Reverse-Engineer Flippa & See EXACTLY HOW TO MAKE A PROFITABLE WEBSITE

goingreen

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This is a BHW exclusive ~> Please leave feedback and thanks accordingly :)


This is a noob and veteran friendly technique...

Dont overlook the power of sites that are already producing results.


At some point in your online career you've asked yourself these 3 questions...


(1) How much money can I make selling a website ?

(2) Can I see ACTUAL examples of websites that are making money ?

(3) Im struggling to monetize my site, can someone please help me ?




FLIPPA.com


This site tells you EXACTLY what style of websites are making money, how their making money, how much their making, and the kind of traffic they are getting !


How ? Check this out...

(1) Goto Flippa
(2) Click the 'JUST SOLD ' tab in blue just above the fold
(3) Now click on 'CURRENT PRICE'

- right now you are looking at websites not that could make money, but basically just did make money and how much

(1) How much money can I make selling a website ?

The site at the top of the list should be a fairly staggering number and completely accurate. At the time of this post is $105,000. Thats alot (even for an expert). This is the top of the food chain. If you want to create and flip websites, this gives you a practical number of what you can expect from a site that is generating income or provide a real product worth the cash. Not interested in flipping sites, but rather just profiting...

(2) Can I see ACTUAL examples of websites that are making money ?

There are some amazing admins and users on this site, but no one is going to show you their EXACT sites and EXACT methods because their afraid your going to take their method or niche. THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO ON FLIPPA TO JUSTIFY A CUSTOMER PURCHASE !!!!! This is like going to Vegas where your playing against people that have to show you their cards. 1+1=2. If they are making money using this method and niche, then guess what...Use the techniques in this forum and do the same! Get their backlinks, use the same theme, word it differently, change the domain, and your there !

(3) Im struggling to monetize my site, can someone please help me ?

The recurring theme is NO. Help yourself....to flippa.

USE THEIR SEARCH

If your making an auto-blog that ranks, has a good theme, is getting visitors, getting clicks, but not making money....Try something thats already working. I just typed in 'autoblog' and guess what, since these people are selling autoblogs they have to again...post their actual numbers. I kept the 'WON' feature checked (recommended for best results) and found 157 results. Sorted by price ~> top autoblog sold for $35,000. the next result was bringing in $1600 a month...

Do you think it might be helpful to goto some of these sites and use some of the same techniques?

They arent going to be changing anytime soon if you do find one. Take a screenshot if you get worried. Someone random just paid, in some of these cases $xx,xxx for a site, that is working the way it is. Do you think hes going to tinker with it? Maybe. But probably not too much.

Go out and check these niches for the lower hanging sites and clean up. If they have an autoblog and are making ok money, if you really put some work into a site you can probably making 10xs what they dont care about.



Hope this helps in building a PROFITABLE site for yourself
 
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Thanks nice share. It gives noob like me a better idea how a website should be. I appreciate your time.
 
No problem. Its easy to see a website that looks good, but finding one thats profitable is elusive. Glad to help out
 
This is sound advice. I've been doing this for a long while and I've got a lot from it. I use it for:

- Niche "research"/competition analysis
- SEO analysis: you have live cases on pretty much anything imaginable
- General brainstorming/new methods (this is can be a gem)
- Link building ideas and resources
- Outsourcing: you'll see plenty of people who are not REALLY into site flipping (not pro flippers), but they do build and sell sites frequently. In any case, you can contact them and make an offer for similar projects.
- You can even use Flippa yourself for promotion of your own sites/products.
- Anything else you can imagine involving IM

In any case, be careful. If you want to really make the most of this, you should really go to the site and make a full analysis, as well as checking their link structure, associated sites and the whole selling process, actual competition in search engines, etc and anything else relevant depending on the case. Be careful to differentiate between claims and actual facts (it's usually specified in the body of the listing, but "weird" things happen sometimes). Also, check the seller background and other listings. You'll have a much better idea.

There's a lot more to this, but you'll get it with time once you're there.

Good luck
 
This is sound advice. I've been doing this for a long while and I've got a lot from it. I use it for:

Be careful to differentiate between claims and actual facts (it's usually specified in the body of the listing, but "weird" things happen sometimes). Also, check the seller background and other listings. You'll have a much better idea.

Thats a good point. You definitely have to read to the body to see what the actual product is. Theres a difference between 'this product' and 'products like this'. Even so theres a ton of unique content. If your looking for ideas of how the final product should turn out. This is the place. BHW is the how to get it there
 
also be mindful that the sellers could have used BH techniques to inflate links, traffic, etc. Check the backlinks, etc.
 
also be mindful that the sellers could have used BH techniques to inflate links, traffic, etc. Check the backlinks, etc.

Thats why looking for sellers with higher feedback is key. If theyre listing multiple sites your in the clear.

If you list a bad site that claims high revenue theyre going to get their account removed at some point in time. In terms of accuracy, this is as honest as its going to get without being able to see clickbank user statistics
 
that's some precious info in here , great post !
 
This is really a great thread and original posting, I'm sorry to see others will be jumping in on what I've been basically doing for a while now :-)

It would be great to see this thread progress further to share techniques for really tearing apart a successful site to see exactly how it gets it's rankings/traffic too.

I always try to look at exactly what a site has in terms of backlinks (how many and where from), then I plan out a strategy to get more/better for my site.

I use simple tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer, Backlinkwatch, Quantcast and Compete, in addition to picking through the source for every page of the successful site. This gives me a decent idea of the on-site and off-site SEO work that I need to be better than.

(Quick edit to add) I mainly use Quantcast and Compete to get a deeper insight and understanding of the demographics for the successful site and any similar sites to it that I can find. I've found this helps me to create an image in my mind of who I'm targeting in terms of age, gender, income and education levels and etc., and that seems to help me create better targeted content as I build my site in the market.

With SEO it's really just a matter of doing a little bit more than the person you want to outrank, so if you put in the research to see what exactly they've done, it isn't hard to create a strategy for doing more. Then you just have to be committed to doing the grunt work in order to rank higher.

I'll also check SpyFu (unpaid) for some basic info on PPC the site may have been running, but I don't usually go too deep on this, which I know is a flaw in what I've been doing so far.

Maybe someone else who has a method/tool that's good for PPC analysis will chime in on that end?

Thanks again to the OP for the write-up, I've been using Flippa to research profitable niches for a while but I've pretty much just searched based on profit claims rather than looking at completed sales. My thinking was if a site is making money (and that can be verified) then it's a good niche to look into, but I like the idea of running down sites that have been sold since presumably if the buyer hasn't pitched a bitch then the seller's claims on traffic and earnings can be assumed to be a bit more trustworthy.
 
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Great post. I had similar idea when I was in site flipping. I select the niche that sold most on flippa, but (like in stock market prices suddenly stop climbing and started dropping when you buy particular share as if market is waiting for you to enter (lol)) suddenly there are no takers and I ended up selling my site for $40 or less.

I got the same idea as op while searching for most wanted niche on flippa and thought of building the same site with same method that earns good money. However, I have not implemented that plan.

Other problem I find at that time is most earning websites are never new, which means you have to work for long time to get the same result.

Anyway I still believe that op is right and if you hang around on flippa and do your search you definitely find some gems which you can duplicate better and earn.
 
This is really a great thread and original posting, I'm sorry to see others will be jumping in on what I've been basically doing for a while now :-)

It would be great to see this thread progress further to share techniques for really tearing apart a successful site to see exactly how it gets it's rankings/traffic too.

I always try to look at exactly what a site has in terms of backlinks (how many and where from), then I plan out a strategy to get more/better for my site.

I use simple tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer, Backlinkwatch, Quantcast and Compete, in addition to picking through the source for every page of the successful site. This gives me a decent idea of the on-site and off-site SEO work that I need to be better than.

(Quick edit to add) I mainly use Quantcast and Compete to get a deeper insight and understanding of the demographics for the successful site and any similar sites to it that I can find. I've found this helps me to create an image in my mind of who I'm targeting in terms of age, gender, income and education levels and etc., and that seems to help me create better targeted content as I build my site in the market.

With SEO it's really just a matter of doing a little bit more than the person you want to outrank, so if you put in the research to see what exactly they've done, it isn't hard to create a strategy for doing more. Then you just have to be committed to doing the grunt work in order to rank higher.

I'll also check SpyFu (unpaid) for some basic info on PPC the site may have been running, but I don't usually go too deep on this, which I know is a flaw in what I've been doing so far.

Maybe someone else who has a method/tool that's good for PPC analysis will chime in on that end?

Thanks again to the OP for the write-up, I've been using Flippa to research profitable niches for a while but I've pretty much just searched based on profit claims rather than looking at completed sales. My thinking was if a site is making money (and that can be verified) then it's a good niche to look into, but I like the idea of running down sites that have been sold since presumably if the buyer hasn't pitched a bitch then the seller's claims on traffic and earnings can be assumed to be a bit more trustworthy.

This is great info. Thanks for the input
 
Maybe someone else who has a method/tool that's good for PPC analysis will chime in on that end?

If your doing ppc when you find a nugget you could essentially create a campaign to split test right then and there. Chances are your already in good position in terms of leverage and probable ROI
 
Very good info indeed. I just saw a post by Peter2002 on Kim Roach's reverse engineering that would be very useful for something like this.
 
Ah man..I have been already doing this :)

nice to know it works. you can still sell on flippa people are just give away way too much info. its puts a giant target on their site for folks like us. what do they care anyway right? theyre selling. really screws over their buyers especially the more profitable the niche
 
Good stuff...I have been doing this for a while as well. And if you have the funds, you just outsource the creation of a similar website design, then write original content and you are good to start building backlinks = )

Works like a charm, and there is less risk when it comes to ROI too!
 
That is actually a super simple idea, but is quite effective at the same time.
 
I do this all the time with product/affiliate websites and use their methods of driving traffic. I make BANK!!!
 
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