Flipping Website Real Estate for Profit

You’ve heard of flipping a house as a profit strategy in the real estate market, right? First, you buy a fixer-upper house for a dirt cheap, below market price. Second, you spend some time and money sprucing up the home. New paint, replace carpets, mow the lawn, etc. Then, you put the shiny new gem back on the market and sell it for a sweet profit. Well, the same strategy works when you invest in website real estate.

Way back in August, Super Affiliate Marketing Blog had a great post on flipping web real estate. Jon details three key redesign elements to turning a low traffic dud into a website worth buying. First, the design…

Is it too crappy to look at? Do you need to change it around? Chances are pretty good that you will need to make some alterations. Whether you should redo the whole thing is again, up to your taste and budget. Remember, you already spent $500 on this, and your goal is $3k, so you don’t want to go overboard with unnecessary beautification operations.

Then, Jon drills down on steps #2 and #3 – usability and monetization. Mixed in with these steps, he gives invaluable guidance that can give you the edge to maximize your ROI. For example, focus on generating statistics like unique impressions, page rank on Google and Alexa, and some basic contextual advertising revenue. Then, provide a mini business plan with current site metrics and future projections in your “for sale” message. Help make it simple for a buyer to pay top dollar.

Also, it is vital that there is an active marketplace to buy and sell web real estate. Of course, the real differentiator that maximizes your overall profits is to understand the potential buyer and don’t burn bridges…

Remember, that even though you are selling a property that doesn’t really interest you much in holding onto, you are selling it to someone who finds it as a good deal or investment, so you must treat it with respect, because this property may be someone’s baby sometime soon…

… put some contextual ads onto it if you like, get the stats program working again, collect as much real data as possible on the current situation of the site, and then make projections of 3, 6, 10 and 12 months. Base those numbers ONLY on the current situation of the site. If you just go off and make numbers up, they won’t buy anything else from you ever again, and you may also sabotage your reputation on your first deal, which can suck.

Here is the link to the full post. The marketplace and profits are there for you. Check out Biz MP for developed websites or The Domain Name Aftermarket by GoDaddy for just domains.