Selling Websites for a Living

Whenever I’m asked for the easiest method to start making money online I always recommend selling websites.

You can literally get started for under $50 and see a return the same day if you are happy to put the work in.

Below is a very basic outline of the 3 methods I have used to sell websites. Future posts will look deeper into each of these 3 online money making systems.

Minimum Budget:

Open a reseller account with your favorite host for around $20 a month. Buy a domain ($10) and install a Wordpress blog on your new hosting account. Write 5 articles and post them to your new blog. List the blog at Flippa.com ($15) and offer it with a years free hosting with a buy it now price of $199

For anyone with no money this is the quickest way to make some online. Sure it won’t make you rich but guess what, neither will all those get rich quick programs promising to show you “how to make $18,517 this week, guaranteed.”

Some Spare Cash:

As above but buy your articles from a quality provider such as Articlez.com for $6 each. This means each site is going to make you less because each costs you an extra $30. The advantage though is that you can pump out a lot more of them because you aren’t doing the writing.

If you can spare $500 you can order 5 sets of 5 articles today ($150) then order the same tomorrow (another $150). Order same again on the 3rd day (yet another $150).

On that day your first order will be returned to you so you can set up those 5 blogs (purchase 5 domains ($50) and get them listed and start selling websites. As soon as you sell a website you place another order for 5 sets of articles. Once the other websites start to sell you are self sufficient and in profit.

Spare Cash and Time:

This is the most profitable method but for that reason takes the longest and requires the biggest investment. The smart folk use the above method to fund this one for the first 5 or 6 months.

Order 100 articles and load up a blog with scheduled posts. I do at least one of these blogs a month. I have a promotion schedule which is applied to each blog at various stages of its life. The target is to build traffic until the site is generating consistantly somewhere around $30 a day in profit at which point it is sold for around $10,000.

This usually takes around 5 months although sometimes it’s quicker, other times slower. Some months I’ve had 3 at once for sale as they’ve peaked together.

A website that is making a profit is obviously worth a lot more than a 1 day old blog that has neither traffic or an income. The first 2 methods are targeting newbie buyers who are looking for a blog that’s already set up and started for them. The 3rd method is targeting investors and marketers who know what they are doing. Most purchase to build on its success before flipping it for a nice profit and sometimes the buyer is building a portfolio of profitable sites as he’s fed up with the banks current interest rates. if he gets 2 years out of it he’s doubles his money, not a bad investment at all!

A website making money is valued using the following formula: average daily income x 30.5 x 11. Sites selling for 5 figures will usually need to show 40 or 50 days worth of consistent profit but I often find 30 is enough for my customers IF the profit is seen to still be growing ie. you might be averaging $25 last month and $30 this – often that’s enough for a buyer to bite as it just might be making $35 next month.

Once you have been building them for a while you get a feel for when they are peaking and if I do sell too early it just means another happy customer who is sure to buy again (most of my customers have purchased 2 or 3 sites from me).