A few of you saw that the auction ended with the highest bid at $5,000, which was around $2.5k short of the reserve. Although there are a few tentative buyers, as of today the blog has not been sold and it doesn’t look like it will either.

I listed it twice, once under established sites for sale, once under premium. As is the usual case with these kinds of sites, most discussion was private… I had quite a few buyers contacting me via PM on Sitepoint, some via instant messenger and some via email. As some have asked what the process was like, I thought it would be better if I covered it here.

The market is rubbish right now.

You still CAN sell sites, I have done without problems for most of mine and there are sites selling. However, if you look at Sitepoint, at Digital Point, on eBay, and the other standard website selling places, you’ll notice that less sites of the same quality are selling than before.

Why?

Partly because the market is getting a tad saturated… cookie cutter sites with no revenue will sell for less than they were a few months ago, although they will sell if the auction is good… but mainly because it’s the Christmas season. It’s difficult for people to spend $100, $200, $500 on a site when they’ve just blown a lot of money on presents, vacations etc. Try doing stuff after around the 10th of January and you should see a lot more success.

If you DO want to sell sites now, make them stand out, add something unique to them… it doesn’t even have to be unique, it just has to make your site better than 95% of the sites on sale out there. Add a forum, add a unique product, add a video section, play around with having scripts developed for you that do unique things or do existing things better. Think out of the box.

Proof that uniqueness can help you destroy in the site flipping game.

I’m a member of a few general topic forums, including a big Arsenal one just to hang around… anyways, there are topics on there in the general chat section about games, news and so on.

There was a big-ish news story about a journalist that threw a shoe at much loved old US President George Bush… a smart marketer thought out of the box and created a game, which spread virally. I actually played this game before I found out about this, which you can find at SockAndAwe.com.

How much would it cost to develop the game? Around $500 – $1,000 if you hired a programmer. Think that’s too much? Think again.

The website was created on the 14th of December.

The website sold on the 18th of December (four days later) for £5,215

See the auction here.

My knowledge conversion rates are a bit shit, but that’s around $7,000 USD or a bit higher I believe. For a four day old site with little revenue!

Again, think out of the box, like they did, and you can earn HUGE.

Some of the bids I got for TUK (this blog).

Although this isn’t a massive site, it is still fairly large… I didn’t want to undersell too much, even though the reserve was lower than what I would have originally wanted, I didn’t mind selling it for that price as long as it went to the right person.

Unfortunately the bid amounts received *were* of the types I wanted, but most of them were installment based offers.

The auction bids are all included of course – $4,000, $4,500 and $5,000, from three different bidders; then there were a few private ones.

Some of the private ones…

$6,000 in cash – turned down because it didn’t meet the reserve.

$7,500 in cash – turned down because the bidder wanted BP included.

$12,000 in cash – turned down because he wanted to pay it over 10 months.

$13,500 in cash – turned down because he wanted to pay it over 10 months.

$15,000 in cash – turned down because he wanted to pay it at $400 per month until it was met. Lol.

I would have taken $7,500 up front over $15,000 in installments simply because i’d prefer not dealing with the hassle. Being that I live in the UAE, were I to get screwed on any transfer, it would be a lot of work fighting it – far more than the extra money brought in.

What if the buyer ran it into the ground for a month (promoting a different product every day, pissing off subscribers etc and then just stopped paying? I’d be screwed. I would have taken installments *if* the buyer was someone I knew and if it was over a shorter period of time – say three months, but both of those conditions weren’t met at the same time.

Unless I get someone willing to pay the reserve before I take off on vacation, this site will be kept; there are a couple of writers on hand that are decent and should produce stuff that you like. I’ll work on it a bit, get it to $2,000 per month in revenue and sell it some time in the new year for double my reserve if not more. Unfortunately I’ll not be around from the 1st – 22nd of January, so will not be able on MSN or Email to help you guys out. :)

What I Thought of The Slyvisions Sale

Another thing I’ve been asked about a lot is the sale of Slyvisions for $9,500. It was sold in less than three days, and stats were around half of this one. I’ve had people asking me why his sold and TUK didn’t, whether I thought it was worth the price, was I jealous, how did it sell… thought answering those questions here would be easier than answering like 15,000 IMs.

First rule – your site is worth what people are willing to pay for it.

If someone pays you $15,000,000 legit for a one day old site, your site (for you, at the very least) is worth $15,000,000. Sure, you may never sell a site again for that amount, and the new owner may find out that in reality the site is worth $15, but for you, whatever amount your site sells for is its worth to you. Remember this is you selling a website legitimately, as most sites are done, with everything represented honestly.

Second rule – the 90/10 quality/luck factor.

90% of this game is down to skills… your knowledge, your innovation, your ability. Site flipping is no different. You can create slick sites, unique ones, sites worth a lot of money with a lot of potential, and 90% of any sale is this. The other 10% is down to luck. As selling to humans is involved, there is always the luck factor.

The luck factor was involved in the sale of Flipnoobs, which sold in less than two hours for $4,000. When I started out, I had a similar product site that made $2,500 in sales which only sold for $1,500 after something like three weeks on auction.

On another day, the buyer may not have seen that auction and thus not bought it. Likewise with Slyvisions, or any other site sale.

Of course, the more valuable you build up something to be, the more ‘chance’ you have of getting lucky. If you have a valuable commodity, people will be interested in it.

Tips for the new owner of Slyvisions

I’ve visited Slyvisions a couple times, just to check what was up… did not have the time to stick around for long, but from what I can tell the new owner has developed his income from online stuff, blogging being one of them.

When you sell a social site… a blog like this one or Slyvisions, you only have a small window of opportunity to catch readers as they most likely read the blog due to the old owner.

Yes, it is possible that you may be liked more than the old owner – this has happened on a few sites, John Cow being one of them (now has like 10k subscribers I think); I’d love it if you guys thought any new owner of this site kicked my butt because that would mean s/he’d be providing you with half decent stuff.

However, any new owner has to take advantage of this window of opportunity; it is a small one.

Most of the blogs sold over the last few months have gone to shit because the new owner has not done the work s/he should have or taken enough advantage of the window of opportunity. Tw3o, One Mans Goal, Cash Quests, Bloggin-Ads… now, it’s almost impossible to replicate the old owner’s personality and posts, so you have to better them.

One Mans Goal was bought by a newbie that had nothing to teach about marketing online, whereas the old owner was experienced, so visitors had no reason to come back. The whole “watch me try to get rich online” thing has been overdone way too many times.

Cash Quests was bought by a company that did jack all with it, which is why it nosedived… how often have you heard about it in the last few months? Same with TW3O. They just didn’t post enough.

I think Site Flip U / BlogFlippingBlueprint will go the same way, because rather than taking advantage of the window of opportunity (it sold for $35,000, so people are definitely going to be interested), they put up a ‘be back soon’ page which is a moronic business decision to make.

Bloggin-Ads has nosedived because most of the posts are generic content that you can find on 90% of blogs out there. Unfortunately, from it’s start, Slyvisions new owner seems to be going the same way, unless changes are made.

If you have the ability to spend $5,000+ on a single site, especially if that income was developed online, as a tenative reader of you I want to get unique content that will educate me on how I can become like you.

Not to be harsh, but I don’t want to read standard, generic shit about how I can build backlinks, why blogging is a good way to make friends, what hosting to use, what is Twitter, stuff about Wordpress 2.7. These are some of the posts recently posted up on Bloggin-Ads / Slyvisions.

If you have the ability to spend $5,000+ on a single blog, I want to know how you did it.

Being able to spend $5,000 on an online blog is more than 95% of people that have tried their hand at IM can afford.

If you buy a blog of that level, you have to start off with a bang, start with content that will blow your readers’ minds, for free. You have to stun them, that’s the only reason they will stick around.

See, soon after a blog at that level is sold, you will see a jump… other bloggers talking about the sale and old readers giving the new one a chance to see what s/he can do. It is up to you to use that jump to your advantage, not blog generic shit about how Twitter makes you happy at night.

Examples of blogs that have done this, and done this well?

John Cow, for one. John Cow was bought by the guys that run Deal Dot Com, guys that are successful marketers making a decent monthly income. Instead of talking about generic rubbish you can find anywhere else, they started off with tons of content that laid out the blog developing process to beginners, as well as worked on viral elements that continued to grow the site like producing a 130+ page eBook for free and things like JohnCowTV.

Another example?

Blogging Experiment. Max Davis is a real site developer… at a far higher level than standard ones (me included). He made something like $700,000 in two years selling websites, came in with a bang and let his readers know strategies on how they could do this from the start. He also went in with a hard sell with a website flipping course promoted to an established audience… I believe he made back the $18,000 or so he spent on the site in three months.

At the rate they’re going, it’s unlikely that Slyvisions and Bloggin-Ads, along with the other blogs that have taken a dive will ever make their spend back.

So my tip would be to milk the window as much as possible, and use this window to explode your blog. $9,500 on a website could seem like nothing if it makes back its cost in two months… and it is capable of doing this.

Everyone (myself included) wants to learn from professionals… those that are making obscene amounts of money, and if you can teach people how to do this, you’ll add a lot more to your monthly income.

Even if it’s not obscene income (for example, the $10k per month I earn), if you can provide people with knowledge that they don’t get anywhere else, they’ll not just come to your site, they’ll spread the word for you!

Anyways… a few of my thoughts. Sorry for the way too long post, but hadn’t done anything on here for some time and it is an interesting topic. No doubt this post will piss off a few people as well. :razz:

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and will be looking at the comments (I got today off – woo!) and replying… so let me know what you think!

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