Flip Your Own Site

There’s a growing movement out there based on flipping websites. It’s very similar to flipping a house, but with virtual real estate. The process is similar to a house, too – buy low, fix it up, sell for a profit. Flippa is doing a great job of catering to this group of ‘flippers’ and sometimes has some really great deals if you pay attention.

I’ve dabbled in the flipping world, but in a reverse kind of way – I’m flipping my own sites.

I’ve been enamored by the Internet for many years now.  Over time I’ve bought some pretty killer domain names.  Typically I’d buy the domain with some grand plan in my head, execute it, SEO it and then get bored with it.  Or I’d find another domain name and be off on the new site, forgetting the previous one(s).

Renewals are Reminders

At some point, the registration for the domain name comes due and I’d ask myself, do I want to keep this domain name?  The answer is nearly always Yes.  Usually after renewing the domain I’d tell myself that I need to update that site, but rarely if ever did I go further than that.  Until recently.

About a year and a half ago I started a website in a niche with basically no competition.  It was a rare find and I was eager to get something going with it.  At the time I was messing around a lot with Joomla, so I put up a site and spent some time making it pretty.  I pulled in some RSS feeds with topics I liked and thought the site would take off.  It didn’t.

Then recently the domain came up for renewal, and I remembered how this niche had nearly non-existent competition.

From Jan 1-April 15 I had a total of 654 visitors with a bounce rate of 44%.  Not impressive.

What I Did

So I decided to rebuild the website in WordPress and set to the task.

• A week or so later I had the site ready and published it over the old Joomla site.
• I hired two writers and started putting good content on the site twice a week.
• I trolled Yahoo! Answers and Twitter search and found out what people were asking, then wrote up pages that answered those questions.
• I submitted one article to EzineArticles with my major keyword linked in the footer.
• I started a Twitter account and started following everyone who mentioned the niche or related posts
• I replied to those twitter accounts with a link to a relevant article on my site (if there was one)
• I set up twitterfeed to post to twitter every time there was a new blog post
• I started a Facebook Fan Page for the niche in mid-June
• On Facebook, I added the blog feed to the Fan page
• I started a Facebook advertising campaign, spending on average $5/day.

Traffic Results

From site launch, April 20 to the end of June, I had 4,865 visits and pulled my bounce rate down to under 33%.  So far this month, I’m averaging over 200 visitors per day – well on my way to an easy 50,000 visits by the end of the year.

Other Lessons Learned

We SEOs preach it all the time: Content is King.  The articles I’ve had written are pulling in plenty of visitors.  The search engines love the content and I’m climbing the rankings quickly.

Facebook advertising is cheap.  Since starting the ads, I’ve had 989,499 impressions at a cost of $133.82.  I’ve gained 215 fans thus far, and it climbs every day by about 6.  Worth it?  You bet.

The site isn’t currently making money, but will be soon.  I’ll introduce some non-intrusive ads or sell some sponsorships.  Since I own my own hosting company, the only real expense besides my time is the Facebook ads.  I’ll make that back quick, especially if the traffic continues at this pace.  Leveraging that traffic to get advertisers will not be a problem.

So Let Me Ask Ya This

What sites did you build back in the day that still have great potential?  Are there some really cool domain names just lurking in your repository that could turn into nice revenue?  Do you have a site that could use some updating?

The results can be phenomenal if you just take the time to do it.

Related posts:

1. Should I Register My Domain or Build My Site First?