Selling Websites for a Living

A guy I am currently mentoring asked me why I am so keen to sell websites when I could keep and make money from them for the foreseeable future?

The single biggest reason I sell websites is so that I maintain control of my business instead of relying on Google.

Once a site is number 1 at Google for its main keyword the only place left to go is down.

# Competitors see a drop in sales and hire an SEO service to try and get top spot back.
# Other internet marketers stumble across your niche and move in.
# Google decides all those Squidoo/Digg/Whatever links are now worthless and changes its algorithm and you plummet down the search results.
# The interest in your niche disappears thanks to a new fad on the scene.

Lets say while doing some digging I uncover a problem in a particular market. After hanging around in forums and doing further investigation I decide the niche is worth entering. I write an ebook that solves the problem, I get my graphics guy to create a unique website and I start the promotion ball rolling.

3 months later the site is number 1 for its main phrase and I’m selling 3 ebooks a day at $37 each.

With a couple of months sales figures to show potential buyers I can sell this website for a quick $30K. Once its sold I have freed up some time so I can start work on the next project.

The alternative is to carry on with the promotion work, dealing with customers, marketing to the growing mail list etc. for my $100 a day while all the time wondering how long before I’m no longer top dog at Google or when the interest will drop out of the market etc.

I’ll take the lump sum every time thanks very much.

You could split the difference as taught by Trevor Somerville. Trever is a fellow website flipper but he calls it flopping.

Website Flopping is where you keep building websites with the intention of selling them but any that strike gold you keep and the ones that don’t perform as well as you had hoped (the flops) you sell.

The thinking is that after a year or 2 you have a stable full of excellent performing websites and while you are waiting for your portfolio to grow you are making a nice living selling websites.