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Showing posts with label Making Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Making Money. Show all posts

Sunday, January 9, 2011

TMC Method #8: My Quick 10 Step Tactic To Make An Extra $1,000 Per Month Easily

All I have got to say is WOW! Great guide and it's sure to be a money maker! Maybe not as much as the title says, but it depend on the amount of effort you put in. This piece of art came from The Warrior Forum and was written by BHunter1212. This is truly a great resource for anyone looking to make real money!






For this guide I'll use the example of people having problems with Time Management. Here Are My Steps:

1. Find A Problem (Time Management) That Many People Need A Solution To Immediately.

2. Create A Site With A Title Related To the Niche For The Problem(A Hosted Wordpress Site Works Best, But A Free Blogger Site Can Be Just As Effective With Good Keyword Research.)

3. Research The Problem If You Don't Know The Answer To The Problem. This Can Be Done Very Quickly With A Few Google Searches.

4. Build A Good List Of Solutions To The Issue, Then Make It Into A pdf. In This Particular Niche(Time Management) It Can Be Maybe A List Of 50-100 Ways To Save Time.

5. Name Your Book Something Catchy, Then Create An Ebook Cover. this Can Be Done for Free At eBook Cover Creator - eCover Design Online Free (Not An Affiliate Link)

6. Setup A Paypal account, then Upload The pdf online to either your site, or you can also do this free at Sell eBooks, Files, Downloads, Digital Products with Paypal - UPLOADnSELL.com (Not An Affiliate Link) I Usually Offer These For $5 Per Site.

7. Here Is Where It changes up: Offer The pdf As A Free Download For People Who Donate To Your Site. Say Something Along the Lines: "Buy Me Lunch For The Day And I'll Provide You With My $100 Value Book Only Sold To 25 Readers: ("Insert Title Here") As A Token Of My Appreciation." 

8. Place Your Paypal Link Inside The Donation Box, Then Place It In An Area Of Your Site That Makes It Stick Out Like A Sore Thumb So Every Visitor Is Forced To Notice It.

9. Add A Few Pages Of Content To Your Site. Make Sure The Content Is Related To The Niche And Is Seen As Valuable To Readers. This Could Even Be Duplicate Content, But I Prefer to Use Unique Content Myself So I Can Enjoy Organic Content To The Fullest. Videos And Pics Also Help Distinguish Your Content, And Videos Can Easily Be Made In Windows Movie Maker If You're Camera Shy.

10. Drive Traffic! Try To Get Visitors That Are Actually Interested In The Problem Your Product Offers A Solution To. Doing This It Should Be Fairly Easy To Get Around 200 Sales If You Use It Correctly. Also Submit It To Search Engines so It Gets Indexed Especially If You Do SEO. I Personally Make Around $3,000 Per Site I Use This Technique On Even On Free Sites, But Im Pretty Good At SEO Myself 

Bonus Tip: Find A Clickbank Product That Goes Along With The Niche You Choose And Also Offer It On Your Site As Well As Other Income Streams. a Lot Of Affiliates Even Offer Banners And More To Provide On Your Site. This Way You Don't Just Put All Your Eggs In One Basket, and Can See Cash Coming In From All Directions!

So there you have it. this is what I do when I either need some extra cash fast, or just want to increase profits on one of my sites. So what are you waiting for? You have no excuse to not be making cash at this moment so get started now researching/writing!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

TMC Method #7: Newest Money Method of 2011 Costs $75

This method was written by me The Method Collector!

Overview:
Recently, I was taught the secret to making $500 dollars in as little as an hour. Sure there is a required $4/month investment, but you have to spend money to make money. My uncle has over 72 clients and he makes $675 for each client. Did I mention he only started 4 months ago. He started agressively and now he only works an hour or two a day. 

What you get:
The method will be officially released tonight...you better order fast because I am only selling ten copies. I call this package the deluxe edition. There will be another 20 released in march but none like the deluxe edition. Here is what you get:
-You will be one of the firsts to try this method garunteeing a high success rate
-You will get weekly tips until June 1st,2011
-You will recieve tools that are going to help you along the way
-You WILL succeed*

*Work must be put in. This is not an autopilot or set and forget method, Well it is kinda.

Is this legal:
Yes,100% whitehat

Cost:
I have decided to make this package $75 for my readers. It's a steep price but keep in mind you will be making much much more and this info is valuble for your whole life. I have gotten offered $250 for my method, so consider $75 my gift to you. 

To order comment below or send an e-mail to: themethodcollector@gmail.com

Review is below...



H4xFr33's(from thebotnet.com) review:


This guide can get you money if used correctly. You're going to need some confidence in doing this as you are going to be contacting people. You are going to have to invest a little, but if done correctly. You will make that money back and more.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

TMC Method #6: Easy Automated $1700/month: A BHer's guide to Exploiting Google Custom Search!

Great guide from MMD. Guide by FightSocialism






Hello All,

I posted this on another forum and it has gotten alot of fanfare...so here it is for my MMD members....

This is a method I read about in the past and adapted it to my own needs. Use your brain when following this guide and I am SURE you can creatively create tons of cash using this little explored facet of Google.

Lets Get Into Some Details...





Background



Google Custom Search has been around since late 2006 and it really didn’t make the huge impact I thought it would in the Search Engine Optimization....That is until it was adapted for my uses  

I figured out that Google Custom Search gave me a brand new way to link together and cross promote my entire network of niche sites, and I thought that was pretty neat. 

But let’s stop for a sec and evaluate three things that make GCS especially useful for us Search Engine Optimization’s and Affiliate Marketers, shall we? 

• GCS engines can be highly targeted, returning extremely relevant results. This means that we can create a GCS that will satisfy the search needs of our site’s users based on their specific interests; and a satisfied user is a loyal user. 

• GCS engines allow us to return results only from the websites we choose. This means that we can set up a GCS to promote only those sites within our network. So if we have a mini-network on home development, our GCS can be set to only return those relevant results from sub-sites within our network. For our mini-network on home development our GCS might return results from sub-sites that provide mortgage offers, information on concrete polishing, or how to select granite countertops. This allows us to cross promote the sites within our network instead of having visitors turn to our competitor for more in-depth information.

• GCS is made to be monetized. You can display your Adsense ads in your search results and thus can make money from the increased impressions when people search within your GCS.



Diggin Deeper



From the standpoint of Search Engine Optimization, GCS is like shooting fish in a barrel because it lets you bypass the usual google.com search completely and in so doing, you bypass your competition! Of course, as I’m sure many of you who have played with Google Custom Search have already seen: your search engine is only as good as the number of viewers you can funnel through it. Meaning, if you have a GCS that only does 20 searches a day then you are really not going to see any tangible benefit to having it setup on your domain.

The hardest thing about making your custom search profitable is getting traffic to it. Often people add GCS to their website as an afterthought. Maybe they just feel like it is a cheap & easy way to provide search functionality and increased accessibility to their users. That is all well and good, but we aren’t just trying to make our site more accessible, we are trying to make some extra money, and this implementation of a Google search is rarely profitable because only a small percentage of your websites visitors will ever use it.

As of this post, I am running a HUGE amount of different GCS engines. I have a GCS engine for every single niche I am involved in. Every time I start a new niche, one of the first things I do after going online is to create a GCS for it. I constantly maintain and update my GCS’ settings and configuration, adding and removing websites from each niche network. This is a lot of work, but depending on the subject matter for each niche, the profit returned from the GCS alone can rival the profit I make on the niches individual websites themselves. 


But still, we face the same problem. My many GCS engines are useless and won’t make a cent unless I am providing them with a sufficient volume of visitors performing searches.

Rather, what we need is a way to take every one of our visitors interested in that given niche and direct their attention towards using nothing else other than our niche’s GCS to find the answers they need. This is where my evil plan unfolds...

The secret here as with all BH is thinking outside of the box. Sure lots of websites offer inline search functionality or something similar to GCS, but how about offering a search-based service outside of a proper website? How about getting people to search for answers in your niche without ever even visiting your website, and without ever even knowing your website exists in the first place?

What I am referring to here are desktop widget platforms like Google Desktop or (my favorite) Windows Vista Sidebar. Even web-top widget platforms like Netvibes, Facebook and more. For the sake of this post, I am going to focus solely on Windows Vista Sidebar. Now I know vista is a bit outdated right now....but use your brain on how to adapt this....(think iPhones, Blackberry, Facebook Groups, Facebook PPC etc etc)

Out of curiosity, I started messing around with was the sidebar widgets. They have made it incredibly simple for people to create and publish their own widgets to the Windows Live Gallery website for other people to download and use. Also, Windows Vista Sidebar widgets can be very lucrative since there aren't many people who have made these sidebar widgets! 

A Vista sidebar widget is comprised of simple HTML and an XML file that acts in many ways like a PAD file does in as much as it identifies your widget and its provenance. If you know how to copy-and-paste and some basic HTML, then you can easily create a desktop widget.



Time to Take the Red Pill



Finding the proper niche is key to doing large search volume. Be SPECIFIC. For example, one of my most high traffic search engines was one that enabled people to interpret their dreams. 

Realizing that people love to know what their dreams mean, I did some brief research and compiled a database of dreams and their meanings. Then I created a website around that database and did all the usual Search Engine Optimization stuff on it, got it indexed and laid in some Adsense ads just for good measure. 

Next, I went to my Google account and set up a custom search engine. The setup interface allows you to target your search engine to a pre-defined list of websites or to have to search the entire web. For my purpose, I made the custom search engine return results from ONLY my website that I had made around the dreams database I compiled. That way, not only do I stand to profit from the ads displayed in the SERPs but since all the SERP results are for pages on my site, I am funneling traffic into my site which in turn shows more of my ads.

After going through all the setup steps, Google spat out the code for me to copy-and-paste into the HTML for my Sidebar Search Widget. 
I am not going to go into detail on how-to create your widgets as it is extremely easy to do and you will be able to figure it out on your own with a little help from a Google search on the topic...

So my little search widget was designed with nice clean interface and a snappy title and then I published it to the Windows Live Gallery website. Within one week, over 1000 people had downloaded my widget to their desktop sidebar. Getting that kind of desktop real estate on peoples computer screens is something that most internet marketers would KILL for. My search box is on their screen every day and it continually sends their requests to my website.

The important part is repeating this process on many different subjects. The more subjects you cover, the more search volume you will pull. The beautiful thing here is the sky is really the limit. If you want to pull in that $50/day I’ve been talking about, then you better be prepared to create a GCS for every niche you are in. And you better be prepared to present each of your GCS’ in a different widget for each platform. Ie: Create one widget for Netvibes, one for Vista, one for Google Desktop, etc, etc. Once you get the hang of it, you will find that you can create a simple template for each platform and then just plug in the different GCS code into each one. The sky is the limit man!


To find new cutting edge content crawl http://www.archive.org/index.php and make a website database easily. You can also utilize Google or Yahoo Trends to get Volcanic ideas for widgets

How about creating a database of Bible verses, and then creating a Bible Study search widget that funnels all searches into that website? How about creating a website of food and drink recipes and making it searchable via a desktop widget?


Ideas, Ideas, and More Ideas....


The databases provided give you an excellent leg-up in creating websites with large amounts of information that are perfectly appropriate for Google Custom Search widgets.

Another Idea I brainstormed is to use Paid Traffic/Paid Semi-Targeted Visitors (I use www.xgcmedia.comfor this) to toss them onto a juicy landing page offering your free widget that does whatever (interpret dreams, daily doggy obedience steps, famous quotes, healthy recipes etc etc use your brain)

Another thing that can be done is paid sign ups...like how some people literally buy sign ups for their offer, for their free ebook to get those people on their email list, for their free software download....these purchased sign ups can be used for your widget download(check the link above for this type of service)

Here are some other widget ideas to get you started:
-Lyrics Search Widget
-Torrent search widget
-Ebooks search widget
-Video Game Cheats Search Widget
-Myspace Layouts Search Widget
-Baby Names Search Widget
-Restaurants Search Widget
-Celebrity Gossip Search Widget
-Product Recalls Search Widget
-Software Search Widget
-Bible Verses Widget

In parting, here some more food for thought for all the BHer's:

Instead of just relying on Adwords for profit, how about a desktop search widget that returns Amazon Books with your Affiliate Link?

Think Think Think Guys! This is where the real money is.



Conclusion


The success or failure of this method, like every money making technique, depends on how much creativity you employ, and how much volume you push. 

Further, the number "1700" is completely arbitrary; it makes for a nice round number and a good title for a post. Truth is, if you are smart and play it right, there's no reason you can't pull in alot more than $1700/day (alot more...think outsourcing...think about how much iPhone widget, Blackberry App World, Crackberry make just from sales of all sorts of widgets like these!). 

On the flip side....If you go about this all half cocked about it you probably won't do nearly as well. So if you are about to gripe and whine about not being able to pull $1700/day (which is pretty easy to do) then take a step back and ask yourself if you really are doing everything right and pushing enough volume.


ALSO

If this will help you guys here's some resources to help ya get the ball rolling...

Resources:

Below are some resources for creating sidebar gadgets
http://archworx.wordpress.com/2006/1...sidebar-gadget


How to develop widgets? Try this search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&r...ts&btnG=Search

If you are still getting that feeling of being stuck in the mud heres a big hint.....goto to freelancer.com and hire a widget developer And ask him to place your search code....he will know what to do if he is worth his salt..

Submit your widgets :
Some websites allow to submit your widget and after some googling you can find them. So search and submit your widget. Suppose your widgets are downloaded by thousands of peoples so amazing the potential of earning and after sometime it will be automated earning and you just have to edit websites occasionally in your custom search engines that can be done easily in your account here http://www.google.com/coop

Hope these help!

TMC Method #5: Noob Easy Method

I'm not to into this method but it's easy to do and it works. Once again it's from MMD and its by their member  AJ113.


OK I have never - not even slightly - posted anything even remotely resembling a method anywhere. But I am just tired of seeing all these 'wahhh I can't make any money' threads. This method will not make you rich, but it will make you some money. 

1. Join Dating Gold, get your aff link for amateurmatch adult. ($3 per free sign up.)

2. Creat a short url for your aff link.

3. Join Pronhub dot com as a girl looking for - men, women, badgers, three toed sloths - whatever.

4. Build up your 'girl's' profile, make it nice and sexy. Get your photos from ipostnaked dot com. Especially make sure your avatar is really sexy. Animated if possible.

5. Wait 48 hours - you will have 100 - 200 friend requests.

6. Add all the friends, and send them a message, something like 'hey thanks for adding me, I am having problems uploading files here but you can see all of my pics at yourshorturl.com - and you can see me on cam there too! DON'T COPY THIS WORD FOR WORD. MAKE UP YOUR OWN MESSAGE.

7. Wait for money to come in. Don't get excited, you will probably only convert at about 1:20 but money is money.

8. Start at 3 again

Now stop whining and start earning. Honestly, if you can't do this, you're in the wrong place. Don't pm me, I have nothing to add to the above.

Edited to add:
You won't find this method anywhere else because I invented it. If you are the type of lowlife scumbucket who would sell it somewhere I WILL find you

Thursday, January 6, 2011

TMC Method #4: Site Flipping EXTREME Full Guide!

Defiantly one of the best guides I have ever read on website flipping. Defiantly check this out, you will be making easy money in no time! Once again this post came from the members over at MMD. Check out their site and be amazed. This guide was written by their member GreenSamurai.


Complete Guide to Website Flipping


We all know that the real estate market is in very poor shape and real estate speculating/flipping is just about the last thing you want to be dependent on right now. What you may not know is that website speculating/flipping is simply booming these days and, following my personal approach, there is almost no way you can lose money by building/flipping/selling websites.


Let me just begin by outlining what you are about to read. This is the complete guide to selling or flipping a website, two different things but both covered, from start to finish. Basically, you can jump in after reading this report with no prior experience and start making money on your own with your very first transaction. I will cover every aspect from buying, selling, values, building new sites to sell and more. That being said let us move on to the good stuff and start earning you some cash.


Determining a Website’s Value

The most important thing, whether selling an existing site, buying a site or buying a site to flip, is understanding a website’s value. This may seem obvious but the majority of the time you are going to be up against other website speculators as opposed to an end user who wants to keep this website so these people are going to be looking to get the best deal possible for themselves – as should you. That being said the information that follows is a general baseline, this will vary based on the following factors that may come up during a sale:


  1. The buyer is not a speculator/flipper and actually wants to keep this site. You will be able to demand a far higher rate because this guy is not looking to simply buy and grow the earnings/traffic a little bit only to resell it a couple of months later for a profit.
  2. What is the site? These base rules apply to standard sites selling affiliate products or with AdSense earnings. If a site includes its very own product for sale or other extras such as an army of affiliates promoting it or expensive custom scripts/licenses then expect to pay extra for those features.

When appraising the value of a website the main factors will be revenue and traffic. We will now go into a bit more detail on each of these factors.

Revenue

Revenue is probably the number one factor when determining how much you should pay/sell a website for. The general rule of thumb is to try to sell it for around 10 months income and, when buying to flip, to try to buy for around 5-8 months income. That being said the general rule of thumb is seriously flawed and anyone who tries to negotiate looking at stiff terms like this will be in for a loss sooner or later.

When I am looking at buying a website I look deeper into the revenue statistics. I want as much data as possible, at least a year back if on an older site and from the start if on a newer site. You are going to want to check things out and try to get the bigger picture of how this website is performing. Ideally you will want to purchase a website where the revenue has been steadily rising month after month – at the very least remaining fairly constant for a period of months. A website that is declining in earnings or was once on the rise for a period of time but now somewhat flat is something to either steer clear of or negotiate a bargain price on in hopes of selling to a silly speculator that will offer you a price based on the flat X months income formula.

Generally speaking websites that have been shrinking in earnings are all dried up and the seller probably knows this which is why he (or she) listed it in the first place – to try to get one last squeeze of cash before it becomes a complete has been. You will want to steer clear of these websites at all costs because, in order to flip for a profit, you will need to hold a site and increase its traffic and revenue for a few months. This could be difficult if not impossible and is usually not worth the potential risk.

Website’s that were steadily rising in income for months but have now leveled off are also something to be wary of. Often times this indicated that the website is also dying and perhaps the owner has been pumping in more and more effort/marketing dollars to keep the revenue from declining until he can sell it. This is not always the case though, often time it means that the webmaster has simply become lazy with this site, which can easily be seen after examining the site itself as well as traffic stats, and that means that you can swipe it at a bargain and pump a little bit of time into to it to get the site’s earnings to grow once again.

The ideal buy comes when a website already has a growing revenue but the seller does not understand the value in that and instead is looking for a solid 10x monthly income based on an average income for the last X months. This provides you with the opportunity to purchase a website that you can simply allow to sit for 5-6 months, while collecting back more than half of what you paid – sometimes much more – because the revenue is increasing, and then selling for a substantially higher amount than what you originally paid. The key here is to examine revenue proofs and traffic proofs (ideally the top referrer is Google) and then speak to the guy and see if it will be possible for you to work this out. Surprisingly enough many people will close the auction right there if you offer them 9-10x monthly income even though you know you just made a purchase that can easily more than double your money with zero work; this is, once again, thanks to the misconception that 10x monthly income should be the basis for the price and that is it!

A final thing to look at and note is any huge surges in revenue. Ask the site owner about it and also do a little research. As an example, a newly released expansion pack for a video game which a site is around may have been recently released which shot up the revenue for the last two months like crazy. You can expect this to dwindle in coming months so don’t take it into account. Most likely there will be some fool out there that wont think of this and will pay more so count this site as something you will not be buying. Other possible revenue increases to steer clear of are new news/trend topics which may have greatly increased last month’s revenue – which is probably why this site is being sold now – but which will dry up very soon. There are, of course, some legitimate reasons for huge surges in revenue such as better ad placement/new site layout or simply good Search Engine Optimization work that will bring in long term organic traffic, which will lead us to the traffic side of appraising a site’s value.

Traffic

Traffic is, of course, just as important as revenue; for both buying and selling. This is because traffic sources indicate the amount of work and or funds being used to gain the revenue for a site. If you plan on reselling this site it is certainly something that any buyer, speculator or long term holder, will be looking at. It is also important because being able to increase the revenue of a site so you can flip it for a higher price is your real goal here – if the traffic is a pain to get then this may not be possible and your only revenue from this sale will be the 2-3 months revenue you earn while holding the site before flipping it.

You will want traffic referrer logs for as far back as possible, just as with revenue proofs. Website’s that have even a small amount of traffic from PPC are something to be very wary about. Even if it is only 2-3% of the overall traffic it just may be the only converting traffic and the rest is junk – this means that you would have to setup a successful PPC campaign and spend cash, not to mention the time tweaking your campaign, just to keep the current revenue stable. So, when checking logs look for referrers coming from any major PPC network and take into account what you have just read. These networks will includes:


MSN/AdCenter

Google AdWords


BidVertiser


AdBrite


Overture


Yahoo! Search Marketing


They will not be exact matches but are usually pretty easy to spot, as an example AdWords traffic will appear from a domain such as‘pagead2.googlesyndication.com’.

Using the same logic you want to see that traffic is coming primarily from Google itself in referrer logs, and has been for a substantial amount of time. This would indicate that the Search Engine Optimization work is probably done and the website is just getting natural organic search traffic which means you will not have to work on it. This is great for being able to increase the revenue with a little work and is also great because the right buyer, when you go to resell, will see this as a big boost in overall value of the site. An ideal percentage is 90%+ coming from search traffic, but really anything substantial is a good thing.

Middle of the road sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg being large referrers will most likely mean that you will have to spend a few minutes daily on promotion to social bookmarking sites. This is not a huge deal but it will lower the value during resale so take that into account when making an offer on the website.

In an ideal buying experience you will have determined that the traffic comes mostly from a search engine. At this point you will want to inquire with the owner what search terms the site is pulling traffic from/ranking well in and do your own research on them.

Check the monthly searches for the term (AdWords keyword tool is great for this if on Google) and also be sure to examine the competition to give yourself an idea of whether or not there is regular/ongoing backlink building and on site Search Engine Optimization that is allowing this site to rank for the keyphrase. If it looks like traffic is high on a term but competition is also fierce then please also take this into account; just because the traffic is natural does not necessarily mean that promotion will be passive – if competition looks rough then make sure you are willing to invest the time into Search Engine Optimization. This will not be a huge point when looking to flip this site as I very, very, rarely encounter any buyers who check this deep into referrer data – it will more be for you personally and what you are willing to do in order to increase revenue for the website. You should adjust the price you are willing to pay based on this factor as well.

In addition if the owner is unable to provide you with the search terms or your research has indicated that there is barely any traffic in said search terms this is usually a strong indicator that the referrer data has been faked – remember there are scammers out there in every avenue of online business. If you are good at reading people you may wish to ask some questions and get a better feel for whether the referrer logs are faked or the webmaster is simply incompetent and doesn’t know what he is ranking for. My personal advice though is to just drop the sale right here, there are always more websites to look at and taking risks is the best way to lose money in an almost surefire business plan such as website speculating.

Also please remember that the entire appraising process is a negotiation, there is no impartial third party. That means that whenever you are presented with a negative result – either on traffic or income – be sure to tell the other party exactly what is wrong and how it is going to affect the final sale price. Remember, there is no set price – it is just like buying a car only you are about to have the background experience to out negotiate the other party instead of getting suckered by some sleazy car salesman.

Buying/Selling

Now that we have covered determining a value of a website it is time to move on to the buying and selling process as a whole. Of course the approach will be somewhat different if you are buying or if you are selling so I will run this as two sub-chapters to be sure to cover everything and make it all as clear as possible.

Buying

Buying a website is very basic once you understand how to determine the value of the site. Beyond this the key points that you need to know are how to go about getting a hold of the site itself and how to properly negotiate to pay the least amount possible. Things like increasing the income/traffic and getting a good price for your site will fall under the buying category.

The very first thing to do, obviously, when looking to buy a website as an investment is to hit up the marketplaces and shop around a bit. The top marketplaces for buying/selling websites are:

Flippa.com: Formerly SitePoint and the biggest one around

BuySellWebsite.com: These guys are very professional, listing fees cost some $$ so sellers are serious and the auction platform is pretty nice


Forums.DigitalPoint.com: Just hit up the website for sale section, in the BST, I actually sold two sites here in July (my first time selling sites here) and it was a good experience with lots of bids. A nice thing about being a buyer here is that there are so many sites and many of the sellers are first time sellers which can mean a steal for you


GeekVillage.com Forums: Another good source. They charge a small fee and sellers can’t be brand new to the forums so as a buyer you are pretty safe here


SiteIndeed.com: Good middle of the road source. These guys do listings for free if they are short then charge for longer sales which means you will get a good smathering of cheap and expensive sites to sift through for deals


Those would be my definite top 5 in terms of both buying and selling. I usually spend a solid 2-3 hours browsing all of these marketplaces before deciding on a site, or a couple, that seem like a real solid investment – based on asking price and revenue/traffic as well as the nature of the revenue/type of website; all of which we just covered.

The most promising websites get a follow up where I begin dialogue with the owner of the site. This is usually just private message or e-mail exchange; since it takes time to close a sale and investigate traffic and revenue details contact via instant messenger really doesn’t provide much of an advantage.

In the final steps of buying a website I will bring forth all of the negative factors that I have identified from the sale, just as with a car I would say that it needs new tires so I need to pay that much less etc., and then I will make my offer. My initial offer will generally be about 25% less than what I am willing to pay and I will usually get counter offered. Sometimes you get lucky and buy it for less than what you were willing to pay – which was already less than the asking price – and sometimes you get talked up to your asking price. Just be firm here, remember this is an investment and there are plenty of other websites out there if this guy wants too much. Sometimes walking away can even get you a lower offer a couple of days later when other buyers fall through.

As you can see the entire buying process is very simple/self explanatory once you have a solid understanding of how to determine the value of a given site. From here you need to cover some basics like:

Content – This is the most important aspect to cover. You want to know where all of the content for this site comes from and have access to it. Without updating this site as it is currently being done both your traffic and revenue will drop making this site worthless!

Hosting – Included or do I need to buy/have my own?


Domains – If not included you are going to need to get the domain transferred to your host. Be aware that some domain registrars such as 1and1 will require a waiting of 5 days before transferring the domain which the seller will not be able to bypass.


Files – Hopefully they can setup an FTP account on their current host/server, if transferring you files, in order to more quickly get you everything you need to throw up on your host. If you are trying to transfer a WordPress blog, as an example, you will need all of the FTP files as well as a backup of the MySQL database. This is probably the most tricky transfer but you can read up on it at: A Complete Guide to Transferring Wordpress From One Server or Host to Another | JealousBrother.com Official Blog


Payment – This is the big one. Usually you will need to pay at close, or within a given time frame, before you receive anything. For purchases under $1,000 PayPal is pretty normal and really is fine. I would simply recommend that you deposit the money into your bank account and use your bank’s debit card to make the payment. This is because PayPal does not cover the non-receipt of digital goods but your bank can do a chargeback for you if you never get the site and PayPal will not fight them on it. For larger transactions I recommend using third party escrow; these are companies that basically do a little swap for you. They get the money and access to the files and then toss them off to the other party insuring nobody is left empty handed during the exchange. Dealing with established members can negate any fears/risks as these guys make a living out of site flipping, much as you hope to do, and a ding on their reputation can mean big trouble.


That is it for buying a website. Shortly we will cover how to maximize this investment by increasing traffic and revenue in order to get a higher price when flipping the site. Unlike real estate investments when investing in websites you are able to easily increase the value all on your own without having to worry about the market as a whole.

Selling

Selling a website is pretty much the same kind of stuff we just covered only you are on the opposite end of things. You want to have strong revenue and traffic stats and you will want to be able to talk up the high points in your sales post while leaving out some of the low points.

Dialogue on the majority of website marketplaces takes place individually and in private between you and potential buyers. This allows you to leave out any negatives about your website and when experienced buyers happen to stumble on them or ask about them you will simply be able to hold out for someone who is a bit less experienced and willing to pay a bit more.

Another note here is that you should understand what the majority of the buyers want to see and cater to that. You should always wait until your website has a revenue that has been on the increase for at least a couple of months before you sell. This will greatly increase the price that you get for it and, because the site is yours now, you will get to take the monthly earnings and keep those as well. I will be covering how to increase your revenue shortly so you will want to be sure to run with that for a couple of months before flipping your newly purchased website. Established sites also fetch a higher price than newer sites so really the longer you can hold a site before flipping it the more money you will make.

If your referrer data is good then hype that in your listing. Let people know that the majority of your traffic is natural and coming from Google, include links to download your referrer logs right there in the post to show it off. If it is not great then don’t worry, there are still tons of people out there that think the formula to buying a website is as simple as 10x monthly income – target these people with your listing. For traffic stats instead include your unique visitors total numbers, rather than referrer data, for the last few months. You should have had an increase before flipping this so that in itself will show people that your site is growing and has some serious potential.

As for initial pricing I list all of my sites at 10x monthly income and let the offers come in. Since you should have paid less than this you can settle for a little but less but most of the time you will be able to actually work the price up a bit from here as bids start to pour in. This is especially true if you end up with multiple people that want this site for their own rather than flipping it, here the true value of your site is not based on revenue or traffic but whatever value the buyer sees this site providing him in the long term (4-5 years of income plus have the income gradually scaled up, perhaps the ability to market a product of his in the same niche to existing traffic, the killing of a website which is his competition; there are many variables here that will yield you a much higher price if you meet up with the right buyer).

The biggest tip I can give is that a quick sale will screw yourself. If you are willing to wait a few weeks to close chances are you will get multiple offers and this is, hands down, the easiest way to persuade someone to pay more. Simply let them know that you already had an offer for more, give them the real offer amount, and you cannot let them have it unless they are willing to pay more. Eventually one party will walk away but whoever remains will have probably been talked up 2-3 times in price and will be very close to the maximum that they are willing to pay.

After you have established the price and buyer then it is time to close the deal. Same story as when buying a website here. You want to be sure that you get it stipulated where you transfer the domain and do not have the site hosted otherwise you are going to end up paying monthly/annual fees. Again PayPal is pretty standard here for the purchase but you may want to consider the following tricks:

  1. Have the buyer send the payment as a gift. They will not always do this because it eliminates their buyer protection but what it does for you is it eliminates most of the fees, which can get really high if you are closing an expensive sale.
  2. Simply send an invoice to the buyer. The fees are greater than a gift but much lower than if paid normally. It also helps to protect you from an unauthorized claim as you have evidence that the owner of the e-mail linked to the PayPal account initiated the transaction.

That is about all that I can say about selling a website. Mostly it comes with experience and your success will be directly related to your ability to haggle and negotiate. There is never a fixed price and unless you get a buyer in a hurry that is willing to overpay expect to be offered and respond with counter offers numerous times over the course of days or even a week.

Increasing a Purchased Site’s Value Before Flipping

Obviously the key points here are going to be revenue and traffic. Usually websites for sale have gone somewhat neglected and no matter what the scenario is there is always some opportunity to increase both the traffic and revenue of a website that you recently purchased.

Holding a website for a minimum of 2-3 months is very important if you want to realize a maximum return on your investment. This gives you time to increase both revenue and traffic and also to make it appear as if the site is on an upward path and a buyer is getting something that is going to perform even better in coming months, allowing you to fetch an even higher price. In addition you most likely purchased this website for less than 8 months of income. If you are keeping it for 2-3 months and you are increasing the income beyond levels that your buying price was based on this 2-3 months of holding it will provide you with earnings that will cover around 50% of the total of what you paid. This allows you to make a far greater return because you have already offset quite a bit of your initial investment before ever taking your new website to the marketplace.

Increasing Revenue

Obviously the most important thing to increase is revenue. The first place I start is with the site’s and ad’s layouts. Many times something as simple as spending five minutes to change the colors or positions of a couple of AdSense units can increase your CTR, or click through ratio, by as much as 5% – which can be substantial on established money making sites. The general rule is that while people read from left to right they tend to view websites from top left to bottom right in a diagonal, then scroll down and repeat the process. Try to capture this line of sight with your ad units – a left sidebar ad or an ad in the middle of the text about midway down the screen are great places to gain attention and capture clicks. The color scheme you choose for your ad units should be an exact match to that of the website itself, spend a couple minutes on this because more people are going to click an ad if they do not realize that it is an ad. In addition, if using AdSense, the highest paying ads will be displayed first so try to limit the total number of ad units you display in order to focus clicks on higher paying ads.

Again the site’s layout as a whole can have a large affect on the revenue. Too many flashy graphics and outbound links are bound to draw attention away from ad units, and thus potential revenue. Try to keep it so that people have few choices but to click your ads in order to leave your website. Try to eliminate an overuse of pictures/movies and make your ads the flashiest thing around.

Really your goal here is to get people to notice your ads and to click on them while simultaneously better blending your ads so that people do not even know they are clicking on an ad unit.

If the website is built around promoting an affiliate product, such as a ClickBank ebook, then you are going to want to quickly increase revenue and flip this site in 2 months exactly. This gives you opportunity to increase the revenue for a bit but also you need to unload it quickly as ClickBank products often die off after 6-8 months or at least see a large decline in sales. In these cases be sure to turn any subtle ads into more straight forward ones. Tell people about the product and how great it is in the body of your page rather than just having a banner ad sitting to the side. Offer a freebie ebook or report and build a mailing list around it (Aweber is good for this) then plug the product in your mailing list. Not only will you increase your revenue but you can include a niche targeted opt in mailing list in your site sale and fetch a nice extra chunk of change for it. Also consider experimenting with additional products in the same niche, somethings just have better sales pages and convert better than others.

Increasing Traffic

The first thing that I like to look it is optimizing the main domain to rank higher in Google. Hopefully the site that you purchased already has a good amount of organic search traffic so bumping it up a notch should take a minimal amount of work. Since I am holding this site for only 2-3 months on average I am going to be investing about 30 minutes daily, 4-5 days a week, into Search Engine Optimization. Chances are that since this website is already established link building has not been given this sort of attention in a long time and you will see a considerable rise in search engines. My daily routine will consist of:


  1. 2-5 Blog Comments – These will be comments on dofollow blogs which are relevant to my niche. I will of course make the comment good and relevant to the post, using my URL only in the URL field and my desired anchor text in the name field. This will insure that I get maximum link benefits while still being able to make my comment stick. 50% of these daily comments will be to internal pages of the website with anchor text that targets the longer tail keyword that these pages are about. Deep linking is a great way to target many more phrases on Google and bring in extra traffic.
  2. Social Bookmarking – I will submit a page to the top social bookmarking sites daily. I personally use OnlyWire.com because they allow me to type it in once and then automatically submit it to the top sites.
  3. 1 Time Initial Promotion – I want to promote the root domain one initially after getting the site. I will write 1 article and submit it to Ezine Articles, this will bring me a strong backlink and some traffic. I will spin or rewrite this article and then post it on uBlurbit.com with a couple of deep links to other main pages. I will submit the domain to a number of smaller social bookmarking sites that it has probably never been submitted to before. I will register on 5-6 niche forums and use a link, with desired anchor text, in my signature. I will then make relevant posts in the most active 4-5 topics on each forum insuring that my link is spidered and human traffic may click through as well.

You will also want to work on your referrer data. If your site is fetching traffic from many sources try to do some Search Engine Optimization work to get more traffic from search engines. Spend a couple of hours building some backlinks and examining internal pages of your website to make sure they are optimized for proper keywords (although your main domain should target your primary keyphrase each individual page should also target a long tail/low competition keyphrase. Shoot for using this keyphrase in a density of 2%-4%, or 2 to 4 times per 100 words, in order to easily optimize your internal pages to naturally rank for low competition terms to gain additional Google traffic) in order to rank higher.

Also please note that content is an equally important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. If this site was previously updated once daily then start updating it twice daily. Make sure your content is unique – put in the effort and Google will love you. This is also why I will talk a bit about building, promoting and selling auto blogs. Buyers tend to love the fact that the content is handled so they can spend much less time on the site to increase traffic and revenue. Flipping auto blogs is truly my favorite.

If you must make a quick sale or struggle greatly with increasing traffic then you can consider purchasing traffic with referrer data included, be sure to use Google for the referrer. Although I do not condone this people’s ethical stances tend to change when they stand to lose a great deal of money so I will say that this can be done.

That’s about all that there is to it. After a couple of months you now have increasingly positive statistics for your website which you brag about in your listing and demand a higher price, you also got to keep everything the site earned in this few months which, combined, makes it a far better idea than simply immediately flipping a website for 5% profit.

Building an Auto Blog to Flip

Although you can build any site and flip it auto blogs are my personal favorite. This is because you can build it and sell it in the same month and, since content is automatic, people will pay you far more than the invested time. Although it may take you a couple of hours initially to setup and promote an auto blog once you get the hang of it setup and promotion combined take me around an hour – because I target long tail niches – and I can fetch $50-$100 for this blog in a few weeks while making a couple of dollars in AdSense revenue in the mean time.

The first thing to note is that there is a free way and a paid way of doing this. I will be covering the paid way (costs are simply a domain and hosting but you can use your same hosting for tons of auto blogs). If you would like to learn about the free way of building auto blogs hosted on blogger.com just do a quick search on this blog and you’ll find my method.

Again I’m not going to cover that because once you have your hosting set you will only pay about $5 for each domain but the fact that it is a hosted blog with a domain will add around $20-$30 in value so this is the ideal approach.

Setup

Of course setup is the majority of the battle here. The real key is to target a long tail niche for your blog so that an hour of promotion can net you natural Google traffic and you have turned your hour of work into $50-$100, which is not too bad if you ask me.

The very first thing to do is to pick a long tail niche. You can use Google AdWord’s keyword tool to look for terms with decent traffic but low competition. Personally I just go with my gut and try to think of a broad niche and then narrow it down. So maybe today I will think of ‘cooking’. For my blog’s niche I will narrow this greatly to something such as ‘new cooking utensil product reviews’. That should be a bit easier to rank for in Google.

Now it is time to register a domain. My ideal domain name would contain my long tail keyphrase, such as ‘cooking-utensil-product-reviews.com’. You want to go with a .com because it is simply worth more money to people who are going to look to buy your website and will only cost you a couple of dollars more.

Now we are going to upload and install WordPress on our hosting account tied to this domain. This is a simple process but you will need to read the provided WordPress tutorial the first time or you will surely miss something.

Once installed make sure to use your entire long tail keyphrase as the title of your blog and pick out a new custom theme, these can be found for free all over Google. After uploading your new theme go to theme editor/presentation and edit the ‘header.php’ file to include some meta description information. Be sure to use your keywords a few more times here, in this case mine would look like:

New cooking utensils reviewed here. Learn more about the hottest new cooking utensils and get product reviews on utensils for your kitchen and cooking right here!”

Basically you have crammed it with keywords for Google and have made it descriptive for your target audience as well.

Another to do is to include a custom graphic, this will also increase your auto blog’s value. Just get a header/logo graphic done that includes your site’s name and a little Web 2.0ish picture. If you aren’t skilled with Photoshop then outsource it, you shouldn’t pay more than $3-$5 for this and it is important to buyers. People at forums such as DigitalPoint do this well and are very cheap.

Be sure to include some AdSense ad units in your blog because although you are going to be selling this brand new and revenue is not the key having an earning of $10 for the month you hold this blog will help you to demand $100 or so for your hour’s worth of work.

Your final step is going to, of course, be getting automatic content. This is actually quite simple. I use WP-O-Matic because it does the trick and is 100% free. You can download it and get complete setup instructions from:


That’s it. Now you just have to find some feeds for WP-O-Matic to pull content from. The thing here is you are trying to crank out these auto blogs quickly in order to produce the maximum number for sale. That means that instead of searching for a blog about your micro niche to pull a feed from just pull feeds on your broader niche, in this case ‘cooking’. With your meta information and your promotion, which are about to get to, on the micro niche having content that is that close does just fine.

Promotion

Promotion is very straight forward. Most of the time in micro niches such as this your competition is zero because the results that are showing up in Google are actually people who were trying to target something else so with a little bit of work you will easily take the number one spot and hold it.

I just do my classic promotion here, submit your site to the top social bookmarking sites – be sure to use the long tail keyword as your title so it will be your anchor text.

I will also do about 10 blog comments on relevant blogs, speed is the key so do not worry about dofollow. As always include your full long tail keyword as the ‘name’ field and your URL in the URL field. Make your comment fit with the blog post or, for speed, comment at another commenter to make sure it sticks.

That is about it for this method I personally have some websites up already so I will stick some links from them in order to get it ranking a bit higher initially and then remove them later. If you find in a week or so you are not ranking then go out and post another round of blog comments followed by a short Ezine Article and you should be set. I usually hold off and see just because I don’t want to waste my time with this if I don’t need to.

Now you have your auto blog all setup and promoted. Follow what you learned earlier and sell it after 3-4 weeks. The only thing here is that when selling these push the fact that the traffic is organic and the blog is all promoted and automatic so it is completely and 100% passive income, this is what makes a brand new site like this worth buying!

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