How to be a website flipper
Website flipping is the online trend of buying up underdeveloped sites, fixing them up, and selling them on for a profit. Here’s a piece I wrote for The Guardian in September. With the credit crunch biting, online property development certainly seems more attractive than getting involved with bricks and mortar.
Who’d be a property developer nowadays? The answer: people who develop online properties – rather than physical ones – by snapping up undeveloped sites in a practice known as website flipping. The principle is exactly the same as that of property development: flippers fix up the undeveloped sites and sell them for a profit. As with property development, it’s all about adding value. In property, adding value may mean converting a loft. Online, it means increasing visitor traffic and improving website revenue. Read more here.
As a update to the story, about a month later Bryan Clark sold his website siteflipu.com, plus blogflippingblueprint.com, for $32,500 to an investor, who in turn listed the websites for sale again after a couple of weeks.
Hi Paul
I was watching the siteflipu development myself. Interestingly, the site expired and has not been renewed. Hmmm, it makes you wonder whether you can make a living out of flipping websites.
I find it more interesting to look at the Bran Clark strategy in this whole siteflipu story, than the actual process of flipping sites:
- build up a buzz about the current “hot topic”
- create a membership site providing material about it
- get people so fired up about it that they buy the “product”
- offer them a %age from selling it to others
- use the spike in revenue that typically comes from a product launch to form a guide to a selling price for siteflipu (some people like to use multiples of monthly profit)
- buzz + big initial month’s profit = tasty sale + unviable work commitment for new owner to satisfy existing lifetime members = siteflipu kaputt
You could actually call this the “business/product flipping blueprint” in action and apply it to areas other than website flipping.
Cheers,
Paul
It’s interesting. I suppose Bryan never hid his intentions, and has proven that his methods, for him at least, worked.
I’ve started from scratch in website flipping. With a good coach and a little bit of patience, believe me, it’s all worth it. Website flipping I guess is a very lucrative online business venture.
@Justin Brooke
>>>Website flipping I guess is a very lucrative online business venture
Which is why BC cashed in and left in a hurry…?