email list was very small and non-responsive
- The seller had sold one other site previously and received a positive rating
Based on our findings, it was worth purchasing. Although we could think of many things to improve the look and functionality of the site, we saw this store as a fast flip so we focused on its weakest point which was lack of marketing. We saw this store as a 120 day flip, so wanted to work on it for 3 months then flip it for a profit.
The store stock a lot of techwear for all kinds of different areas including fashion and sports. We decided to focus on sports because we thought it would be more profitable. So we created a sport techwear Instagram page and joined a lot of Facebook fitness and sports groups. We posted a lot of athletes and regular people in techwar on Instagram and followed a lot of people who are following similar groups, but we did not promote our store. We posted images 2-3 times a day. We also share articles and videos on techwear to Facebook groups. We started conversations and answered peoples' questions in the group. Again we did not promote our store. We did all this sharing and interacting with people but not promote our store for 30 days in Month 1.
In Month 2, we started promoting our store, in the first week we started slowly but introducing images of products in our store. We share articles, images and videos of techwear and mentioned that either we had something similar in our store or we explained that we had products that would help them during games or exercise. We didn't post a lot initially but slowly increased our campaign every week. During the end of Month 2, we did 65% free content and 35% store promotion.
In Month 3, we increase we promotion even more, now we are 50% free content and 50% store promotion. I don't recommend your promotion to be more than 50%.
In Month 4, we did exactly the same as Month 3 as we are already getting a lor of interest in our store so we didn not need to promote it so heavily.
Our result?
Month 1 = $0
Month 2 = $973.12
Month 3 = $2,517.78
Month 4 = $5,822.07
Month 4 was an explosive month for sales which didn't suprise us because we had built a lot of trust in a short period and people were starting to recognise our store and want to buy our products because we educated them from the free content we were sharing!
Our store had been running for 4 months and we made $9,312.97 in sales! That's over $2,300 per month!
As we set our goal to be a 120 day flip, we flipped the store for $48,500! That's just over 20x its monthly income!
So after 4 months, we made over $9,000 in monthly sales PLUS $48,500 when we flipped the store, we made over $57,500! That's over $14,250 per month!
With the money, we simply repeated this process!
Once you have done this process several times, you can even flip 2 stores at once. We tend to flip 3 stores at the same time and we make over $42,000 per month!
2. CREATE YOUR OWN WEBSITE
Maybe you don't want to buy a website but create your own instead.
Even though this may take a bit longer, your costs will be lower and you can generate a higher profit margin once you flip it.
Luckily, here is a great video that will teach you to build an online store from scratch!
As for stock, we recommend you visit Alibaba. As a guide on what products to list, pick something:
- Light and and easy to pick up, these are usually inexpensive and postage and packaging can usually be cheap if you are paying for it
- That you have never seen before, if you sell the same thing as everyone else, you will not stand out and the only way to sell is to make it cheaper than other people. If you sell something different, you can charge a higher fee
- Where the supplier can offer a free sample because you want to be able to see a sample of the product first before you sell it. You don't want to end up sell the wrong product or something nobody wants
Once you have built your store, you will need to promote it. Promotion and marketing will be the same so refer to the above section on this discussion.
You can decide to flip an empty but ready made store now or you can flip it after you have generated some sales. I recommend that you generate some sales across at least 3 months before you flip it so that you can make more money, remember - you can flip for 20x the monthly income.
For us, under this method, we spent more time building a store than buying one. Most recently as an experiment, we built a store from scratch and decided to flip it after 6 months. From creation to flip in month 7, we generated an average of $1,700 per month in sales and flipped it for $53,000!
Again, once you get more familar with this process, you can do 2 flips at once. And again, we usually do 3 flips at a time.
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