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.

Watch my aged domain case study with traffic numbers and more here:

In today’s post, I’ll be sharing my experience with building a website on an Odys Global aged domain.

You’ll get to see my full Odys review, and learn about my experience building a website on a premium, aged Odys domain.

First, we’ll go over why people (like me), buy aged domains, and how buying an aged domain can speed up the website ranking process.

The main reason people buy aged domains on marketplaces such as Odys.Global, is that brand new domains and sites tend not to rank.

Do Brand New Domains Rank?

Brand New Sites Take Time to Rank

With a brand new site you have two options. You can either wait it out, and build site links and authority, or, you can build a site on an older, aged domain with high authority to try to rank more quickly.

Another option to help a brand new site rank more quickly is to redirect an older, aged domain with high authority to your brand new domain to transfer authority onto the new domain to try to help it rank more quickly.

One question many people have is, why don’t new sites rank?

Why don’t new sites rank?

• The Google Sandbox
• No time for Google to see how visitors react to the site
• No links, trust or authority
• Need more content / keyword-researched content

The Google Sandbox

One reason new sites don’t rank right away is the Google Sandbox. If you’re an SEO or have been in the online world for any amount of time, you may have heard of the The Google Sandbox.

The Google Sandbox refers to a general 6 month period that most websites are in a sort of purgatory before they have a chance to start ranking for any keywords at all.

As you can imagine, this can be frustrating for many website owners who are impatient to see results.

Google Needs Time Before it Ranks a Site

The reason for the sandbox is that Google tends to need time to start indexing new sites, to see if they actually have good content, and to figure out what they’re about.

Because of this, Google tends to wait at least 6 months before they will even start ranking a brand new site and domain.

This period of time is known as the Google sandbox period and is recognized by many in the SEO world and by those who have ever started a brand new site on a brand new domain.

No Links, Trust & Authority = No Google Rankings

Another reason a new site will have trouble ranking is because a brand new site has no links, and no trust or authority.

When a site starts fresh with no links this is a sign to Google it has no outside trust so Google is less willing to rank it or trust it.

Links are outside trust factors that show to Google and other search engines that a site can be trusted.

A brand new site has no trust factors that search engines can recognize to rank it.

Since a brand new site is new and without links, trust or authority, and search engines don’t want to rank something brand new with no trust factors. Lack of links, trust and authority are part of the reason it takes brand new sites so long to rank.

No Content = No Google Rankings

New sites also tend to have less content or even no content. 

Every site needs content to rank.

Specifically, every site needs content that targets keywords with some type of search volume and low enough competition for the site to have a chance to start ranking for anything.

No Content = No Rankings

• To rank, a site needs keyword-researched content. Since new sites tend to have less content, or even no content they start out not ranking for  anything. The less content a site has, the less chance it has to rank.
• A new site will never rank for every single keyword it targets, so part of ranking is a numbers game of how much content you can put out into the world to even have a chance to rank. A brand new site will generally have less content and fewer chances to rank.

The key to getting your site to rank in Google, is getting Google to trust your website.

What makes Google trust a website?

• Age
• Site history with links, content, visitors and Google
• Number of links, quality of links, relevance of links 
• Quality of content, visitor engagement with site
• Sources, who it links out to & who its authors are

Website Age

There are several things that make Google trust a website, and one is age.

Google tends to trust and rank sites that have been around for a very long time. This is more often the case when the site has been around for a long time and provided good content and a good user experience.

Sites with 5-20+ years of age have already gotten past the new site ‘sandbox’ period, and Google knows them better so is more likely to rank them.

Having an older, stable, established site is a trust factor and can help a site rank, and stay in the rankings on Google and other search engines.

I’ve bought multiple sites and one thing I always look for is site age.

Buying a 10 year + stable ranking site is always a good sign for the site’s future health. Buying a brand new, rocket-ship growth site that only has 6 months or a year of traffic and earning potential is usually a red flag because the site has a higher chance of using risky SEO tactics or being penalized quickly after you buy it.

Number of Website Links AKA Authority

Another thing that makes Google trust a site is the number of links it has, the quality of links it has, and the relevance of the links it has. 

Links from other sites show Google a website is trusted enough by other sites for them to reference the site on their own webpage.

This is a positive trust signal.

The more links, the more trust a site has. Of course it is not as simple as that.

The more relevant links, meaning links from sites in the same niche, the more trust a site has. Links contribute to how much Google trusts a site, because links from a site in the same niche show that the site is “trusted” by other sites in its niche and therefore has more credibility and expertise.

When a site is trusted by other sites enough to be linked to, Google sees that as a positive ranking signal, and boosts the site in search results.

Why are random links neutral, or even bad?

Random links show Google that your site is either buying links, using unnatural link building tactics, or is looked at as less valuable by Google because the site linking to you doesn’t have the expertise to decide if your site is actually trustworthy or not.

Getting high quality links from those in your niche is the best type of link, even if the domain linking out has a lower authority than an unrelated niche.

The quality of link is also important, you don’t want links from a PBN, or a blog that advertises they accept sponsored posts, paid posts or guest posts.

You want links from high authority sites, meaning sites that have lots of trust signals in the form of links from other sites.

If other high authority, high trust sites show Google they trust your site, that means more to Google than a site with no links or authority linking out to your site.

Why do high authority links matter?

High authority links are similar to if you get a letter of recommendation from a random person on the street, versus getting a letter of recommendation from the President of the United States.

Which do you think will carry more weight with the job you’re applying to?

Of course the letter of recommendation from the president of the US, because they have high authority and are recognized by others.

Why do in-niche links matter?

Additionally, if you receive a letter of recommendation from the president of the US, and a letter of recommendation from the Owner/CEO of the company you’re applying to, which would hold more weight?

Likely both would have weight, but the letter from the CEO of the company would hold more weight, because even though the CEO of the company has less social trust and authority than the President of the US, the CEO is more relevant to the job you’re trying to get since they own the company.

 Quality of Website Content

Another Google trust factor is the quality of content and visitor engagement with site

Google’s algorithm is continually changing to try to figure out which content is the highest quality and how visitors are engaging with the site.

Since no one can figure out the exact algorithms, and since Google keeps changing them anyway and getting better at detecting good content, the best thing for you to do is always produce the best quality content for your site that will serve visitors the best.

Google trusts sites more when they have high quality content and when visitors seem to respond well to the content, ie, not immediately clicking back into search results after visiting a site, or staying on a site longer to read more articles.

Quality of Website Sources

Lastly a Google trust factor is a site’s sources, who it links out to and who its authors are.

Google is asking, where is this site getting its information? Is it linking out to reputable sources? Who are its authors? Are they subject matter experts?

Google is trying to serve high quality content to its visitors, so they try to make sure the content is factual and not made up or pulled out of thin air.

These trust factors are not present in ‘brand-new’ sites, and are why some people choose to build websites on aged domains, such as those from Odys.global marketplace.

Why do people build sites on aged domains?

• An aged domain has many search engine trust factors including age, authority/links, past site visitor engagement, past site content & sources

People build sites on aged domains so they can:

• Skip the Google sandbox
• Get the power of the domain’s trust factors (age, authority/links, past rankings)
• Rank more quickly
• Rank with less effort
• Utilize the power of the domain to rank their site and content effectively and quickly

What are the risks of building a site on an aged domain?

• Choosing a domain that had low traffic or declining traffic before it expired, or had bad backlinks or was previously penalized
  • When you choose a domain that never had traffic, or was penalized, or had bad backlinks, you’re simply reviving a site that never worked in the first place, so there’s no reason it should work again now.
  • The main thing I always look for when buying an expired domain is finding one that had traffic when it was live, was live not too long ago, and doesn’t seem to have been hit with any type of penalty, or declining traffic.
  • I also look at the backlink profile using Ahrefs, and make sure the linking domains are high quality, high DA and relevant.

• Choosing a domain that is copyrighted and that can be taken away from you
  • If you end up buying Google.com in-between its renewal period like that guy did a few years ago, the copyrighted url is owned by someone else and they will be able to take it back quite easily.

• Trying to pivot the direction of the domain once you own it
  • This is key, you want to keep the domain in the same niche with the same intent, and I’ll go over my own case study regarding this in a few slides and go into more detail about keeping the domain in the same niche and same direction for best results.

• Writing content for/choosing a niche that doesn’t match the old site’s content or intent**
  • Again, this is super important. You want to write new content for your aged domain that is spot on with the old site’s intent. Trying to pivot the site’s niche or intent will signal to Google that the site is now different, not the old trusted site Google liked before, and this comes with ranking and SEO risks.

Note: Just like buying a live site, of course there are other risks as well. Any site at any time can have organic traffic or any type of traffic taken away from it for any reason (as likely many of you know if you have been in the online world for any amount of time).

Tips When Buying an Aged Domain

What to consider when choosing a niche

• Choose a niche that is an exact match if possible.
• You can choose your niche first, then find a domain with the same exact intent, OR you can choose your domain first and then build a website with the same exact intent as the old website

Choosing an exact match niche when buying an aged domain is very important.

When you pick a website where you can pick up where it left off so Google says,

‘oh look, it’s my old favorite trusted site, and it’s back again, only better! I love this site and I want to push it right back up to the top of the rankings where it was before! Yay, I missed my old friend!’

When your niche picks up exactly where the old domain niche’s content left off, it’s a signal to Google the site is back and your rankings tend to come back quickly.

What you want is content that picks up exactly where the old domain niche’s content left off for best results.

Aged Domain Case Study

Buying my First Aged Domain:

• I bought an aged domain from Odys, 6 months ago
• The domain was a DA 33, with 1.2K or so backlinks
• Many backlinks from very high-quality .gov etc domains
• When I bought it, it was live. Odys keeps their aged domains live so you don’t have to ‘revive them’ completely from the dead.
• When I bought it 6 months ago, it was only ranking for a small handful of keywords.

My Process Buying an Aged Domain

My first time buying an aged domain

Before this purchase, I had never bought an aged domain before, only websites with current traffic and revenue, or bought fresh domains and created my own sites on them.

6 months ago, I was curious about how building a site on an aged domain could help it rank more quickly and without putting in the usual link building legwork.

I had been hearing about people building sites on aged domains and the process of taking a domain that already had links and trust from search engines intrigued me.

I liked the thought of simply taking a domain that had been ranking well, and then putting content on it and having the potential to rank again without much effort.

Buying my aged domain through Odys

At the time I had been hearing a lot about Odys Global, a company that buys, curates and sells aged domains, through reading several of my  favorite SEO email newsletters I follow, so I decided to look at their site for aged domains.

I’d never purchased a domain with no current traffic for so much money before, so it took me a good two days to work up the nerve to make the purchase before I finally did

I ended up buying my first aged domain from Odys (O-d-y-s), 6 months ago, and looking back I’m very glad I did.

I like looking for aged domains on the Odys site because they curate high DA, high quality domains and they keep them live while they sit for sale.

It’s better to pick up an aged domain that hasn’t been offline for a super long time, so I like that they keep the domains sitting live while they’re listed for sale. Odys also pre-vets sites and makes sure the domains have high quality backlinks which takes a lot of the work out of your end when looking.

Buying my second aged domain at a GoDaddy auction

I’ve looked for and bought an aged domain on my own as well, and it was quite an involved long and uncertain process.

It took a few days of poring through domains on my own using SEMRush to find even a handful that looked semi-usable. then I had to wait over a month for it to fully expire. then i had to go into an auction period to actually purchase the site. 

Benefits of Buying an Aged Domain From a Marketplace like Odys

• Marketplaces make it easy to find a curated list of high quality domains, no spending days searching for quality expired URLs
  • One thing that’s nice about Odys is all you have to do is simply logon to their website and you see a list of ready to use, high quality domains available right away when you want one.
• Fixed, buy-it-now price, no bidding wars.
  • The Odys domains are also reasonably priced with a fixed buy it now, which is also nice.

My Recent Experience Buying an Aged Domain Through a GoDaddy Auction

The other aged domain I recently purchased through an expired domain auction directly from GoDaddy.

As I explained before I had to spend several days trying to find the domain, then once I did I placed a backorder on it, and then waited over a month for it to expire.

Then the day of the auction there was another person bidding on it at the same time I was. Luckily they only placed one bid and then I got it.

I’ve tried with other domains and it’s a ton of work to find them in the first place, and other people usually want them pretty badly so they tend to get snapped up.

Buying an Aged Domain on a Marketplace vs Buying an Aged Domain at an Auction

Pros of buying an aged domain in a marketplace

• It is easy to find and view quality aged domains in a marketplace
  • One reason I like buying an aged domain through a marketplace, such as Odys, versus at an auction, is that you can simply login and see a list of high quality domains available to buy.
  • This means you don’t have to search through hundreds or thousands of expired URLs, trying to find a quality one in your niche, and then waiting for it to expire just so you can get into a bidding war with someone else who wants it.
• You don’t have to wait to buy the domain, you can buy it now
  • Sometimes you need or want the domain right now, and you don’t want to go through an unpredictable auction process.
• You don’t have to compete in bidding wars 
  • When purchasing an aged domain on a marketplace, you don’t need to compete in bidding wars, instead you pay a buy-it-now price.
  • In an auction, it is always a possibility you may have to compete in bidding price wars wondering if you’ll even get the domain you want.

The ease of buying an aged domain in a marketplace, the ability to purchase the domain right away, and the price certainty of not having to compete in bidding wars are all part of the reason I found it nice and easy to buy my aged domain on an aged domain curator like Odys. 

Process of buying an aged domain through an auction

I also personally think it’s a good experience to go through the process of finding and buying an aged domain on your own, so I recommend you try both ways to get acquainted with the entire process that goes into finding and buying aged domains.

It can be possible to get a better deal on some auction domains, as long as there isn’t too much competition or interest. This is one reason why setting up several backorders in a niche you’re interested in can be a good idea.

1. Find quality URLS
   • If you’re looking to buy an aged domain at an auction, first you’ll have to find a list of URLs that interest you. I use Ahrefs to find these, you can use any tool, or even search on aged domain marketplaces directly.
2. Monitor domains as they expire
   • Then, you need to either monitor the domains on your own, or pay for and set up domain backorder tracking to make sure you are notified when they expire.
   • This is so you can get the domain automatically if you’re the only bidder, or bid on them in the auction if there are multiple bidders.
3. Bid on the domain in an auction, or automatically receive it
   • After the domain expires, if there are multiple bidders, you then have the live auction situation where you will need to bid against others for the domain.
   • Whoever wants to pay the most for the domain will win it in the auction.

Cons of buying a domain through an auction

Buying a domain through an auction means you’ll be bidding against others to get the domain if more than one person is interested in buying it.

• You may not pay enough to win the domain
  • Bidding for a domain means you may not want to pay enough to win the domain, and it means you have to be ok with waiting all that time for the domain to expire, and then walking away empty-handed without a domain.
• You may over-pay for the domain and regret it
  • In an auction situation, you also risk getting caught up in the auction mood, and then over-bidding and over-paying for the domain and regretting it later.

Expired domain auctions, with all of their uncertainty and bidding wars are one reason I do have a soft spot for curated aged domain sites like Odys, since in these marketplaces you don’t have to spend time waiting for a domain to expire or wonder how much it will cost you.

In a domain marketplace such as Odys, you can just browse the site and hit checkout when you see one you like. 

Aged Domain Case Study: What I did

What I did:

• I bought the aged domain from Odys, www.odys.global
• I looked up all of its high-link, high-traffic pages
• Then I 301-redirected all the pages with 2 or more quality links to a new keyword-researched page targeting the same keywords
• I added a ton of new content, specifically over 70 new category pages, and thousands of new content-specific pages
• I strategically internally linked the content category pages
• I waited 6 months

Aged Domain Case Study: Lesson #1

One takeaway: 

• One thing I would do differently looking back is I would have matched my site’s relevancy spot on
• I matched the exact niche, but it was more of an overlap.
• It’s still ranking first page for the exact niche match keywords, but many of the overlap keywords are still page 2-3
• I noticed the exact niche keywords shot up in the rankings, while the related niche keywords are ambling up the rankings on their own time more like a normal site would.

Takeaway: Related/overlap niches can work when building an aged domain, but you’ll see the rocket-ship results from exact content intent matches.

Try to keep your intent exactly as the old site was for the best of the best rocket-ship type results.

Takeaway Explained

• Traffic and intent are the most important things to consider when buying an aged domain
• Look at the old site’s traffic, if it was always high, then that is a good sign, regardless of how high the DA is
• Look at the old site’s intent, if your intent is the exact same, then that is more important than getting a site with a super high DA

My site had very high DA and traffic. My intent was a 50% match.

My site is still doing quite well, likely because of the high DA, high past traffic, and that the intent is a pretty good match.

However it was easy for me to see how the exact match intent keywords went from 0 to 100 in a few days, and my 50% overlap keywords are still page 2 and 3 after 6 months, which isn’t bad, but it is a clear difference.

For the Best Results, keep the intent a 100% match. For Good Results, keep the niche the same.

• Traffic and intent are the most important things to consider when buying an aged domain
• Look at the old site’s traffic, if it was always high, then that is a good sign, regardless of how high the DA is
• Look at the old site’s intent, if your intent is the exact same, then that is more important than getting a site with a super high DA

Intent Example

• You purchase an aged domain site that helps people with low income buy “affordable balloons”
• Exact-match intent: Reviving the site and continuing to help people figure out how to buy affordable balloons
• Overlap intent: Reviving the site and starting to sell balloons directly on your site to all types of people searching for ‘buy balloon’ keywords

Both work, but with the exact match intent your rankings have a higher chance of hopping right back to page 1 right away, and with overlap intent the new keywords may rank much more slowly, if at all.

Note: (in my case), the exact match intent keywords ranked right away and the overlap intent keywords have slowly been ranking and after 6 months many are on page 2-5.

Aged Domain Case Study: Traffic

I bought the domain here, in April of 2021. Note the upward keyword ranking growth curve.

Aged Domain Case Study Site Traffic Over Time

• Note: Month 1 the site was already getting 418 visitors
• The site is getting 759 visitors a month now, 6 months later (no link building etc only added new content):

As you can see in the blue Google Analytics graph below, month 1 the site was already getting 418 visitors. The site was getting traffic right from the point I set it up, from all of its exact match intent keywords that started ranking right away.

The site was live with other owners during these other two periods, ranking for quite a few keywords, as you can see in the first and second arrow on the left side of the orange Ahrefs graph below:

I bought the domain in April. Note the upward keyword ranking growth curve. as you can see in the third arrow on the the right on the orange graph below:

I would like to note I did no link building to this site at all, I only added new content.

Note, you can sign up for the future case study updates at www.her.ceo/subscribe.

How to buy an aged domain:

• From an aged domain marketplace, such as Odys, where I bought mine
• Directly from an owner, contacting owners of live, or expired domains using WHOIS contact info
• Waiting it out and putting a backorder on a domain until the domain officially expires, and playing in an auction to win it
• Putting a backorder on a domain until it expires and hoping you win it without it going to auction

There are a handful of ways you can acquire an aged domain. The easiest is buying directly from an aged domain marketplace such as Odys.

I’ve acquired one aged domain from Odys, and one from a backorder + auction.

How to set up an aged domain website?

First you’ll want to find the high link pages, and recreate these pages on your site, making sure to 301 redirect the old pages to your new site’s pages.

One caveat is to not copy the pages word for word, and don’t even copy the URLS word for word. Instead it is often best to keyword research your own new urls that will have a better chance of ranking, and 301 redirect the old URL to your new similar URL.

Then, in terms of content you want to create brand new high quality content around the same topic to avoid any copyright issues.

Here is how to Recreate & Redirect the old high-link pages:

• Put the domain into Ahrefs
• Go to > Pages > Best By Links

To find all the pages with links:

• Create new similar keyword-researched pages for the pages with 2+ good links
• If a page has a ton of links, consider keeping the exact URL for that page
• 301-Redirect all all these old URLS to your new keyword-researched URLS

Doing this page creation and redirects will help you keep the link authority of the site in place.

How to create content for your aged domain:

• Create a ton of keyword-researched, exact intent-match content for the site.
  • Pro-Tip: Ask yourself, what would the old site do? Then create content that the old site would’ve wanted to have.
• Create the best content you can for pages that historically ranked top 10 or 20 (because those will likely have the best chance of ranking again now).

Keep the site intent the same, but put new great content on the site for the best chance of ranking well.

•   I focus on creating the best content for pages that historically ranked top 10 or 20 because those will likely have the best chance of ranking again now.

•   The point is to create new content that is targeting the same keywords the site used to rank for, or keywords in the exact same niche. Keep the site intent the same, but put new great content on the site for the best chance of ranking well.

•   Note: When creating your new site’s content, don’t copy old content word-for-word. Create new content that is under the same topic. You don’t want to get into any copyright issues.
  • I almost made this mistake but luckily contacted the Odys support team asking how to do this and they warned me to stay away from directly copying content due to potential copyright issues.
•    Use the Wayback Machine for content inspiration.
  • The Wayback Machine allows you to see almost any old page on the web.
  • The Wayback Machine works by archiving webpages in its database so you can look at old versions of sites and sites that no longer exist by inputting the page URL and selecting the date you want to view the page.
  • This is really cool because it allows you to see what the old site looked like and what the pages content was, so you can create pages that are similar so they have a chance to rank.

•   I focus on creating the best content for pages that historically ranked top 10 or 20 because those will likely have the best chance of ranking again now.
  • The point is not to create a whole new different site, but take the exact same niche if possible and create a better site.
  • Google trusts the old site so if it senses you’re making a completely new or different site or a site with a different angle you’ll have a higher chance of falling of the trust radar and losing traffic.

 In Conclusion: Why Aged Domains?

• • Trust: Google trusts sites when they have age, authority/links, good history with traffic, rankings, and visitor engagement
  • Rank more quickly: People build on aged domains to leverage their power and links to help a new site rank more quickly, with less effort
  • Don’t Forget: Choose an exact-match niche, 301-redirect old website pages, and create new original content for the site

How to buy an aged domain:

• Go to an aged domain curator such as Odys and pick out a domain to purchase

• Contact website owners directly and ask to purchase their domain
• Place a backorder on a site like GoDaddy and wait it out until the domain auction

Remember to subscribe to the Her.CEO newsletter to stay up to date on future case study updates!

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!

I just bought a duplex in the surrounding Austin area and wanted to update you guys!

Most of you know me as the ‘Her.CEO girl who buys websites’. At least that’s how I imagine you all think of me.

Well guess what? I just bought a duplex.

Before I dive in, I just want to say thank you to my websites for making my duplex purchase possible. Ok diving in.

I’ve been looking in Austin, Texas and the surrounding areas for the past 4 months, and just closed on a property today.

Now, you’re probably thinking what in the world is she doing? She should only be buying websites, not real estate, so she can keep teaching me things and write more website case studies!

Her posts are my favorite part of each day. At least, that’s what I am imagining you’re thinking. I’m guessing that’s pretty accurate. My Her.CEO website posts and emails are the favorite part of many people’s days. Haha I’m kidding guys.

I’ve been thinking about investing in real estate for some time now, and I’m very happy I ended up being able to do so.

Why? Mostly due to my thoughts on stocks and inflation.

I started writing this post, which actually started out as an email, trying to fit all my thoughts on stocks and inflation right here, but then I realized it was way too long. So, subscribe to the Her.CEO newsletter here to read the full post, or head over to posts 2 and 3 where I explain why I took most of my money out of stocks recently, and why I’m investing more in assets due to my thoughts on inflation.

Current Austin, TX Real Estate Market

Hint: It’s Hot

I want to give a quick shoutout to Her.CEO email list reader and real estate investor Nadav, who I’d connected with recently and who gave me some real estate tips before I made my purchase.

He told me hasn’t been investing in real estate this entire year, even though he usually buys properties regularly, due to the high buyer competition and prices in hot areas right now.

I saw this to be true where I was looking in the Austin, Texas area as well. Almost no one was listing their home for sale, and there were tons of people flocking to Austin from all over, particularly California.

Everyone is coming to Austin.

It doesn’t help that Tesla, Oracle and others are moving their headquarters to Austin, and that businesses like Samsung are continuing to pour billions to expand in the Austin area.

With interest rates as low as they are right now, there are many people looking to buy a new house as a home-owner or an investor, so there was a ton of competition for barely any for sale listings.

I started looking in November of 2020, and there were already dozens of offers on each house slightly above list price. After Christmas and in early January, prices had gone up 20% or more from when I started, and people were bidding insanely high to the point the winners of houses would be basically breaking even each month if they had put down 25% and were renting the houses out as an investment property.

To give you guys an idea, the Austin market is currently so hot with so little supply and so much demand, the norm was / is for houses to go on market, and then accept an offer and go off market that same day or the very next day.

Real Estate Investing Tips

Tips From Her.CEO Reader Nadav that are applicable to both real estate and website investing.

Nadav, the Her.CEO real estate investing veteran, gave me two real estate tips that I took to heart:

1) Find Deals – In any type of market, even in hot markets, there are always deals to be found. Look out and be patient for those.

2) Look for things you can Improve – Don’t be afraid of renovation or buying something you need to improve.

These tips are also incredibly applicable to website investing. Website multiples have been rising rapidly. I remember when I first started buying websites 4 or so years ago and the going multiple was 20X the monthly profit valuation. Nowadays, the average is closer to 32X, all the way up to 60X for some highly in-demand sites.

However, it is still possible to find deals if you look hard enough, or if you have good relationships in the space.

Nadav’s second point, don’t be afraid of renovation or improving a property, is also the #1 thing I look for when buying a website, because even a site priced at a higher multiple, if you know you can improve it, either through driving more traffic to it, or by increasing the revenue per visitor, then it can still be an insanely good deal.

Website SEO quick wins VS Real Estate quick wins

There are a lot of SEO quick wins you can do to quickly drive more traffic to a site, and drive more traffic over time, maybe I’ll do an email that goes into that at some point.

One example of a quick website SEO win, similar to one may quickly renovate to make it look nicer on the surface, is: Increasing website revenue per visitor

Increasing revenue per visitor you can do a lot of ways, the most common are through switching and testing ad networks, or switching from affiliate to ecommerce, or offering more products or services or sponsorships on the site. I could also go into that more in a future email, both are huge topics.

My Austin Duplex Investing Story

Here’s how I ended up with my first duplex in the surrounding Austin area:

I started my real estate search in person when visiting family in Austin for Thanksgiving and Christmas. During this time I made an offer on a duplex slightly above list but didn’t make it into even the top 4 cut.

In January, I doubled down on my search, completely via FaceTime with my realtor, who is amazing, if anyone is looking for or to sell a place in the Austin or surrounding area feel free to let me know and I can connect you.

Whenever new houses and duplexes appeared on market, almost every day, he would send me a hand-picked list of the best listings for my criteria “cash-flowing duplex or single family in the Austin or surrounding area, more focus on surrounding areas due to Austin’s high prices in relation to rent.”

The best Austin Realtor = Chris

It took me 4 realtors to finally find Chris, the one I liked, because the rest had simply set me up on MLS auto searches, as opposed to actually taking the time to find the best deals that were relevant to me. Chris was the only one who understood what cash-flow was as well. I’m picky with who I work with, and it also took me 3 tries to find my current accountant.

I ended up writing offers for a handful of single family homes in the Hutto, Round Rock, and Austin area, as well as a handful of duplexes in similar areas including Austin and other surrounding areas, and even one in San Marcos that ended up having foundation and other issues which I ended up pulling due to that.

Kind of cheating to figure out what we should bid

My realtor Chris would always talk to the agents the day before bids were due and get an idea of what the highest bids were so mine could be competitive. On one duplex near Dell’s campus in Austin, we used his intel and I bid the exact price of the actual winning bid, but we had a few less seller favorable contract terms so I ended up not getting it. That was a blessing in disguise because I ended up getting a much less expensive duplex in better condition that I like even more.

The duplex I ended up getting was a duplex I had initially bid on and lost. My initial bid was higher than the original winning bid, which my realtor Chris had helped us semi-figure out the range of by talking to the other realtor in advance. The original winning bid likely beat mine because it was all-cash for both duplexes the owner was selling at the same time.

How I saved $20K and got an off-market duplex

My bid lost out, so I moved on and kept looking at and bidding on other places. A few weeks later, Chris texted me, “You want Luther? They terminated on that one. He [the listing agent] said I’m the first and only one he’s called.”

I ended up making an offer on it, competing against no one this time, since my realtor and I were the only ones they had reached out to, offering $20K less than my original bid, and they accepted.

Then I was able to get $5K more off in the option period, as there was an HVAC that needed a small drain line fix, and a few other small handyman repairs.

The woman who owned the two duplexes was selling as she and her husband were retiring, and she had owned them for 25 years as her “babies” that she renovated very well and took care of in terms of property and tenants.

We like to buy from retirees? I do

The strange thing is, my two best performing websites, I purchased from two people also retiring. My takeaway here is I like buying from retirees selling their businesses, real estate, websites and other assets, because retiring can be an actual motive to sell a high-quality asset.

I closed on my duplex March 1st.

My closing date was March 1st, and I now own a beautiful, cash-flowing duplex in Georgetown, Texas, only 30 minutes and miles from central Austin.

Georgetown is one of the fastest growing cities in Austin, and you can search Georgetown homes listed on the MLS if you’re looking for a real estate investment similar to mine, or you can send me a note and I’m happy to help with ideas.

Ok, this picture isn’t great and the day was bleak, but I took it from the appraisal form.

I ended up getting a really great deal on it, and it was so much less expensive with a much better cash-flow ratio than any other winning duplex bids I saw during my entire 4 month search period. Needless to say I feel very blessed and happy to have found it.

As Her.CEO reader Nadav would say, I think I ended up finding a good deal.

Real estate vs Websites as an asset

Real estate is also an asset similar to websites, although it is usually only accessible at a higher price point and multiple. The main difference is you can usually get loans for real estate while they can be harder to come by in a conventional way for websites.

Mortgage loan rates are also at an all-time low right now. I took a small loan and did a very large down-payment, and my loan was only 2.875%, which I know is crazy low.

Keep an eye out for my thoughts on why I bought real estate, mostly due to an uncertain future for stocks and inflation, Part 2 & 3 of this email, which were too long to include here.

In Part 2 & 3 I’ll talk about why buying assets right now is very important (in my opinion I’m not a financial advisor or trying to influence anyone..I’m simply talking about my own thoughts and actions right now *end disclaimer here*).

Feel free to reply if you’ve bought any real estate recently, if you’re buying or selling near Austin right now, or if you have any other questions about my process & as always I love emailing with you all!

You can always send me an email at stacy@her.ceo

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Also, of course my Ad & Affiliate Disclaimers: I often feature products in the form of paid ads which are clearly marked in the email. Also, I often use and recommend affiliate products (only really good ones I actually like and use). If you use any of these products with my link or code, I get a commission, which is something I have to let you know. I’m also letting you know I get compensated for any ads in this email. You can always ask me about specific products or send questions and I read (and currently try to reply to) every one, so always feel free to send your questions.

Financial Disclaimer: *Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, and I’m not a financial advisor. I simply share my own thoughts and actions about my own choices and thoughts. You may find or talk to your own financial advisor if you are looking for financial advice or direction.*

Christopher Schwab started an outsourced Cleaning business from his college dorm, and grew it to the point he was able to work entirely remotely from Japan and London.

From there he grew to become a virtual assistant hiring expert and started a VA outsourcing company as well as a handful of other successful ventures.

He shares his experience starting a cleaning business, growing it, hiring VA’s for his company and for others, and how he was able to remove himself from day to day operations to be able to live the digital nomad dream and work completely remotely.

If you are thinking of starting a cleaning business, hiring a VA, or learning to outsource day to day operations in your own business, this article will help you learn how to do so.

How to Find a Virtual Assistant

If you really want to find a great VA, you want to find someone who might not necessarily even label themselves as a VA. But nonetheless, who can do the job you require remotely.

For example, my VA company, we focus on admin work for local businesses, we’re not a sales VA, or a real estate VA. Instead we’re really Office Admin for local businesses. So we don’t need to specifically hire a local business VA.

This means we can hire someone who’s helped run a family business, or who’s done admin work for much of their career, or who’s worked as a specific type of secretary. And then we can train them on the virtual aspects.

And I actually find this works better to find someone with the underlying skills that you need, and hire them and then train them on the virtual side, instead of finding someone who’s a VA and then teaching them the underlying skills that we need.

I think a lot of people get that wrong. And so we focus on the underlying skills.

So for someone who’s qualified and has the experience, we look for people who aren’t really marketing themselves as vas, but who can become the best VA that we need.

Common VA-based Business Mistakes

The most common mistake I’ve seen that can make a VA-based business crumble is promising quality of service at the level of an expert. I see a lot of VA companies doing this, where someone says they need a marketing funnel designer and a good marketing funnel designer can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000.

I’ve spent 10s of thousands of dollars on a really good funnel designer before. But I see VA is offering the service for $15, or $20 or $25 an hour. And it’s just not a realistic thing to offer.

If you’re being honest about the level of quality that you can deliver to the client, you are not an expert in that field. But many VA businesses fall into the generalist category, but they sell themselves as a specialist. So many VA services offer 10 or 12 or 15 different services to their clients. But they’re a generalist to all of them, and that’s fine.

But, but they need to recognize and be honest that they cannot deliver the quality of an expert specialist who only does that one service. And I see a lot of VA companies making that mistake. And so their clients inevitably get disappointed when they get something that is not at the level of expert that they were hoping for.

So you have marketing VA’s, you have econ VA’s, and funnel VA’s, you have all these decent all-rounders, which is great. But you just need to be realistic about what level of service you can actually deliver. That is probably the biggest mistake that I see people make.

And this is not just true to the industry, but it’s particularly true of the VA industry. So what led me to start thinking it’s what I want you to do for that is Google Think Maids Side Hustle School, there’s a quick five to six minute interview that Chris Guillebeau of Side Hustle School did that answers questions three and four.

Why Should You Start a Cleaning Business?

Starting a cleaning business allowed Chris to become location independent and fulfill his dream of working for himself.

Starting any type of business can help you gain independence and allow you to work for yourself. Choosing cleaning specifically is a niche you could get into if you enjoy cleaning, or if you see a need in your community for more cleaning services and think you can do a good job fulfilling this either yourself or by outsourcing the work and doing the marketing, sales and business side yourself as Chris has done.

Comment below if you have ever thought of starting a cleaning business and your experience so far.

When Should You Start to Outsource Your Business

You can outsource any type of business tasks, including cleaning business tasks, as Chris did.

Here is some detail to help you figure out if your business is at the point where you should outsource.

When you should start outsourcing your cleaning business or any VA-based business entirely really depends on the business model that you’re running.

For example, an e-commerce business doing $20,000 a month is totally different than a local business doing $20,000 a month. And it’s totally different than your manufacturing business doing $20,000 a month. I see a lot of people say, Hey, get to $10K a month and then outsource, get to $20K a month and outsource. And it’s just terrible advice.

Because it’s not specific to their business model is not specific to their industry. Those things really do matter. There are certain things that you can generalize, but this is not one of them. You need to know the business model, and you need to know the stage of growth they’re at before you can make a call that you need to outsource things because a lot of people are starting to outsource too early, and it’s an enormous mistake.

Of course my specialty is local businesses. So I will stick to that but if you local service business, you shouldn’t even think about it before getting to around $15,000 to $18,000 a month, unless you have a full-time job. If you have a full time job, and you just need someone to cover some of that basic admin, and you can afford it from the salary in your full time job, that’s fine.

Otherwise, you need to have a base of revenue, and you need to have a base of profit coming through before it makes sense to offload that. So when you’re an owner, you really need a solid foundation built, meaning you’re profitable, meaning you have a base of recurring revenue every month, and you have clients that are with you a long time.

You also need to be consistently closing sales and growing. You don’t need to have a crazy growth trajectory, but you need to be closing more business than you are losing every month. So your closing rate needs to be higher than your churn rate.

And the last thing is you need to reach a point where most of your day to day is spent on busy and work and the busy work is what is really stopping you from growing, because you’re just spending so much time on the basic running of the business. And when you get to that point, that’s the point, at least in a local business, where you should start to hire a VA and offload some of that admin work so that you can refocus on growth.

I see a lot of business owners get to a good stage of growth and then hire a VA and offload everything to them. One that’s bad because the VA is only good at certain things. And you should only offload the things that they’re good at. So if everything but to it’s bad, because I see the owners become complacent. And they don’t take the extra time that they gain from hiring their VA to refocus on growth. And that’s when their business starts to crumble. So before the that stage, money should be reinvested back into marketing and sales for quicker growth,

Until you’re hitting around that $15K to $18K mark in a local business, all your profits, you need to reinvest back into marketing and sales. If you’re not paying yourself or if you can afford to not pay yourself, you should also work on systematizing before you burn on help, otherwise, you’re just wasting money that needs not be spent otherwise.

I’m a big fan of systems and automations but you shouldn’t do it with everything. You know, if you ever call a bank, and you can’t get a hold of a human, it’s a really frustrating experience. And it almost it just makes you angry. So there’s certain things you should not automate. But there’s a lot that you can and you could automate and make your business twice as efficient, and then bring on the extra time and revenue. And then you’re saving all that extra money, because you’re not having your VA is having to work two hours a day instead of four, six. So that’s a big one.

Outsourcing Cleaning VA’s vs Hiring Full-Time Employees

In terms of outsourcing and using a VA or a full-time employee, what makes more sense?

If you are a bigger business, you know, if you’re running seven figures in most industries, e-commerce is a little different, because there’s so much volume and not that much profit, but manufacturing too.

If you’re a bigger business, it’s better to go with employees generally but it differs by industry and is not something to generalize.

If I had to generalize for this question, it would be roughly seven figures is going to cover most industries, is when you should start transitioning over to full time dedicated in office employees. Before that point, VA’s grow really well with you, they’re really adaptable.

And you can build a specialized team of the A’s for each little service that you need. After that point, it becomes better and more profitable to have an in house team. You know, if you’re only doing $10,000 a month, you can’t afford an in office employee, you can’t afford it in office marketing team, you can’t afford it in office salesperson, you might have one or two marketing platforms that you’re using, like Facebook ads, you might have a VA that’s helping with a couple hours of admin work.

But at that revenue, you can’t afford to have people in house full time on a salary working for you. But as you scale up, and you have those profit margins, and you have that leeway, it actually becomes cheaper and more effective to have an in house marketer to have an in house sales guy to have an in house admin team because you’re paying them a set salary every month, you know what’s gonna cost and they’re in the office with you and they’re able to work more closely on your business goals. Instead of just viewing you as a client, they’re viewing you as their employer.

So when you’re bigger it’s a con to have a VA you can still have the ACE for specific tasks. Of course we still do that that goes without saying. But generally it becomes a con to have a VA versus a full time employee. So stage of growth is the biggest thing that’s going to determine how Reliant you become on VAs. The other thing is with outsourcing if you outsource to US-based agents, this is this is not much of an issue. And it happens rarely, although it does happen.

But with international VAs, it’s just unfortunately the case that ghosting clients is quite common. See, and part of this is pay rate. You people pay want to pay an international VA $5 to $7 an hour, which is okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. I know this is a, a big debate in the industry. But there’s nothing wrong with paying someone a good pay rate for their country. Right. It’s just geo arbitrage.

But if you pay a cheaper rate, be aware there is to a certain extent you pay what you get for it in this industry. And it’s increasingly common, where people come to me that their VA from the Philippines or from somewhere else, has ghosted them. And they don’t have access to the account they gave the VA to anymore. The VA is not responding to the emails a week went by, and they didn’t hear anything. So their customers weren’t being served. And so they come to us, and they want to try to transition to a US based firm for more reliability. And I don’t like making these generalizations again. But unfortunately, this is one that generally does hold true, is US based firms tend to be more reliable, they tend to be easier to track down, they don’t tend to ghost you as much. It’s just what it is.

Another con is reliability. If you’re hiring internationally, it is just less reliable. There are so many good days and so many good companies internationally, but they’re less generally reliable in the US. So that’s another con if you’re hiring internationally, for a VA, especially as you get bigger becomes mission critical to have that reliability.

Where to Find a VA

For us, we look a few different places from sourcing VAs.

Where we actually source vas is a mixture of Craigslist. It’s a mixture of indeed, it’s a mixture of Facebook groups, LinkedIn and old VA forums, we found if price is not an issue, VA forums are actually a great place and VA societies as well, are a great place to reach out to VA because there is a vetting process.

There people who’ve been VA s often for 10 or 15 years, they were among the first batch of VA s, when this was kind of a new job, it’s not so new. Now, it’s been around almost 25 years now. Some people were doing this, really in the late 90s. This, that there were very, very few, but there were vas who were VA’s in the late 90s. So you know, this is not a new industry now. But it’s fairly new to most people as of the last 10 years or so still, maybe even the last seven or eight.

Having said that, we find if price is not an issue, VA societies and VA forums are a fantastic source for more experienced VA’s who have industry experience as well.

• Facebook Groups
• Craigslist
• LinkedIn
• VA Societies
• VA Forums
• Facebook Ads
• Recommendations

We find Facebook groups are okay. But the but it’s mostly newer VA’s. There are there are of course many viewers who are not. But a lot of the newer VA s are the ones who are jumping on the job posts immediately who are applying. And so there is a lower level of expertise in Facebook groups.

Having said that, if you’re bringing them on in house as an employee VA versus a subcontractor, you’re that’s okay, because you’re able to train them on your processes. But for us, it’s a mixture of Facebook groups, Craigslist, LinkedIn, and VA societies and forms. Those are the main ones. We’ve played around with Facebook ads, and we’ve had some success. But we don’t really use that unless we’re in a pinch, just because you know, it’s a more expensive option to get applicants through. Those are kind of the sources that we use.

Other ones just include asking our current fees if they know people who are reliable that they’d recommend for this job. And honestly, just asking friends and family, if they know any former office admin staff who might be interested in remote job. So that’s kind of how we source for it. There’s no secret sauce there that you could look for. It’s pretty standard sourcing.

And what I would do a tip that I would give to people for the location they live in is to go to Craigslist and go to their local Craigslist, and then put up a post in the local high like the local office and then customer support and sales sections of the hiring board on Craigslist. And you get a lot of people applying to those ads. They’re not currently VA’s but they’re very open to becoming VA’s. And so that’s been a great source of new ways for us.

I know Craigslist has a very bad reputation. But that was the early days of Craigslist. It’s a very different place now there there are still scams that go on. There are still people who reply who aren’t serious. But Craigslist has evolved as a platform and become a very good source of job applicants. So it’s a good tip for people looking for ways outside of the typical Facebook or LinkedIn.

Cleaning Business Operations Roadblock – Case Study

The biggest roadblock I encountered starting to think maids was the speed of our growth, we went from $0 to $20,000 a month in less than 90 days. And that caused issues because I was a first time business owner. For me, it meant that I was just focused on booking people and getting them on the schedule.

I wasn’t learning how to handle my teams particularly well. I had great teams early on. So they put up with me, and they put up with a lot of mistakes. But one big mistake for me was Halloween. This is actually the story. I’ll keep it very short, just a few seconds. But this is how I ended up starting my VA company was in my cleaning company. Halloween 2016, I was still a full time student was in my final semester University.

And I was doing all exams at the same at that time, it was midterm exams, and people were calling left and right for Halloween cleaning. And I didn’t say no, I was booking people thinking that my teams would want to be on with all the extra money coming in, because we pay them a percentage. So the more cleans they do, they get a lot more money.

I was thinking that they would want to do these cleanings because hey, more money for both of us. But a lot of my team’s called off last minute to be with their family, which is perfectly understandable. I just didn’t have the foresight to ask them ahead of time.

On those days, if they would be available, I just assumed that they would be. And so I had a bunch of customers who were very angry because every other cleaning company in the city was booked. And I had really screwed up there. And some people missed their cleanings for that day. And so that was a really tough moment for me as a business owner.

Not only did my customers lose faith in me, I lost a couple of those customers. But also my teams were frustrated because I was scheduling them for cleans that they couldn’t go to. And so it was just a very big issue for me as a first time business owner, learning that balance of how much business we could take in versus the needs of my teams. And and the time respecting the time of my teams as well. These are issues that I hadn’t thought about before as a business owner because I’d only been in business a few months. So this was a big roadblock for me.

I had wanted to grow, I wanted to grow so fast, and it was going so well. But I was humbled by this experience of finding out that maybe the marketing or the sales isn’t the problem. But there’s all these other parts of running the business that maybe I wasn’t doing a good job on.

And actually I had to step back and learn those things. I had to learn the operations, I had to learn how to handle my teams properly, I had to learn the customer service parts, I had to learn foresight, right, I had to learn how to predict these things ahead of time for the next busy season, and how to handle those ahead of time. And so the biggest roadblock for me with Think Maids was really those other parts of the business.

They’re actually my strengths now. Our operations, our customer service, our teams, those are our main strengths were even better that than that. We’re even better at those than marketing. But those were early on the struggle. I would say the proudest moment with Think Maids was when I was able to take it remote.

But when I started Think Maids, it was kind of a side project I was I was debating that, or becoming a web developer at the time. I just I didn’t want to work for a boss. And so I I gave it a go and I started this business. And that was a beautiful thing when I had that first booking come in. But what made it truly real for me was a few months after I graduated university, I realized that I had slipped into this thing full time. And I had gone from kind of a side business, and it just naturally evolved into a full business.

Taking a Cleaning Business Remote

I had brought my VA on at that point for a few months. And I found out that I was able to just take it remote full time. We did a test run in November when I visited my girlfriend in Japan for a week and a half. But, and that that went perfectly well the VA handled everything while I was away. We jumped on meetings at weird times to make sure things were fine, but everything went okay. And that was a beautiful moment in my business where I thought maybe we can do this.

But the moment that I’m most proud of Think Maids is March 2016-2017. At the end of March, I believe it was March 24 or 25th 2017. I took off and I moved to Japan for an entire year. And I’ve been living since between Japan in London these past three years. But I moved to Japan for an entire year March 24th or 25th and in 2017 and I made this permanent, running my business remotely a permanent thing.

And I realized that I actually hit this dream that so many of these digital nomads talk about that so many of these business owners talk about, but they never show you how to get there. They just tell you it and then they sell you the dream, but they don’t tell you the process, I realized I’d actually hit that myself. And I did it myself.

And in just a few months that that was really the culmination of, of what I do working towards at that point for thickness. And it just made me so indescribably happy to know that that was my situation. So I would say that’s the proudest moment.

Adding Cleaning Business Services

And we’re looking forward to adding additional services we’ve played around with carpet and window cleaning these past few years. It’s something that I want to make a permanent offering what we do as well. So that’s a major focus of this year, it was a major focus last year.

But between my other businesses I just didn’t get around to it. So for think Nate’s the focus this year is really adding those carpet and window cleaning services as a full part of our business rather than just to existing customers or just to people who ask about it.

After Outsourcing Cleaning & Adding New Businesses

Yeah, so for my local business MBA program. This is for people who either want to start a local business from scratch, or people who’ve been stuck in their local business for years. In so in one case, we’ve been helped a lady who’d been stuck since 1989, at the same place.

This is a program for people who are really stuck or new. And the people who are stuck when they join with us, it’s to rebuild the foundation of their business, they often haven’t, they’ve often been good at sales or marketing, or they’ve been good at word of mouth or just teams, they’re usually good at one or two things and bad at a lot of things.

This is for people who plowed ahead being good at one or two things, but never did the basic foundational work of their business.

So this getting unstuck part of the MBA program is really about rebuilding the foundation of their business. So they know the basics in every area are covered and functioning well. It’s about implementing the right systems, of which I have many detailed tutorials for everyone goes through it.

And it’s about removing yourself from the day to day, that’s kind of the final stage is you rebuild your foundation, you put the right systems in place, you start marketing and sales, again aggressively with the right strategies. And then you start to remove yourself from the day to day so that you’re more of a business owner and less of a business manager. So that’s kind of what people sign up with us to fix is to get unstuck to get to the next stage of growth, or to start from scratch.

Comment below if you have started a cleaning or VA based business and your favorite takeaway from this article.

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!