Blog Flipping – Creating Your Auction Listing
Take a look around blog flipping auction sites such as Flippa.com, DigitalPoint or even eBay – and you’ll quickly realise that there are a LOT of blogs and websites for sale at any one time.
Blog flipping and site flipping are becoming increasingly popular. In fact they can seem at times that every man and his dog is looking to get in on the act. Browse around internet marketing forums such as the Warrior Forum and you’ll find no end of people talking about blog flipping and asking a whole manner of questions about how they can get started as a blog flipper or how they can increase their success.
Competition to blog flippers is becoming ever greater and thus standing out from the crowd is becoming increasingly hard. Gone are the days when you can throw up any old blog and people will buy it.
So just how do you get people to want your blog and not somebody else’s? How do you get them to actually click on your auction listing in the first place and then convince them once they are there that your blog is the one to buy?
There are many reasons why blogs and websites sell (and don’t sell) but one of the main ones is the actual quality of your auction listing – ie. The title and the main auction advert. The better your listing is the more chance there is that it will sell and that it will achieve the price you are looking for.
The quality of your auction listing is more important when you are selling a low priced, un-established blog than it is when you are selling an established blog that is generating revenue and getting lots of traffic. The latter type of blogs sell well because they are already successful and they almost sell themselves. If a blog is making money (and the higher the better) then it is almost guaranteed to achieve a good price at auction of typically 5-10 times its monthly revenue. If on the other hand we are talking about a brand new blog which is receiving no or little traffic and is making no money at all then people need a little more convincing before they will buy it.
Here’s how to create your auction listing and details of the main things you might want to think about…
Your auction title
The title of your auction is absolutely crucial because it needs to get people to actually check out your auction listing in the first place. You can have the best blog and the best advert in the world but if nobody ever sees it you’re not going to achieve a successful sale.
A good auction title should be two things. It should capture people’s attention and make them want to click on it and it should also inform people about what it is you are actually selling so that they don’t feel in any way mislead once they’ve clicked onto your listing (vague attention grabbing auction titles generally don’t go down well because people get annoyed if they spend time reading through something which they weren’t interested in in the first place.
If you can, include essential information in the title such as the domain name of the site, the subject/topic/niche and any pieces of outstanding information which there is about your blog. If your blog is earning $1,000 a month through advert revenues, for example, then it might be a good idea to state that it is making $1,000 a month in the auction title. That will definitely get people interested!
Your main auction description
Once you’ve got people to click onto your auction it’s now the job of the main advert/auction listing to sell it to them…
Make sure that your listing contains all the essential information. People want to see exactly what they are buying so don’t leave out any details – and don’t be vague either. You would be amazed at the number of people who fail to explain things such as what the blog is actually about or where the content has come from (if it is unique content then that is a great selling point.)
The crucial thing in your advert/description is to point out clearly the main selling points of your blog. If it is generating revenue and profit then it might be a good idea to focus the advert around that. Include screenshots of earnings and traffic statistics as proof.
The starting price
Another thing to think about is the starting price of your auction because this can have a big impact on how appealing your blog is to potential buyers. Generally speaking a low initial starting price will attract more attention than if you start off at a higher price. A low starting bid usually attracts more bidders and this can ultimately have the affect of driving up the price as people start bidding against each other. This can also be a risky strategy however, so you might want to add a reserve price so that if the bidding doesn’t reach the level you want it to you can guarantee that you won’t be letting your blog go for a much lesser amount than you wanted to. You can also consider adding a Buy It Now price to your auction because there are plenty of people who will see your blog, want to buy it but don’t want to get involved in a bidding war. If you optimistically set your Buy It Now price then you could achieve a price higher for your blog than you would do had it sold through the auction process.
Conclusion
Creating an auction listing really isn’t rocket science but it is something that lots of people can get badly wrong. A good auction listing can really help to make the sale and hopefully this blog post has taken you through the essential ingredients. The main thing to remember is to give people the information that they want to know. People can ask you questions if there is something they aren’t sure about but many of them won’t bother – so it’s obviously better to include the information within the auction listing in the first place.
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