Luckily, I had the day off today… and will have all Wednesdays off for the rest of the semester, as I don’t have any classes on this day. Just relaxed a little bit, worked on setting up the new computer (will put up a picture soon if I can find my camera…) and had the time to write this post for you guys. :)

Many people ask what they should do when they want to start getting into website flipping… although there are plenty of people that recommend it, few say get started and do X to make money. Of course, newbies generally have a tonne of questions – what kind of sites do they flip, where do they host them, how do they transfer domains, where to sell, how to build up a positive reputation, how to decrease the risks… you get the idea.

Anyways, this is how I started out, and I’d recommend you do this too… flip BASIC websites. Websites that you can put together in less than five minutes.

Don’t worry about promoting, customizing, developing your websites… just buy domains, setup a fresh install of your website and try to sell it. Of course, blogs don’t work for this (no one is going to buy a base blog with no traffic / revenue / content) but people will definitely be willing to buy other types of turnkey websites.

You will make very little amounts on these (maybe ten dollars or less profit) however I recommend it when you start out. Why?

Build reputation. The problem in public forums is that people don’t tend to trust new users. By building up a reputation (be it reputation or iTrader ratings) you make sure people will be more likely to deal with you.

Gain experience. When I started out selling websites, I didn’t even know what the term ‘hosting’ related to… yes, I asked friends questions, but the best way to learn is by experience. By selling simple turnkey sites, you’ll learn the basics – transferring, how to best conduct a sale and things like that.

Low risk. You start out with (for example) trying to flip a niche content website with ten articles that took you five hours to write or $50 to outsource… if you get scammed (which is definitely possible when starting out, as you are inexperienced / naive), you lose a lot of time / money (for a newbie, $50 is a lot of money!). When flipping $5 – $10 sites, you get scammed, fine – you won’t be happy about it, but all you lose is five minutes or so which is worth it for the experience (and having that experience, it’s less likely you’ll be scammed in the future).

Potential further sales. Sell a simple site, but the buyer doesn’t have hosting for it? Point him / her to a great host that you know, for example Hostgator… and collect $100 in affiliate commission. Should the buyer like your website that you sold to him at $15, ask him if he’d like 5 more at a discounted rate of $12 apiece… finding buyers can be difficult, and if you can get repeat buyers that is the easiest way to make money out there.

Of course, experience is the biggest benefit out of all the above.

What type of turnkey sites can you flip?

PLR EBook Sites. I had a period a few months ago when I was making around $1,000 per week flipping standard PLR Ebook sites… all I did was upload the files to a related domain and it used to sell for $50 – $150. They sell for less now, but considering you have to do less than a minute and a half of work after buying the domain, well… it’s worth trying to sell them. If it looks good, it’ll sell.

Proxies. Choose a decent domain (nothing wrong with .INFOs for proxies), put up a slick looking free design and list it. At worst, it doesn’t sell and you promote it yourself, at best it sells and you make a profit (even if you make only a $1.2 profit, you can reinvest it in a .INFO domain! :) ).

Image hosts. Likewise, upload the script, and list it. On these fresh websites, you really have to convince the buyer… you could talk about how popular image hosting websites are, mention some recent big sales and find some blog posts talking about how to promote them and link the buyer to them after a purchase.

Simple script sites. You can make a decent amount of money flipping simple script websites… a person that I helped get started out site flipping, who is also a contestant of the site flip contest was able to flip 2-3 of them (flip word sites) at $30 each less than a day after putting them up on a new domain. Considering that the script costs $5 or so for multi use and .INFO domains cost $1.19, it’s not that big of a loss to try it out. You could try flip word sites, PR checker sites, WHOIS checker sites, joke sites, quote sites… you get the idea.

Try, try, try and soon you’ll feel confident enough in your abilities to move onto bigger and better things. Without those early, low level attempts though, I probably would never have been motivated to move into site flipping, or even start this blog… so make sure that if you haven’t entered the site flipping game, this is how you should start out. :)

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