Assorted Thoughts on Website Buying, Selling and Monetizing

Interesting article Clinton. As you know, my approach to flipping is to not follow the crowd and sell awful turnkey sites, but instead focus on adding value - keeping myself, my buyers and Flippa's bank manager happy.

Most of the doubters are those who sell these start-up Wordpress sites that offer little value. Buyers have wised up to this and as such, selling the same templates over and over again with the same boring listing copy just ain't gonna cut it!

Still plenty of profit to be made - just need to think outside the box and not follow the crowd.

Thomas

Clinton, nobody wants to be told that building a long-term profitable business takes many months worth of long hours at work each day and specialized skills that take years to evolve. The pursuit of the quick buck is always going to get more attention.

Thomas, spot on. I may have come on a bit strong in the post but I do genuinely feel sorry for those template creators who are convinced there's long term money in what they're doing and that this model will continue to be profitable enough to cover the time required.

Peter, yeah, as we know only too well. You, I and others have been pointing this out since before Flippa was even conceived! These template sellers aren't a lazy bunch, some of them put a lot of effort into what they do, but if they took a step back and put as much effort into long-term sites they'll make more money overall. It's a shame that so many of them are wasting their talents this way.

Hey Clinton,

How are you? How is it that creating a site from scratch, bringing in articles, finding different ways to monetize it, customizing the theme, etc... can be called "build/sell templates"? A template is a also called a WordPress Theme and yes we do offer 'templates' for site flippers to use, but the entire process should not be referred to as 'selling templates'.

Man, your 'image verification' for posting a reply is hard!! 5 attempts and counting!

Ian

Hi Ian, thanks for letting me know about the image verification. I made it easier a couple of weeks ago. I'll take another look at it.

Good question. I can see that someone who spends more time putting together his site and has taken the trouble to integrate some extras feels he deserves to be differentiated from the seller of bare templates. However to me, though that's a step up, it's closer to the template market than to the sale of a five year old site with a history of $2K per month.

Your offering would still be a concept rather than a proven business model. If one were to treat it as substantially different to the bare template because of the time and input involved, what happens to the template that's been designed by an artist who put a lot of creative effort into his design and spent more time on it than you spent adding the articles and finding the right CB products? He's put effort into it right? So he should be treated as a cut above other template sellers? What if a template seller ran his copycat article directory content painstakingly through multiple spinning tools? He ends up with 10,000 pages of un-readable, junk content. But he put a lot of effort into it so he's got a better property? Who's the arbiter of what's good effort and what's bad effort?

The ultimate yardstick is how much of a business you're handing over, not the sizzle of a business.

Ok Dr Seuss ... clearly I'm not the only one who enjoys a spot of bandwaggoning

I did jump on the Flippa is broke trail (and I was one of the first, so there ) but, whilst I respect your view and agree that starter sites aren't the way, I feel you and others are being a little harsh.

There's a big difference between maliciously selling something you feel has no value and selling something that you believe is worth something to the person willing to pay. Some people exploit people and some people exploit an opportunity but they dont all deserve to be treated the same.

The issue aside, I have to commend you on an original post. If there's one good thing that's come out of this is that people are talking and finally there's something interesting to read on the subject almost constantly for the last few days.

And let's be grateful that this is Internet Business and not Rap, otherwise someone would have already released a song about someone's mother and someone would be shot by now...give me IM beef anyday of the week.

p.s. - the definition of irony - here's someone whose gone one step further, selling a course about selling on Flippa ... on Flippa.

http://www.flipfilter.com/site-overview/8319/1

but I guess they cant make revenue until they sell the course which means they cant complete the course until they sell the course which means....you get the idea.

Justin

LOL, I love circles, I've been going around in one since I was born

I get your point about exploiting people versus exploiting opportunities. What about creating a fake opportunity and attracting victims to that opportunity? Some would argue that's exactly what Flippa did. Still OK to exploit the opportunity itself? What about if you genuinely felt, like I'm sure some Flippas and Flappas do, that the opportunity isn't fake at all and is 100% 25 carat (when it isn't)? Should we still encourage them to exploit the opportunity?

Serves you right, you've now got more than your fair share of moral dilemmas for the day!

[QUOTE]I get your point about exploiting people versus exploiting opportunities. What about creating a fake opportunity and attracting victims to that opportunity? [/QUOTE]

Hey Clinton,

As you know we've built and flipped sites on Flippa for a while, so we 'know' how to do it - because we have had success with that - we decided to build a community around that topic and then we monetized that knowledge via a paid online course and have been teaching others how to do the same. It's not a 'fake' course or a course about a subject we know nothing about, so we feel that we are qualified to teach it and it is valuable.

HOWEVER, telling people to create/sell an info-product about a subject they know NOTHING about is what I would call a 'scam' or 'fake'.

Telling people something like "It doesn't matter if you don't know yourself, you can still charge them for it." is a pretty terrible thing to do... but you probably know that line well - I found it on one of your articles:

[url]http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1042-top-ways-of-making-money-online/[/url] - SEE NUMBER 2

Interesting.

Cheers!
Ian

[quote]Clinton, nobody wants to be told that building a long-term profitable business takes many months worth of long hours at work each day and specialized skills that take years to evolve. The pursuit of the quick buck is always going to get more attention.[/quote]Hey Peter,

I totally agree with you and that is what we are now doing. We're also updating our course to include information about building and holding a site for greater value.

We're very open and honest and tell people that we are not millionaires and that you will not become a millionaire flipping websites, but you can make some money and that is what good, honest people are looking for - a way to make some extra money by learning a new skill.

Cheers!
Ian

Oh this post summarized the whole Flippa situation so well with such clarity and humor, cause you know it's so true. Good laughs. So is Flippa becoming a Clickbank type of marketplace? With all the CB sites on flippa, they are cross-pollinating that's for sure. It makes you wonder is the marketplace for suckas bigger than the marketplace for real web-based businesses?

Ian, you seem like a decent chap. Let me put a hypothetical situation to you: You're operating in an environment where there is demand for an average of 100 starter sites a week and you're teaching people how to produce and market those starter sites... and then the wind changes and demand permanently drops to one or less pw. Would you still encourage people to sign up to learn how to build and sell starter sites?

Thanks, FlipArtist. With regards the size of the marketplace for starter sites vs real web-based businesses, it's a funny old world. There aren't a lot of real web-based businesses for sale i.e. few sellers, but there is huge demand, a virtually infinite demand. While some starter sites won't sell at any price, every single real business will sell if it's listed without reserve.

[QUOTE]The dealers - a firm in Australia - wash their greasy car-mechanic hands of the problem. "It was sold 'as seen', gov".[/QUOTE]

That's a little harsh Clinton... you'll be calling us convicts soon!

As I've [URL="http://flippingawesome.com/for-39-per-view-and-no-sales-is-flippa-losing-it/comment-page-1/#comment-848"]stated[/URL] over at FlippingAwesome, Flippa maintain a marketplace, we do not dictate the trends or tell people what they should be buying or seller. If you're a regular reader of the Flippa blog, you will know however, that we do encourage sellers to create/add value and we also encourage buyers to do their due diligence.

The bubble may have indeed burst on Start-Up sites; with all the "Learn how to Flip Websites" material being promoted, supply was bound to outstrip demand.

That being said, there is certainly no shortage of buyers looking for profitable, high traffic sites, so perhaps we'll start seeing more SEO and product development types teaming up to trade on Flippa, or perhaps we'll see the website flipping product creators teaching people how to generate and monetize traffic.

This bubble, Luke, what part did Flippa play in its creation?

[QUOTE=LukeMoulton;bt22]If you're a regular reader of the Flippa blog, you will know however, that we do encourage sellers to create/add value and we also encourage buyers to do their due diligence.[/QUOTE]
You've also encouraged beginners to buy no-hoper sites purely to line Flippa's pockets. Newbs are seduced by the illusion (that Flippa helped create) that it's easy to buy a startup site and start making money.

You glamourise the buying of a website [URL="http://flippa.com/blog/buying-websites/buying-your-first-website-a-case-study/"]here[/URL], but there is no follow up on progress you've made with it. Is this site making you a profit? I would hazard a guess that most startups bought on Flippa end up getting thrown on the scrapheap because the new owners can't make money with them, and yours is just another one on that heap.

What exactly is the problem with startup sites ? As a former startup site buyer I fail to understand your problem.
I started in the business by buying a few startup sites, it let me get into the business with very little investment and little risk.
Buying start up sites was cheaper then hiring a web designer who would charge much higher price for their services. I could barely afford to buy anything for over $1000, but spending about $200 per startup site allowed me to start in the business slowly for little money and no risk, later it became a $100,000 per year business. Not from the start up sites, but thanks to the knowledge I gained from startup sites I bought in the past, that was my beginning and I don't know how else I could start in the business and learn for so little money.

How about your valuable sites you sell ? how many of them remained valuable and made money for new owners ?
If they failed (many of them failed due to some market changes, competitions, etc.) the buyers lost more money than any startup site buyer.

Startup sites will always sell, prices will drop, but there will be always need for them, it allows people who can't afford more expensive sites to start in the business, make some profit, if no profit then at least they can learn for very little cost and no risk.

[QUOTE=LeonZ;bt25]I could barely afford to buy anything for over $1000, but spending about $200 per startup site allowed me to start in the business slowly for little money and no risk, later it became a $100,000 per year business. Not from the start up sites, but thanks to the knowledge I gained from startup sites I bought in the past, that was my beginning and I don't know how else I could start in the business and learn for so little money.[/QUOTE]
Buying startup sites to get a learning experience is fine. Is that why you bought them, or did you think you would make money out of them?

I don't think anybody has a problem with startup sites. I think the problem is with the cleverly created illusion that it's easy to just buy a startup site and start making money. That illusion is being exploited by people who stand to make money out of getting others to believe it (i.e. people selling startup sites, marketplaces that list them and people who say they can teach you how to make money flipping them).

Why are there no case studies on Flippa's blog that show us how easy it is to turn a startup into a money making machine?

LeonZ, thanks for your comment. I love success stories and the fact that you started with these template sites and are now doing $100K a year has brightened my day up, it really has! That's one of the main purposes of this experienced-people.net site - to help others, to learn and share information about buying/selling/profiting from websites and to do all of that in a non-spam, non-promotional environment i.e. to assist others to achieve what you have achieved.

But there will be one or two sceptics who habour a suspicion that you have a hidden agenda in talking up starter sites or maybe you're in the business of creating starter sites yourself. I don't believe it myself, of course, but it would go a long way in dispelling their suspicions if you told us a bit about the starter sites you bought and the current domain you're so successful with. It would be very inspiring for them (and it would benefit the sellers of starter sites too).

Nice post, if a little snide.

Website selling is a very, very young market, which will twist and turn and change and permute in many ways over the next few years. Anyone participating in the market should understand that they can profit from any of those momentary sub-markets, but that maybe it's not a good idea to build a long-term business on them.

The more educated participants there are who've thought about this, the better for the market. But in general, it's impossible to educate everyone all the time.

@ Ian,

"We're very open and honest and tell people that we are not millionaires and that you will not become a millionaire flipping websites, but you can make some money and that is what good, honest people are looking for - a way to make some extra money by learning a new skill."

I must admit, I do appreciate the fact you and Amy are very transparent about your business - that goes a long way with me.

I think you are under-estimating the power and potential in flipping. No offence, but it seems you've almost been blinkered by the start-up market. There is SO much more to it than just that - and in my opinion it is a massive shame that 90% of IM'ers view flipping as building a new site and selling it. There are so many other flipping business models out there that are overlooked, and some of them really do have the potential to build millionaires (admittedly, with a lot of work - but it can be done if managed correctly).

Wherever there is demand, there will always be supply - regardless of the validity of the reasoning behind the demand. I'm not a great supporter of turnkey sites, but I do believe there is some use in them - IF sold with realistic claims. There will ALWAYS be demand for quality sites - I just think the goal posts have shifted lately as buyers become more savvy and the market becomes "saturated" with turnkey sellers. It just requires a little thought and thinking outside of the box to have profitable flipping business model.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for dropping in.

Website selling is a very, very young market

Isn't it as old as the internet? I've been doing it since the last millennium. Or are you talking about the market for identikit templates? They are not the same thing

The more educated participants there are who've thought about this, the better for the market. But in general, it's impossible to educate everyone all the time.

Would you say Flippa played any part in "educating" them to jump into selling templates? And to jump into buying templates to make their millions? In other words, the same question I posed Luke: What part did Flippa play in creating the bubble?