Making Money with a Blog
Blogging has become a popular and highly effective way to make money online and provide information to people on a subject that you are passionate about discussing. Starting a blog is a fairly easy process; however, making money from a blog takes some planning, patience, and hard work.
The first thing needed to start a profitable blog is a good subject matter, also known as a good niche. Blogs that do not have a single theme tend to fail because they do not often attract a loyal following of like-minded individuals or high search engine rankings for various keywords within a niche. The best subject matter to start a blog with is something you are experienced with and have some knowledge about. Everyone has a talent so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a blog topic. The blog subject can be a hobby, something you love to do, or even something you are learning about currently. For example, a new mom could write about her experiences learning how to be a parent.
One you have your subject then you need to find a good blog host. For beginners a free blog may be the best way to go. Two that are easy to use and start with are blogger.com and wordpress.com although I prefer blogger because it’s run by Google, super easy to use, can be easily dropped if your niche doesn’t work out, and many internet marketers like to use it.
Once you are set up with a blog provider and you have your niche picked, it is time to start writing. For an popular blog, it is recommend that you post a minimum of three times a week, but the most important thing you can do is build lots of inbound links to the blog to increase rankings, traffic and earnings.
Now, if the content is flowing and you are starting to get a good following, it is time to monetize your blog. Making money blogging entails a variety of things. The three most popular revenue streams are adsense, affiliate marketing, and selling advertising.
Affiliate links are a form of advertising within your blog. This is done in two ways, through a banner ad or direct links from words in the text of your blog. Adsense is a Google advertising product that is code inserted into your blog allowing Google to link websites into your blog based upon the content and theme of the blog. Clickbank and Commission Junction are two of the most popular affiliate companies on the web today. Their client lists include many popular retailers.
Making money blogging is easy in terms of the technology used and income streams available. Anyone who feels comfortable in front of a computer writing about a certain topic should have no problem developing a good blog. The keys to making money blogging are picking a profitable niche, providing quality content, and building enough backlinks to get high search engine rankings.
Put it all together an you will have yourself a profitable blog. You can then collect the money monthly or flip your blog for a large one time profit.
I Made $48,000 In Two Days Flipping a Website!
Earlier this year I sold a website on Sitepoint (flippa) and the listing was only up for 2 days before I got the “Buy It Now” bid of $48,000 – which ended the auction and sold the site!
In addition to that I received a private bid of $60,000 for the same site from a very well known and respected internet marketing guru. However, I had already started the transaction with the original buyer and I am not someone who backs out on a deal just because I can get more money from someone else.
Okay, so I admit the subject of this post is a little misleading because it took me a lot longer than two days to build up that site to the point of being worth that much money. However, it shows that you can make a lot of money selling websites.
Take the time and put in the effort to build a website or blog up to the point where it is getting good traffic on autopilot and consistently bringing in a solid monthly income. If you are willing to do that, you can sell it for THOUSANDS of dollars.
Most people say they would never sell a site that they had built up to the point of getting great traffic and consistently high earnings. I used to say the same thing. However, that nice lump sum of money is great for funding new projects, buying more sites, paying off debts, taking vacations, or whatever else you want to do with it.
There’s no doubt that you can make money flipping blogs & websites so if you are looking for an extra income stream, this is a great way to do it. What could you do with an extra $48,000 or more right now? Think about it!
Flippa is Now Officially the New Sitepoint Marketplace
If you have ever done a site flip or have ever read information about site flipping then I am sure you know about the Sitepoint Marketplace. It’s one of the most popular places to buy and sell websites. In fact, it has become so popular that they had to create an entirely new website just for the marketplace.
The Sitepoint Marketplace is now Flippa.com and it’s pretty darn cool if you ask me! They seem to have kept all of the features from the old marketplace and added several more. What I really like is that they transferred all accounts over to this new site so nobody lost their feedback, listings, verification, or anything else.
There’s no doubt that “Flippa” is the place to be if you want to make money with site flipping, blog flipping, domain flipping, or if you are just trying to buy or sell a website. It’s got everything the old Sitepoint Marketplace had and more.
I suggest you browse around and get a feel for everything before you try to buy or sell a website (or blog). Here is the link again: Flippa – Buy and Sell Websites
How to Make $250 for Free by Flipping a Website
There are a lot of people getting into buying and selling websites these days because site flipping is such a hot topic right now and a great way to make money online. Sometimes there are people who are trying to sell a website or blog and for whatever reason they need or want someone else to do it for them.
There are many reasons why a person would need help selling their website or blog…
- Maybe they aren’t very good at writing up an auction that will sell, or they have never done it before so they don’t even know where to start.
- They might need money really bad and must sell their site now but they are new to site flipping and haven’t built up a reputation yet, so they want help from someone who has.
- It could also be that they simply don’t have time and are willing to pay someone a percentage to just do it for them.
…Or maybe they have another reason for needing help with their site flip.
Whatever the reason is, you can step in and sell it for them for some very easy money!
I recently sold a website for an online business acquaintance of mine because he needed the money fast and thought that I could sell it much faster than he could and get more money for it. He agreed to pay me 10% of whatever the site sold for. I calculated the value of the site being around $2500 so that’s what we decided to set the Buy It Now (BIN) at. Within two days we got a BIN bid and the site was sold.
The site owner handled the domain transfer, site transfer, answered all the questions, and everything else. He even paid the Sitepoint fees for listing the auction. All I did was write up the auction listing and sell the site. Although I did offer to handle the transferring of the domain and site files and would have done it, but he did it himself instead.
He sent me the $250 and it was done. That was about the easiest money I’ve ever made! And it was completely free money other than the hour or so I spent writing and listing the auction.
Flipping websites is a fairly easy way to make money online itself but this was even easier because I didn’t have to buy or build the site, or do much else.
There are plenty of people out there just waiting for someone like you to help them with their site flip or blog flip. Go make some easy money!
Work Online from Home Buying and Selling Websites
One of the fastest growing ways to make money online is by buying and selling websites, also known as website flipping or blog flipping. There are many ways to work online from home but flipping websites has a certain appeal to entrepreneurs because it is exciting and the profit margin can be huge.
What is Website Flipping?
It’s similar to flipping houses or other real-estate in the offline world, except it is done online with “virtual real-estate” which is just a fancy way of saying websites. The website flipping process is pretty straightforward; you buy a site that can be fixed up for a low price, make improvements to the design, increase the traffic and earnings, then sell it for a profit. You can also start a new site and build it up before selling for a nice profit.
What Types of Websites Should I Buy and Sell?
If you are going to buy and sell websites to flip instead of building them yourself for flipping, there are basically two types you can get depending on how much money you have to start, whether you have time to work on them, and your interests…
1. Buy a new “startup” website.
Most people start with this when they are first getting into site flipping because it is the cheaper and less risky option. It’s also a good way to learn the process of buying and selling websites if you have never done it before. Somebody will have registered the domain and set up the site, there might be a little traffic and earnings, but usually not much. You buy it and “fix it up” by adding content, building traffic, monetizing it, etc… If you put enough time and effort into it you should be able to sell it for a substantial profit within a few months to a year or so.
There are two main dangers with startup sites. One is that they might not be original so a lot of other people have the exact same or similar sites and some of them will be better at marketing it than you are. It is best to either buy a site with original content, or edit the content after you buy it so that your site is unique.
The other danger is that you may end up not doing anything with it. Since it didn’t cost you very much money you might not be as fired up to develop it. It will sit on the internet for a year or two costing you money for hosting and bringing in no income. If you are not going to develop it then you shouldn’t buy a new startup site… see the next section for more on that.
2. Buy an established site that has existing traffic and is making money.
An established site will cost you more to buy but you won’t have to do as much work because it should already have traffic and income coming in. If the traffic is generated from search engines you should be able to let it run on autopilot while you spend time doing other things to increase its value.
Most established sites are priced for sale on the basis of their current income, with the price usually being between 10 and 24 times the monthly income. Some sites make a lot of money or get a lot of traffic (or both) and will be relatively expensive. However, a site that has been online for a year or two without much traffic and a low monthly income can be bought for pretty cheap.
What you get basically depends on how much money you have to spend, how much time you have to invest, and how comfortable you are with technology. A site that is based around online games is probably going to require some programming knowledge while a content site made up of articles and blog posts on a popular subject will be much easier to maintain.
One of the great things about this way of making money online is that if you buy a site at the price of 10 months income, you should make your money back in less than a year and then you can sell the site and make even more profit. So, you will have doubled or tripled your money in a year without doing much of anything. This is a much better rate of return than you will get on just about any other investment that you can do.
If you do enough extra work on it, you can increase the traffic and income during that year, and then flip it for 12-24 times your increased income. You can earn your money back many times over that way.
Things to Keep in Mind While Considering a Site Purchase…
You do need to do your due diligence when you are buying a site. Keep in mind that income and traffic stats can be faked or inflated, even if they are images. Most people won’t let you log into their accounts to check the information for yourself, so you need to look for other indicators of whether the stats are likely to be true or not.
One thing you can do is check some of the main keywords of the site to see where it ranks in Google and other search engines. You can ask what keywords the site owner has optimized the site for, or you can guess from the title tag and headings on the home page. But keep in mind that a little traffic may come in from hundreds of different keywords that all combine to create a lot of traffic, and sometimes a lot of traffic will come in from a keyword that the site is ranking for completely by chance.
You can also look through the recent posts on blogs to see if they have a lot of comments, and check how many RSS readers it has. Those can both be a good indicator of traffic. If the site has a forum, is it lively? Be cautious if there were suddenly a lot of forum posts, blog comments, or a sharp increase in readers in a very short time just before the site went on sale. This may mean the site owner has done a bunch of stuff to make the site look more popular than it really is.
Some other things to check are how many backlinks the sites has, it’s Alexa rankings, how many pages it has indexed in Google, what the Page Rank (PR) is, and whether or not the traffic and income information the seller gave is relative to what other sites with similar stats get.
You’ll have to do some learning before you can make money buying and selling websites but you will pick it up as you get more experience. So, even if you have a lot of money to spend on sites, it is probably best not to buy a very expensive site when you first venture into website flipping. It’s better to buy several cheaper startup sites when you are first getting going so you can get some experience while you work towards your goal of being able to work online from home flipping websites.
