Comments on: Flip This Web site: How to make money others are missing

By: Jason Pearson

Jason Pearson — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:07:23 +0000

Great tips, I have been tossing this idea around, but didn’t know how to go about it. Keep up the good work.

By: Rex

Rex — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:08:30 +0000

“search the back links of popular free traffic counter websites like Sitemeter, Webstat and Gostats”

I first read this to mean: do a Yahoo “linkdomain:” search on the “sitemeter.com” URL. But that gave me 5,694,346 links to look through.

Then, it occurred to me that what you are suggesting is to use the analytics function of those sites applied to the ones you are investigating. Right?

In terms of looking for buy candidates here is one more idea: forums. People looking for monetization help with their high traffic sites.

I recall that the SBI (Site Build It) forums had a number of people who had built sites with considerable traffic that were making little or no money.

By: MB Web Design

MB Web Design — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:12:21 +0000

That’s definitely something to think about, perhaps I’m being a little *too* discriminating with my decisions. Having said that, I’ve only regretted passing on one such opportunity but that was nothing to do with design - the site was bought and a few weeks later there was a Pagerank update - the site jumped from 2 to 6 and of course, within days the page was chock-full of paid advertisers.

By: Hamlet Batista

Hamlet Batista — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:33:56 +0000

MB - Thanks for your comment. There are some really clever comment spammers out there.

I’m keeping my eye on a number of such opportunities but sadly they usually end up selling for more than I’m prepared to invest.

If they can get your money back in say 6-10 months, why not borrow money, pay it with the income and after 6 months the site is yours?

By: MB Web Design

MB Web Design — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:27:27 +0000

That’s one of the most amusing comment-responses I’ve seen in a long time.

Back on topic - as a designer I see a big opportunity in redesigning established sites. As users get increasingly web savvy, good content and linkage doesn’t cut the mustard, it needs to look professional as well. I’m keeping my eye on a number of such opportunities but sadly they usually end up selling for more than I’m prepared to invest.

By: Hamlet Batista

Hamlet Batista — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:34:36 +0000

A similar idea I have had to find old domains is to scrape the web and look for sites that have not had their homepage modifies in over a year.

Excellent idea. Thanks for the comment.

By: Hamlet Batista

Hamlet Batista — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:24:53 +0000

rasty - I left your comment because it is an interesting form of spam. In order to be more effective don’t just read the title, read the full post. This blog is not about house flipping

By: rasty

rasty — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:22:07 +0000

Great blog . I really liked it. I have also created a lens in same niche. This is my first time , hope u guys like it.Here’s a brief intro We’ve all probably heard before how real estate holds one of the surest keys to financial independence and wealth. These days however, it’s not just about agents selling houses and real estate properties. Now, we also have the flippers. Flipping houses is one of the best ways to enter the real estate scene.more detail visit here [edited for spam]

By: Mutiny Design

Mutiny Design — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:28:00 +0000

I like your idea of checking the backlinks of traffic counter websites to find potential buys - very inovative. A similar idea I have had to find old domains is to scrape the web and look for sites that have not had their homepage modifies in over a year. This would out sites built on server-side scripting out of the window - it would be mainly for finding forgotten sites that have good backlinks. With those sort of purchases you could rest assured that the links are not going to disappear.

Thankfully, most of these sites that are available to purchase or are ripe for picking are very shoddy and so they often don’t want to much. I was surprised to see some quite good domains for sales at Sitepoint for less than $2,000. Unfortunatly most of the really good sites have short memorable domain names, so the values goes up for something you might not really care about.