Lately we have seen a huge increase in popular websites getting sold. It seems to be the in thing at the moment with bloggers such as Blogging Finger, Cash Quest and others selling at decent prices. As of today Amy Bass’s MyDebtFreeGoal is also for sale.

Actually, website flipping has always been big, but it was more an underground method to those who knew. Now since it hit the mainstream blogging media we are more aware of this and therefore take note.

The question arises whether website flipping would be a valuable business for some. My answer is definitely yes.

I’ve decided to do a little test and see what is available on SitePoint. Whilst searching for the available listings I spotted the following site for sale.

As you can see from the above image, HOTipodTouch.com is currently for sale. It is a new domain but has been set up to run and is ready to go. On the first impression the asking price of $169 to buy this site outright is peanuts and seems like a great idea.

Especially when you see that the iPod is the most popular search term on EBay today for example as you can see on the following screen shot.

Now look at the screen shot of the actual site for sale for a outright price of $169.

As you can see the site is all set up ready to earn money. But there is one small problem. The site has currently an Alexa ranking of 3.5 million+ and no Page Rank. Remember it is a new site. Most likely there are also no incoming links and nothing to shout about really.
So to get organic traffic to bring you sales, the buyer would have to come up with an aggressive promotion strategy to get this happening. Over time the site will attract organic search engine traffic, but this won’t happen quickly.

So the question arises, would it be worth buying for this seemingly affordable price, or not and why?

Here is the answer: It really depends as you can do the exact same with a similar domain in a couple of hours. Looking at it this way, it is definitely not a good idea to buy a flipped site that new. (I’m excluding established sites here for good reason)

Alternatively,  you decided to do it your way and in this case we need to know what you need, to clone a site like this one:

1. First, you need to visit Go Daddy and get yourself a suitable domain name. The thing to remember is to have your keyword in the URL!
2. Decide on the template. WordPress (self hosted only!) or Blogger are probably best for various reasons but the main one being search engines.
3. Sign up with EBay’s Affiliate Program for free
4. Sign up with Amazon’s Affiliate Program for free
5. Apply for a Google Adsense account
6. Create your new site.

The listings you see displayed on http://www.hotipodtouch.com/ are automated. It will only take you a little time to get the right feed to keep this updated and once the site is up, you can go about promoting it.

Looking at is from the second view where we want to do the do-it-yourself approach, you will save yourself at least $ 160. A domain on Go Daddy is only $9/year or $7 with coupons and that’s all you need besides the hosting.

In the end your decision on whether you would want to proceed with this sale depends on two things.

• Whether you want to invest some time and save money
• Whether you want to save time and invest some money

In closing, domain flipping is a great way to make money for those who look at it from the other perspective.

But before you rush out and start building sites like crazy make sure your keyword is well researched.

Just before closing, Mani Karthik wrote a great post just now about what to look for before you buy these sites. It is well worth a read.

Monika Mundell

Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: website flipping , website selling , blogging , web 2.0

Filed under: Internet Marketing