Comments on: Site flipping article on Sitepoint

By: Peter Davis

Peter Davis — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:29:03 +0000

Shawn, I’d really have to invistigate the individual case to be able to give any decent advice. I generally don’t think that the expensive ebook/video gurus stuff is all that worthwhile. There is no substitute for just getting out there and taking action, the ebooks/videos are in my opinion a distraction from that.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:26:18 +0000

Thanks Peter ! Great article!

Actually it was *this* article on sitepoint that got me into the mood to explore this business. After reading it i got all excited and hit google.

Not that many places on the net talking about this, especially from people giving advice from their *own* experience.

A “twist” to the story is not buying and selling but creating and selling. This was done by a Warrior guy who created a series of videos and shows the whole process “live”.

Long story short, i bought the videos and have had moderate success: around $550 for 3 sites and a few hours (around 20) of work.

What is your opinion on this? Would you advise holding on longer to increase PR before flipping ? Have you had any experience with this ?

TIA
-Shawn

By: tovorinok

tovorinok — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:30:58 +0000

Hello

Great book. I just want to say what a fantastic thing you are doing! Good luck!

Bye

By: admin

admin — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 01:36:06 +0000

Hi mhdoc. Yes, I really enjoy Franks blog. I think you have a good point, but you might actually do better doing the reverse – the market for domains has taken off a lot stronger than the market for small to mid size websites. You can, with a lot of effort, buy a website with a great domain and pay website prices for it and strip off the domain and sell it at the higher premiums we’re seeing in the domain industry.

By: mhdoc

mhdoc — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:32:45 +0000

Hi Peter,
I saw your post on shoemoney’s blog and hadn’t read any of your stuff for a while. Really nice article on flipping websites. Combine what you said with Frank Schillings advice about buying good .coms and it could become quite interesting.

As for new ideas for you to write about… We are looking at adding some of the javascript tools such as those at scriptaculous or mootools to improve the intuitiveness of the user interface. At first glance it looks like it should be possible to change the user experience with little or no back end programming work. If a site with a clunky interface was purchased cheaply and then improved that might make it stand out from the competition. I would be interested in your thought…

By: admin

admin — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:36:53 +0000

Yes, giving it a try, and not risking more than your willing to lose are good principals to live by in any business.

By: Aaron Stahl

Aaron Stahl — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:48:27 +0000

Peter, Thanks for replying! So I guess the next step would be finding site(one that costs only what I’m willing to lose), doing my due diligence, and giving it a shot right? Trial by fire:). Thanks for all the good info on the blog!

By: admin

admin — Thu, 31 May 2007 04:01:51 +0000

Hi Aaron, thanks for the comments. I don’t think that a depth of technical knowledge is required to be successful at flipping sites. In fact, as you mention, outsourcing coding is possible and certainly something I do, as I’m not really a talented coder. Your talents in managing freelancers may be more valuable than actually doing the work yourself.
Another thing I’ve been pursuing currently is teaming up with others instead of doing it all solo. Certainly a team of people can accomplish much more than each of them could accomplish as individuals. Even considering that, there are things that I would still outsource. It really depends on the skill sets within the team.

By: Aaron Stahl

Aaron Stahl — Thu, 31 May 2007 03:15:08 +0000

Peter,

Thanks for the article, real good stuff. I’ve got a question that may make a good article for you(i may just have to read your entire blog to see if you already addressed this:).

What skills does one need to buy and sell websites?

I’ve got a decent business background so I get most of it, but what I’m curious about are the technical skills.

For instance do you outsource all coding? Do you outsource advertising/seo/webmaster stuff?

I’ve got a limited technical knowledge of websites, but if one is built like yahoo mail I think I could handle it:). Hope this makes sense. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks!!

By: Peter Davis

Peter Davis — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:48:05 +0000

Thanks again for your comments.
Matt, interesting points. Perhaps the market for websites will develop enough that someday we could build a Zillow.com for web real estate. And sure I’d be interested to “trade knowledge” get in touch when you can.
Lee, it’s easier to place a value on a website when you base it as a multiple of earnings. That doesn’t mean that a site with no earnings has no value. In fact, I’d personally rather buy a website with traffic but no earnings than the reverse. Asside from traffic, you can find value in content, product, etc. It just might be harder to arrive at a selling price.