E. Brian Rose and GPL Licenses

If you are flipping anything, you need to know about this!  This information can really help your website flipping business massively.  How you ask?  How about getting great premium themes and plugins for free and using them on sites you sell and telling the buyers of the great themes and plugins they are getting as part of the deal.  No more worries about buying expensive developer rights and all of that. 

So what is it I am talking about here?  I just bought a WSO I just couldn’t pass up. It was created by E. Brian Rose. In his headline he states how this WSO is going to be very controversial. And he wasn’t kidding! I think a lot of developers are going to be a bit pissed with this.

Basically it is a very short report on GPL law and how to use it for your extreme advantage. What it basically says is that you can ‘rip off’ anything on wrodpress.org and resell it. He backs up all of this and I think this WSO is really going to open some flood gates.

There are also links to around 70 themes that you can begin pilfering right of the bat. It isn’t as clear as I’d like. I’d like a bit more specifics as to exactly which parts of the themes he listed are usable.  So if they are usable, they are also sellable.  And that means they are okay to use on your Flippa sites with out needing to transfer any kind of license to the client!  How much cash can that save you?

It will be interesting what happens now. Do developers pull their themes off of WordPress? Will everyone just copy everyone else for now on? Lots of questions. But a great thought provoking read. If selling themes or plugins aren’t your thing, then skip this. But if you are planning on selling themes, plugins or are looking for a product of your own to sell, then grab this.

One thing to note, in order to read your PDF you’ll need to download what is an .exe file. It is some kind of file that is supposed to protect the PDF from people sharing and hot linking, etc… I had a problem with it and needed support. But all was taken care of quickly enough.

Here is the link to E. Brian Rose’s product. After you read it, give me some feedback on how you think this might change things for the better or worse?

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.

Here are some frequently asked questions about blog flipping and the answers to them…

What is blog flipping?

Basically blog flipping is just the act of buying or building a blog and selling it for profit. Blog flipping (or site flipping) is one of the hottest online business models right now. Flipping blogs is somewhat similar to flipping real-estate in the offline world, but instead you are flipping virtual real-estate.

Why would I want to flip blogs?

Well, the best reason for blog flipping is simply to make money. You can make some quick and easy cash doing a blog flip.

It’s also a great way to make money from a blog that isn’t earning the income you expected for the amount of work you put in. You can also do it as a way to get rid of blogs you don’t have time for anymore. There are a lot of reasons for flipping blogs but it mainly comes down to making money.

The great thing about flipping blogs for money is that you don’t need to spend all your time learning all the internet marketing techniques most people use to make money online and there are very little technical skills or special knowledge required.

How much money can I make flipping blogs?

The sky is the limit really. Many people are making thousands of dollars on every flip. Some are earning over $100,000 per year flipping blogs. Most likely you will earn anywhere from $50 to $1000 per flip depending on a number of factors including age of blog, current earnings, search engine rankings, niche, how much content it has, readers, traffic, etc…

How do I get started in blog flipping?

You already have a great start by being here at the Blog Flipping University. Read through the posts here for all the information you need to get started flipping blogs. You can also get a copy of my ebook the blog flipping insider if you want more step-by-step information.

Then it’s basically just a matter of buying or building a blog and putting it up for sale at the Flippa Marketplace or another similar site where you can buy and sell websites. You can also just flip blogs and sites you already own if you are willing to part with them.

Do you know of any blog flipping resources that will help me make money?

Yes, there are several blog flipping and site flipping resources that I recommend. Some are free and some you will have to pay for. Here they are:

- Blog Flipping Products – A few products that will teach you how to earn big money flipping blogs and websites.
- Host Gator – The best web hosting for blog flippers. Cheap, reliable, and you can host as many blogs as you want on one account.
- GoDaddy Domains – A very popular domain registrar. Most people buying your blogs will already have an account with them so it will be easy to transfer the domain.
- Flippa – The best place to sell your blogs. Most blog flippers use this marketplace.
- Digital Point – You can buy sites and blogs pretty cheap here, fix them up, and sell them on Sitepoint.
- Website value calculators – Cubestat, dnScoop, CyberWyre, Your Website Value – They aren’t usually even close to being accurate but they can at least give you some idea of the possible value of your blog before selling it.

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Blog flipping is one of the hottest ways to make money online right now and it’s also one of the most discussed topics in the internet marketing world. It seems like just about everyone is either making money from blog flipping or they are at least talking about it on their blogs, forums, and sites.

The reason blog flipping is so popular is simply because it’s a great way to quickly make money online and you can do it over and over again. In one day you can easily start a blog, write up some good content for it, upload a fancy theme and some plug-ins, and put it up for sale in the Sitepoint Marketplace. You can find brand new blogs selling for a couple hundred dollars or more all the time there.

If you really need to make money fast and you already own a blog you can put it up for sale and earn a nice profit on it right now. If it’s a popular blog with an established following, good traffic, and existing income you should be able to sell it for quite a bit of profit. If you don’t already have a blog to sell you can buy one cheaply, make some improvements and resell it, or you can easily start a new one using WordPress and do what I said in the previous paragraph.

If you are building a new blog to sell it’s a good idea to check out the marketplace first to see what kinds of blogs are getting the highest bids and build your blog around the same or similar niche. I suggest starting your minimum bid really low to get the bidding started and set your reserve at the lowest amount you are willing to take so you don’t have to sell if the bids never get very high. If you are trying to make money fast you should set your Buy It Now (BIN) price low so you can sell it quickly, otherwise I suggest setting it higher than you think the blog is worth. That way if someone decides to use the BIN option you make even more from the sale than you planned.

That, my friend, is how you can make $250 or more today by flipping a blog. Making money online flipping blogs really isn’t a difficult process and it’s something almost anyone can do as long as you have access to the internet and a little blogging knowledge.

Here is the second half for all of you website flipping junkies looking to build a back office. If you’d like to read part 1 of Your website empire setup for free? first, click the link.

Now that you have your computer’s basic operating system all figured out, the next great piece of software you’ll need to complete your desktop computer setup is also free. Open Office is a fantastic open source project backed by Sun Microsystems. It does around 90% plus of what Microsoft Office (MO) does, but for free! And I mean 90%++. Unless you need something very unique, Open Office is the perfect program for all of your word processing needs. And like MSO, it also has a spreadsheet for all of your data, a dictionary, Presentation which is the equivalent of a Power Point program, and the Evolution mail client that is as good as Outlook or better!

Again, this program is very easy to download, install and use on any computer. It is supported by all operating systems including Windows, Mac and Linux. It even comes in a slew of foreign languages from Chinese to German. Why anyone buys MSO anymore is truly beyond my understanding.

So with all of the above we have our computer set up with an operating system, maybe even our own server to host our sites on, plus a bunch of other miscellaneous tools to create and transfer our HTML sites with. Now how about a great free browser that not only browses the web safely and efficiently, but also helps us do our jobs well.

Say hello to Firefox. Firefox for me is the ultimate browser. And while it isn’t perfect, it sure is the most stable, secure and helpful for our needs out there today. That is why I recommend it as the first one to be installed on your computer. It comes as the default browser with Ubuntu Linux. If you are building your own sites, I also recommend you install a number of browsers including Windows ??, Opera and Chrome. That way you can see what others would see when viewing your new sites.

There are a lot of great add-ons for Firefox, and to try and list them all here would make this article too long. So just Google Firefox add-ons and you’ll find a bunch of people that can explain each one in detail far better than I ever could.

In closing, if you use all of the software I mentioned above, you should have a great, stable, secure and best of all free desktop to run your website and blog flipping business from. Maybe even your own free server. And remember, you don’t need the newest or most expensive hardware. Use what is already available to you until you begin making money. Or until you know you will stick with flipping. There is just no need to pay for anything in the beginning. Use your cash for buying great keyword laden domain names or link juice for your sites.

So good luck and let me know what you think about this article. Do you have something to share? Please comment below or post in our forums. Anything you can add to help our community is fantastic and appreciated. And don’t forget about out opt in list so you can get our announcements first!

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