So, what’s all the buzz about website flipping…do people really make sizeable returns by taking a pokey, battered old website and reselling it?

The answer is yes they do – but as with everything in online biz that is worthwhile, it takes a level of technical skill, experience and a little business savvy to reach the pinnacles that the pro’s have. However, if you do manage it, the sky is the limit. We’re in the internet era just now – and websites are the houses, sparkling office skyscrapers and (sadly) shanty towns of the internet world. Internet real estate (as much as I dislike that term) is here to stay and will continue to create millionaires in the months, years and decades to come.

   The Evolution Of The Internet – From The Dot Com Boom And Bust To Today’s Cool Tools For Site Creation

A decade or so ago, websites were perceived much like air travel in the fifties – they were really reserved for the rich and/or famous. In fact, prior to the dot com boom in the earlier years of this decade, investment banks and the clueless managers who ran them would almost back any old start-up company as long as it had a dot com presence. Even (or should I say especially) if the business model made no sense, was seemingly written by a child and had serious flaws.

During the dotcom boom (while I was wrapping up my banking career), I saw companies given the green light for investment that I’m quite sure no-one reading this would have backed – for example Pets.com who were given so much financial backing that they splurged on a multi-million dollar superbowl ad, bought an inflatable balloon slot for the Macy’s parade and squandered the rest of it’s money in all sorts of idiotic ways.  A few months later, someone in management took off their dunce cap long enough to realise that actually, products like flea lotion and kitty litter have a pretty low mark-up and that because they took about 4 days to deliver goods, people would rather walk five minutes to their local pet shop to buy what they needed. The company promptly folded, after losing investors a boatload of cash.

Today, it’s a different story – the website industry is booming and the beautiful thing is that the internet has evolved so that the smarter but smaller guy and gal have a competitive advantage in having a website business over the big guns. While website/blog design still requires technical aptitude, we have more tools, software and resources to be able to put out good looking websites and blogs – one’s that can stand up proudly against anything that a Fortune 500 company can whip up.

Of course, an alternative to building sites to resell is flipping them – buying established sites at a low fee, doing them up, and then reselling them for a markup. In some ways it’s a lot like real estate investment. That’s what we’ll look at next…

  So, What Sort Of Things Do You Need To Know About Before Flipping Websites?

The answer is, a lot. You would not enter the world of site flipping under-prepared any more than you would get into the real estate investment industry without a sound understanding of how it all works (unless possibly you’re pets.com). To get into website flipping, you’ll need to understand how the industry works. You need to set out a clear plan on how much you expect to yield through your site flipping efforts, and where to pick-up websites on the cheap (and where to resell them).

Make a start – learn about website flipping and what skills and knowledge you need to do it to earn a living. Then give it a go – you may be surprised at what you can achieve.