Anyone who has ever experienced the excitement of putting up their first website for sale, will know that excitement can quickly turn into worry when the auction doesn’t attract any quick bids or general interest. Following on from that can be feelings of rejection, and you might even begin to think that selling web property doesn’t work. This situation can leave you completely demotivated and wanting to stop selling sites altogether.
Even though the reality is that not every site will sell, that doesn’t mean you can’t aim for and actually achieve a better than average sell through rate. Flippa’s current average sell through is 56% but it is just that, an average. There are some sellers averaging a sell through of 70 to 80%, and some less than 20%!
In this article I’m going to cover the things I believe you need to focus on, to increase your chances of a high sell through rate on your Flippa auctions for start up blogs.
When building start up sites to sell (sites with no traffic or revenue to speak of), I like to aim for the site to appeal to as broad a range of potential buyers as possible. If I can appeal to a variety of buyers then my chances of the site selling are markedly increased.
Just like a restaurant who offers kids meals, vegetarian options and meat lovers pizza will appeal to a wider audience, so too will sites that show off great graphics, reasonable amounts of content, attractive domain names etc. The key is ensuring that the sites you build tick as many of these boxes as possible. Some buyers are only interested in the site looking good, whilst others want the site to look good and to be in a very popular niche. Other buyers will be looking for great domain names, and some will want the whole package including high quality unique content.
If you solely focus on selecting a popular niche then you are limiting your potential buyer pool. If you focus on design and unique content, but put the site on a .info domain then your site won’t be all that appealing to those buyers looking for good domain names. There is a time and a place for narrowing your sites for sale down to one type of customer, but for start up blogs that many sellers offer, I suggest you try to focus on appealing to a broader range of buyers. In other words offer excellent graphics, premium themes if you have a license, .com domains, unique content and even an ebook sold from a mini sales page within the site.
The Complete Package
I’ve had buyers who were attracted by the ‘complete’ package, and that is very satisfying knowing they can appreciate all aspects of the offer. But I’ve also had buyers who took the site to pieces and the only recognisable part left was the content. It can be frustrating to think you put in a lot of effort into a design only to see it tossed out, you wonder why you bothered when the site would have sold without it. Well in hindsight of course you can say that, but the thing is you can never be certain what types of buyers are browsing the listings at any given moment. I had a buyer toss out unique content, but that didn’t mean I would create all future sites with PLR (private label rights), because if I did I would cut out those buyers looking for unique content.
At the end of the day you really need to consider the following points and aim to appeal to the various buyers who focus on one or all of these aspects:
- Domain Name
- Design
- Market/Niche
- Content
- Monetization
- SEO
It’s very easy to fall in love with your sites as you build them and to convince yourself that they’re worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars, but not everyone sees and or appreciates the opportunities you’ve built in. That being said, it’s very important to have effective sales copy in your auction listing.
If you over price your listings at the outset you miss the opportunity that being at the top of the listings page brings, which is more eye balls. Many people panic a day or two into the auction, realising that the site could be over priced for the current market conditions and then adjusting their reserve and BIN. Don’t worry if this sounds like you, I’ve been there too, it’s not an exact science, but don’t work against yourself by putting up very unrealistic prices and then trying to play catch up after the horse has already bolted.
At the end of the day, there are no guarantees no matter how much you do and often you will need to adjust prices as you go along, but hopefully not by $100 increments. There are things you can do to try to increase your sell through rate though.
Staying The Course
So now you’re probably thinking that by the time you put in all this effort into these sites, and try to tick all these boxes you’ll end up working for less than minimum wage; that can be true at the outset. If you’re learning FTP, WordPress installations, transferring sites and pretty much a newbie to either Internet marketing and or selling web property then yes, the rate of return per hour of time invested can be low. This type of thinking won’t help you stay the course though; you need to remember that everything takes time to learn, and if you don’t have the time or inclination to dedicate to what you need to know then you will find it unpleasant and unprofitable indeed.
If on the other hand you feel you want to invest in your knowledge, practise what you learn over and over and gradually increase the speed at which you work, then you’ll have a good chance of making money from this model.
Questions
Remember that I’ve covered only one type of site in this post, there are many variations of web property that you might like to sell. If you have any questions about this particular model or anything to do with developing virtual real estate leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer it for you. If you’d like to learn more about building and selling websites then read about and download the QuikCash Convertor for free here.
Michelle, I never cease to be amazed that you reveal more information for free than most sell in .pdfs!
I had a question about content. As you know from my comments on previous posts, I have not tried this business model yet but I have just started building a portfolio of domains.
As I recently worked through this process the first time, instead of parking the domain, I created a 5 page mini-site to monetize it and wound up writing about 2,200 words one afternoon, so now it’s easier for me to see how this model can lead to site flipping.
The question I have is specific to content. I know a general rule of thumb for most blog posts is to keep them between 250 – 400 words. Do you hold to this advice when creating your sites and if not, have you noticed any correlation between content length when compared to the number of sales and/or final sales price?
Edie I’ve typically written to a minimum of 350 words but if the article needs to be longer to include all the relevant info needed for the reader and or to conclude logically then I’ll just keep writing. I haven’t noticed a correlation between content length and successful auctions of brand new sites but I would say that publishing poor quality articles, be they long or short, would be detrimental to your chances of selling.
My rule of thumb is to give a new site an excellent start by publishing useful keyword rich articles. Not every site will sell and therefore I’ve never wanted to feel ‘stuck’ with an unsold site. If it’s built on solid foundations then it’s off to a running start to attract traffic and earnings that will help recover costs to-date and increase the chances of a sale in a future auction.
You’re asking the right questions and I’m always happy to help so any areas of uncertainty feel free to ask away.
Thanks for the info, Michelle. When it comes to creating website content, I’m finding that I like to go “old school” when I can and basically write it all as a 3-5 point thesis using my main keywords and then each sub-heading becomes a separate page with long tail keywords relating to each point. I feel that it creates a more cohesive end-product.
I had to smile when I read that you plan your sites to at least recover start-up costs as I am still trying to wrap my mind around the idea that I’ll be seeing any earnings at all
Edie it sounds like your sites would be worth reading given you care about the content to that degree. I like it!
How are you monetizing your sites? Are you following a specific model? For example, optimized for AdSense or niche blogging or list building?
Michelle,
My original intent was to just sell the domain name which is in the fitness niche and so I took a lesson from realtors and created the site as if it were “staged” – putting up a bare-bones site which includes original, keyword rich content, clean code, a simple banner and css navigation, and one graphic per page. I then put in some suitable Amazon products and Google AdSense.
Thinking of the way I’ve been following domain sales, the first thing I usually do is type it into my browser just to see what’s there. Following that idea, I wanted to give the potential buyers an idea of what could be done with the domain in more general terms instead of targeting a specific model and I consider the site a throw-in bonus. However, it’s been my experience that when it comes to true monetizing, I would be better off picking my poison so that visitors aren’t being tossed all over the page and I’m not thrown in different directions trying to bring in traffic.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Am I correct in thinking that it’s at about this point where the domainers finish up and the site flippers continue on?
Edie my knowledge of the domain market is very limited. I’m not even sure if adding a skeleton site to a domain would help or hinder a sale. I would suggest participating in a forum that specialises in discussion on domain buying and selling such as http://www.dnforum.com/ so you can learn more from experienced players.
In terms of monetizing…I’ve had success using a variety of methods on the one site, I think it really depends on what the long term plans are for a site as to how it’s best monetized.
I’m not sure how much cross over there has traditionally been between domainers and site flippers, but I know there has been some recent hype around buying old domains with page rank to build sites on to sell. It’s certainly one way of leveraging a domain but as with any site purchase, buyers should do their due diligence on the links that point to those domains.
Thanks Michelle. I think the general consensus is that as premium domains are scarce these days, the chances of financial success with type-in traffic on a parked domain through a parking service are dwindling.
One recent trend to offset these losses is to develop mini-sites. This option is more viable than ever as more servers such as HostGator offer unlimited domains and incredible bandwidth. These are then monetized to at least recoup yearly expenditures until the domainer can find a buyer. In fact, your readers that develop and flip sites might like to know that I have seen the more industrious types offering the development of these sites for other domainers. If you take a look at contentminisites.com you can see one of the more professional sites that offer this service. No, I don’t work for them. I checked it out to see if my own site model was in line with everyone else.
Some domainers take a short, mid, and long-term approach to the sites by quickly selling off those that make little money and continuing to develop the more lucrative domains/sites to hold as part of their portfolio since of course the older sites do have more value.
The only real differences I’ve seen between domainers that are developing these mini-sites and site-flippers is that, while both do keyword research on the sites for the domain, those whose primary objective is the acquisition of the domain will go on to try and get some sort of professional estimate of the value of the domain itself before making a purchase but are less inclined to create full-blown sites with hundreds of pages unless they see a marked increase in revenue and/or traffic over the first 90 days of ownership.
Me? I’m still building backlinks on my first sites! LOL!