How to Identify and Monetize the Best Sites for Flipping
Flipping isn’t a new concept—but website flipping is certainly on the rise, thanks to the fact that it’s accessible to everyone who has the financial capability to pull it off.
It’s fairly simple, and it can be a great way to either add extra cash to your yearly revenue—or even become a full-time gig.
This article will cover what website flipping is, how to identify the best websites for flipping, and how to increase their value once you’ve bought them.
What is Website Flipping?
Website flipping is nothing more than buying websites that are making a profit already. Additionally, you should improve the site’s profit by increasing the number of high-quality traffic it receives or by utilizing monetization methods like website monetization. Ultimately, the goal is to sell the site for a higher profit.
Source: Profiletree
Naturally, there’s work to be done behind the scenes. You need to be good at spotting which websites have flip potential, and you also need to work hard at increasing the website’s value once you’ve bought it.
This takes time and effort—but it can turn a site that’s making $250 a month into one that’s making $2,500 a month. Some flippers prefer to hold a website for a few weeks or months. It all depends on how much time and effort you are ready to invest.
To get an estimation of how much your website can be worth, Empire Flippers is a great place to start. After you submit your website for a sale, you can start negotiating prices.
Others prefer to hold a website for over a year to increase its value by thousands of dollars.
The size of the website you buy is also down to you. Websites worth $100,000 or more will be easier to scale because their processes are already effective. However, it can require a team of people to constantly maintain and optimize a website of that size.
How to Evaluate a Site Being Sold to Flip
All websites have pros and cons that you need to assess before deciding whether or not a website can be flipped. Let’s take a look at a few of them:
- Niche
A niche must be profitable for a website to be worth it. For example, a heavily regulated niche, such as medicine (and especially CBD), might be worth skipping unless you can find a profitable affiliate program.
- Work Required
If a website needs a makeover, it will cost you in the short term—and it might eat into your profits in the long term.
This comes down to a website’s potential and how much work you’re willing to put into it.
For example, it might be the case that a website simply needs affiliate links to increase its value massively.
Likewise, it might need some website design or layout changes to improve the user experience or website speed optimizations, like moving from a shared hosting plan to a faster hosting provider.
- Domain
The best domain names are short and easy to remember.
Additionally, it’s a good idea to check the domain’s backlink profile. If a domain has a lot of backlinks (also known as external links), it can indicate that it has a lot of value. However, the quality of the links is important too, so carefully evaluate the referring domains linking to this website.,
If they are low value, the domain can get hit with a penalty from Google, which will reduce the chances of your content being found. This can also negatively affect the price you can sell your website for in the future.
When it comes to backlinks—aim for quality over quantity.
To check the backlink profile of a domain, you can use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.
- Traffic
Traffic is essential when weighing up whether or not a website is worth purchasing, as well as how much potential value it has.
With little or poor-quality traffic, a website can have no revenue. Therefore, it has zero asset value.y
You can ask for Google Analytics data when evaluating a website, but look out for red flags like bot traffic.
- Earnings
Anyone selling a website should share their earnings data with you. To submit your website for sale, it’s a requirement to disclose this data with potential buyers.
Even so, it’s still important that you double-check the numbers to make sure nothing has been inflated —for example, if the numbers seem disproportionate to the traffic the website receives.
- Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the top three ranking factors. The more quality backlinks a website has, the more valuable it will be—and the easier it will be to flip if you continue securing authoritative backlinks.
If a website has poor-quality backlinks, it’s an indicator that it may have been using black-hat spammy SEO strategies, like link farming.
Affiliate Marketing Software: A Key Tool for Website Monetization
In the realm of website flipping, identifying potential revenue streams is crucial. One effective method is through affiliate marketing. This is where affiliate marketing software plays a pivotal role.
What is Affiliate Marketing Software?
Affiliate marketing software is a tool that helps website owners manage and track their affiliate marketing campaigns. It simplifies the process of finding and partnering with affiliates, tracking their performance, and distributing commissions. This software is particularly beneficial for website flippers who aim to maximize the revenue of their sites before selling them.
Benefits of Using Affiliate Marketing Software in Website Flipping
- Efficient Tracking and Management: These tools provide an easy-to-use dashboard to monitor affiliate performance, track sales, and calculate commissions. This efficiency is vital for ensuring the website’s affiliate marketing strategy is profitable.
- Enhanced Partnerships: By utilizing affiliate marketing software, you can easily connect with a broader network of affiliates. This expansion can significantly increase the website’s reach and, consequently, its revenue.
- Increased Value of Website: Websites with established and successful affiliate marketing programs are more attractive to potential buyers. The presence of a streamlined, software-managed affiliate program adds value to the website, making it a more lucrative option for flipping.
- Time-Saving: As website flipping often involves improving a site’s value within a short period, the time saved by using this software can be crucial. It allows the flipper to focus on other aspects of website improvement.
Examples of Affiliate Marketing Software
- Impact.com: Known for its robust tracking and analytics capabilities, Impact.com is ideal for those looking to gain detailed insights into their affiliate campaigns.
- Refersion.com: A user-friendly platform perfect for beginners, Refersion.com simplifies the process of affiliate program management.
Incorporating Affiliate Marketing in Your Flipping Strategy
To incorporate affiliate marketing effectively in your website flipping strategy, consider the following steps:
- Select the Right Software: Based on your website’s niche and needs, choose an affiliate marketing software that fits.
- Identify Suitable Affiliates: Look for affiliates that align with your website’s content and audience.
- Monitor and Optimize: Regularly check the performance of your affiliates and optimize the strategy for better results.
- Showcase Your Efforts: When it’s time to sell the website, highlight the established affiliate program and its success as a key selling point.
By integrating affiliate marketing software into your website flipping strategy, you not only enhance the website’s revenue potential but also its attractiveness to potential buyers, ultimately leading to a higher sale price.
Tips for Increasing the Value of Your Website
Once you’ve bought a website, it’s time to boost its value. Here’s how:
- Secure More Backlinks
By launching strong guest blogging and outreach campaigns, you can generate more authoritative backlinks to your site. This will drive more traffic and link juice and boost your position in the SERPs. This should automatically increase the value of your website because you’ll be able to drive more organic traffic.
- Launch an Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing remains one of the best ways to divert traffic to your website and therefore build more sales. Indeed, 77% of marketers say their email engagement has increased over the last year.
The smart idea is to segment your email campaigns to send tailored, relevant offers to the right people. You can then use email campaigns to build lasting relationships with your customers to turn them into loyal customers. In this process, make sure to use a DKIM checker for email authentication and security measures.
Consider using a reliable email campaign software provider. Such a tool offers advanced features that can significantly enhance your ability to connect with your audience on a more personal level.
When someone takes over your website, they have all these customers in one place.
- Publish High-Quality Content
Before you launch a fresh content marketing campaign, perform a content audit to find any gaps in content that your website currently has.
Then, start publishing high-quality, valuable content that’s fully optimized with keywords, and which positions you as the authority figure in your niche.
You may need to invest in SEO tools to help with your content marketing campaign, as well as a team of content writers, and editors. As such, exploring SaaS financing options might be worthwhile.
Diversify Monetization Methods
Potential buyers want to see that your website generates as much revenue as possible. By diversifying your monetization methods, you will increase your website’s value.
- Affiliate marketing–Affiliate marketing–Affiliate marketing is a low-risk method of generating more revenue. It also gives you the chance to network with more influencers and brands. It usually requires linking a product that you promote subtly in your content. You get a commission each time a site visitor clicks the link and makes a purchase.
Impact.com and refersion.com are popular affiliate marketing platforms.
- Digital or physical products–You can sell digital or physical products that are relevant to your website. Think of t-shirts or ebooks.
- Display advertising–You can sell ad space on your website with a help of an advanced monetization partner like Setupad. It will guarantee you sell your ad inventory for the highest possible price. Again, how much you’ll earn will depend on your traffic volume, geolocation, user engagement, among other things.
Conclusion
Website flipping can be a profitable venture if you develop a knack for spotting saleable websites that have a solid domain, a worthwhile niche and lots of potential.
Once you’ve got a website and you’ve increased its value, you can use sites like Flippa and Empire Flippers to get a valuation, put your site up for sale, and attract bids.
