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Wondering how to start a website flipping business for under $1,000? In truth, you can start website flipping with a lot less but if you have a budget up to $1,000, you can definitely do a lot more and potentially make more money quicker.
Grab the ebook: I teach you how to build and flip starter sites in my ebook!
Let me explain.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of profitable business models that you can start on a shoe-string budget.
If you’re looking for a great return on investment and don’t have much money to invest then I’ve got the perfect solution for you!
Some of my sales…
It’s called website flipping and its an awesome passive income business model that anyone with access to the internet can do. All that’s required is a little know-how and creativity.
Let me show you exactly how this process works so you can get started right away…
What Exactly Is A “Website Flipping” Business?
Website flipping is simply buying and selling domain names (i.e site names) generally for small profits over and over again. Once you’ve purchased a domain name the only limit is your creativity and willingness to learn new skills.
Generally speaking website flipping can be broken down into two basic categories: “Build It” or “Buy It”. In the first option you’d need to come up with a site name that would then require some type of content creation such as with blogging, article marketing, videos etc.
Basically there is no specific criteria for this method so if inspiration strikes you go with it! The second method is simply buying an existing website which will have most of its traffic and revenue generating process already in place.
Purchasing these types of sites are generally cheaper due to their success although they might not always provide a perfect “plug and play” solution.
First, let’s take a look at the Build It Method.
The Build It Method
The build it method is about building your website for flipping, instead of buying it.
When looking at buying versus building, buying is definitely the cheaper option.
Building is easy and once you’ve done it once, you can do it a million times.
Step 1: Pick a niche
This is when you decide what to blog about, like chihuahua dogs or raw vegan living, for example. You can pick any niche you want.
Step 2: Get domain and hosting
Next, get domain and hosting. The domain can be included with your web hosting purchase, which makes it nice and easy. I recommend Siteground which is the host I personally use for this site. Siteground is also website flipping friendly. Their cheapest plan is less than $10 a month and you’ll absolutely love them. Their support is unparalleled.
Plus, you can buy your domain with your web hosting purchase, so everything is included together and your domain and host will be at the same company.
If you’ve never bought web hosting before, it’s super simple.
This article gives you a walkthrough of each step of the purchase process with screenshots and recommendations of what plan to choose.
Click here to check out Siteground.
Step 3: Connect WordPress
Connecting WordPress is next. You just access WordPress in your Siteground dashboard and with one click, you can connect it, set your username login and password for WordPress and you’re done.
WordPress is the content management system behind your website. It’s how you add content like writing articles, add images, design your homepage, etc. It’s where you do everything, basically.
Step 4: Add content, design, and launch
Lastly, you’ll:
- Add content
- Do design
- Launch
Adding content is about writing articles to put on your website. Then, you can apply a website theme. WordPress has hundreds of free themes you can choose from. You can also buy a paid theme online. And then when you’re ready launch!
The Art of the Microflip covers this process more thoroughly including showing you how to get traffic and make money with your website prior to flipping it.
If you want a full step-by-step of the process, this article and this article are both good, showing screenshots and walking you strep by step with more detail.
Next, in this tutorial I’ll be showing you the “Buy It” method.
The Buy It Method
This method is more expensive but also, time-saving.
There are a number of ways to go about finding new domains that have some sort of potential for future investing/resale but below I’ll show you my personal favorite which happens to be Fiverr.com.
If you’re not familiar with Fiverr I suggest checking it out as it’s a great resource for anyone trying to start a business on a budget or for more experienced entrepreneurs looking for specific high-quality marketing services done quickly and cheaply.
As an example let me tell you exactly how the website flipping process will work using Fiverr…
Step One: Head Over To Fiverr And Perform A Basic Search For Keywords That You Might Want To Invest In
As you can see I performed a search for the keyword phrase “how to start a website” and found countless options.
For this tutorial I’ll choose “finestwebdesigner520” as my seller since their profile was complete, had good reviews and sounded professional enough.
My process is generally to buy at least five gigs from different sellers before deciding on whom to hire for the entire project. If you’re interested in buying these services it’s important that you know exactly what you need done otherwise some of this might be considered overkill.
Now let’s move onto Step Two…
Step Two: Order A Small Sample Of The Gigs You’ve Chosen And Evaluate Their Quality
Since I’m looking for a website to buy and flip rather than build my own it’s important that the seller creates an SEO friendly site with quality content.
The above gigs all look appealing so I’ll pick one of them at random, order it and then leave a positive review if everything goes smoothly. Now let pitch in (ha! see what I did there?) and take a look at some of these products…
As you can probably tell from this screenshot getting five reviews will be no problem.
Some of the websites even come with “premium” or “exclusive” rights compared to other sellers which allows you limitless use of their work (i.e as many sites as you’d like).
Since my goal is simply to buy a site and flip it I don’t need to worry about purchasing multiple “premium” accounts.
Step Three: Order Several More Gigs And Compare Costs & Bonuses
OK, OK, OK…I know what your thinking.
This is getting expensive! However, keep in mind that if you purchase all of these gigs you’ll end up with five (5) completed websites which should be enough to sell one (1) for at least 100% return on investment or ROI as we say in the industry. If that’s not a good enough deal then why bother starting a website flipping business in the first place?
Remember also that Fiverr takes 20% off everything so if I bought four gigs they’d basically pay for one.
Step Four: Contact The Seller And Get A Quote!
Once you’ve compared the prices and bonuses you’ll want to contact the seller. Since I’m also in sales (yep, not much has changed since high school) I know that there are certain questions that might help me decide which seller is best for my project.
For instance, who will be building the site? How many pages will it have? Will it be 100% original content or spun articles…etc., etc.?
You get the picture so let’s take a look at what “finestwebdesigner520” had to say…
Pretty good deal huh? So this means he’ll create five (5) websites with unique content and a working contact form. Also, in regards to time…I can expect a new site every two (2) days which is very fast so I’d better get my clients lined up quick before someone else snaps this deal off the table.
Plus, it’ll only cost me $20 bucks extra for him to build an affiliate review page with a tracking link and graphic plus 20% of that goes right into his pocket from Fiverr. Sweet!
Step Five: Order And Enjoy The Benefits Of Having A Network Of Sites That You Can Resell For Profit!
Now you might be wondering if all five websites will have unique content since I ordered them all at once rather than one at a time?
Well, as far as I know, Fiverr does not provide SEO articles therefore I’m going to assume that the seller will write each webpage manually using a different spin of the same topic template. In other words, “webdesigner520” might use this as a general outline for all five sites…
If you’re interested in getting into website flipping I would suggest following these simple steps. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking a more professional approach and hiring a company to build your first site but where is the fun in that?
At least now you know how it’s done on Fiverr so get out there and have some fun!
As you can see, this process will have you spend more of a serious budget of up to $1,000 if you decide to outsource as it explains. You don’t need to do this but if you’re busy with other work and projects or you want to outsource for other reasons, this is a route to take.
What are some website flipping ideas?
Honestly, you can choose any niche you’d like. If you’re trying to make money from the site while you’re developing it and prior to flipping, I’d recommend choose more specific niches with a passionate audience behind it.
Instead of a dog blog, for example, go with a chihuahua blog. Or, instead of a vegan blog, try doing a raw vegan blog.
Here’s a quick list of some of the most profitable niches:
- Health/wellness
- Fitness
- Money (like personal finance, make money online)
- Travel
- Mom/parenting
How much money can you make from website flipping?
This entirely depends on how much you are willing to invest and how fast you can turn a website around.
As a general rule, the faster you sell a site the less money you can make but if things go really well it’s possible to make thousands of dollars in less than a week.
On the other hand if your flip takes months or even years then there is very little chance that you will earn more than $100 per month unless of course your site ranks #1 on Google for multiple keywords with over 1 million searches per month which might be unlikely considering some of these cheap sites have been up for several months without ranking anywhere…
If I had three words to describe this new way of making money from websites those would be: It’s totally amazing!
It’s no secret that website flipping has become extremely popular over the last year.
In fact, there are literally thousands of people just like you who have discovered the secrets to buying cheap websites for pennies on the dollar and selling them for hundreds or even thousands of dollars in a matter of days. I’m not talking about owning a website that generates one sale every few months either!
No, this is about dealing with sites that are getting 1-10 orders per day which means your monthly revenue could be anywhere from $1,000 – $10,000 depending on how fast you sell. If you’re interested in learning more then please feel free to continue reading.
The Good News About Website Flipping
I first found out about website flipping from a friend of mine on Facebook and nearly fell off my chair after I logged onto his computer and watched him make $200 in less than an hour.
He basically bought a site for under $5.00, tweaked it around to avoid being penalized by Google, put it up for auction with another company called “Flip It Fast” and made an easy profit!
Of course, at the time I was pretty skeptical so I decided to hold off until someone actually showed me how to do this myself before investing any money into their system.
Here are some pros to website flipping…
Pros of website flipping
- Introvert-friendly business
- Be the boss
- Design your dream schedule
- Unlimited income potential
- Opportunity to turn this into a full-time business
The Bad News About Website Flipping
You’ll always need at least a modest budget to start website flipping, even if you’re a seasoned flipper. That’s just the nature of the business so as you go into each new website project, make sure you allocate a budget for yourself.
Cons of website flipping
- A budget is required
Can anybody do website flipping?
Yes, anybody can flip websites. The Art of the Microflip is my 12-module training which takes you through the process of flipping your first website, start to finish.
You’ll learn what it takes to start a website flipping project, make it profitable and create a real website flipping business for yourself.
Here’s a look at some of my portfolio…
You can see these numbers on my sales page too.
My largest flip made me nearly $100,000 and I’ve made four figure and five figure flips since then.
It’s a great business to get into for anyone, whether you are an introvert or extrovert, you want a side business or looking for some extra cash to level up your lifestyle.
What’s required to do website flipping?
Here’s exactly what you need to flip websites:
- A budget
- Computer
- Time
As I mentioned above, a small budget is needed for every single website flip you pursue. It doesn’t need to be $1,000 every time or at all. You can get started with $50. As long as you have at least $50 to start, you can website flip and that’s not a bad startup budget for a business.
Next, a computer is needed because you’ll be building websites. You can do this with a cell phone or tablet too but it’s just easier with a computer, in my opinion.
Then lastly, you’ll need time to devote to the project. How much time? You choose. You can work this project after work, on the weekends, daily for an hour a day, 8 hours a day, 8 hours a week, whatever you want.
This is the kind of business you can do entirely on your own. As a solopreneur you get to make the rules so you can choose your work schedule, decide what projects you want to build, set your income goals and more.
How fast will you make money website flipping?
You can start making money from your first website flip. My students from The Art of the Microflip have had success right from the start, making hundreds and thousands of dollars with their website flipping ventures.
My student has made $12,000 since starting!
Imagine if you made $200 from each website you flip and you make 10 sites a month. That’s $2,000. Do this with 20 sites a month and that’s $4,000. Once you master how to create and flip websites, it’s kind of like a money-making machine, not to sound sleezy, but it totally is.
From Flippa alone, I’ve made this much..
Can website flipping be a full time income?
Yes! I’ve made six figures flipping websites! It’s a fun and rewarding business you can do for yourself. Once you do your first website flip, you’ll want to keep going.
To learn more, click here to visit The Art of the Microflip to check out the full course.