Case Study: Newbie Site Flip Part 2
Posted on 04. Sep, 2008 by Benjamin Patton in Site Flipping
Ah I see you listened and enjoyed a cold glass of something good, well my friends lets get back to it today and let me finish telling you about my case study: Newbie Site Flip Part 2. Today we are going to wrap it up and reflect on the project in its entirety and we are going to listen to some great tips from Bryan from Siteflipu.com between this self imposed case study and his tips you have absolutely no excuse to at the very least not attempt one of these for yourself, this can serve as a great way to earn some extra income on the site, or if you have enough of what it takes then to make a living at it, remember the sky is the limit and only you set your own limitations not anyone else.
Yesterday we finished up talking about design, operation and deployment and today we are going to pick up with monetization and other site value and roll from there. So here we go.
It Needs To Have A VALUE Or Ability To EARN Value
If I were buying a site I would be buying it because it has value, be it to earn cash, or draw traffic for future projects. This being said for the Golf Niche PepperJam Network took care of me with an awesome selection of banners. Now with OIO Publisher these would have been randomly changing on every refresh. I added 5 skyscraper ad’s to the side of the blog, and added a small boxed banner to the bottom of every post with the text of “this post brought to you by”. One thing about the niche I choose is that it seems the readers tend to eat that type of stuff up, and for sure they did within the first two days of the blog being open for business I had over 200 clicks via PJ. Now that’s very decent if you ask me. I do however believe looking back now that this site would have benefited much much more from ad sense in a few locations instead. (The new owner did this) and in the future I would recommend doing the same.
So now I have a domain, properly themed word press blog with all the bells and whistles and it even is monetized effectively. What what what? I forgot something, and by now I need to sleep right? Wrong, it was time for some content creation. Like I said earlier I have some experience on the golf course since I had caddied and even watched a few events, but would it be enough to write 15-20 posts that would appeal to any potential readers?
Content Creation
Now I could have easily outsourced this or even used some of the PLR articles I have, but I figured to keep in the spirit with this particular project that I would tough it out and do this all on my own. I recalled quite a bit in the form of valuable tips, and even posted some golf humor, a video or two and then some rankings. By this time amazingly I also had real readers already asking me questions.
Two points in particular I want to make here for those of you that are going to attempt this, create a pen name for this blog with all the necessary accounts so that the next owner can take over and continue to answer questions and keep the facade up. Continuity is going to be very important, and while your building your site, or even getting ready to flip one make sure your taking care of the investment, and this does include the new found readers. I fielded many questions via email, and then translated these into new posts for everyone. What amazed me is that I had two different posts, one about the men’s ranking and another about which was the most popular men’s golf ball. Normally I would not think about the opposite sex in this as I was rushing through this project at warp speed. It hit me when I got these comments on the blog asking me what about us? Make sure your not overlooking any demographics as well, and this goes for much more than just a site flip, but also your own blog as well. After adjusting the format a little due to the one sided nature of the content so far I was now ready to put this site up for auction.
The Auction
So far so good is what I am thinking , but this is where the true test of the whole project and my work on it so far is going to be ultimately graded for success or failure. My 24 hours were up and the site was already gaining traffic and readership at a much higher rate than I had originally thought.This being said I was ready to get graded and then show the world what I had done.
Now you have a couple of choices for auctioning off your site, I choose sitepoint.com because, well it was my first time, and the guys which blogs I read use this site specifically so I jumped on the popularity train. Keep in mind so far I have invested my time, which we wont put a price on, and the cost of the domain which as I recall was roughly $7. A site point auction for a start up site with some basic options that will help you stand out a bit will cost you around $27. I choose a little bit more than the most basic because after all all the help I can get within reason was going to be a good thing. That’s called hedging a bet folks, get to it.
I highly recommend you get everything done for sitepoint that they ask you to. You want to be considered trustworthy at this point to any potential buyers and if you do not at least appear it you have a strike against you already. I proceeded and jumped through all the hoops posted a screen shot of the blog, and of its traffic from Google anayltics, and then wrote my first sales copy for a site flip ever.
Now granted comparatively speaking I do have some experience from list marketing writing sales copy and even have done some successful contract work for others, to keep this as true to the “first timers” experience as possible I basically hurried through the writing of my sales copy, and I think that some of the people with experience will be able to see this.
The Verdict
If you wish to see the actual auction page please stop by here. Within 72 hours of posting the site up for auction I had come to meet my buying who was asking many questions about the site which was being offered. I highly recommend you do not slack on this aspect of the whole shabang or else your going to chase off potential buyers. I did influence this sale in one manner that I wish I had not, after the first 24 hours of sales I was getting nervous and I did not want to write this post without having sold the site, I mean what would that be worth right? Anyway My original posting was to have a min bid of $50 and the buy now @ $100. After the 24 hours of sweating I immediately lowered these to $50 buy it now, and the min bid exactly what I had invested so far which was $34. Over the next 12-24 hours I was fielding questions from a few different potential bidders and ended up selling the site successfully for the buy now price of $50.
Shawing! Success! On a small scale be it, but it shows that if you have a goal, and can buckle down on it you to can achieve anything. All that being said let me point out a few things I would do differently now that I am on this side of things and not still a virgin.
Post Project Tips
First things first put any sites you intend to sell on their own account. – This will make the transaction post auction much easier for you and for the buyer. It also is a great way to give someone an account that is setup already from your own affiliate link and can earn you some bonus cash that way as well. I just did not think about this as I was so wrapped up in the content and niche aspect that I was blind to this lost opportunity.
Premium themes. – Yea these are good to have laying around, developer licenses are more than worth the measly fees the authors ask for in return. Adhere to their rules and give credit where its due and this will increase the total value of your project ten fold easily.
Do not attach accounts to your own email or link with any of your own. While this did not present many issues I did link the EC accounts and ended up having to have an admin fix this after the sale as the que was full and was earning credits for the new owner. Keep in mind about email addresses and pw’s do not use your own and in stead use randomly created ones just to protect yourself.
Make sure you are an excellent sales copy writer or can outsource to someone who is. This alone will create a tremendous value for the site before they ever see it. Also my sales copy was weak and for a start up did not really list a lot of its value, potential or features. This has to be a strong point if you wish to do this and see really positive results time in and out.
If your going to do this and be very serious about it instead of a weekend warrior like me I would suggest looking around for a real keyword research tool as when you start to enter the big money arena you will want to offer this to your buying to increase the value of the purchase by many fold.
I am going to let Bryan Chime in here and see what he has to say as I welcome any advice from this guy not just for my future endeavors, but to point out anything I missed and help you have a better first or next time out.
Bryan from siteflipu.com say’s
“First of all, you did a fantastic job, and any tips I give here are only going to make you more money, while decreasing your workload.
The domain name was great, and it was a good starting point for your blog. You are right on the money about having domains readily available too. I try to buy 3-4 new domains for each site that I flip, as it gives me some flexibility later, rather than dealing with having to find domains a year from now, when it’ll get even tougher.
As for hosting, setting you flip up on it’s own account was smart. If you purchase a big hosting account, and then offload sites daily or even weekly, it gets to be a tangled mess. It’s much easier to deal with if you have a cpanel for each. That said, if you want to streamline the process even further, get a reseller hosting account at HostGator. This is what I use, and you can start with the smallest $25 package. This gives you the ability to create a hosting account at will, without having to pay for it each time. So each site gets it’s own cpanel, and you don’t have a tangled mess on your server. Plus, after the sale, you can just delete the account and create another one for your next flip.
On the PLR topic, it’s good that you went for unique content. Sitepoint doesn’t allow duplicate content, so PLR could have gotten your auction deleted. You can always use PLR software or eBooks as bonuses though, keep that in mind.
Let’s get to the sale now. The auction headline was fantastic, but the sales copy left something to be desired. It’s an incredibly difficult process writing copy, so I know how you feel. I’d recommend using the sales copy template that you can find on my site, and tweaking it here and there. Remember, the sale isn’t just about the website, it’s how well you present it. Sales copy will make or break your auction.
Other than that you did a great job. I think you got a little gun-shy and lowered the BIN, when it could, and should have gone for your original asking price. Remember, sometimes it takes more than a day or two to get bids, and you really need to wait it out. No matter how hard it may be. The two times where your auction gets a lot of looks are the first, and the last 24 hours. So, use that to your advantage and you’ll be well on your way next time.
Great experiment Ben, and I’m glad you took that first step. It’s the hardest part of doing anything new, and you made it look easy. Congrats, and I can’t wait to hear about bigger flips down the road.”
In Closing
Thanks again Bryan for the inspiration, and thanks for the reinforcement and pointers. I look forward to my next project which is already in the works, and I look forward to your competition as well. Good Luck as a great group of people have assembled to give your team a run for the money!
I challenge everyone to give this a try, its a great way to make some extra cash, and just happens to be fun! Let me know how your first site flip turns out!
Related posts:
- Case Study: Newbie Site Flip Part 1
- A Day Off, And A New Site-Flip Project Underway
- $5 A Day Adsense Site: Case Study – Part 2
- $5 A Day Adsense Site: Case Study – Part 4
- $5 A Day Adsense Site: Case Study – Part 3
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