I Bought A Website From A Flipper

byPaulWatson

3.8K followers

2 years ago

Hey guys, hope you are all well. So, in the last week, because I don't have enough to do with two websites and running a fitness studio with my wife, I decided to purchase a new website.

The theory behind it was simple - as above, I have two websites now that make me between them around $1200 - $1500 per month. I pay a writer $500 a month to do my posts for one of them so figured I could afford for one to write on a new one.

To me, this has become a numbers game and in time, I hope to be able to build it to the size of the other two and obviously increase my income.

What did it cost?

Ok, so as I mentioned in the heading, I purchased the site from a 'flipper' which I am terming here as someone who creates a website, adds a few posts to it and then sells it off. In this case, I paid $149 and received:

- The domain
- WordPress website
- 20 posts
- A premium theme and content editor plugin
- 1 Designed logo
- 3 legal pages (Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, T&C)

From here it cost me an extra $35 to import the site to my own web host (I didn't use WA for this one) and $14 for the domain to move over (which pays for another year on top of the current term). This also took around an hour of my time to set up new accounts and manage the migration etc.

So all up for a smidge under $200 I have a new WordPress website on my own host with 20 posts already written.

Why buy and not build?

To be honest, I actually really enjoy building websites from scratch and for anyone working in the bootstrapping stage of their online business - this is how we do it. But in this case, I figured what I was paying for was time. It would take me around 5 hours to build the site to what it is now plus the cost of a writer for 20 posts is around $500.

And that is all it was for me. A saving of around $300 in writers costs as well as the time to set up a new site. The posts are all generated via an .ai bot (as we will discuss below), but they are a good starting point for my site in terms of having content and keywords ready to go.

What did I check before I purchased?

For anyone who has ever been on a website marketplace site (I used flippa.com), you will know how daunting it can all be. There are thousands of sites on there ranging in price from a $1 up to $1,000,000. so it helps to have an idea of what you want to start with.

For me, the process was as follows:

1. Narrow down to the price - I was looking at anything at around the $100 - $300 mark
2. Choose a niche that interests you and then do some searches for popularity - I chose the travel niche so was happy that there is a market there.
3. Open the website and make sure it works - I clicked every menu option and link. I also ran a broken link and site speed check . Too many broken links or something that is too slow is to be avoided. I also confirmed with the seller that it was a WordPress site as well.
4. Check the content on offer - Count the number of posts and check every one to make sure that they contain proper content and useful information (some of the more unscrupulous flippers will do a first paragraph and fill the rest with rubbish). I also like to run a search on the same headings to make sure they have not copied and paste from another site as well.
5. Check the seller - make sure they have good reviews and a history of sales - if not, check that they operate within the rules of the site - and NEVER transact outside of the marketplace platform.
6. Check the site stats - as my site was relatively new, this didn't really apply to me however for more mature sites, run checks in a good analytics site such as AHrefs etc. and make sure it is ranking well for the number of keywords you would expect for the price and outlined revenue numbers (higher priced sites will include this in the sales page).

And again, for more mature sites you would definitely want access to their Google Analytics, current affiliate program details and copies of income statements as a minimum too.

What else do I need to do?

From the point of purchase - I used PayPal via the platform however for higher costing sites they also offer an escrow service. You then need to Migrate across to your host - which in my experience is never as simple as it should be but most hosts employ great support services.

I also added to my Analytics and Google Search console etc. as well as loaded my SEO plugins and double-checked the legal doco - you can always get that from here at WA if you needed as well.

From here, I will just run through and tidy up each post and make sure all my SEO processes are in place. I have decided to leave the theme and editor plugins as they are and will only update them if I feel the need.

Now what?

Now I do the same as we all do for our affiliate marketing websites - Add content following the basic SEO rules. I plan on spending around $300 - $500 a month on writer (will give me 15 to 20 posts a month) and hope, based on my other sites, to start making sales in around 2 - 3 months with a look to making around $1000 a month in around 12 months.

What if I don't have $500 a month?

Then the only difference here is that I would be writing the posts myself - which if that is all I had to do would not be any different. For me however I would only manage around 5 - 10 posts a month simply meaning it would take a little longer to build up.

Conclusion

Ok, so that was my outline of my experience in purchasing my site. I didn't write it as a "look how much I can spend" brag, rather an outline as to what is out there for those of you who want to get a site up and running a little faster, or have some money to invest.

Please don't hesitate to ask any questions below and I would also love to hear below from those of you who have purchased sites as well.

Until next time

Have fun

Paul