Maybe you have not heard of flipping websites before. It may sounds shady or ponzi that a typical website with a domain name and website files can sell for 6 or 7 digits. How do I start flipping websites with low starting budget?
The answer is really simple. Research and choose a niche. Buy a domain name and hosting plan(this hosting provider provides a free domain name for the first year) and start churning out articles by yourself. Give it around 9 months to 1 year to grow before selling it off on platforms like flippa or motioninvest. Use the capital to build more websites and repeat the process.
If this is your first time buying a hosting plan and domain, check out this guide
Read on if you are keen to find out more on how you can start flipping websites as a good side income.
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Build from scratch or buying existing site to resell
For a start, you may have to decide if you will like to build from scratch or buy from existing sites. If this is a first time doing this, I would recommend you to launch a site from scratch.
It is much cheaper and the cost of failure is lesser than buying an existing site. I would highly recommend going through the course by income school from Rick and Jim. They have a step-by-step process of creating passive content niche sites and provides a free super fast theme for their members for free.
P.S I am also one of their existing member and have used the free theme for the portfolio of my websites including this.
However, if you have a bit of experience like me. The ROI can be faster by just flipping existing content site to resell. I would recommend to start from small and choose projects that cost less than 2000USD. There is plenty for you to browse through from platforms like flippa and motioninvest but it may take some time to get a bargain.
When I started in 2019, it is still possible to find sites selling for between 15x to 25x, however be expected to pay between 36x to 45x monthly income in 2021.
How To Decide A Niche
The easiest niche to start will be something you are an expert in. For example, let’s say your hobby is rearing ants and you have tons of knowledge about them.
It makes sense to create a site around them and it will be easier for you to continue writing for the site when your site is still too small to see any visible results. Of course, you may also need to research on whether there is any demand for your niche and what kind of affiliate products can you promote in the future.
If you are like me without any passion for anything, a good practice will be going window shopping daily on sites like flippa, motioninvest or empire flippers to see what niches are profitable and attracting lots of buyers. Some evergreen niches are relationships, health, making money, Hobbies etc.
However, do make sure that the niche you chose does not fall under YMYL unless you are a specialist and have credentials to show you are an authority in that field.
How Much Content Do I have To Put On My Site?
Due to the frequent google algorithm updates and Google intended to provide better search intent results for their users, your site may not be able to generate much traffic with short articles or too little quantity.
To grow the traffic for the site, a rule of thumb will be around 100 well-researched articles with a total number of words of between 1.2k words to 3.5k words. It is really a volume game and articles will allow you to grow organic search traffic gradually so you can monetise it at a later stage.
If you have never write a blog post before, I highly recommend you to check out Jim and Rick of Incomeschool. They provide a blog recipe that teaches you how to write articles that can rank on the first page even if yours is a new site with no authority.
I have enjoyed quite a bit of success following their course even though I do not have much prior experience in starting a niche website.
If writing is not your forte, you can simply use their blog recipe and outsource to writers in Fiverr or upwork.
Launch Multiple Sites
As there is a thing called the Google sandbox for new sites that can see your site take more than 6 months to rank, it will be best to launch multiple sites in different niches every few months.
For example, you start a site about pets in the first month of the year. After writing 50 articles over 3 months, you may like to put it there and let it generate enough data and traffic to plan for your next 50 articles.
You can then start another site maybe in another different niche at the 4th month. You can always come back to the 1st site after 6 -9 months and add another 50 articles.
Review All Your Sites To Keep Or Sell
At the end of every year, review all your sites to see what articles are working and what are not. Research and write more articles that are related to the top 20% of articles in your site. If you are seeing more than 100 visitors a day, you can start adding them to google adsense to earn some ad revenue.
Monetise using Ads
I personally always start from google adsense and once ad earnings exceeded $80 per month, I will shift the site to ezoic which is another ad network that pays much better per 1000 visitors.
They use AI and data to ensure the best paying ads are showing to your visitors and is possible to double or triple your ad revenue from adsense if you optimise your ad placeholders properly.