reflections

As promised a couple of weeks ago, this post begins a series of articles on the subject of Website Flipping. At it’s simplest level, flipping a website involves the following steps:

1. Find a site to purchase
2. Evaluate, negotiate and complete the sale
3. Add value to the project
4. Find a buyer and make a sale

Finding a Site to Purchase

In order to narrow your focus a little, it’s a good idea to decide on some sort of specialisation. Perhaps there’s a particular type of site that you already have experience with - forums, blogs or e-book sites for example. Buying in an area that you’re already familiar with will give you a much needed step up the virtual ladder, at least over somebody who’s a stranger to them. If you don’t have existing experience then sites that provide a service like image hosting, file storage, content resources, tutorials etc may be a wiser investment. E-commerce sites that sell an actual product are also good to work with.

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Both the stock market and real estate industry have long been populated by day traders and “flippers”, those that buy and sell in a short period of time in order to make a quick profit. With luck, this process can then be repeated over and over for a reasonably stable income - and you might even get rich!

Flipping Fun

A unique breed of entrepreneur is starting to emerge - one that takes the concept of flipping to the area of buying and selling online businesses. The shrewd investor will locate an underperforming business, buy it, work their magic to improve performance and then sell it for a good margin. It is by no means easy and certainly requires a lot of research and due diligence, but the rewards are there and it’s a lot of fun too!

The big advantage of buying a site is you don’t have to establish an audience and wait for the site to be indexed within search engines. Most webmasters, even those that don’t know their SEO from their XML, will understand the benefit of link exchanges. Even the most poorly managed sites should have some form of backlink network developed and return a result in the major search engines. It may not be a top ten search result but it will be a result ready for you to optimize and improve.

I intend to write a series of articles on website flipping, covering top acquisition strategies, places to shop for sites and details on how to avoid the common pitfalls. If there’s a topic you’d like to see covered then let me know!

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I hate giving business presentations, and I do anything I can to avoid them! It’s not that I’m bad at them (many years of practice has made me quite good), it has nothing to do with me not liking to talk (anyone who’s met me will tell you that I can talk the hind legs off a donkey), and it’s certainly not anything to do with nerves (being a DJ means that I regularly find myself on stage in front of large audiences). I just don’t like them - simple as that!

I’ve had many labels stuck on me in the past; including Techie, Geek, Designer and Coder - but recently I’ve been called an Entrepreneur, which is a new one for me! The label stems from my development of Britster - a niche social networking site focused on Britain - and carries with it the threat of presenting the project to potential venture capitalists and the like.

I plan to write a few articles covering this topic, but one of the most important aspects of a presentation is the materials you use to reinforce your sales pitch. They can make the difference between a successful presentation and one that flops - so from slides and brochures to props and snacks, here are the essentials that entrepreneurs should bring to their first meeting.

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