Desmond Ong is the co-founder of The Site Flipping Code with his business partner, Jani G. Desmond has been regarded as one of the top site flippers on the internet due to his vast experience in the field as well as his remarkable strategies to flip sites.

1. How did you first get started with internet marketing? And eventually site flipping?

Hey Stanley. I got started in internet marketing when I was 15 year old. After reading ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ by Robert Kiyosaki, I realized that I need to make a life changing decision and I decided to make money on the internet.

My first business on the internet is by selling customized stuff on eBay and I wasn’t doing very good. After realizing I need to move on, I bought the late Corey Rudl’s “Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business On The Internet” which is a home study course. I started to get into niche marketing and made some money out of it selling $97 eBooks.

Then, there was this blogging trend when everyone has a blog and I decided to get into the blogging business as well. Unfortunately, I am never a good blogger and decided to sell those blogs away and I was shocked to be able to sell 5 blogs for a combine amount of $3,000.

And that’s how I got into the site flipping business.

2. What was your most successful site flip? What niche was it in? How much time and money did it take?

My most successful flip is really a fitness and diet membership site that I sold back in 2008 for $12,000. It’s not a lot of money but I only took less than 10 days to complete the website and recruited over hundreds of members that will pay the recurring fees.

After seeing the result of that flip, I managed to duplicate the success over and over again.

3. What types of sites should people flip? What types of sites should people avoid flipping?

There are a lot of sites that people can flip – from forums to blogs. I personally recommend people who do not know anything about site flipping to flip turnkey script sites. There are a lot of turnkey script sellers on the internet and sometimes you can even buy them for as low as $10 and best of all, you can use the same script over and over again on different domain names. Plus, it’s very noob-friendly.

The type of sites that people should avoid flipping is really…none. I personally believe that every site can be flipped. Even if the website is the worst website on the internet, you can develop the site for a few days and that website can be sold for a higher price that you could imagine.

4. How do you find the right niche?

I always pick the hottest niches like health, dating and money niches. I suggest newbies to go into the hot niches too because in hot niches – it’s impossible for you to go wrong.

Otherwise, you can always go to Clickbank and check out what’s hot and what’s not. If a lot of people are buying that stuff in that niche – you can always be sure that that’s the niche that you want to get into.

5. What is the number one mistake people make when it comes to site flipping?

There are actually 2 number one mistakes that people always make.

The first mistake is pricing their sites ridiculously high. I’ve seen some sites that have no traffic, no earnings and bad designs without any history selling for $1,000. For example, not long ago, I just saw a plain blog with plain designs, 6 blog posts, no earnings and no traffic was listed for sale for $450. Of course, that blog was not sold.

The second mistake is skipping the basics. You have no idea how many of newbie site flippers actually skip the foundation of site flipping. You need to learn to start from scratch so you know how to outsource the works easier and cheaper as well as how to build the best sites.

6. Many of the readers here at TUK are bloggers. What are the keys to flipping a blog?

Blog designs.

Blog’s value has dropped ever since the CPA marketing trend took over. But generally, if you can have a blog that makes $100 per month (easily attainable), good theme design, powered by WordPress – your blog should have a value of more than $1,000.

7. How do you grow your website after you’ve purchased it or built it from scratch? When is the right time to “flip”?

The best way to grow websites is to prepare a schedule of when you want to bring traffic to it and also a plan on how to make money of it.

For example, if you bought a product site which sells eBook in the internet marketing niche (big niche in the “money” niche), you can plan out how much you want to run PPC on it. The most effective methods to quickly grow it are to leverage other people’s mailing lists and forum marketing. You can run a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on the Warrior Forum and after making some sales – you could flip it for big profits.

The right time to flip is very subjective as it depends on the market and types of sites which we will cover in The Site Flipping Code.

8. How are you able to demand the best prices when selling your websites? How do you write the best ad copy for your website listing in the marketplace?

Demanding a good price for your site is easy if you know what the main selling points of your websites are. Most of the time, you need to know what the buyers want in a site. Most buyers obviously love sites that are generating good earnings (passive would be even better) as well as good design. Some go for long term potential.

Another great way to demand good price is to increase the number of bids in your auction listing. The more bids you see, the higher chance that the buyers will want to “buy-it-now” bid your site. Of course, you will need to know how to fish for more bids. One method that I like to use to fish more bids is to give away review copy of whatever that I am selling on my site to bidders only. This prompt interested buyers to bid.

Writing a good copy is essential but a listing copy is very different from a sales page copy. The main thing that you need to remember when constructing a listing copy is to be straight to the point and as simple as possible. Lesser words are always better because trust me, no one wants to read a six thousand words listing copy. Use some basic HTML (if you don’t know HTML like me, get NVU which is a free HTML editor) to give the headline and sub-headline some striking colors like dark red or blue. Make sure you use paragraphing wisely.

9. Tell us a bit about The Site Flipping Code. Who do you think this product is for?

The Site Flipping Code was born when Jani G (my business partner for this project) knew that they were a lot of people approaching me to ask me questions related to site flipping as well as paying me big bucks just to coach them on how to make money from site flipping.

Because of this incredible demand, we decided to create The Site Flipping Code which is both of me and Jani’s biggest ever launch.

The Site Flipping Code is really the best product on site flipping on the internet currently in our opinions because it is broken down into many different courses that cater people who have no idea how to make money online to experts who know how to program a powerful website. Most importantly, the theories and strategies that are outline in the course are proven to be effective after we went through many trials and errors that took us over 6 months to test!

10. Thanks for your time. Do you have any final comments?

You’re welcome Stanley.

I know a lot of people have yet to take action even though they want to make money on the internet. My advice is, just do it.

Just take action and do it. If the outcome is successful, then, that’s great because you can make money…and maybe even lots of money. If the outcome is a failure, you still gain something…experiences and lessons. A lesson that will teach you not to repeat the same mistake again. So, there’s really nothing to lose if you take action.

I started out with nothing. My parents do not believe in me. My friends think I’m lying. My teachers think I’m crazy. But so what? You shouldn’t care about what people think about what you think. You know what you want and it’s your own destiny to pursue it.

Thanks everybody.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This blog post is part of a 6-part mini-series on “Profiting With Interviews“.

You’ve done your research. You’ve identified the experts you plan to interview. Now the question is… how to get those people to agree to conduct the interviews? I’ve included a few tips below on how I got those interviews for my book eMillions.

1. Introduce Yourself

Get in touch with your expert in a polite and professional manner. The medium I used for my eMillions project was via email. However, it’s a lot more effective if you are able to pick up the phone and talk to them in person. Obviously, it takes a lot more guts and courage to do this.

Regardless of whether you’re using email or phone, you want to start off by telling them a little bit about yourself and how you know them. If you are a customer, subscriber or promoted one of their products as an affiliate before, tell them! If you were recommended by another expert who you’ve contacted, say that as well.

Remember, personalization is the key. Your email/proposal has to speak directly to the potential interviewee. If that means you’re contacting 50 people, it means you’ve got to write 50 individual emails (obviously, you can have the same “rough” layout for each email). Visit their website, subscribe to their newsletter, study their materials. It’s going to take some time, but, trust me, it’s worth it. Never, ever use email blasts.

2. Get Straight To The Point

Don’t go on and on blabbering about yourself, who you are, what the project is etc. These people are usually very busy and you don’t want to be wasting to much of their time. Get straight to the point and tell them why you are emailing them. Something like, “I am writing to ask for a favor to conduct an interview with you…” will do. You don’t want to make it too complicated or “fluffy”.

Remember – KISS (keep it simple stupid)

3. Tell Them How The Interview Will Be Used

Tell them where the interview will be used and an approximate date of when it will be published. The last thing an interviewee wants to see is that they took an hour of their time out to do this interview only to find out that you never published it.

In my case, I told the interviewee that I was currently in the process of compiling a collection of success stories into a physical book published by Morgan James Publishing (NOTE: In this case, it was vitally important to mention the publisher’s name as this helps build credibility for yourself) towards the end of 2008.

4. “What’s In It For Me?”

You’ve got to give incentives. What are they going to get as an result of taking an hour of their time with you? You’ve got to have that compelling reason or hook. Take some time to brainstorm some ideas. It takes time to craft an offer, but it’s well worth it. Usually with interviews, the obvious “what’s in it for me” is the exposure and publicity.

People WANT publicity.

That’s the key. It’s human nature that we all have egos to some extend. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get some of those people to say “Yes”.

In my case, I gave the experts free publicity and promotion of their products. But on top of that, I gave them the opportunity to promote my book and get 100% commission for each sale when I launch it this November 2008. To the average marketer, this might sound like a stupid idea to give all your profits away, but anybody who understands the power of backend marketing will understand that this is in fact a very smart move. I’ll talk more about backend strategies in a later blog post.

5. The “Cool Kid” Syndrome

When you are able to secure one expert to conduct an interview, leverage that expert’s credibility in your next interview proposals. For example, you can add “Oh, by the way, these people have also agreed to contribute to this project…” I call it the cool kid syndrome because everybody likes hanging out with the cool people at the time. Soon, you’ll be able to fan that out and find the number of “yes” growing very quickly. Sort of like a snowball effect.

However, NEVER EVER LIE. Even if they come back with a “maybe”. Don’t go out there thinking that these experts won’t bother checking those people you’ve given them. If one of those people happen to be their friends and they go and check, then you’re credibility will be damaged FOREVER.

6. Follow Up

If they don’t respond in a day or two, don’t panic. These experts are usually very busy so there’s a good chance he/she might have missed your email. Heck, it might have even gone into the SPAM filters. The solution is to send a follow-up email to remind them. If they don’t respond, follow-up again. And again. And again. You’ve got to persevere.

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

-Thomas Edison

The more you follow-up, the higher your chances of getting the attention of the potential interviewee. Most of the time, a second or third email will do the trick. If not, just wait for another opportunity.

If the person tells you that they’re busy and get back to them 6 weeks later, then get back to them 6 weeks later (no sooner, no later). Make sure you follow-up and don’t push it too hard that the person becomes annoyed (for example, emailing them EVERY SINGLE DAY for 6 months). For example, with Yanik Silver, it took me 6 months before we were finally able to get together on the phone. You’ve got to be patient and persevere.

7. Don’t Take Rejections Personally

Inevitably, you’re going to get “No”s. In fact, many will not even respond. Don’t take it personally. Just thank them and move on. During my quest to getting interviews for my book, I probably send out around 100+ emails and got 15 “Yes”es.

If you really, really want to get hold of that person, perhaps you can wait for several months and ask them again (if you believe that it their reason for rejection was because they were busy at the time). Read the last point for more information on following-up.

That concludes the post. Remember, you’ll get better and better at writing those proposals as you go along. In a way, getting interviews is much like a joint venture proposal (actually, technically speaking, it is a joint venture). You might want to read my post – 5 Reasons Why I Won’t Read Your JV Proposal

You’ll be surprised by how much people will say agree to the interview. Miracles will happen. People who you might not have expected to say “Yes” will say “Yes”; people who you expect to say “Yes” may say “No”. I would have never even dreamed of being able to talk to people like Mark Joyner,ShoeMoney, Rob Cowie etc.

In the next post, I’ll be talking about how to arrange and conduct the actual interview itself so you can extract the best content out of your expert.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This blog post is part of a 6-part mini-series on “Profiting With Interviews“.

Now that you know the power of creating instant content using interviews, let’s take a look where you can find those experts for the interviews and hopefully be able to develop a list of potential interviewees.

First off, I’m going to assume you have chosen a niche and have some sort of idea as to the product you want to create. Just to go over very briefly, these are the things you need to look for when picking your topic:

1. Is it something you’re passionate about? I stress very strongly about passion in the post “Do What You Love And The Success Will Follow”.
2. Is it something you’re knowledgeable about? In this particular case, this doesn’t apply as you’re leveraging your expert’s knowledge and credibility.
3. Is there sufficient demand? In other words, is there money to be made in that market? Is there an economic engine that will drive your business forward?

Generally, the more focused your topic is, the better the end result. Now, before we go out and find those experts, we first need to know what “type” of expert we need to look for.

(NOTE: Keep in mind that they may or may not have ALL of these features. It is more or less a list of things you should look out for.)

What Defines An “Expert”?

1. Authors. In fact, the word “authority” comes from author. Some one who have published books, created products, or written articles is generally a good choice
2. Publishers. As in somebody who operates a well-established blog in your niche, or publishes a weekly newsletter (digital or physical) with large numbers of subscribers.
3. Awards & Recognition. You need to ensure they have the right qualifications and is recognized as an expert in your field. For example, if your topic was about legal issues, you would need to find a qualified attorney.
4. Produces Results. Lastly, but most importantly, you need to make sure that your expert actually “practice what he preach”. You need to have actually taken what they’ve said, and produced actual results.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about where to actually find those experts. You see, experts don’t just come to you (unless you happen to be the expert), you’ve got to go out there, find them, and approach them.

In my opinion, there are 4 main “expert hangouts” (that’s places where experts chill out):

1. Forums

This is the most obvious place. The best people in your niche tend to hang out at the top forums in your niche. The reason is because that’s their passion. People hang out with people who share similar interests. That’s where they get to share ideas. That’s where they get to discuss about their topic. So if you want to find the best video guy, you go to the best video forums. If you want to find the best graphics guy, you go to the best graphics forums.

If you don’t know any forums in your niche, just go to Google.com and type “[your niche] forum”. For example, if you’re in the dog training business, then you type “dog training forum”. Once you’ve found the top 3 or 4 forums in your niche, look around and try and see who are the experts. There are 3 signs which you should look for:

1. Moderators. If they are one of the forum moderators, chances are, they know what they’re doing and they’re passionate about what they’re doing.
2. Look out for names. Look around for a few days and see what names come up in the discussions. See who people are talking about. Usually, those people are the well-known top guns in the industry. Heck, if you are really stuck, just go in there and create a thread titled something like “Which guru do you subscribe to?” or “Who is your favorite expert?”
3. People with quality posts. Look out for the people who post the best suggestions, people who provide the most value to the community. This usually suggests that they know what they’re talking about and they’re passionate about the topic.

2. Bookstores

Remember what I said earlier on about what defines an expert? Authors! Go to your favorite bookstore and note down the author’s name of books related to your niche. Or you can even go to Amazon.com and type in the keywords related to your niche and see which names pop up. Chances are, if they have published a book on that topic, they know what they’re talking about. You can also take a note at the Amazon.com rankings to see whether or not that book is a hotseller. The better the ranking, the more authority that the author has in your niche.

3. Website Owners

Identify website owners who are positioned as authority figures. Go to your favorite websites relating to your niche and try contacting those owners. You can tell whether or not that particular website is an authority in your niche by looking at the Alexa graphs over at Alexa.com.

4. Offline Events

Attend offline events and seminars in your field and begin networking with the people. You’ll soon find out who the experts are. Usually, the experts are the ones that are speaking on stage. Try approaching them at the event before or after they’ve spoken and see if they are willing to do a video interview.

From those 4 places, you essentially need to write down a list of at least 20-50 people. Obviously the more, the better. The reason you need AT LEAST 20 people is because not all the experts will say “Yes”. In fact, many will say “No”.

However, in the next post I’m going to show you some cool tips and tricks on how you should approach those experts and create an offer they can’t refuse. In other words, increasing the “Yes” rate

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Content is crucial when it comes to information marketing and product creation. Not just any old content, but fresh, original and quality content that provides value to your market place. But creating your own product or writing an ebook is not necessarily the easiest thing in the world, especially when you’re just starting out.

But, what if there was a proven system where you could create your own information product in as little as 12 hours… without having to write a single word?

In fact, this was the exact same system I used to create my #1 best-selling book, eMillions. It actually worked too well that my publisher rejected the manuscript telling me it was “too long”. (More about this in a future blog post)

But before I tell you, let me give you a classic example on how this system works.

On the left is a book called Chicken Soup for the Soul. It’s a huge bestseller and probably one of the best selling book series of all time. Over 100 million copies of this series had been sold worldwide. I’m sure you’ve read it before, if not, at least heard of it.

Anyways, let’s get right to the point. The whole secret behind this success is actually right on the front cover – the subtitle 101 Stories To Open The Heart And Rekindle The Spirit.

You see, Mark and Jack (the authors) really didn’t write too much of the book. They might have written the introduction but that’s pretty much it. But for the most part, it was from… guess what?

OTHER PEOPLE.

Mark and Jack got people to contribute stories, then all they did was edited and compiled them to create this phenomenally successfully series of books.

It’s all about finding a way to profit from OTHER PEOPLE’S INFORMATION.

LEVERAGE is what this is all about.

So, the question is:

• How can YOU apply this to YOUR internet business?
• How can YOU become somebody who profits from other people’s information?
• How can YOU create a product that is yours to sell and control, without actually writing the content yourself?

The “long answer” will be revealed over the course of the next few days into a 6 part series.

The “short answer” is simply…

INTERVIEWS.

That’s right - Conducting interviews with experts, thought-leaders and authorities in your field.

That’s what I’m going to be talking about over the course of this 6 part mini-series: How to profit from other people’s information by interviewing them. Interviews are a great strategy, but ONLY if you know how to do them. I know it because I’ve been through the process with my eMillions project.

Interviewing is one of the most important skills you can learn as an online information marketer

In a nutshell, this is a rough outline of what the 6 posts will cover:

1. Why you should do interviews
2. How to find the experts
3. How to land the big interviews with experts
4. How to come up with good questions to ask
5. How to conduct the interview itself
6. Packaging the content

Plus… I’m throwing in a surprise bonus along the way. So stay tuned

Without further to do, let’s tackle the first one – why should you use interviews to create your content?

1. Leverage

a) Knowledge – You get to leverage and tap into the knowledge of the person you are interviewing. If the person is an expert in your field, chances are, he/she will know a lot more than you and is able to bring out that knowledge (if you interview them in the right way – more on that in series #4 and #5).

b) Credibility – The benefit of interviewing an expert is that they bring credibility and authority. Let’s take Tiger Woods as an example. He is an expert. He has the credentials. He is a leading authority in the golf industry. That’s why his book How I Play Golf is a huge bestseller. On the other hand, I’m not good at golf, so if I wrote a book on golf it probably won’t do too well. But if I were to interview Tiger Woods and turn that into a product, there’s no doubt that it would be a success.

2. “Free” Content

It’s super easy to set up those interviews and extract the content out of the expert (that is if you know what you’re doing – I’ll reveal this in the upcoming posts in this series). Most of the time, the experts will happily do those interviews with you for free, since they’ll get publicity in return. While it’s going to take some work coming up with good questions, the interviewee actually does most of the talking (i.e. content creation).

3. Instant Content Creation

It’s faster than any other content creation process out there. It’s almost likecreating content at the speed of sound. For example, when I interviewed Tom Beal, the time it took from sending the email to him and finish conducting the interview took only 12 hours.

If it wasn’t for the 12 hour time zone between Hong Kong (where I live) and New York (where Tom lives), it probably would have taken a lot less. If you know of any other content-creation methods where I can crank out 13,000 words in less than 12 hours without having to write a single word, tell me in the comment section. I’ll be curious to know 

4. Expert By Association

Similar to the first point about leveraging the expert’s credibility, by interviewing the experts in your field, it adds a certain level of perceived expertise to you. In other words, you sort of automatically “become the expert” as well. The reason for this is because people begin to see you talking to all the other experts and will eventually see you as the expert too, even if you don’t know anything about the topic. So by associating yourself with someone who is already well known in that field, you automatically increase your credibility in the industry.

But beyond this, you actually become a true expert as well after conducting many interviews within one niche. Not only does your customers/subscribers who listen to the interviews learn, you also learn from the experts. The more interviews you do, the more you learn, and the more you become of an expert.

5. Build Connections & Relationships

Let’s say you’ve finished interviewing all those experts and compiled them into an ebook or packaged them into a home-study course. And the time has come to launch your product… you need some joint-venture partners. Well, what better candidates for JV partners than those experts you’ve just interviewed?

If you have done your research right (I’ll show you where you can find the RIGHT experts in the next post), the experts you’ve interviewed should be the ones that have huge influences, large numbers of followers and big mailing lists. Chances are, if you’ve impressed your interviewees well enough by either asking good questions or being very professional and polite, they will come back and promote your product. Hey, why not? They are featured in the product, which means they are getting publicity. It only makes good sense for them to promote the product that they’re featured in.

Apart from the joint venture side, by positioning yourself as an interviewer also opens up more doors to world class though leaders and top influencers in your field. A public interview accelerates your rapport with that expert way faster than a private 1-on-1 conversation. You’ll become friends with industry leaders in your field and be able to leverage their network and connect to more interviewees and business partners.

6. Break Into Niches Even If You’re Unknown

I touched on this already with the Tiger Woods example and the “expert by association” point. So even if you are a complete unknown to that market place, by leveraging your expert’s name and credibility, you can not only turn your product into a hotseller, but also become an industry expert yourself almost instantly. That way, you’ve just successfully broke into that niche.

7. Become A Better Communicator

Lastly, on a personal benefit, the more you interview, the better communicator you become. It’ll help you with business in general in terms of becoming a better speaker and negotiator. You’ll also become better at communicating with your prospects thus close deals more easily.

That’s it for the time being. In the next post, I’m going to be talking about where to find the experts for your interviews.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This is a guest post by Bud Hennekes.

I want you to take a moment and think about what brings you joy. What are you truly passionate about? What makes you come alive?

Is it cooking? Helping people? Reducing poverty? Perhaps all three?

Close your eyes and imagine yourself living a life in which you pursue your passions without fear.

(Why are you reading? I told you to close your eyes.)

How does this make you feel?

Feels good eh?

If your goal is to become a successful entrepreneur or even to be happy for that matter, it is essential that you follow your passions wherever they may lead.

Simply existing is no longer acceptable. Today is the greatest time to be alive. More people than ever are consciously choosing to follow their passions and making a solid living in doing so. What’s your excuse?

Too often we fill our lives with people and things we cannot stand , leaving us to live an unfulfilled life.  The key to living an amazing life is to follow your passions. Your passions awaken the powerful force that resides inside you.

One of the reasons I have chosen to pursue the path of entrepreneurship is because it gives me the chance to live the life I love. That’s not to say entrepreneurship is easy.

Following  your passions doesn’t mean that life will be wonderful 24/7.  Life will never be obstacle free, you will always have to PERSEVERE, and will continue to face numerous setbacks along your life journey, however when you follow your passions setbacks are only temporary.

The world needs people who put their passions first and security second, for those are the people who will solve the problems of the world.

What are your passions?

The greatest thing you can ever decide to do is discover and live your life passions. When you follow your passions you then inspire others to do the same. Imagine a world in which everyone pursued their passions.

Quit living an unfulfilled life by simply going through the motions. It is time you summoned the courage and followed your dreams.

Are you living your passions? If not, what are you waiting for?

Bud Hennekes is a 17 year old blogger and aspiring young entrepreneur. His hobbies vary depending the day, but more often than not he enjoys reading, authentic conversation, meditating, blogging, and growing. He is the owner of www.aboundlessworld.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!