The Highly Profitable World Of Building And Selling Simple, Easy To Build Websites.

You may not be aware of this but there are people who make their money building simple blogs and websites which they then sell for good money.

Similar to a property developer who buys up property with no intention of living in them – their main focus is to renovate and smarten up the property then sell it on for profit – these guys do a similar thing with websites.

It is known as flipping. Taking ownership of a thing to improve it and then sell it on for a profit.

The big difference to property flipping is that a website may take longer to be in a position to sell for a profit but it is essentially the same thing… but with a higher return on investment.

Website Flipping – Property Developing Without Leaving The Comfort Of Your Home

Many website flippers buy a domain and build a website with the intention to sell. They do not want to spend the next twenty or so years building a website for fun, or to one day maybe leave work living off the website earnings.

No a website flipper starts with the plan of selling it as soon as they can firmly set in place.

They know that they have no intention of keeping it longer than is necessary. The reason for this?

There are big profits in selling websites and a fast turnaround means money in the bank and they can move onto the next profitable project.

They may buy an existing website from an auction website like flippa.com one which they think has a lot of potential and that they can develop and capitalise on that potential. Or they may start completely from scratch.

In this article I am going to share with you several websites which have been sold on flippa.com for nice tidy amounts of money.

These websites may have been built by serial website flippers or they may have just been built people who decided to sell up after years of working on a website.

What is important is the amount of money these websites sold for. Take this one for example…

Spanish business directory called filebees.com which was making $6K each month on average since 2013 sold for $32,000.

Why Stop At One?

It is possible that a professional website flipper is working on multiple websites at one time.

Like a property developer who pays tradespeople to do work like plastering, electrics, carpentry, plumbing and carpet fitting the website flipper will often pay people to do specific jobs too.

A website flipper will pay for website graphics to be done and he or she may also pay for writers to fill the website with quality content.

Some may write their own content but why bother when you can buy it from quality writers in places like India, Indonesia or the Philippines who will often do it for a few pounds.

As long as the content is of a high quality who cares where it came from. A website flipper will grow a team of trusted content providers.

Take the incredible story of Viral Nova. Scott DeLong is a well known internet entrepreneur who likes to start jobs and then move on to the next.

He start a website called ViralNova which he sold only two years later for a staggering $100 million. I am not sure whether he planned to build it to sell or whether he was convinced to sell it after being approached by a media company with an offer he couldn’t refuse.

What is important is that he had a small team of around 3 freelance writers who he paid to fill the website with content. He initially wrote the content himself when he started but once the website started to earn money he then paid people to create the content and grow the website.

It was said that ViralNova was generating over half a million dollars each month in advertising revenue within a very short time and that brought with it an incredible hefty price tag of $100 million.

ViralNova is the exception to the rule, an incredible success story which is one in a million and it is unlikely that there will be many who will replicate that kind of success but what Scott Delong did is not actually that hard.

This website sold for over $20,000. It was two years old and generating $806 in advertising revenue each month. It has nothing special in the way of content. It simply listed all of the new films, TV shows and documentaries which were released on Netflix in a way which was easy to navigate.

I don’t know about you but I hate trying to find stuff on Netflix and this easy to navigate solution has helped a lot of people and earned itself a nice little lump sum of money too.

$20,000 may not sound a lot to you but when you stop and think about how easy it is to actually build a website when you know how you will soon realise that these guys are probably working on several websites and that they are managing others to do a lot of work.

Think Of It This Way… Putting It Into Perspective…

What could you buy with the profits from the sale of those simple easy to build websites?

This spacious apartment in Alicante with 3 double bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and lounge-dinner was recently on sale for the incredible price of €19,950. It is a doer-upper but what an incredible price!

A profitable website could either fund the renovations or if it was sold could possibly buy something like this apartment.

For as little as £85 you can host 1 website for 2 years or for £143 you can host several for 2 years using SiteGround hosting. Domain names can cost between £25-35 for 2 years depending on what deal they have on. And Siteground regularly have cheap deals on.

Get Started Building Your Only Profitable Website Today: Get Siteground Hosting Here

Selling Multiple Websites

They may not just sell the one for thousands of dollars they may sell 3, 4 or more a year.

The NetflixReleases example above was earning over $800 per month and the Filebees website was earning $6000 each month so it’s not like these guys are not earning any money and waiting until the website is sold.

Imagine having a couple of websites earning around $1000 per month each while you build them up to sell.

Yes, when they start a new website project they will be without income from that website for several months but isn’t that the way with all businesses?

Very few offline businesses actually make any profit in the first year or two as they are paying off costs, loans and wages.

It is said that a new restaurant can take upto 2 years to turn a profit.

Those first 2 years of blood sweat and tears toiling hard in a hot bustling kitchen, dealing with complaining customers, working long days and anti-social hours pay off the huge setting up costs which come with that type of business.

Not with a website.

The online world can be very different with very low entry costs. Earning income can happen fast with profits soon to follow. For example a simple website can cost less than £150 for two years – depending where you buy your domain and hosting from.

It is possible to build a website using a free theme and grow it for free if you do the work yourself.

If you built a website that became as popular as the NetflixRelease or the FileBees, which required little ongoing work, you could generate a healthy monthly income plus sell it for a nice profit all from that initial £150 investment.

Even if you spent £500 – £1000 on that website over time, and it earned several hundred dollars back each month and then you sold it for tens of thousands a few years later – that wouldn’t be a bad return on investment would it?

An Evening And Weekend Project Perhaps?

Let’s look at a few more websites which have sold for nice sums of money. Some of these may have been set up because the owner wanted the website then decided to sell it later and others may have built their websites specifically to sell for a quick profit.

Phasemix is a website teaching non native English speaking people how to speak casual and everyday conversational English.

It was generating over $3,000 a month income from over half a million monthly hits and was sold for over $90,000.

What Is A Website Worth?

The old rule of thumb was that a website was valued at two years of its average monthly earnings so 24 times $3,000 would make phasemix worth $72,000.

That rule of thumb is a guideline really as a websites valued is also determined by its potential, and what an individual can see in it.

Also, the value of a website can be higher if it has an email list and a healthy active social media following.

In the case of Phasemix it was generating a good monthly income and it had a lot of visitors each month giving it a lot of value to a company which sold English language programmes.

Further Reading: Make more from your website… How This Little Easy To Do 5 Minute Task Could Earn You Hundreds Of Pounds Extra Each Month

Just as a property is worth as much as a person is prepared to buy it, a website is also subjective with websites selling for more than what its base value would be, as seen in the next example.

TrendyResume generated around $1,750 a month from only 5K  monthly visitors which is a lot less than the PhaseMix example yet it sold for $70,000.

Two years worth of income at $1,750 comes to $42,000. It is said that in 2016 it generated 26K so two years at that income would give it a price tag of $52,000 but someone still paid $18,000 more for it.

What is also impressive is this website was another young website being only 2 years old.

I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t have thought that there was a lot of money in resumes but what do I know? Just because I don’t find something interesting doesn’t mean there is no value in it.

PreppersJournal is a good website. When it was sold its average income over 3 months was $6,562 per month. (Flippa use the latest 3 month incomes to determine the average likely income) That would give the website a value of $157,488 using the two year income rule.

The website sold for $159,000. What is impressive is this is only a 4 year old website. For those who do not know.

Prepping for the collapse of civilisation or at least a temporary collapse in society as we know it is a HUGE niche and can generate a lot of money as this website shows. It was receiving over 230,000 visitors each month at the time of sale.

Recently there was a website called scubadivingaddicts up for sale. Only 2 years old, it was earning over $3,500 a month and was looking for a minimum offer of $65,000

What I notice on this sale is that the seller has already sold a couple of websites and made $15,700. This would be his 3rd sale by the looks of it. He is finding his feet with this industry.

His previous websites were obviously not huge sellers and I don’t know much about them but it appears that as he grows he is getting better.

Not only has he sold 2 websites for $15K, he has another one up for $65K which is earning him a nice $3.5K. That is not bad going.

A Nice Little Earner

But how about this guy?

This guy is a serious serial website flipper. His latest website is up for sale for offers no less than $100,000! And it appears that it is not generating an income!

That’s not the only thing which is interesting about this guy, if you look closely at his profile in the corner (below) you will see that he has 214 transactions totalling $358,997.

That might be a combination of sales and purchases, I cannot tell for definite but if it is just pure sales from website flipping, then that is one incredible little business he has.

The last website example is a little special. This one gets people to sign up their friends and family to have cat facts sent to them by sms text message.

I am not sure how ethical that is right now with the new GDPR and privacy rules but you are essentially setting your friends up to receive text messages which either they have to pay for, or they recieve other marketing messages.

What is crazy is that this website was only 2 years old when listed ( I see a bit of a pattern appearing here) and it was sold for $50,000. It was generating $2,050 a month which would give it a value of just under $50,000.

What Could A £150 Investment Do For You?

It would appear that the valuing of websites at 24 months times the monthly income is still the main way of determining the price of a website.

However if you have a website which has a lot of potential it may sell for a lot more as websites like flippa do use an auction system and so there may be several people bidding on a specific website.

Don’t forget, the value of a website increases if there is a healthy and active social media and email list running alongside it.

The amount and quality of backlinks a website has is also good for the value.

Two years does seem to be the average length of time a website flipper works on a project before offering it up for sale. As mentioned before, you can host a simple website for 2 years for less than £150.

Not every popular and profitable website needs hundreds of thousands of visitors a month. A few thousand visitors generating a couple of thousand dollars each month could have you earning $50K+ from one website.

That is on top of the money you earn during the time you have been working on the website or websites.

Remember, there is nothing stopping you from working on more than one website at a time… time permitting of course.

If you have the time, the skills and/or the resources, then it is possible to work on a small portfolio of websites which could generate you a very nice yearly wage.

To see what kind of websites are being put up for sale, pop over to flippa.com and spend half hour or more mooching around the listings.

To learn more about building profitable websites then check out the Viral Code Here.

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