At a Nick Gray, 2 Hour Cocktail Party author, networking event in Austin, TX, I met a handful of extremely accomplished and interesting people.

One was David Holmes of Red View Ventures, an entrepreneur who has bought, scaled and sold a handful of ecommerce businesses.

David Holmes has been in the Amazon space for more than 7 years and has successfully exited 2 Amazon-based businesses.

In 2020, he acquired an existing Amazon FBA business, grew it 500%, and ultimately sold it to a private buyer in 2022. His work has been featured on WebAcquisitions.com, ImportDojo, and other industry publications.

Now, he helps premium DTC brands take advantage of the full potential of Amazon through his unique launch and scale strategies.

Thinking it could be fun to buy, scale and flip an Amazon FBA site?

I met David Holmes, an entrepreneur who has flipped 6 Ecommerce sites, at a neighborhood networking event in Austin, TX last week.

I got to ask him a bunch of questions. Today we’ll dive into his specific tips to successfully scale and sell an Amazon FBA business.

He’s the best I’ve met at this, so you’re in for a treat if scaling or flipping an ecommerce business interests you.

Has anyone read entrepreneur Nick Gray’s book The 2 Hour Cocktail Party?

I haven’t read the book, yet.. but I want to! I went to a 32 person event the author hosted at Support Ninja founder Cody McClain’s house in my neighborhood in Austin, TX last week and it felt professionally hosted.

It was one of the best events I have been to, and chock full of accomplished, bright, entrepreneurs.

The event is where I met David, an entrepreneur who scales Amazon FBA sites full-time.

How has David sold 6 Ecommerce sites?

David was kind enough to give me some insight into FBA site flipping over coffee – Sharing his tips with you all below as I’ve never personally bought or scaled an Amazon site before.

Hoping to buy or scale your own ecomm business?

If you currently own an ecommerce site, or are interested to buy one, he can help you scale it. David runs an agency now and scales Ecommerce businesses with a profit-share model.

He knows what he’s doing. He helped one Amazon site go from $220,000/month to $2,400,000/month in under 6 months.

Let’s dive into David’s specific tips and experience below:

How did you first get into website investing and flipping?

I started my own content site in 2014 while I was in college. I quickly got it to $1,000/month which was a lot of money to me at the time. When I learned, I could sell it for $20,000+, I was astounded. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked.

What were you doing before you made the switch?

I used to be a mechanical engineer working in engineering consulting. I worked in accident reconstruction – where I would help reconstruct car crashes for civil litigation.

How many years have you been full-time buying and flipping websites?

I’ve been full time for 3 years now. In January 2020, I took the leap and I haven’t stopped since.

Is it more or less time-consuming than when you had a full-time job?

This isn’t what a lot of people want to hear but it’s definitely more time-consuming than a full-time job. You can’t just clock out at 5 pm. You’re responsible for every aspect of your business.

What do you prefer about having your own business vs working for someone else?

The freedom and the opportunity. I’ve been able to travel extensively while running my own business because I’m not tied down to a location.

Tell us about the first site (or last site etc you can choose one) you purchased. What niche was it? What type of site was it?

The last site I purchased was an Amazon FBA business in the skateboard niche.

Where did you buy it?

I purchased it off of Flippa in December 2019.

What stood out to you that made you want to buy it? Were there any red flags?

I had prior experience in the niche and I knew the seller from a previous skateboarding content site that I ran. There were multiple red flags – revenue was declining, product quality was iffy at best, and there was low net profit.

What did you do to optimize it/increase traffic/revenue/profit?

I did 3 things primarily:

1. The business was manufacturing in the USA. I outsourced manufacturing to China – saving 45% on cost of goods sold and improving the product quality
2. I optimized the Amazon Ad strategy. By doing so, I was able to grow revenue quickly.
3. I optimized the Amazon listing. This helped increase conversion rate quickly and helped grow revenue.

With this 2 sided approach (grow revenue and cut costs), I was able to drastically increase the valuation of the business.

How much did you increase its value by the time you sold it?

From the initial acquisition price to the exit price, I increased the value by 5x in under 2 years. Including cashflow while operating the business, it was a 10x return on investment.

What tips do you have for people who want to buy a site and flip it, what should they look for?

Always look at the negatives first. There are always reasons you can think of to buy a site. You need to think of all of the reasons this deal could go bad. Protect your investment first and then look to grow it.

What are your tips for how they can optimize it and grow revenue?

For content sites, you want to look for easy wins first – switch the ad network (Adsense to Ezoic/Mediavine/AdThrive), add comparison tables, add interlinking between the articles.

For bigger wins, add more content, improve backlinks, and start growing pageviews.

Where did you find the buyer?

I found the buyer through Flippa.

Any tips for people looking to sell a site? How can they present it in the best light? When is a good time to sell?

If you’re looking to sell a site, sell while it is growing! It is incredibly difficult to sell a declining site – I can’t overstate this enough. It’s possible but it’s difficult. You want to sell while your site is growing or stable.

You also want to leave some easy wins for the buyer. This gives them confidence they can quickly see a return on investment.

Do you tend to sell sites when they are on an upward trajectory?

I try to but it’s difficult. What I like to do is grow the site as quickly as possible, maintain revenue for 3-6 months, and then sell it – while leaving opportunities for growth for the new buyer.

How much more of a multiple do you find can you sell for if you sell for if you sell it on an upward trajectory vs a downward?

Multiples obviously vary wildly based on niche and the exact site but generally a growing site can go for 3-4x seller’s discretionary earnings. If it’s declining, you’re looking at a 2 – 2.5x earnings multiple.

What are red flags people should watch out for when buying an Amazon ecommerce site?

Product quality and moat against competitors. Amazon has become fiercely competitive in the last 3 years. You want to truly understand how you’ll differentiate from competition and maintain a premium price point.

What are some red flags you saw before purchasing your own sites that you wish you had paid more attention to or that made your growth and flip journey harder?

I wish I had paid more attention to the product quality. There were some quality issues that I fixed but there were other issues inherent in the product. That held back growth.

How many sites have you purchased, grown and sold? Have you sold all the sites you bought?

I’ve purchased 4 sites and built 2 other sites from scratch. I’ve sold all of them now.

Have all your site purchases been successful flips? If not, can you explain what happened and why and the lessons you learned?

Not all of them have been successful. I bought 2 sites built off expired domains in the spirituality niche. I ended up selling them a year later and recouped ~80% of my initial investment.

Biggest lesson learned was time.

At the time of running those sites, I was also running an Amazon agency and my own Amazon brand. I didn’t have enough bandwidth to focus on the sites so I eventually just sold them off.

Can you tell us more about what you are doing right now? What is your business?

I help e-commerce brands launch and scale on Amazon through my agency: https://www.redviewventures.com/

What is the specific service(s) you provide for companies? Does it involve just running their Amazon ads or do you offer other services / does it involve a more comprehensive growth plan or multiple services?

I perform full Amazon channel management – including listing creation, launch strategy, Amazon Ad strategy, scaling, and optimization. My goal is to take 90% of Amazon off of your hands.

Do you offer multiple packages or do you have a single service package offering? If multiple, what are the multiple offerings and who should choose each one?

What types of companies do you work with?

I work with e-commerce companies primarily doing $200k+ in annual revenue that want to expand to Amazon. If they’re not on Amazon, we’ll help them launch their products on Amazon. If they’re already on Amazon, we’ll help them scale to become category leaders.

Do you work with all niches as long as they are Amazon sites?

I only work with companies selling physical products.

How soon do you find companies experience revenue/profit growth after starting working with you?

Typically 3 months is the sweet spot to see good traction and revenue growth.

What is the most monthly revenue growth, and profit growth, a company has seen while working with you and how long did it take to get there?

I helped one e-commerce company go from doing $220,000/month to $2,400,000/month on Amazon in under 6 months. I wrote a case study about it here.

What made that company such a perfect fit to grow with your help?

They had the capital and cash conversion cycle to grow quickly. For other brands, we’ve been able to scale but have been limited on the inventory side.

Where can someone follow you on social media?

Connect with David on Twitter and Linkedin

Where can someone reach out to talk more if they have questions about your company or working with you?

david@redviewmanagement.com

If a Her.CEO reader is buying an Amazon site and wants to work with you, are you interested in running the ad portion for a percentage of revenue share? If yes I can let readers know.

Yes, I predominately work on a performance/revenue share basis.

Remember that website for sale last week?

Remember the matrixlab-examples.com website that a Her.CEO reader listed for sale last week?

Many of you were interested in purchasing the website, and a great buyer closed on the site this Wednesday.

The site had a solid monthly 18,193 last 30 days traffic, and 29 Ahrefs DA.

It was also severely under-monetized with only one revenue source, Adsense, which the valuation was based on, even though in the past the owner had made money off of teaching services and even selling a few guest posts, so it had a lot of potential.

The site ended up selling over-asking price, and both the buyer and seller were very happy with how the sale turned out.

Looking to sell your own website?

If any of you have a website you are looking to sell, you can send me an email at stacycaprio@gmail.com and I am happy to talk more to see if there is anything I can do to help.

How do you find a good website deal?

One of the Her.CEO site readers was interested if this specific site would sell because it was priced at a multiple a bit higher than an Adsense site would generally sell at.

At first I was surprised by this question simply because the site had tons of traffic, a very solid DA and age, and was severely under-monetized.

Then I realized that this was a way I could share with you guys to identify undervalued websites so you could find sites at a great deal. Ones that you can easily increase revenue on.

Which is better, profit or traffic?

Many people value profit on a site more than traffic. Sure, profit is nice, but you have to pay a multiple on profit, not traffic. Websites in today’s market are valued at a multiple of monthly profit, not traffic, and traffic is just as valuable as profit.

Traffic is arguably more valuable than profit, since you can always monetize traffic. You can monetize it in layers too, which is what makes it so valuable.

Monetize the site in layers

You can put ads on in layers. You can put products and services on top of that. You can sell sponsorships and email sponsorships and sponsored shout-outs. You can get even more creative and add layers on top of that.

Traffic is the baseline for profit. It’s a foundation for profit. So the fact that websites are valued based on profit and not traffic gives you guys a loophole. It gives anyone a loophole to get an undervalued site.

Find a site that has a ton of traffic and low profit. Then add layers of monetization to that site to quickly improve profit.

That is one way to find and buy an undervalued site and diamond in the rough, just like the site sold in my last email arguably was.

My favorite way to bump up a site’s revenue

The site sold in the last email is a great example of a site where you can add in more monetization methods to quickly increase revenue because it already has a ton of traffic. For example:

•  Adding in your own or outsourced Math tutoring or teaching services
• Adding in Math courses or ebooks, you could put your own or affiliate links
• Selling sponsored posts or links on the site, the old owner did this a bit in the past and found it successful but didn’t include this in his revenue or in the multiple since it was further in the past
• Selling banner ads to other Math teaching companies etc, since the site already has tens of thousands in traffic a month

How to quickly increase revenue on a site with traffic:

Buy an undervalued site by looking for one with lots of traffic but low profit

One of my favorite things to look for in any site I buy is, how can i increase the revenue here quickly, with the traffic we already have?

That’s why I love switching ad networks or adding in new ads to quickly increase revenue. Because it’s not a bet on if you can increase traffic with SEO or social media.

Less risk when you use the traffic you already have

It’s simply taking what you already have and squeezing more juice out of it. It’s less risky if you know the traffic you already have can be monetized in more ways or better ways than if you’re counting on scaling the traffic to the moon or making some bigger change.

You still need a long-term SEO plan

Of course, long-term, looking to scale traffic and actually grow the site is usually the best way to very significantly increase revenue over-time, but to take away the most risk, I’ve found it best to look for very high-traffic sites that are severely under-monetized.

Traffic & Attention are Valuable

The key thing to note here is if a website, or anything for that matter, has a lot of traffic and eyeballs on it, but little to no revenue, is that it is still valuable. Traffic and attention are very valuable and you can always monetize traffic.

Profit is Valuable, but so is Traffic

It is much easier to take a site with tons of traffic, and put more ads on it or different ads, or simply add in your own extra layers of monetization such as adding in your own products or services to sell on the site, and then see revenue increase significantly, than it is to take a site with little to no traffic, even if it has a high DA, and grow its traffic and revenue that way.

Find an under-valued site by looking for one with traffic and low revenue

The key point here is I’ve found from experience that a site with traffic is often just as valuable, or more valuable as a site with revenue.

The only difference is that a site with revenue will cost you more to purchase, since websites are valued at a multiple of monthly profit, not monthly traffic.

Leave a comment and let me know if you’ve ever bought a site with tons of traffic and then added more monetization methods, I’m interested to know if anyone else has and how they did it!

As a reader of the Her.CEO blog, you’re probably aware of the power of an affiliate business in starting off as an entrepreneur.

This post is an Empire Flippers case study from a seller who bought an Empire Flippers site and flipped it for a profit. The website buyer bought the site, optimized it, and then sold it for $136,773, getting to keep $116,257 in their pocket after transaction fees. In total, the seller made a total of $64,001 profit on the site from time of purchase to time of sale 18 months later. 

This case study walks you through exactly how the seller successfully bought, grew and flipped their website profitably, and includes some great insights that will help serve as a roadmap for anyone interested in learning more about how to successfully flip sites.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize a website and create a hands-off source of income. Further down the road, you might even think about selling your site for a huge sum of money.

But what if the hidden value of an affiliate business lies in your skillset instead of the site itself?

Flipping sites can become a profitable career, even more so than building a business from scratch! Flipping online businesses for a living is becoming a growing industry. In the Empire Flippers marketplace, we see many sellers return as buyers, and they sell their acquisition for a profit in a year or so.

Once you’ve planned your exit strategy, you could use the capital windfall to buy a house without a mortgage, put the money toward your children’s college funds, or even buy a smaller affiliate business with the intention of improving it and selling it for a profit.

That’s exactly what one seller did in our marketplace: they bought an affiliate business and sold it for over $120,000 in profit after 1.5 years of improvement.

They achieved this success by following two simple steps:

• Creating a due diligence checklist and sticking to it.
• Figuring out a sustainable growth strategy that can be applied again and again.

We’ll break down how this seller achieved that in this case study, and hopefully you’ll have a better idea of what flipping online businesses looks like.

The Timeline

• Niche: Advertising, hobbies, lifestyle
• Site Created: May 2014
• Site Acquired: April 2017 for $52,256
• Monetization: Amazon Associates
• Total earnings (April 2017–October 2018): $60,000
• Completed Empire Flippers Application: October 6, 2018
• Listed on marketplace: October 14, 2018 for $136,773
• Agreed sale price: October 25, 2018 for $136,773
• Transaction completed: November 11, 2018. Net payout after broker’s commission: $116,257
• Total site profit: $124,750

Over the course of 18 months, this seller optimized the site and increased its overall earnings. After being listed for sale in the marketplace for only 11 days, it sold for its listing price in an all-cash offer.

Let’s break down the earnings. The site was bought for $52,256, and sold for $136,773. After the commission fee, the seller received $116,257. The seller made a profit of $64,001 from the initial purchase.

Keep in mind that the profit isn’t just the sales price. The seller received a monthly profit generated by the business from Amazon Affiliate commissions, which totaled around $60,000 during this time. In sum, the seller walked away with over $120,000.

Now that we know the details of the sale, let’s look at the seller’s strategy in buying the right asset to flip.

Fine-Tuning Due Diligence to Streamline Your Search

The seller’s main purchase criteria involved the following four points:

• An evergreen niche: The site should be as evergreen as possible, focusing on topics in the niche that will be relevant. 
• A great backlink profile: A spammy backlink profile could lead to a Google algorithm penalty. Some buyers also avoid PBNs and any blackhat SEO tactics. Look for high-quality backlinks from domains with high DR and in a relevant niche.
• A niche with a high potential ceiling: For this seller, potential was measured by how many keywords the site was already ranking for. In other words, they considered the search volume of the top keywords.
• Upward traffic trends: The seller focused on acquiring sites that had a positive traffic trend. Reading traffic was similar to reading stock charts.

These are some great starting points to consider when creating your own due diligence checklist. However, keep in mind that this seller has been flipping online businesses for a while, so their criteria will likely be very different from what you’d include. If you need help in deciding what criteria to use, download this free due diligence checklist to make your search easier.

Once you’ve decided on your checklist, this will help you eliminate unqualified businesses from your search, so you can spend more time focusing on the best available options.

In addition to the above criteria, you might consider the age of the business as a qualifying measure. While the site in the case study was created in May 2014, the seller acquired it nearly three years after it was started. This period of time is useful because it gives you enough time to grow a domain’s authority, which makes it easier to rank for keywords.

You might consider simplifying the criteria of positive trends to a minimum traffic measure, such as 10,000 monthly views. If you’re buying a site for the first time and you’re not confident about identifying trends, these types of stats can be easier to visualize to help you decide if a business might be a good acquisition.

Growth Strategy

The overall flow of the growth strategy in the case study was to identify the site’s strengths, improve them, and, once performance had improved, expand the business further.

The seller’s growth strategy can be broken down into three steps:

• Identify the top 5 to 10 highest earning pages.
• Optimize these top pages for on-page and off-page SEO.
• Create new content sections.

The first step included adding a unique affiliate link to each page so that they could monitor how much revenue each page brought in. From there, they could see the best-performing pages or articles and optimize the content. Another way you can check performance is by looking at your web analytics software. Google Analytics is a top choice for many bloggers, with Clicky being a popular alternative.

However, analytics aren’t as accurate as setting up unique affiliate IDs when measuring revenue performance. Check out this in-depth guide on how to create affiliate links if you want to follow the above strategy.

Once the seller identified the top-performing pages, they began optimizing them for on-page and off-page SEO to supercharge their potential.

On-page optimization ensures that you’re capturing all the relevant keywords from the parent keyword and placing them in appropriate places and with enough volume on each page. On the other hand, off-page SEO is more nuanced and requires a different approach, since this depends on a site’s backlink profile.

When considering manual outreach, many bloggers turn to guest posting for sites in shoulder niches or posting on forums while providing contextual links. These efforts require patience and steady output if you’re considering doing these on your own.

If you don’t have time for manual outreach, you could hire an agency to create guest posts for you so you can focus on securing opportunities and providing briefs.

The final step of the growth plan was to monitor the pages the seller improved. After seeing the site’s overall performance, new content sections were created in order to target new keywords. 

Finding new keywords to start ranking doesn’t mean you need to go after all the competitive ones with high search volumes. From a search engine’s perspective, targeting low-competition keywords with a small search volume can build the site’s overall domain ranking and authority, especially if those articles appear in the first few search results for a specific keyword.

The Exit

Once the site reached a certain level of performance, the seller decided that it was time to sell their investment. After 17 months of improvement and optimization, the seller listed the affiliate business in our marketplace.

It was listed at $136,773, and after 11 days, an all-cash offer was made. With low 6-figure deals, it’s more common to see offers with cash up-front, as buyers are able to raise the capital. Deal structuring can come into play to mitigate the buyer’s risk, but sellers can also use these earnouts in their favor to negotiate a higher overall sales price to compensate for receiving a delayed payout.

All deal structures are different, and although this case study didn’t involve one, it’s worth bearing in mind when you decide to exit your business.

Flipping – a Full Time Career?

We hope this step-by-step guide on how a seller managed to turn an initial $50,000 investment in an affiliate business into more than $120,000 profit has been useful to you. 

If you have capital and skills, flipping online businesses could be a great career opportunity. Instead of sticking with one or a few businesses, you could put the skills and experience you’ve gathered into improving failing or immature businesses and selling them for a profit.

The types of assets you flip depend on your strategy. However, it’s recommended that when you begin, you stick with a single type of monetization in the same type of niche.

Once you’ve created a system for choosing businesses that are the right fit for you and a way to optimize them, you’ve got processes to trust every time. All that’s left to do is decide where you want to buy and sell your online businesses when it’s time to flip the assets.

Where to Buy or Sell Businesses

If you’re selling or buying an affiliate business for the first time, we recommend that you use a broker’s service instead of going with a private sale.

A private sale has no protection for either party, and you’re depending on the honesty of the other party. If you’re buying, there’s no real way to tell if a business actually performs as advertised, or if the traffic and revenue figures have been doctored just to make the business look great.

If you’re selling through a private sale, you’ve got no way to protect yourself from tire kickers who will constantly present low-ball offers without any serious buying intent. Not to mention, there’s little protection in the final step when the funds are wired to your account.

When you use a broker, there are well-established processes in the service that will ensure that the deal goes as smoothly as possible. A reputable broker will ensure impartial service for everyone involved, since it’s the broker’s reputation on the line if they allow a bad actor into the system.

Which broker you should choose is harder to say. Stacy gives her own account of what worked and what didn’t, so make sure you check it out here.

In the meantime, if you own an online business, think about your exit strategy. You could gain a large amount of money in a short amount of time, and you can use that money to accelerate the growth of another project you’ve been working on. You could even start your own journey of flipping digital assets for tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Start your own flipping journey by registering for free and start browsing today for the right deal that could be waiting for you.

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This post is a case study documented by Vinnie Wong. 

Vinnie Wong is a Content Specialist at Empire Flippers. Originally from the UK and now residing in Malaysia, he loves everything related to online businesses. When he’s not neck deep with work, he’s running after his toddler or trying to relive the glory days by injuring himself while playing soccer.

His first exit was in 2010.

Since then, he has done 175 website flips with multiple 6-figure exits. His free newsletter, The Website Flip, covers case studies on his portfolio of sites, website flipping guides, and exclusive websites for sale.

I had the pleasure to speak with Mushfiq and learn how he recently bought a website making $300 a month and has grown it to make $3,000 a month in under a year and a half. He plans to keep growing the site and flip it soon, so keep an eye out for when it comes on the market!

Mushfiq explains how and why he bought the site, what he paid, how he’s grown the site. This is a great case study anyone looking to buy, grow and flip a site will enjoy and learn a lot from.

Mushfiq explains what he’s done so far, and his specific case study, so he will take it from here:

Buying, growing, and selling websites is what I have been doing since 2008. Since then, I’ve successfully done 175+ website flips with multiple six-figure exits. 

This case study will reveal how I purchased a site for $23,000 at a 76X monthly multiple (6.33X annually) earning just around $300/mo. I reveal what I did to grow the site to what it’s earning today around $3,000 on average to $6,000 in peak months.

Let’s get into it!

The Website I Purchased

I use Flippa to find sites created by “hobby bloggers”. These are sites that the individual created out of passion, wrote a lot of content, but hit a wall when trying to figure out how to monetize it. This is because the bloggers are niche experts but not experts in SEO, monetization, and/or conversion rate optimization (CRO).

These types of sites are excellent acquisition targets for niche website investors. Let’s get into the stats.

Acquisition Statistics

• The site is in the overall outdoor niche
• Acquired on March 2020, paid $23,000 to the previous owner (76x avg earnings)
• The site was averaging $300/mo via Amazon Associates only
• Domain live since 2010
• DR 48 according to Ahrefs
• Around 500 articles written by experts
• 181,000 Facebook followers and an email list of 3400
• Multiple natural backlinks from high authority general websites (e.g., CNN, Forbes) as well as authority websites in the same niche

Why Did I Purchase?

• I saw this as a strong authority site built by hobbyists that was poorly monetized
• Saw multiple easy wins to almost immediately 10x earnings (which was done by end of April 2020 just one month after purchase)
• Extremely strong backlinks all gained naturally
• Very high per visitor revenue niche when properly monetized
• Product focused niche with professional reviews
• Very recession-friendly topic

After performing detailed website due diligence, I asked the seller what their asking price was and closed the deal via a Buy It Now on Flippa. 

Now, let’s get into why I paid such a high multiple with the easy-win growth tactics.

How I 10X Growth with 5 Major Easy Wins

When I acquire sites, I like to map out the easy wins available on the site before purchasing them. This allows me to justify overpaying for the site to take it off-market.

Note that this is a skill set I’ve developed over many years by buying and selling hundreds of sites.

Here are the growth wins that I implemented within the first month after purchasing the site.

1. Add Custom Comparison Tables 

I knew adding a custom comparison table is a fast way to put information readers want right by a “check price” button they are very likely to click. The most successful Amazon affiliate sites use customized comparison tables. For example, Wirecutter is a good example of this.

This allowed me to display high commission relevant products in a way that was eye-catching, helpful, and appealing. This increases both the click-through rate as well as the number of sales made.

This is what I did:

• Analyzed Google Analytics to find the top 20 pages getting the majority of the traffic
• Analyzed the top products being sold on each page
• Created a dedicated comparison table for each page with 3 product recommendations

Here is an example of the comparison table I created for all of my top traffic pages:

2. Implemented New Affiliate Programs

It’s no secret Amazon doesn’t generally give the best terms to affiliates.

Many other affiliate programs have much higher affiliate rates and longer-lasting cookies to track sales. There is also a small but growing group of consumers who simply won’t buy from Amazon.

By having an alternative check price button I increased overall conversions as well as affiliate sales from programs that paid a far higher percentage than Amazon did.

I added relevant brands from AvantLink, ShareASale, and more with the comparison tables. This drastically increased both the number of total sales and the number of high percentage affiliate sales.

Here is an example of the multi-affiliate comparison table:

3. Add Contextual Affiliate Links to Amazon

I’m a huge fan of AAWP. This is simply the best WordPress plugin for adding Amazon links.

The flexibility of AAWP allows me to replace old Amazon links from the previous owner and display my Amazon affiliate links quickly and effectively however I want them presented.

The previous site owner did not add links to products within the content. I manually added links throughout the content. 

This increases the click-through rate because as readers read the content, they are enticed to click on links instead of manually finding the call-to-action buttons or comparison tables. 

Our job as site owners is to make the user experience as streamlined as possible. 

4. Added Display Advertisements

Since there were no display ads on the site, adding display ads was one of the clearest ways to increase revenue on the site.

I applied to Mediavine and AdThrive but the site was rejected due to the topic. Because of this, I went with NeworMedia for general display ads, and LockerDome, a specialized display ad network. 

I treat display ads as residual income. So I generally get a low ad RPM because I won’t interfere with the user experience to receive higher display ad rates. 

Video ads were added on the desktop via Ex.co to bring in another additional income stream. These are incredibly disruptive on mobile devices which is why I only allow them on desktop computers.

Even at low RPM rates, these display ads were new income to the site. Ramping up the traffic will only continue to grow the display ad income numbers.

5. Revamp Site Foundation

I saw multiple foundational issues with the site that could be improved immediately to help with both user experience and on-site SEO. 

First, I removed Elementor for GeneratePress Premium and GenerateBlocks. These are my preferred theme and customization tool options. They’re clean, flexible, and let me design the user experience I want visitors to have.

Next, I added the WP Rocket plugin for caching. This would help with load times and site speed.

Finally, I used Cloudways for hosting. I want web hosting that is fast, dependable, and that I don’t have to worry about.

These foundational changes mattered immensely when optimizing the site to run fast, smooth, and be SEO-friendly according to what Google wants to see. 

The Results

Now for the results! Here is the profit and loss of the website since March 2020. I’ve owned the site now for 14 full months as of May 2021. In blue are the revenues, and in red are the growth costs.

After acquiring the site in mid-March, I implemented the growth easy wins, and in the first full month in April 2020, the site earned $3,595.

I continued improving on the site as time went on and due to this being in the outdoor niche, the site received a seasonal uptick in revenues peaking at $7,536 in July 2020. 

One thing you will notice is that I invest heavily in growth. Growth includes new content, backlinks, virtual assistants, software, and more. 

When did I break even? Month 9!

Check out this chart that shows my cumulative profit every month since acquisition. The red line is my breakeven line of $23,000. Essentially when my cumulative profit surpasses the red line, I have fully recouped my cost of acquisition, and every dollar I earn is pure profit.

What’s next?

After owning the site for 14-months and in full growth mode, I am entering the maintenance phase of the website flip lifecycle.

Now, I am cutting down on a significant amount of content. At one point, I was publishing 50+ articles on the site. To maintain the site, I will be publishing 10-15 articles. 

Why am I cutting down? A few reasons:

• The content needs time to “marinate” in the Google SERPs. Giving some time for the content to rank will allow me to understand which articles need further optimization
• Build up reserves. By piling the profits, I can be ready for the new growth phase for this website
• Focus on other projects. I have a portfolio of sites so my other sites need my attention more than this one.

Will I flip this site?

Yes, I will flip this site at one point. I am a website flipper first. I prefer not to hold on to sites for a long time horizon. In approximately 12-15 months, I will plan for an exit on this site.

This is not because I do not believe in the site, it’s more about my personality. I like to grow businesses; not maintain them.

Wrap Up

Buying, growing, and selling niche sites is a great way to build up an income stream but also build up realizable equity in an asset.

While the passive income is nice to have, real wealth is created when sites are sold for 6-figure outcomes.

This site’s trailing 12-month average revenue is $4,840. At a 35X to 40X monthly multiple which is the approximate going rate these days, I can exit right now for $169,400 to $193,600.

Go out there, analyze some deals, and get going buying your first site!

First, this is not investing or financial advice. Anything you do is at your own risk and your own decision. This is simply an example of a mental model I use when I invest in websites. You can read and learn and start thinking about developing your own website investing and general investing mental model.

The VSOT method, also known as the Website Value Investing method, is a framework you can use to help determine if a website is a good buying opportunity and to scale growth and earn back your investment as quickly as possible.

This video goes through the VSOT method and explains how the different pillars came to be through my experiences. The article also goes through the method in-depth.

VSOT – Value Website Investing Method

The VSOT method is one way you can walk through a website purchase before making it to help determine if it makes sense for you.

The method allows you to look at the purchase from different angles to help set you up to buy an online business that can actually return money and profit month after month.

The first two sites I purchased I didn’t put through a rigorous method and ended up making poor investing decisions. That’s when I started thinking more carefully about how to fully vet sites and what makes a truly good website purchase.

This is when I started thinking about a mental framework to think about what makes a good site purchase, and started developing the VSOT mental model even though I didn’t think of it that way as an official method yet.

The second two sites I bought more than paid for my two mistakes as well as grew to the point where they paid for and pay for my current lifestyle, so its safe to say I learned a lot from my first and second mistake purchases but that I was able to parlay them into knowledge that has given me a great structure and method I use to make my successful website purchases that fund my lifestyle today.

The method I developed is called the VSOT value website investing method and I’ll go through each step below. It is designed to help you make good website purchases by buying sites that will earn your initial investment back so you can start earning profit from your website each month.

Verification

The first step in the VSOT method is verification:

First you need to verify all revenue and traffic sources explain how, so you know the site is being truthfully represented and its traffic and revenue and profit.

You’ll need to get access to all analytics and revenue and cost sources and it is best to get added as a primary or secondary user on each account, and screenshots and live video shares can also be supplements at this stage.

Source Evaluation

The next step is Source evaluation where you can determine where the traffic and revenue is coming from and how risky the number of channels are and the type of channels are.

Here is where you look at where the site’s traffic is coming from:

You can evaluate the traffic sources and look at how dependent is the site on a single traffic or revenue source. You want more than one traffic source and you want to fully understand how that traffic source works. You also want to understand how you can maintain and increase that traffic source once you own the site and how to add new sources into the current mix.

You’ll look at how diversified is the current traffic mix and revenue mix. If one affiliate program gives the site all its revenue, is there a risk of that going away and how can you prepare for this happening? Same with traffic sources, you need to think this all through and it can help to write this all out. This will be one way to flesh out the risk level.

Is traffic all from Google, or from a certain ad type, or from a specific social channel or an email list? This is the time to dive deep into all traffic sources and determine how healthy it is.

You’ll need to check what country and language the traffic is.

Ad providers pay more for US and UK traffic and English speaking traffic bc these countries are more affluent, and take the time to check if the traffic is high quality and staying for a long time on the site. If everyone is bouncing or not sticking around you’ll want to know.

It is important to know where all traffic and revenue is coming and going from, and one way to do this is to get out an excel sheet and list the following:

• List all traffic sources
• List all revenue sources
• List all expenses
• Do you know all the expenses?
• Are you dependent on a single affiliate network? Or a trend etc
• Are you dependent on a single back link or few back links or PBN or bad links? Link audit is important here too
• This is where you dive deep to find what could easily stop your traffic or revenue or profit so you have a clear understanding of the risks
• See how dependent your traffic And profit are on A single source this helps you evaluate risk and create a growth plan

Opportunity

The third step in the VSOT method is O for Opportunity
Opportunity means looking at the opportunity you have to increase the site’s traffic and revenue. Here you can look specifically for ways the site is currently undervalued or under-monetized.

You can also look specifically for traffic and monetization opportunities.

Opportunity means looking at the the site’s current input, AKA traffic, and its current output, aka monetization, and determining the different possibilities and ways you can increase each as the new site owner.

Your own skills and talents will come into play here. For example, I am experienced with SEO and paid ads, so these are both areas I always audit and look to increase traffic, and profit and decrease costs on.

There are often many Organic traffic opportunities after you buy a site: before buying you can do an SEO audit – there is often an opportunity here to clean up current keyword targeting, cut dead pages or change keyword targeting on current pages.

You can do a current keyword ranking audit and plan how you can direct more powerful internal and external Links to areas with opportunity for ranking boosts

Additionally this is the time you can start to do keyword research and create a new plan for keywords and content to grow your site over time, think long term and how much room this site has for content and keyword growth.

This is the least sexy or flashy part but the part that has the most benefit over time as you figure out what search engines see your site as an auth for and then continue to publish in that area and see traffic growth slow and steady over time

The site I bought that has been the most successful with the highest ROI got that way not from a flashy ad network switch or a quick hack, but from me adding hundreds of keyword researched articles over a few year time period and I was able to see huge organic traffic and revenue growth over time.

Then if you’re good at ads or social media or whatever you know how to do, you can think about how you would approach that with the new site and what the growth potential for that would be.

For example, does the site currently sell high ticket items and are they running either super expensive ads and wasting ad spend you can quickly cut? Or are they not running ads and missing the opportunity to add a ton of profitable sales each month.

These are things you can test and change once you own the site and are potential opportunities to quickly increase the site’s monthly profit and value.

Another opportunity to look at during this time is to ask the questions:

• Is this asset a supplement to something you already own? Another site in a similar niche it can support in brand or in SEO?
• Will it boost your brand in a non tangible or even tangible way?

Think about how it fits into your overall vision, brand and portfolio and if it adds value in any less obvious way.

Lastly and arguably one of the most important opportunities to think about is monetization. What is the current site doing to monetize and how can you add to this and improve upon it?

Anyway you can add a monetization method or switch monetization methods to be more profitable, do it here. Test test test first and then find what works best for the site.

Organic traffic opportunity: Do an SEO audit – there can be an opportunity here to clean up current keyword targeting, cut dead pages or change keyword targeting on them.

You can do a current keyword ranking audit and direct more powerful internal and external Links to areas with opportunity for ranking boosts.

Start to do keyword research and create a new plan for keywords and content to grow your site over time.

This is the least sexy or flashy part but the part that has the most benefit over time as you figure out what search engines see your site as an auth for and then continue to publish in that area and see traffic growth slow and steady over time.

Ad traffic opportunity Here are some questions you can start by asking:

Are currently making a littler visitor or sell high end products? Consider running ads to your site and test if could be a profitable opportunity.

Is this asset a supplement to something you already own? Another site in a similar niche it can support in brand or in SEO?

Will it boost your brand in a non tangible or even tangible way?

Think about how it fits into your overall vision, brand and portfolio and if it adds value in any less obvious way.

Monetization opportunity:

Anyway you can add a monetization method or switch monetization methods to be more profitable, do it here. Test test test first and then

Some examples:

Is your monetization currently affiliate? If its amazon can you switch to a different affiliate network that pays more and Test it
Or can you switch completely affiliate or wholesale?

Are there ads on the site?

If there are not currently ads on the site even if it is monetized in other ways you can often add ads especially on high traffic sites and get a big revenue boost without hurting your other areas of revenue including affiliate or even e-commerce depending on what you’re selling.

May not always work but always a good idea to try and look at overall profit for a few weeks compared to few weeks before and year prior and just see if there’s a lift or not

Test ad networks:

Ad networks pay different rates for different niches. I’ve seen 2-4X increase from switching ad networks and different ad networks pay different amounts per niche so there isn’t one best network overall. Key is to test here, rpm specially if ads are your site’s only revenue source .

Reach out to brands to put banner ads on your site for a monthly fee or in your email newsletter or as a social shoutout.

I was getting $500 flat fee in euros actually when that was higher than USD for a header banner on one of my sites that was also making a few hundred a month from the other ads running on it in addition the flat fee banner
Having brand sponsors can be hugely profitable and often they’ll reach out to you but you can brainstorm who would be a perfect fit and reach out to them to.

Remember when reaching out is not all about you, it’s about how you can help them, they are the hero and winner in the story if you want to close a deal

Social Media & Customer Communication

Next you can look at how the site communicates with customers, look at social media, are there areas you can improve and automate, then look at email.

Does the site have an email list? Start regular emailing build up trust and intimacy.

Use this an an opportunity to build real connections with your Audi be and reply and have conversations. Having conversations also puts your email in more people’s inbox and not promo or spam folders as email providers see that as a real person trust signal.

That’s why my Her.CEO emails have such high open rates (right now 42%+ and land in a lot of main inbox folders), I have other lists I didn’t do This with and took over when I bought with much lower 10-13% open rates and get pushed into the promo folder as a default.

Add more value than trying to sell in every email or social post. Every so often you can send a sales email for something you know your audience actually wants and people will stay because they like your emails, even the sales ones because At that point your sales emails aren’t selling Anymore because you’re giving your readers what they want to pay for anyway.

Create a product

Then there’s the under-appreciated monetization opportunity which is to create a product- Your site has traffic in a spec niche but no revenue or only ad or affil rev? you can start offering a wholesale product or even take The step after wholesale which can actually be more profitable than wholesale which is to create your own product.

Your site has traffic in a spec niche but no rev or only ad or affil rev? The step after wholesale and can actually be more profitable than wholesale is to create your own product.

First of all, do you think the people running ads on your site are doing so out of charity because they like handing you free money Each month? Obvs not! There is so much tracking available online these days they know what they’re spending and the profit they’re getting from running ads on your site.

What if, you decided to sell what they’re selling using your traffic generating site as the vehicle?

What?

I never thought of that you’re thinking! Genius!

Why thank you,

You can always step your site monetization game up a level from ads to actually selling something whether that is wholesale or your own physical product or even service or ebook or non physical product .

If you have traffic you can monetize it all you have to do is brainstorm every possible way then test every possible way then pick the winner.

For your long term revenue source, and try stacking revenue methods by doing more than one at the same time.

For example you can even triple dip and run ads on your site while promoting affiliate products while selling your own products on your site and you may find you make the most money while doing all three at once as opposed to only picking one at a time and you’ll never figure that out unless you try and test it.

Create supplementary videos

More opportunities include generating traffic through other channels, and you can do this by repurposing content or crating new content in the form of videos.

Think about how you could Create supplementary videos in the website’s niche.

One site I own I created a viral 600K video for expecting the video to drive site traffic and sales, which it did in a small way but this also added an entirely new monetization method to the site and the video itself ended up earning more in Youtube ad revenue than the website earned the first year in affiliate income.

Getting more eyeballs to your site with videos can drive more sales and more revenue just from the videos themselves in some cases worth a try

Sponsored posts

Reach out to brands to put banner ads on your site for a monthly fee or in your email newsletter or as a social shoutout. I was getting $500 flat fee in euros actually when that was higher than USD for a header banner on one of my sites that was also making a few hundred a month from the other ads running on it in addition the flat fee banner.

Having brand sponsors can be hugely profitable and often they’ll reach out to you but you can brainstorm who would be a perfect fit and reach out to them to. Remember when reaching out is not all about you, it’s about how you can help them, they are the hero and winner in the story if you want to close a deal

You can always let brands reach out to you for sponsored posts or reach out proactively to start getting sponsored posts on your site. Having more traffic helps with this and having an uber specific niche also helps.

Lastly, you can always think of more ways to monetize the site, there isn’t a limit on what you can do. My list includes ones I’ve personally done or thought of but the list is endless and only limited by your creativity and what your audience does, wants or needs, and think of how you can best serve them in a way that also allows your site to generate revenue.

Timeframe

The next step in the VSOT method is Timeframe.

Timeframe is how long it will take to earn your money back. You can determine the timeframe and the subsequent Value of a website by looking at what multiple is the site priced at? If nothing changes how long will it take you to earn your investment back?

For example, if the site is priced at 30X its monthly profit multiple that means if nothing changes it will take you 30 months to earn your investment back assuming your site is not hit by a traffic or monetization penalty that you already evaluated the risk of in the step 1 the Verification step in the VSOT method.

I always plan for say none of my optimizations work or nothing changes, I’ll make it back in X months.
You need to be ok with that because nothing is ever guaranteed.

I’ve bought most of my successful sites at either 10 or 20X monthly profit valuation. New French Affiliate site I bought Was at 30X valuation but was lower price so I knew it’d be ok even if my plan to wholesale didn’t workout, but also easier to justify because going from a few dollars profit to 10-20X+ that per sale would mean earning back my investment in less than 2 months If my wholesale and estimates worked out.

Run through a few situations using the opportunities you found as well and figure out best case scenario earn back time period as well.

Using These estimates as a range can help you decide if the investment seems worth it to you.

I’ve bought most of my successful sites at either 10 or 20X monthly profit valuation. The new French Affiliate site I bought was at a 30X valuation but it was also a pretty low price and there was a huge revenue opportunity to move from affiliate to wholesale so I knew it’d be ok even if my plan to wholesale didn’t workout. It is also easier to justify because going from a few dollars profit to 10-20X+ that per sale would mean earning back my investment in less than 2 months If my wholesale and estimates worked out.

Everything is risk reward and you can use these steps to help you make an informed decision but you also have to realize there are risks involved in any purchase.

Let me know what you think of the VSOT value website investing method – this is something I’ll be continually updating and adding more detail to as I go along – let me know in the comments the #1 thing you look for when buying a website.

Get the Website Investing Checklist here.

How to Sell a Website – Tips How & Where to Sell Your Website + How I sold mine. You can learn how to sell your site watching the video below or reading the rest of this article.

First things first, I am here to be a resource for you and if you are looking to sell a website send me an email, stacy@her.ceo.

I’m always looking to buy high traffic and/ors revenue generating websites, and I have a website investing email list who are also hungry and ready to buy websites. So if you have a site that gets traffic, or any type of revenue send me an email, stacy@her.ceo.

You can also sign up for my email list if you want to buy a website, as I send website buying tips and deals.

Starter Sites vs Established Sites

There are two types of sites you can sell, one is a starter site, which is one that you either custom make or that you’ve already made that has all the pieces in place. It has content and structure or is a custom site for someone, but it has no traffic and no revenue.

Depending on how you position it you can still sell it for a lot of money, especially if it’s a custom site for someone.

Th second type of site is one that has traffic and is making money already so it’s actually worth something on its own.

Personally, I only like to purchase the second type of site which is a site that already has traffic and already has revenue.

If you have a starter site you can always try to get it traffic and optimize it for SEO and other traffic sources and then if you start getting traffic or revenue you actually might be able to sell it for more than what you’ll be able to sell it.

Basically if you make a website and want to sell it, anything you can do to get more traffic to it or monetize it more fully will allow you to get a buyer more quickly and to sell it for a much higher price.

How to Sell a Starter Website

Sell on Motion Invest for Quick Cash:

If you choose to ignore my advice then you can still sell a site not getting any traffic. Motioninvest.com is one site that sells both websites that are earning a small amount of revenue and brand new starter sites that aren’t earning revenue. You can try contacting motion invest and selling your starter site, although I believe they prefer sites that do have some sort of monthly revenue.

Sell on a Facebook Group:

Another way to sell your starter site is to join website investing and passive income and retirement income facebook groups and once you establish a relationship with people in the group by helping answer questions and have value-add posts, you can post about your starter site that is ready to go and see if anyone is interested in purchasing it.

You’ll want to ask the group admins first if this is allowed or figure out a creative way to phrase it where it doesn’t seem like you’re selling anything but you’re still gauging interest if anyone wants it.

For example you could post, “I have this beautiful, 10,000 word, finance website, but I don’t know what to do with it. What do you guys think? Should I renew the domain or let it go or try to sell it somewhere? “ the beauty with this type of post is you’re not actively selling but if someone is super interested in your site they will reach out to you via DM and you can start a sales conversation there.

If you have a site that does have some sort of traffic or revenue then you have a lot more options to sell it.

You can email me, stacy@her.ceo and I can either make an offer on it or send it to my website investing waitlist to see if anyone there has any interest in buying it.

How to Sell an Established Website

How to sell a website that already has traffic and revenue:

Email Stacy@Her.CEO

The first thing you want to do is email me stacy@her.ceo, and we can start a conversation and see if there’s some way that I can either buy your site or help you sell it. As a first step, always I have a huge email list that always wants to even if it’s something I’m interested in.

List Your Site on a Website Selling Platform:

You can also choose to sell it on a website investing platform.

You can list your site to sell on Flippa which has a starter site listing fee of $15 or an established site listing fee of $49 PLUS a 10% sale success fee that goes down in a tiered structure for sites that sell for over 50K, you can also apply to sell your sit on Empireflippers.com they don’t accept all sites like Flippa does so you have to send in stat and revenue verification data and they have to choose your site to list on their platform.

When I went through the process of listing my website for sale on Empire Flippers they made me pay a $250 deposit that they ended up refunding when they didn’t choose to list my site for sale on their platform.

I’m not sure but I think they might refund the deposit after you sell your site but you’d need to check with them to verify how that works or even if they still collect that type of deposit because I checked their website and they don’t publicly post about requiring sellers to send in a deposit even though it was something I had to do. they also take a 15% success fee for any website that sells for under $1 million dollars which is quite hefty, and that also goes down in a tiered structure for more expensive sites.

I don’t have personal experience selling a site through any other platforms but you can also apply to sell your site at FEinternational.com, investors.club and quietlightbrokerage.com.

I ended up selling my site using a broker at Latonas.com.

It’s important to do your research for each platform to figure out the fees you’ll have to pay for listing and sale success fees as it differs by platform.

If you choose to sell on Flippa.com for example, they have $49 listing fee and then they take a 10% success fee of each sale, and that goes down as your site price goes up, like, the percentage that they take goes down so the number they take still goes up but the percentage will go down.

You can also sell your site on Empire flippers.com Flippa accepts every site that lists on it, Empire Flippers is more choosy and they’re going about your site and going to make sure it’s exactly what they want to sell to their audience. You might not even get accepted with Empire Flippers since they don’t accept all sites to sell.

Getting accepted by them is also not a a guarantee of a sale, although you’re going to get more visibility from listing on Empire Flippers, Flippa or any of the other site listing platforms because both of these platforms have a huge audience so there’s a really high chance that someone will want your site.

I was looking at EmpireFlippers.com and it says that out of all the sites they’ve approved, they’ve actually sold 89% of the ones that they’ve listed, so still your site could be in the 11% that doesn’t get sold.

Empire Flippers also makes you pay a $250 deposit when you list it which I think they say they refund after the sale or return of the site. I only know about the $250 fee because I went through the process of listing the site with them although I didn’t end up listing it on their platform, but I still had to pay them the $250 and then they refunded it when they didn’t approve my site for their platform. They actually don’t post about this fee publicly but I only know about it because I had to pay it when I tried to list with them.

They also take a 15% success fee which is pretty hefty it goes down if your site is over a million dollars in price, they take a pretty big success fee so that’s something you want to take into account if you can try selling it with a broker first that takes a lower success fee, you’re going to get to keep more of your total selling price.

It’s something I’d recommend listing all your options and then seeing the potential amount you could get for the site on the different platforms and start with the ones that have the highest potential and then apply for the ones that have lower potential.

Where to sell your website

There are many platforms and places you can sell your site. Here are a few you can research and try:

• Her.CEO
• Facebook Groups
• Private Deals
• Flippa
• Empire Flippers
• Latonas
• FE International
• Motion Invest
• Quiet Light Brokerage
• Investors.Club

My Experience Selling a Website

Latonas.com is where I actually ended up selling my site.

I had a very good experience in the sense they worked hard to sell my site and were very communicative and responsive. They also have a pretty big audience so I had a buyer within a few weeks, an interested buyer, so we got on a call and everything was great. After the call he made an offer and wanted to buy it.

We went through the process. The buyer put the money in Escrow and I transferred everything to him. We signed multiple airtight contracts. After I transferred everything to him he had everything he had the domain he had the host he had the database. He sends an email and says, “You know what, I just I can’t, I don’t want to do this anymore and I want to take my money out.” He got cold feet, and he said it was because the site didn’t comply with GDPR.

He said, “You need like a controller, someone to manage the data GDPR”. GDPR is very complex, however if you don’t think a website complies with GDPR, you probably aren’t going to be able to buy any website, because even Google has had the GDPR lawsuits and they’ve had to pay huge fines.

If Google has its huge team of lawyers and they weren’t even incredibly able to correctly, prepare for GDPR, any small website or any website on any listing platform is likely not even close to prepared for literally any GDPR lawsuit. At the end of the day, this person just got cold feet and wanted to pull out and they were trying to pin the blame on something so they chose GDPR. The takeaway here is that even if it didn’t have anything to blame it on they still could have pulled out of the deal.

The buyer was able to take their money out of escrow, and then I transferred everything back even though we had airtight contracts. It’s not worth it to get into a lawsuit over something like this – I’m not going to go after them with a lawyer to try to make them follow through with the transaction.

I guess it’s good to know that contracts, at the end of the day airtight contracts don’t have that much value. I mean if you take something to court I would guess that contracts have more value. It took a few more months to find another interested buyer.

This person did end up buying it for less than the already very low price I had originally put on it, and this buyer had tons of red flags. I shouldn’t have sold to that person and there ended up being issues later on which I won’t go into here.

At the end of the day I don’t regret selling the site however I do wish I had waited for a different buyer and went for a higher multiple.

Website Selling Takeaways

Takeaway 1: Choose a high-multiple broker with low fees

When selling my site I do wish I’d chosen a higher-end broker so I could have sold at a higher multiple.

Takeaway 2: Be Patient, there will be a buyer

I do wish I’d been more patient waiting for someone, or does that so I could have gotten a better purchaser who would have done more work on the site and not cause issues that we ran into later on, as well as a purchaser who was willing to pay a higher multiple take all those things into consideration when you’re selling your site.

In conclusion, if I could go back in time and give my old self advice before selling the site I would say, “Be patient, choose a higher end broker and work out the math on the different brokerages and platforms to see what makes sense for you to list your site, and just know that contracts aren’t really airtight until the money has been not just put in escrow but literally released from escrow.”

Comment below if you have ever bought or sold a site and your experience with your listing platform.

Flippa – I’ve Spent $35,700 on Flippa, What did I learn? Avoid my mistakes. Learn from my experiences on Flippa by watching the video below or reading the article that outlines the lessons:

Pre-Flippa: My 9 to 5 Background

I’m going to start by giving you my background from the first business I started to feeling trapped in my first 9 to 5 job to spending $35K on sites from Flippa to where I am now. I’ll take you through my experience with Flippa and what I learned form each purchase so you can learn from my mistakes and successes and get a feel for what’s possible buying websites on the Flippa platform.

I remember when I was really young, in elementary school and high school, and I would see my dad and other adults go off to work each day and come home each night, and I always assumed they were all so happy and having so much fun each day at their work!

I never thought about my own work or future at that point or even looked forward to it and I never wanted it to come faster, I just assumed when I got there it would be great and that I would absolutely love each day. I never even considered the possibility they were only doing it for money or what each day really entailed. I think I assumed because they were adults and knew everything and had everything under control that they were choosing to go to a fun place each day to something they loved to do, it never even crossed my mind there was any other possibility. I never thought about salary or salary caps or freedom or anything, I didn’t even really realize people got different amounts of money for different types of work – it wasn’t something I ever thought about.

Even in college, I never connected my major to the job I would eventually have. I didn’t even think about choosing a major connected to my future job, it never really crossed my mind, which looking back doesn’t seem very bright, but I wouldn’t go back and change a thing.

I graduated from Boston College and found out later that my dad had wanted my sister and I to apply to the Carroll School of Management, aka the business school at BC so we would have better paying job prospects, but my mom told him we should be able to follow our hearts and choose the majors we were most interested in.

It’s funny because I love business and my first job was even in marketing, but it never crossed my mind to major in ‘business’ because I clearly was not thinking in any type of long-term way since at this point as I still assumed everyone got a job they loved and went away each day to a fun retreat type setting or something – honestly I never gave it much thought.

So I majored in psychology in the school of arts and sciences at BC because I loved psych classes, and I knew from the start I never wanted to be a psychologist or go to any more years of school – that never interested me. I was able to get a job running google ads for an ecommerce marketing agency, mostly because I’d already run google ads in an unpaid internship the past summer, not because of my psychology degree. However having a college degree definitely helped me get the job, and I don’t think that company or most companies will hire you without some type of college degree.

I was so excited to get my first job offer and to finally be a true adult and going to the special adult work club each day. I actually loved my first three months at my new job and thought it was such an exciting, fun and new experience.

Once I settled in I realized how constricting it was. My boss actually sat me down and said, “ I noticed you have been eating lunch away from your desk each day, for over half an hour?” I said,”yes, I like to go get lunch and eat it outside and stretch my legs, it’s nice to have that time to myself” he said “that’s not how we do things around here. You should try to start packing lunch and eat at your desk for no longer than 15 minutes each day.” I remember being flabbergasted that he would even say that.

In his mind, and most company’s mind, they are paying for you like some type of ‘workhorse’ and they want you to be seated at your desk for 8 to 9 or in some cases more hours each day, and that is how they measure your productivity and dedication to your job. They don’t care about your results as long as your results are mediocre or better. If you only worked 4 hours each day but had insanely good results they would definitely fire you which doesn’t make any sense at all but that’s how it is because of the way companies look at owning you and your time.

The funny part is sitting all day is unhealthy, and honestly even worse for productivity because you need to get up and move in the middle of each day for blood flow and to think more clearly.

I know now every time I take my midday run, it completely resets me mentally and physically and I’m able to start working again after it with an incredibly clear mind and start working as effectively as I was at the beginning of the day again as opposed to petering off mentally with tiredness and anxiety as I used to after the half way point each day at my 9 to 5 when I was stuck sitting in the same position the entire day.

Companies including my 9 to 5 roles also don’t pay you based on results, with the exception of commission in a handful of sales roles, so no matter how long you sit there each day and no matter what results and revenue you bring in to the company, your pay stays the same or goes up very slightly. Effort and results aren’t tied to pay in a normal company setting.

For me, even worse than the pay caps and no match between effort results and salary, was the lack of freedom, and the relentless sitting each day, and that started to wear on me mentally. The fact someone else owned me, and my time, and that even a simple vacation request had to be submitted and could be denied, which actually happened to me at my first job, and vacation limited to a small number of days each year, and that I needed to sit in a chair for 8 or 9 hours each day plus two hours of driving each day, meant I had only a handful of hours truly to myself each day, and only a handful of hours I could do anything but sit forced and trapped staring at a computer screen each day.

I remember my face would get really inflamed and red from anxiety of feeling forced to be sitting at my desk for the 8 hours each day. The company wasn’t paying for results, they were paying to have me chained to my desk each day. Every company does. I guess it’s an easy way for them to measure your perceived effort even if it doesn’t help them maximize their own results.

Anyway, I realized a few months in that I would really rather have control over my own time each day, and I would really rather see a correlation between my effort, results and salary as opposed to some type of artificial cap where I could never really make over a certain amount.

I kept working there and learned a ton about paid ads and SEO and ecommerce marketing so it was a great learning experience, and I was able to learn even more online marketing skills that have helped me tremendously to get a website investing ROI and still help me to this day.

Flippa Mistakes: My First Flippa Purchases

At my third 9 to 5, working in the marketing department at a financial technology type company, I started reading even more financial freedom and how to make money online blogs and for the first time I started seriously implementing what I was reading.

This is the time I read a Niche Pursuits blog guest post article where I learned about Flippa, a website buying and selling platform, and I had more disposable income than I’d ever had before at this time due to a multi five figure salary raise I’d gotten when I’d switched from my second to third job. This was when I took the leap to purchase a website on Flippa while I was still at my 9 to 5.

I remember scrolling through hundreds of pages of both live and expired listings, poring over each one and trying to figure out which to buy. I was really desperate at this time in my life in the sense I felt I needed to be making more so I could stop feeling anxious and trapped all the time. My desperation put me in a poor place to be making any type of buying decision, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

I ended up rushing into buying a small website that educated people on technology and iPad case coverings monetized with amazon affiliates. I paid $1,300 for the site which the owner claimed was making $350 profit a month, so I thought oh this is an incredible deal I’ll be able to make back what I paid for the site in less than 4 months, this is great! He even showed me revenue screenshots from his amazon account that showed over $300 each month in affiliate commission, and I had Google analytics access to the site before buying it.

I remember my gut telling me there was a red flag. When I looked at the amazon affiliate screenshots, the majority of the purchases were not technology related, they were bible or other related, and the thing about amazon is they pay affiliate commission on all purchases someone makes after clicking your link, not just the direct purchase of the item you inspired them to purchase.

This means logically there could have been a lot of other non-related commissions being received. But I had a feeling there was something off, but I ignored it out of desperation to buy a site that was making money. And I told myself, worst case scenario it has to be making something.

At this point I’d never evaluated a site to determine how much it is currently making and what its potential is via google analytics so I saw it had around thousand visits a month from only 30 or so visits a day and thought maybe it just had a very high conversion rate etc, I wasn’t diving deep to verify things and I was way too trusting.
Another red flag was he was selling it for a 4X monthly profit valuation and I knew that the going rate for sites at this point in time was 20X monthly profit valuation, another “too good to be true” signal.

I put in my offer and bought the site and transferred it into my hosting account. I remember getting the first affiliate commission from it for a few dollars and how excited I was. It really is a great feeling to make your first few dollars from something online, if you’ve done this already you’ll know what I’m talking about. And then there were crickets.

I realized pretty quickly he had lied about the site profit and revenue and that I’d fallen for a Flippa scam.

The site was only making around $20 a month, and the previous owner had said it was making $350. Turns out I had paid a 65X monthly profit valuation multiple when I thought I was paying a 4X multiple, and had been lied to about site revenue.

I reached out to the seller and he never responded of course, and to Flippa to report his account, and they were able to take action and deactivate his account, but I had been lied to and had fallen for one of the many Flippa scammers who try to lie about revenue to sell sites for a lot more than they’re worth.

Looking back it ended up being a great first lesson for me because I’d only lost a small amount of money, $1,300, to learn such an important lesson that has likely saved me from losing tens of thousands I could have lost if I’d made that mistake on a bigger site purchase.

Imagine if my first $1,300 site purchase had been an honest good purchase, and then I’d lost way more on my next bigger site purchase that was a scam. I definitely got lucky that I only fell for a scam on my first very small purchase because the main takeaway I got was a lesson to never fall for any similar scam again.

You have to remember that no platform has time to really dig through everything which is why you as an individual, always have to verify everything and dig through everything before you make a purchase, before we make any investment before you buy stock, you need to look at all the financial statements and dig through it to make sure it’s a solid company. Similarly, you have to do the same thing before you buy real estate before and before you buy any investment. For example, you have to go and inspect a house before buying it and make sure it checks out as well as look at historical rental rates in the area and other numbers to determine if it is a good investment.

Even though my first purchase didn’t end up having a positive ROI,=it also got me hooked on Flippa and buying websites in general, because it was making a little bit of money when I first bought it. I remember seeing that money go into my Amazon affiliate account.

It was just a few dollars and I thought so happy because I realized what was possible with owning a website and buying websites that you could actually make money online, it really opened my mind I never even realized websites could make money. The first site purchase ended up being a blessing overall because it encouraged me to keep going.

Lesson 1: Dive Deep into Verification

The lesson I took away from that experience is that if you’re buying any type of investment, including a website, you need to go deep to verify revenue and stats and make sure the seller is honest and telling the truth. You also need to use the common sense test to look at all the website traffic and industry average RPMs and do your own calculations in addition to getting revenue verification screenshots, looking at video earning reports, and diving into analytics to check not only traffic numbers but traffic sources, location, language and more.

Lesson 2: Don’t Ignore your Gut or Red Flags

You also need to listen to your gut if it’s telling you there’s a mismatch, like in my example where a technology site was getting its main revenue source from bible affiliate products and when a site is only getting 28 visitors a day but the owner tells you it’s making $350 a month Which doesn’t past any type of gut or common sense test or even logical test if you site down and work the numbers out and truly think about it.

What you need to realize is there will always be people trying to lie to get more money, yes on Flippa, and yes even when you’re buying a house or buying any type of business or even product. People lie if they can get away with it.

So you need to assume nothing is valid up front and go deep to verify everything on your own before making a purchase to avoid falling for any type of scam.

Lesson 3: Only make investments with a clear, calm mind

The other lesson I took away from this site purchase is to only buy a site when you are calm and have a clear, non-desperate mindset. It’s similar to making a decision when you’re angry, or texting someone when you’re drunk or angry. None of those actions will end well. You should only make a big decision or purchase when you’re in a good, clear state of mind.

It’s also important to listen to your gut even after verifying everything with logic. If something feels off, it probably is, and your gut is a lot smarter than you give it credit for, so if everything checks out on the verification end but you still feel something is off, then my advice would be to not buy the website.

In this specific example, even though I was a website buying newbie and had no idea even how to verify revenue or what a site getting 28 visitors a day in the tech affiliate niche should be making, if I had listened to my intuition that was screaming red flags I wouldn’t have made the purchase.

However, only listening to your gut can only get you so far, you need to have a handle on revenue verification if you’re buying a website, no matter how good your intuition is.

Lesson 4: Weed out sites early on using Flippa’s Verification Features

This website also wasn’t using any of Flippa’s verification features which include google analytics verification and google adsense revenue verification, and I now only even consider sites on the platform that have these two features enabled, so I can weed out fake sites sooner to only dive deep into ones that already have basic traffic and ad revenue verification enabled.

Lesson 5: Buy sites with long-term potential, not fad or trendy

The final lesson from my first site purchase is the content was based around the current iPhone and iPad models, which meant every time a new model came out you’d need to update the content. I now look for evergreen content when buying now so I can focus more on stable growth and long-term revenue producing content, so the cyclical content nature of the site would have been another red flag for me since I buy sites for long term revenue potential that don’t require constant content updates.

My Second Flippa Mistake – Site Purchase #2

I was still at my 9 to 5 at this point when I decided to buy another website, this time for a much larger investment, $10,000. I applied my revenue verification lesson and was 100% certain of the site’s amazing traffic and revenue before I bought it. I also knew I could switch ad networks right away and 2X or more the revenue, so I knew it was a great purchase.

Again, my desperation this time combined with over-confidence lead me to make the purchase.

I was right that the traffic was great and I was right about quickly doubling the revenue, so at first I thought I’d made an amazing purchase.

The issue was the website was based on a trendy app’s popularity, and a few months after I bought it the traffic tanked and so did its revenue.

I did make over $5K back from that purchase from first few months of great performance, but I ended up losing a bit on the total purchase price.

This time I lost money not because of a dishonest seller and definitely not because of Flippa itself, but because I had made a bet on something trendy and short term, not thinking about a long-term content play.

Main Lesson: Focus on sites that are long-term investments, not short term money plays

I was still at my 9 to 5 at this point, and had lost $4K or so my previous two website purchases combined, but I had also learned a lot from the mistakes I’d made.

I knew there was an opportunity to buy a website that could help me achieve my goal of financial independence and I knew I now had the knowledge and skillset to make a good purchase.

I took the lessons I’d learned from my previous two purchases and I was very careful to verify traffic and revenue and to buy a site that had evergreen content and long-term potential, and one that I knew I could quickly increase revenue on in several ways.

How to Have Success with a Flippa Purchase

I bought my third site while still at my 9 to 5 and it was my first success and is what gave me my foundation for financial independence.

On my third website purchase I was able to quickly double the revenue again like I had with my second Flippa site purchase. So in other words, I was able to see how a site could actually make money and how a successful purchase on Flippa works.

With this purchase, I made back all the money I bought from other sites plus more plus profit. This site ended up having aI really good return on investment, and I was able to see how successful website runs and works and how a good purchase on Flippa works.

You have to remember that there are tons of good listings on Flippa, you just have to know what you’re doing and understand the space to make a good purchase.

My fourth Flippa purchase is the one that really knocked it out of the park and enabled me to fully support myself on my own and move out of my rent free living at my grandma’s in the Chicago suburbs.

The site was in a great niche I was able to expand using SEO and consistent content publishing over time.

Flippa Success Lessons

• Lesson 1: Use what you’ve learned from previous sites, investments and purchases to improve your decision making
• Lesson 2: Implement quick wins such as quick SEO wins, ad network changes & placement changes to quickly increase revenue
• Lesson 3: Look for long-term value in sites
• Lesson 4: Use long-term SEO and content adding to grow sites over time

The takeaway is that Flippa is a great place to find undervalued assets is amazing if you look closely enough, and you put in the time to grow them consistently each day.

Flippa assets, and website assets in general, tend to be undervalued as compared to any other type of asset, real estate, you’re lucky if you make your investment back in five or six years in my two successful website investing cases.

My two successful Flippa site purchases I made back my purchase price within 10 months. I increased revenue off the bat and long term for these purchases.

One thing to keep in mind is that website multiples are continuing to go up so you have to make sure you are finding a good deal and a good timeframe that you can actually make it back end websites are a great area to invest in right now they’re a great asset. You can also plan on improving and then selling the site as the multiples keep going up.

Of course there are risks involved, and you can make mistakes. As I mentioned earlier, Flippa has a great selection of sites and is my favorite website broker because it doesn’t vet sites so you have to take on the vetting yourself, and that means you can actually find better deals.

When a broker vets sites they hike up the commission, and this includes broker sites like Empire Flippers that hike site prices so they can take a large cut, making the deal less good for the buyer. I like other website brokers too but Flippa is actually my favorite and I have bought most of my websites from Flippa and had a great overall experience with them.

You guys can let me know if you have you bought a website from Flippa in the comments.

What are Flippa scams and how can you avoid them? Keep reading or watch the video to find out.

How do you know if a website owner is lying? There are many signs but the best way to figure it out is to verify everything they are saying independently and on your own.

My Experience with Flippa Scams & Good Sites

In this article I’ll go into my experiences with Flippa, both good, bad, and the scams I’ve encountered and give you insight into how you can avoid scammy Flippa listings and make good site purchase decisions.

I have fallen victim to one Flippa scam, as well as made one poor purchase on Flippa that wasn’t a scam simply a bad investing decision on my part.

The other sites I have purchased on Flippa have been great purchases that I’ve made many times back what I paid for them and many more times what I lost in the scam and poor purchase.

I want to clarify that the Flippa platform itself is not a scam, but like any platform or any activity where money is changing hands, there are some people who will try to take advantage of others and not represent their sites accurately in order to do so.

The only reason I’ve been able to make a handful of good purchases on Flippa is that I had the experience first with buying a site that was represented untruthfully and was a scam, because that firsthand experience made me realize how important it is to dive deep into site stats and revenue and verify everything before making a purchase.

It all started when I received an email from a Nigerian prince telling me I needed to buy him a specific website on Flippa so he could regain access to his bank account and send me a million dollars. Of course I went right away to Flippa and purchased the site so the prince could regain his bank account access and send me a million dollars!

Guys I’m kidding – but on another note don’t give your bank details to any Nigerian princes who email you.

How I Fell for a Flippa Scam

I fell for a Flippa scam on my first Flippa purchase due to a number of factors, and one was desperation and feeling the need to purchase a site that would start making money right away, similar to people who fall for Nigerian prince emails, they are likely desperate for money so they look past the obvious red flags and wire the prince money or do other not super smart things.

Even though I would never fall for a Nigerian prince type scam even in a desperate state, my desperation put me in a poor place to be making any type of buying decision, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

When making that first purchase I scrolled through pages of listings on Flippa and ended up buying a small $1,300 that compared technology and iPad case coverings monetized with amazon affiliates site, and the owner claimed it was making $350 profit a month, so I thought oh this is an incredible deal I’ll be able to make back what I paid for the site in less than 4 months, this is great! The owner even showed me revenue screenshots from his amazon account that showed over $300 each month in affiliate commission, and I had Google analytics access to the site before buying it.

I remember my gut telling me right away there was a red flag. When I looked at the amazon affiliate screenshots, the majority of the purchases were not technology related, they were bible or other related, and the thing about amazon is they pay affiliate commission on all purchases someone makes after clicking your link, not just the direct purchase of the item you inspired them to purchase. This means logically there could have been a lot of other non-related commissions being received.

But I had a feeling there was something off, but I ignored it out of desperation to buy a site that was making money. And I told myself, worst case scenario it has to be making something.

At this point I’d never evaluated a site to determine how much it is currently making and what its potential is via google analytics so I saw it had over a thousand visits a month and thought maybe it just had a very high conversion rate etc, I wasn’t diving deep to verify things and I was way too trusting.

Another red flag was he was selling it for a 4X monthly profit valuation and I knew that the going rate for sites at this point in time was 20X monthly profit valuation, another “too good to be true” signal.

I put in my offer and bought the site and transferred it into my hosting account. I remember getting the first affiliate commission from it for a few dollars and how excited I was. And then there were crickets.

I realized pretty quickly he had lied about the site profit and revenue and that id fallen for a scam.

The site was only making around $20 a month, and he had said it was making $350. Turns out I had paid a 65X monthly profit valuation multiple, and had been lied to about site revenue.

I reached out to him and he never responded of course, and to Flippa to report his account, and they were able to take action, but I had been lied to and had fallen for one of the many Flippa scammers who try to lie about revenue to sell sites for a lot more than they’re worth.

Looking back it ended up being a great first lesson for me because I’d only lost a small amount of money to learn such an important lesson that has likely saved me from losing tens of thousands I could have lost if I’d made that mistake on a bigger site purchase.

How to Avoid Flippa Scams

The lesson I learned is, if you’re buying any type of investment, including a website, you need to go deep to verify revenue and stats and make sure the seller is honest and telling the truth and that your investment is not based on lies or a scam. You need to deep dive into traffic and revenue verification logically to make sure everything checks out. You also need to listen to you intuition and gut which will also give you clues if something is off or ifyou’re falling for a scam.

I also now use something common sense test to determine if stats add up with what the site owner is saying they actually get for revenue.

In the common sense test I combine Google Analytics, average RPMs and conversion rates to determine what the income numbers should be if the site owner is telling the truth. Then I compare the common sense estimates to the numbers the site owner provides and see if they are in the same ballpark.

Learn from my blind trust mistake and always verify traffic and revenue before purchasing a site.
Not everyone is an honest fairy God-mother and some people will try to cheat you out of your money.

You also need to listen to your gut if it’s telling you there’s a mismatch, like in my example where a technology site was getting its main revenue source from bible affiliate products and when a site is only getting 28 visitors a day but the owner tells you it’s making $350 a month Which doesn’t past any type of gut or common sense test or even logical test if you site down and work the numbers out and truly think about it.

What you need to realize is there will always be people trying to lie to get more money, yes on Flippa, and yes even when you’re buying a house or buying any type of business or even product.

People lie if they can get away with it. So you need to assume that is the case up front and go deep to verify everything on your own before making a purchase to avoid falling for any type of scam.

The other lesson I took away from falling for this site purchase is to only buy a site when you are calm and have a clear, non-desperate mindset. It’s similar to making a decision when you’re angry, or texting someone when you’re drunk or angry. None of those actions will end well. You should only make a big decision or purchase when you’re in a good, clear state of mind.

It’s also important to listen to your gut even after verifying everything with logic. If something feels off, it probably is, and your gut is a lot smarter than you give it credit for, so if everything checks out on the verification end but you still feel something is off, then my advice would be to not buy the website.

In this case, even though I was a website buying newbie and had no idea even how to verify revenue or what a site getting 28 visitors a day in the tech affiliate niche should be making, if I had listened to my intuition that was screaming red flags I wouldn’t have made the purchase.

However, only listening to your gut can only get you so far, you need to have a handle on revenue verification if you’re buying a website, no matter how good your intuition is.

This website wasn’t using any of Flippa’s verification features which help weed out scam sites and include google analytics verification and google Adsense revenue verification, and I now only even consider sites on the platform that have these two features enabled, so I can weed out fake sites sooner to only dive deep into ones that already have basic traffic and ad revenue verification enabled.

Is Flippa a scam?

The main takeaway here is that Flippa is not a scam, they are simply a platform where anyone can list a site for sale.

The lesson is to not take anything a seller says at face value. you need to dive super deep into analytics, traffic, revenue, costs and every facet of the site, getting details on every level until you have proof that the site has the traffic and profit that the site owner says it does.

On Flippa and in life, it is your responsibility to look deeper than face value to avoid scams and make informed decisions and purchases.

Have any of you fallen for a scam on Flippa or anywhere else? Let me know in the comments and I’d love to hear your story and reply!

Monumetric is an ad network that requires a minimum of 10,000 monthly pageviews to join. If you have more than 10,000 pageviews and less than 80,000 you will be required to pay a $99 setup fee.

Monumetric Review

Here is my personal Monumetric experience and review.

Monumetric has been an ok way in a select variety of niches to see a slightly higher RPM for ads. It doesn’t have a higher RPM in all niches, so it is one you have to test for your specific site to see if it will be better than your current ad network.

One of the main cons with Monumetric is they have a high staff turnover rate, so you go through a new account manager or contact every year or less.

The main issue I have with Monumetric and why I am hesitant to recommend them is how they handled a mistake they made regarding a website I sold, that was using Monumetric ads.

After selling the site and completing the asset transfer on my end, I sent a clear email to Monumetric that said:

Me: “Hi [Name of Account Rep Here]”

The transaction is complete and feel free to transfer the site ownership to [Name of Buyer’s] account – please keep my account open and ready for my new site to go into.

Thanks,
Stacy

and received the response:

Monumetric Representative: “Great! My team will be sending these over today. Thanks so much!”

Shortly after I see the website taken out of my reporting dashboard and assume everything is in Monumetric & the buyer’s hands now.

One year and four months later I receive an email from Monumetric saying they never completed the transfer on their end.

I had been receiving deposits for the site I had sold in addition to the sites I owned in my Monumetric account.

However, I had no way of knowing this was happening because I had already handed the site off to the new owner and done through so Monumetric as well.

Monumetric then asked me to pay them asking me to pay them $7,103.81. I had to calculate the money I had received minus the money in my reporting dashboard to figure out the discrepancy was much lower than what they were asking, only $4,947.78.

To get to this lower number, it took multiple weeks and multiple emails. I requested a phone call multiple times to iron things out, and was told they don’t do phone calls for this type of issue.

This surprised me, since they were asking me to give them $7,000, and then after correction almost $5,000, in addition to a payment for my own site that had never been completed but were unwilling to get on the phone to discuss it.

If you are asking someone to send you thousands of dollars due to a mistake you made over a year ago, I would think you would be willing to get on the phone to clarify & make sure all the information is correct and that you are both on the same page.

Apparently, Monumetric did not feel that way about the situation.

One moral of the story is if you do use them as an ad provider, make sure you go to the settings page and enter your billing information for every site you have with them, or you may risk not getting paid, or other issues that may be very hard to resolve down the line.

During this process I also found out they had also not paid me $1,474.65 for a site I had never entered billing information specifically for, so I entered that and they are sending the payment on the next payment cycle.

I have worked with competent Monumetric reps, and some who are on the complete opposite spectrum. It’s the luck of the draw, but the majority are unable to understand simple concepts, and at the end of the day it comes back around to hurt the Monumetric customers.

They also shared my banking information with the seller, something that makes me uncomfortable and that I don’t think any company that has access to your billing info should be able to do.

In the end they required me to pay them $4,947.78 for a mistake they made when they failed to finish the transfer on their end without acquiescing to my request to get on the phone, although they did end up lowering the number they asked for and promising to pay me for the site they had neglected after checking their reporting and the back and forth of emails.

Any ad platform that does not own up to their own mistakes and asks its customers for money as well as shares private bank details with other customers, is not one that I would ever actively recommend or promote.

It’s a shame because I did use to recommend them and have on several podcasts.

The customer support is simply subpar, and the RPMs have been going down over the last several years.

I’ve heard and read other negative support stories such as issues with taking larger ads off the page and other response issues.

Keep that in mind when you try them out, you may be on your own and/or liable for any mistakes Monumetric makes on their end, and, keep in mind they are quite likely to make a billing, payment or other mistake.

For example, you may find them requiring you to pay them $4,307.9 for a mistake they made well over a year ago.

Monumetric Pros

• Another ad network to test if the RPM is higher

Monumetric Cons

• Support can take days to answer
• High employee support turnover – new contact every year or so
• Huge ads that can disrupt user experience, or have to deal with lower RPMs
• Have to wait 60-90 days for payment, Net-60 payment, after each month you wait two months or more for payment
• Reporting dashboard is very limited
• Can’t change date when accessing reporting dashboard on mobile
• You need to pay $99 setup fee when you have a site using Monumetric that has less than 80,000 pageviews

Monumetric Conclusion

Monumetric could and likely should still be on your long list of ad networks to test different niches in to see if it does have a higher RPM.

In terms of being your first, second, or even third choice, I wouldn’t recommend placing it near the top of the list.

This is for reasons including having to wait up to 90 days for payments, the poor reporting experience, the poorer ad experience for users with intrusive, pop-up ads, sometimes 2 to 3 at the bottom of each page, poor support, high turnover in employee contacts, and potential for you to be liable for mistakes the platform makes in addition to not having secure billing or bank information within the platform with the potential for Monumetric to share that information with other customers.

Simply put, the overall experience isn’t great, you have to wait a long time for payment, and customer service is poor to the point of sharing your private bank details, simple incompetence and long delays, and the potential to be liable to pay the company thousands of dollars for their own mistakes.

 
    Thing
 
 
    Stacy Caprio
 
 
  Rating:
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His story is incredibly interesting, and below he shares how he got into making passive income from websites.

Dreaming of Passive Income?

If your dream is to start a business, you probably have a ton of excuses.

Hence, it is still just a dream.

Some of the most common excuses are time, money and other factors close to these two.

In the end, excuses are just excuses, and if you want something badly enough, you will go for it, no matter your circumstances.

For me, entrepreneurship started with a borrowed computer in a post-communist country. I had little experience, and I worked like my life depended on it.

Now I know there’s a better way.

Starting a new business is super hard, and you have probably heard the statistics on how often fledgling businesses don’t make it.

But, at the same time, looking for shelter behind the image of a “safe job” is not the answer either!

Long commute, putting up with people you don’t like, “doing as they say, not as they do”… Is this all there is to life?

In case you’re wondering, yes, there is definitely more to life, and if you keep reading I’ll share my journey to finding more in life.

How I Stumbled into Website Investing

Fast forward from my “borrowed computer” situation; my VC backed business was struggling. I was quickly joining the trend, and I was running out of ideas.

We were not going under, but we hadn’t lived up to the Silicon Valley high valuation either. It was early 2017, and Bitcoin was approaching its $1000 value.

I had some money saved up and wanted to create my first passive stream of income.

After reading and talking with some of my peers and mentors, I skipped the whole crypto-craze and decided to go back to the roots. Websites!

My first business was a web design and web hosting business. There I learned how to create a website and later how to advertise on Google and Facebook.

We started in 2006, so Facebook wasn’t around, and AdWords wasn’t a thing in Croatia.

I had heard about affiliate marketing, but I had clients to work with, and to be honest, I didn’t know any better. Lucky for me, I learned a lot, and it came in handy when I started buying revenue-making websites.

So, in 2017, I made a smart choice. Instead of running after the latest craze, I looked into acquiring my first website.

Well, technically, it was my second purchase. I got burned on a scam back in 2014, but that’s a long story for another time. More on how to avoid getting burnt, keep reading.

The important message here is that I gathered the courage to try again, and I am very glad I did.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to buy my new lovely small apartment, on an island, within 5 minutes walking distance of an incredibly beautiful beach.

I bought my first website for $500. Second for $550. Third for $2200. The rest is as they say history.

Those first few websites I bought have already made 100% on their returns.

So now I know I am not crazy, and I want to help others join the ride.

I would rather not disclose publicly how many investments I have made. I can share the numbers for those first 3 investments I already mentioned.

I still own all 3 websites.

Editor’s Note: Goran also owns another website not described here that makes him around $5,000 a month.

6 reasons why you will love revenue-making websites

1. You can be wherever you want.My fiancee and I bought this place on an island because we would like to be there. We are not digital nomads per se, but we could be.Two weeks in Florence, Italy, followed by three weeks in Alicante, Spain?No problemo!

   Please don’t be mistaken, we still have to work a lot, but we can work wherever we want.

2. You can pick your projects.Gaming was an old passion of mine, so I bought a website around games. I am vegan, so I bought a website that’s making money with affiliate commissions for selling products to vegans.I am super passionate about website investing, so my company built software that helps website investors.See how that goes?
3. Revenue is mostly profit.The cost can be so low compared to other businesses that most of it is profit, especially if you handle the work yourself like writing, graphic design or SEO.Depending on the website, there have been occasions where I haven’t worked on the website at all, and it still gives good monthly returns 24 months later.
4. Low headcount.A friend of mine runs a ten-person agency. He has so much payroll, responsibilities, projects, office maintenance and he is still not making any money. That’s with 10 people, imagine a 100.And then you know how companies go on a retreat?Let’s face it, most people would rather be somewhere else.
5. Easy to maintain, solid returns.Compared to a restaurant and many types of businesses, websites are easy. Compared to stocks, websites are easy. Compared to real estate investing, websites will probably have a better risk-reward ratio.Before my fiancee and I bought this place, we rented an apartment for €270. If you wanted to buy a similar apartment (same skyscraper), it would cost you €70,000.If I bought a website for €70,000, I would expect my money back within 40 months at the latest, not 260!
6. Choose your work hours.I could have said “make money while you sleep”, because the websites are running 24/7, but working whenever you want is more realistic.It comes with a real challenge to motivate yourself to work.Yes, the money comes even if you sleep. However, it is you who has to push yourself to work.

   You have the option to pick when it’s most convenient for you, that’s the difference.

How to Avoid Getting Scammed When you Buy your First Website

When I bought my first site, everything was going great. Traffic looked realistic in Google Analytics, and clicks were flowing in my Google AdSense account.

One month later when I was approaching the $500 mark I opted for my first AdSense payment.

A couple of days later my account was banned and with it completely shut down. I was so devastated that I completely gave up on those 2  web sites.

Google didn’t tell me why they banned and shut down my Adsense account, but I think the site was built by scammers who fabricated the site traffic and Adsense clicks.

I consider myself a website expert, so I was really hurt when I figured out I had been tricked, and lost money in the process.

It took me years to recover mentally and try again. Back then money was really scarce and I was going through enormous challenges with my business.

Like Stacy Caprio said in her own website buying case study on the Her.CEO site, you have to do serious due diligence before you make the purchase, and don’t invest in fads or you could get burned.

Let’s build upon that.

What I like to do is understand where exactly the traffic is coming from, and how good are my skills at containing it.

I like websites that rely on search engine traffic, and for me, it’s not enough to see a verified listing or verified Google Analytics account. I don’t even look at the Google Analytics account.

I use tools that show me the list of keywords for which this website ranks.

That way I can see that the website I am considering for buying, is in fact at the top for a particular keyword.

I use another tool that gives an approximate number of searches, so I know if that keyword could bring a lot of traffic or no traffic.

Why revenue-making websites are perfect for passive income

So don’t chase the latest get quick rich scheme. Make sure the opportunity (income stream) is the one that suits you most, and then dive deep.

Doing this is what has allowed me to live my dream life with my fiancee, in our gorgeous beachside Croatian apartment. Without risk there is no reward, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Good luck, and see you on the other side!

If you’re interested in following in Goran’s footsteps and buying a website for yourself, you can sign up for Stacy’s Her.CEO website investing waitlist using the form below to receive our occasional, vetted site for sale emails:

Sign up For the Website Investing Waitlist here: