How ‘flipping’ websites can make you money
”To add value to real estate, you must do something significant, labour-intensive and, usually, expensive, like building a new bathroom.
”But with websites, you can make small changes such as building links from other sites or improving the overall look for little cost.
Among his success stories is forextradingstrategies.org, which he bought for $10 and sold for $10,000 after spending $100 to have SEO-friendly articles written for the site.
In fact, many of Barrie’s freelancer.com staff of more than 100 come from the site, a situation he says represents a ”seismic shift in the world’s labour markets”.
Needing 1000 pieces of data entered into a spreadsheet, he was unable to find anyone to do it and reluctantly placed the job on getafreelancer.com.
”It was perfect,” says Barrie, who realised the world’s labour-market model was potentially on the verge of dramatic change and immediately set about building a similar site before discovering getafreelancer.com was for sale.
”They are just as smart as us, just as motivated and want a job just as much as we do.”
Barrie cites the example of a young woman in the Philippines who now makes $400,000 a year turning out logos for businesses and websites around the world.
Flippa last year hosted the sale of FaceMash.com ($30,000), Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook predecessor, famously created during his time at Harvard University, as well as Retweet.com, which was sold for $250,000, and BlogTopSites, which went for $117,000 in April last year.
”I’d found this little site, called webmaster-resources.com, run by a guy named Matt Mickiewicz out of Canada,” says co-founder and former Sausage Software programmer Mark Harbottle, who this year made his debut on the BRW Young Rich List with an estimated wealth of $40 million.
After achieving several years of 150 per cent growth, the pair, still living in different hemispheres, decided to spin out the website sales arm into Flippa.com.
”I had no idea if it was going to be three months or three years when I started but today I get to do what I love and this whole experience has allowed me to do lots of cool stuff, especially helping others with great ideas,” Harbottle says.
”And it all started with a $400 investment in a little Canadian website.”
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Tips
- Unless you just want a pretty site or to bulk up your digital portfolio, don’t just buy a site simply because you like it.
- Look into the quality of the user base, how many users (and how many of them are active), where they’re coming from and how they are being acquired.