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		<title>Scaling &#038; Selling Ecommerce Sites &#8211; How David Flipped 6 Sites</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/sell-ecommerce-site-case-study/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/sell-ecommerce-site-case-study/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Jan 2024 18:12:41 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Buy Website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Case Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Organic Growth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sell Website]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1771</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Scaling &#38; Selling Amazon FBA Sites &#8211; How David Flipped 6 Ecommerce Sites At a Nick Gray, 2 Hour Cocktail Party author, [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h1>Scaling &amp; Selling Amazon FBA Sites &#8211; How David Flipped 6 Ecommerce Sites</h1>
<p>At a <a href="https://nickgray.net/">Nick Gray</a>, 2 Hour Cocktail Party author, networking event in Austin, TX, I met a handful of extremely accomplished and interesting people.</p>
<p>One was David Holmes of <a href="https://www.redviewventures.com/">Red View Ventures</a>, an entrepreneur who has bought, scaled and sold a handful of ecommerce businesses.</p>
<p><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="wp-image-1781 alignleft" src="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/David-Holmes-Red-View-Ventures.png" alt="David Holmes Red View Ventures" width="229" height="286" srcset="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/David-Holmes-Red-View-Ventures.png 404w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/David-Holmes-Red-View-Ventures-240x300.png 240w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/David-Holmes-Red-View-Ventures-230x287.png 230w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/David-Holmes-Red-View-Ventures-350x437.png 350w" sizes="(max-width: 229px) 100vw, 229px" /></p>
<p>David Holmes has been in the Amazon space for more than 7 years and has successfully exited 2 Amazon-based businesses.</p>
<p>In 2020, he acquired an existing <a href="https://sell.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon">Amazon FBA</a> 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.</p>
<p>Now, he helps premium <a href="https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/direct-to-consumer">DTC</a> brands take advantage of the full potential of Amazon through his unique launch and scale strategies.</p>
<h4>Thinking it could be fun to buy, scale and flip an Amazon FBA site?</h4>
<p>I met David Holmes, an entrepreneur who has flipped 6 Ecommerce sites, at a neighborhood networking event in Austin, TX last week.</p>
<p>I got to ask him a bunch of questions. Today we&#8217;ll dive into his specific tips to successfully scale and sell an Amazon FBA business.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s the best I&#8217;ve met at this, so you&#8217;re in for a treat if scaling or flipping an ecommerce business interests you.</p>
<p><em>Has anyone read entrepreneur Nick Gray&#8217;s book The 2 Hour Cocktail Party?</em></p>
<p>I haven&#8217;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&#8217;s house in my neighborhood in Austin, TX last week and it felt professionally hosted.</p>
<p>It was one of the best events I have been to, and chock full of accomplished, bright, entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>The event is where I met David, an entrepreneur who scales Amazon FBA sites full-time.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="" src="https://milxi.com/sendy/uploads/1705084969.jpg" alt="" width="272" height="589" data-cke-saved-src="https://milxi.com/sendy/uploads/1705084969.jpg" /></p>
<p><em>How has David sold 6 Ecommerce sites?</em></p>
<p>David was kind enough to give me some insight into FBA site flipping over coffee &#8211; Sharing his tips with you all below as I&#8217;ve never personally bought or scaled an Amazon site before.</p>
<p><em>Hoping to buy or scale your own ecomm business?</em></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>He knows what he&#8217;s doing. He helped one Amazon site go from $220,000/month to $2,400,000/month in under 6 months.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s dive into David&#8217;s specific tips and experience below:</p>
<h4>How did you first get into website investing and flipping?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>What were you doing before you made the switch?</h4>
<p>I used to be a mechanical engineer working in engineering consulting. I worked in accident reconstruction &#8211; where I would help reconstruct car crashes for civil litigation.</p>
<h4>How many years have you been full-time buying and flipping websites?</h4>
<p>I’ve been full time for 3 years now. In January 2020, I took the leap and I haven’t stopped since.</p>
<h4>Is it more or less time-consuming than when you had a full-time job?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>What do you prefer about having your own business vs working for someone else?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>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?</h4>
<p>The last site I purchased was an Amazon FBA business in the skateboard niche.</p>
<h4>Where did you buy it?</h4>
<p>I purchased it off of Flippa in December 2019.</p>
<h4>What stood out to you that made you want to buy it? Were there any red flags?</h4>
<p>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 &#8211; revenue was declining, product quality was iffy at best, and there was low net profit.</p>
<h4>What did you do to optimize it/increase traffic/revenue/profit?</h4>
<p>I did 3 things primarily:</p>
<ol>
<li>The business was manufacturing in the USA. I outsourced manufacturing to China &#8211; saving 45% on cost of goods sold and improving the product quality</li>
<li>I optimized the Amazon Ad strategy. By doing so, I was able to grow revenue quickly.</li>
<li>I optimized the Amazon listing. This helped increase conversion rate quickly and helped grow revenue.</li>
</ol>
<p>With this 2 sided approach (grow revenue and cut costs), I was able to drastically increase the valuation of the business.</p>
<h4>How much did you increase its value by the time you sold it?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>What tips do you have for people who want to buy a site and flip it, what should they look for?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>What are your tips for how they can optimize it and grow revenue?</h4>
<p>For content sites, you want to look for easy wins first &#8211; switch the ad network (Adsense to Ezoic/Mediavine/AdThrive), add comparison tables, add interlinking between the articles.</p>
<p>For bigger wins, add more content, improve backlinks, and start growing pageviews.</p>
<h4>Where did you find the buyer?</h4>
<p>I found the buyer through Flippa.</p>
<h4>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?</h4>
<p>If you’re looking to sell a site, sell while it is growing! It is incredibly difficult to sell a declining site &#8211; I can’t overstate this enough. It’s possible but it’s difficult. You want to sell while your site is growing or stable.</p>
<p>You also want to leave some easy wins for the buyer. This gives them confidence they can quickly see a return on investment.</p>
<h4>Do you tend to sell sites when they are on an upward trajectory?</h4>
<p>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 &#8211; while leaving opportunities for growth for the new buyer.</p>
<h4>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?</h4>
<p>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 &#8211; 2.5x earnings multiple.</p>
<h4>What are red flags people should watch out for when buying an Amazon ecommerce site?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>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?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>How many sites have you purchased, grown and sold? Have you sold all the sites you bought?</h4>
<p>I’ve purchased 4 sites and built 2 other sites from scratch. I’ve sold all of them now.</p>
<h4>Have all your site purchases been successful flips? If not, can you explain what happened and why and the lessons you learned?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Biggest lesson learned was time.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>Can you tell us more about what you are doing right now? What is your business?</h4>
<p>I help e-commerce brands launch and scale on Amazon through my agency: https://www.redviewventures.com/</p>
<h4>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?</h4>
<p>I perform full Amazon channel management &#8211; including listing creation, launch strategy, Amazon Ad strategy, scaling, and optimization. My goal is to take 90% of Amazon off of your hands.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<h4>What types of companies do you work with?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>Do you work with all niches as long as they are Amazon sites?</h4>
<p>I only work with companies selling physical products.</p>
<h4>How soon do you find companies experience revenue/profit growth after starting working with you?</h4>
<p>Typically 3 months is the sweet spot to see good traction and revenue growth.</p>
<h4>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?</h4>
<p>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 <a href="https://gamma.app/public/Scaling-a-DTC-brand-on-Amazon-from-220000month-to-24-millionmonth-s0uncrd6x9v0dzx">case study</a> about it here.</p>
<h4>What made that company such a perfect fit to grow with your help?</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<h4>Where can someone follow you on social media?</h4>
<p>Connect with David on <a href="https://twitter.com/dholmes94">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidh94/">Linkedin</a></p>
<h4>Where can someone reach out to talk more if they have questions about your company or working with you?</h4>
<p>david@redviewmanagement.com</p>
<h4>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.</h4>
<p>Yes, I predominately work on a performance/revenue share basis.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
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		<title>Inflation 2021 &#8211; Thoughts on Inflation in 2021 &#038; Buying Assets</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/inflation-2021/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/inflation-2021/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:23:59 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1503</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Inflation in 2021 What is the answer to the title&#8217;s question, &#8216;What costs $1.9 Trillion?&#8217; Hint: It&#8217;s not a website, it is Congress&#8217; [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2> Inflation in 2021 </h2>
<p><strong>What is the answer to the title&#8217;s question, &#8216;What costs $1.9 Trillion?&#8217;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Hint:</strong> It&#8217;s not a website, it is Congress&#8217; next <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/10/what-is-in-the-stimulus/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">$1.9 Trillion stimulus bill</a>.</p>
<p>Congress seems to be fond of conjuring money out of thin air and passing many trillion dollar stimulus bills this year.</p>
<p>Keep reading to learn more about how much debt the US has, how many trillion dollar bills Congress keeps passing this year, why I&#8217;m concerned about future inflation, and how owning assets like websites and real estate plays into that.</p>
<p>Here is the final Part 3 in my duplex real estate investing email series about inflation and how that tied into my duplex real estate investment decision.</p>
<p>*again this is not financial advice or predictions, these are simply my own thoughts about my own life I am sharing in an email, end disclaimer here*</p>
<p><em>how I feel about inflation</em></p>
<p>the media + fear + the government</p>
<p>This past year has been a scary demonstration of how the power of online media, fear and hysteria can cause regular people and politicians to take extreme actions rooted in fear and concern with how they think &#8220;others&#8221; perceive them.</p>
<p>Politicians all over the world, including the US, seem to feel they have unequivocal power to shut down businesses without any type of democratic vote and take away people&#8217;s freedom of choice.</p>
<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s shut down the economy and then print trillions of dollars&#8221; &#8211; Congress</p>
<p>Then, because the US government decides it has the power to keep people locked in their houses and to shut down the economy, they also decide to print trillions of dollars with no regard for how it will affect the country long-term.</p>
<p>Ask anyone, a stranger on the street or your friend who doesn&#8217;t understand basic finances, and they&#8217;ll be able to tell you the government has printed trillions and trillions of dollars this year. Obviously doing this has repercussions. You can&#8217;t just print trillions of dollars of debt and think life will just go on as normal indefinitely.</p>
<p>As the US isn&#8217;t on the gold standard anymore, every time the government prints money, when that money is used, it makes the value of all the other existing money a little bit less.</p>
<h2> What is inflation? </h2>
<p>Even in regular years of government money printing and overspending, we get inflation each year where the money you have saved becomes worth less.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sovereignman.com/investing/golds-vs-the-stock-market-31538/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Simon Black</a>, one of my favorite financial email lists, explains the issue with stats:</p>
<ul>
<li>Last year the Fed increased the supply of US dollars by 26%&#8211; the single largest annual increase since 1943.</li>
<li>The Fed has almost doubled its balance sheet in the last 12 months, and nearly 10x’d its balance sheet since the 2008 financial crisis</li>
<li>The latest COVID stimulus bill Congress passed, is $1.9 trillion.</li>
<li>$1.9 trillion is nearly 10% of the size of the US economy, and roughly 50% of expected federal tax revenue this fiscal year.</li>
<li>In simple terms, the Fed ‘prints’ money (albeit electronically) and sprinkles it around the financial system.</li>
</ul>
<p>Each time the Fed &#8216;prints money&#8217; it is a form of debasement, not much different from ancient Roman emperors cutting corners by reducing the purity of their gold and silver coins.</p>
<h2>What are the effects of inflation? Does it really matter?</h2>
<p>Looking at history, debasing the currency causes inflation.</p>
<p>You may have heard of some of the extreme famous historical episodes, like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, or the Weimar Republic, where the government’s crazy money printing caused hyperinflation and now hundred trillion dollar bills are used as wallpaper.</p>
<p>There are countless ‘quieter’ examples of inflation- like Brazil, where inflation is now over 5%, or Turkey, where the annualized inflation rate is about 15%.</p>
<p>15% a year isn’t hyperinflation. But it does make life pretty uncomfortable, especially when wage growth fails to keep pace. It&#8217;s still like losing 15% of your saved money each year, like paying a 15% &#8216;invisible tax&#8217;.</p>
<p>Even in a yearly 15% inflationary environment, each year people find themselves much poorer and worse off. </p>
<p><em>What is the US thinking?</em></p>
<p>Even with all this historical data of how printing money can lead to inflation and lower everyone&#8217;s quality of life, the US government puts its little head in the sand and thinks its easier to print money and throw it in the air and simply ignores the fact it can have consequences. </p>
<p><em>What will happen to the US dollar?</em></p>
<p>The truth is no one knows. </p>
<p>The insane government money printing of this year makes me think inflation is going to get very out of hand and make money sitting in bank accounts worth a lot less. Who knows how soon, 2 years? 10 years? Who knows how much less, 10%? 100% less, or more? 1000% less?</p>
<p>Whatever the answer to these questions is, it&#8217;s not something I want to wait around to find out. </p>
<p>Instead of housing money in banks you always have the choice to house it in an asset that has true value.</p>
<p>The most extreme example of worst-case inflation would be, say the US dollar became completely worthless, similar to how the government overprinted money in Zimbabwe and now people use hundred trillion dollar bills as wallpaper.</p>
<h2>Why I&#8217;m focused on buying assets</h2>
<p>In the most extreme case, even if the US dollar went to zero, a business that still has customers would still have value, a website still selling items would still have value, gold would still have value, a farm would still have value, homes would still have value. There are many items that have value that is completely separate from the US dollar, and real estate is one of them.</p>
<p>Technically stocks are representations of business value, and can be an asset separate from inflation, but they are also based on the emotion of buyers, and on underlying company performance, which I feel has a disconnect from stock prices right now.</p>
<p>I had initially been hesitant to buy real estate because of the property taxes you have to pay, and the maintenance costs and managing of tenants. </p>
<p>Real estate has much higher base costs and recurring expenses than owning a website, and it can be more of a hassle in some ways, which are reasons I had never considered looking into owning any before along with the fact it is simply more expensive than purchasing other types of assets such as gold or websites.</p>
<p>The current crazed government printing and economic control means there is potential for business growth to slow and inflation to happen is why I ended up making my duplex real estate purchase, and am currently focused on purchasing assets.</p>
<p>Now you know my full reasoning of why I chose to move money from sitting in cash or stocks into real estate.</p>
<p><em>What would Warren Buffet do?</em></p>
<p>I&#8217;ll leave you with this Warren Buffet quote:</p>
<p>“Productive assets such as farms, real estate, and yes, business ownership, produce wealth&#8211; lots of it. Most owners of such properties will be rewarded.”</p>
<p>We can all choose where we invest our money and if we place it in wealth-producing, valuable assets or if we&#8217;d rather purchase Shawn Mendes digital NFT art. At the end of the day, do what makes you happy, even if that means owning a shirtless Shawn Mendes digital token.</p>
<p>-Stacy</p>
<p>Also, of course my Ad &#038; 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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Financial Disclaimer: *Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, and I&#8217;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.*            </p>
<p>        </p>
]]></content:encoded>
					
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		<title>Real Estate or Stocks? Which Asset Class is Better?</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/real-estate-or-stocks/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/real-estate-or-stocks/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:20:20 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1504</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Real Estate or Stocks: Which is better Today let&#8217;s talk about why I moved money from stocks to my new duplex investment. [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Real Estate or Stocks: Which is better</h2>
<p>Today let&#8217;s talk about why I moved money from stocks to my new duplex investment.</p>
<p>Today I&#8217;m talking about investing in assets and why I chose to move money I earned from website investing first into a business asset, stocks, and now into a real estate asset, a duplex.</p>
<p>Should I turn this into a real estate investing opportunity blog? haha! Just kidding guys.</p>
<p>Before we start, I wanted to say thank you again to my websites for making this duplex purchase possible. Anyone interested in buying their own <a href="https://heartofaustinhomes.com/austin-duplexes/">Austin, TX duplex</a> can search the available inventory here.</p>
<p><em>Are websites, like real estate, assets you can invest in?</em></p>
<p>Websites are one type of asset I have invested in that you can also invest in. There are many more investable asset types including businesses that you can invest in via stocks, and real estate you can invest in directly or indirectly through <a href="https://www.reit.com/what-reit#:~:text=REITs%2C%20or%20real%20estate%20investment,number%20of%20benefits%20to%20investors." target="_blank" rel="noopener">REIT</a>s or online offerings such as <a href="https://www.peerstreet.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Peerstreet</a>.</p>
<p>An asset is anything that produces value or income each month. Anything that drains your bank account each month, even by one penny, is by definition not an asset.</p>
<p>This means technically a home you live in, even one that is appreciating, is not technically an asset because you pay more each month than you get back from it.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re looking for further asset reading, I love and recommend the book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/69571.Rich_Dad_Poor_Dad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rich Dad Poor Dad</a> which goes into explaining what an asset vs a liability is in more detail.</p>
<p><em>What about NFTs? Are these assets?</em></p>
<p>I had to throw this one in here. Have you guys heard of NFTs AKA non-fungible tokens? A lot of celebrities, including <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2021/02/25/genies-will-sell-one-of-a-kind-digital-goods-for-shawn-mendes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shawn Mendes</a> are selling digital art of themselves as NFTs..who would buy that? Sorry if you already bought one, I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s a great purchase.</p>
<p>Some people are investing in these as though they are appreciable assets, and they may be, but personally I would not invest in a digital Shawn Mendes art token.</p>
<p>Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet as an NFT, and someone may buy it for $2.5 million. If you know more about NFTs feel free to email me because I don&#8217;t know much, but there are many other assets I would invest in before buying an NFT.</p>
<p>NFTs also don&#8217;t return monthly income, so they may be more similar to gold and bitcoin than actual assets such as dividend stocks, websites or real estate that can appreciate and return payouts each month.</p>
<p><em>What do you do with your asset payouts?</em></p>
<p>Some website owners like to pour all their profits back into their websites, which can speed up their growth as well as have nice tax benefits, however I actually prefer to take my profits elsewhere for diversification purposes and grow my sites with as little expense as possible.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s why I invest the majority of my website profits in other things like stocks, annuities, and now real estate.</p>
<p>This is the email that dives into why I moved a large chunk of my savings, earned from website revenue FYI, from stocks into real estate. *Note, this is not monetary advice, none of my emails are, and I&#8217;m not a financial advisor, etc. This is simply my experience and thoughts, end disclaimer*</p>
<h2>My feelings on stocks, website investing, and why I bought a duplex</h2>
<p><em>how I feel about stocks </em></p>
<p>Stocks are a way to buy a part of a company you believe in, and you can get payouts in the form of dividends, and reap the benefits as the stocks grow in value.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve had a large chunk of my savings invested in stocks, most of which I invested during the COVID lockdown-induced dip around April of last year. These stocks did very well over the past year, as most stocks did, ironically so, as investors were pouring money into the market while companies were suffering financially in reality.</p>
<p>At the time, I put money in the market because I thought the economy and US businesses would be back to normal or better in 2 or more years. Now, I actually don&#8217;t feel that way anymore.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m very happy I had money in the market during this time. However, I see the large discrepancy between actual company performance and stock performance now and the past few months.</p>
<p>Companies are still hurting from the excessive government regulations and people are bullishly pouring their savings, their government printed stimulus checks, and their unemployment money into stocks, driving the market up while actual company performance is suffering.</p>
<p>Who knows how much longer the stock market rise can continue? Either way I don&#8217;t feel very good about either the short or even long-term future of the stock market, more because I am now uncertain about the future of the US as a pro-business and prosperous country, and US dollar inflation.</p>
<p><em>how I feel about website investing</em></p>
<p>Yes, I still think websites are a great asset to have as part of my overall income and investment portfolio.</p>
<p>Obviously I think that, as they are the reason I am able to earn a living on my own, and the reason I was able to purchase a duplex. I love owning and investing in websites and will keep doing so for a long time to come.</p>
<p>My point is that I have always, and will keep always owning other assets as well.</p>
<p>Every asset and investment comes with risks, and websites are not immune to that. Even assets that appear they have no risk, yes, still have risk.</p>
<h2>No investment is risk free.</h2>
<p><strong>Other examples:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Stocks can always go down, just paper money.</li>
<li>Bitcoin can be hacked or stolen. You can lose your Bitcoin password or hard-drive. Or it could just tank in price due to excessive government regulation, or people losing interest and moving on to the next internet fad.</li>
<li>Real Estate. Here I am, talking about how I just bought a duplex, but real estate prices can fluctuate up and down, property taxes can rise, maintenance costs can arise, natural disasters you&#8217;re not insured for can happen, tenants can stop paying rent and the government can forbid you from evicting them (lol it&#8217;s funny because it&#8217;s true).</li>
<li>Annuities &amp; &#8220;Guaranteed&#8221; Investments. Even &#8220;guaranteed&#8221; things like fixed indexed annuities have risk. In a crazy scenario, yes, there is always the possibility your insurance company or all insurance companies backing your annuity could go out of business.</li>
<li>Even bonds aren&#8217;t risk-free. Bonds are yielding 1.4% right now. Combine that with the current 1.4% US inflation rate and they&#8217;re break even after adjusting for inflation. Then add in the potential for higher inflation and even lower interest rates and there is always the possibility for a negative bond yield after inflation adjustments.</li>
</ul>
<p>Alternatively, the US dollar could also become worthless. Or, it&#8217;s very possible inflation could hit a point with inflation where your annuity could be worth less than half or less of its value very quickly before you have a chance to take the money out.</p>
<p>Every single investment in the world has risk, even if people try to tell you otherwise. Life has risk.</p>
<h2>Is website investing still a good idea?</h2>
<p>I still love investing in and growing the websites I own. They are my main income stream and have been for the past 4 years. I am currently actively working on and growing the sites I already own. I did also purchase a small website of my own this year. I&#8217;ve always invested in multiple things at once, as this is basic diversification.</p>
<p>Now you know the first part of my thought process on why I purchased a duplex as opposed to putting all my website profit and savings into more websites.</p>
<h2>Benefits of re-investing asset profits to grow the asset?</h2>
<p>I know some website investors and owners like to pour 100% of their website&#8217;s profit back into their current site or sites, or purchase new websites with the profit.</p>
<p>This has some benefits, such as being classified as a business tax expense write-off, and allowing you to scale your site much more quickly in a hands-off way. I personally usually prefer to simply take most of the profits, and then use those to invest in other assets so I&#8217;m able to have some savings in different areas and so all my eggs aren&#8217;t in a single basket.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s why I recently purchased my duplex, partly to diversify, partly to move money out of the uncertain future of US stocks, and partly to hedge against possible inflation.</p>
<p>The final email in my duplex purchase series, Part 3, will include my thoughts on and some stats on government spending &amp; inflation. Then you&#8217;ll know my full thoughts on why I invested my website profits into stocks and now into real estate in the form of an Austin duplex.</p>
<p>Feel free to reply and let me know what types of assets you are investing in right now.</p>
<p>-Stacy</p>
<p>Also, of course my Ad &amp; 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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Financial Disclaimer: *Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, and I&#8217;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.*</p>
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		<title>Austin Real Estate Investment: My Story Buying a Cash-Flowing Duplex</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/austin-real-estate-investment/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/austin-real-estate-investment/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:39:34 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Case Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Real Estate Investing]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1468</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Austin Real Estate Investment I just bought a duplex in the surrounding Austin area and wanted to update you guys! Most of [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Austin Real Estate Investment</h2>
<p>I just bought a duplex in the surrounding Austin area and wanted to update you guys!</p>
<p>Most of you know me as the &#8216;Her.CEO girl who buys websites&#8217;. At least that&#8217;s how I imagine you all think of me.</p>
<p>Well guess what? <em>I just bought a duplex.</em></p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1481" src="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-duplex-investment.png" alt="austin duplex investment" width="700" height="528" srcset="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-duplex-investment.png 700w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-duplex-investment-300x226.png 300w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-duplex-investment-230x173.png 230w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-duplex-investment-350x264.png 350w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-duplex-investment-480x362.png 480w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /></p>
<p>Before I dive in, I just want to say thank you to my websites for making my duplex purchase possible. Ok diving in.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been looking in Austin, Texas and the surrounding areas for the past 4 months, and just closed on a property today.</p>
<p>Now, you&#8217;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!</p>
<p>Her posts are my favorite part of each day. At least, that&#8217;s what I am imagining you&#8217;re thinking. I&#8217;m guessing that&#8217;s pretty accurate. My Her.CEO website posts and emails are the favorite part of many people&#8217;s days. Haha I&#8217;m kidding guys.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about investing in real estate for some time now, and I&#8217;m very happy I ended up being able to do so.</p>
<p>Why? <em>Mostly due to my thoughts on stocks and inflation.</em></p>
<p>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 <a href="https://her.ceo/about-her-ceo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Her.CEO newsletter</a> 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&#8217;m investing more in assets due to my thoughts on inflation.</p>
<h2>Current Austin, TX Real Estate Market</h2>
<p><strong>Hint: It&#8217;s Hot</strong></p>
<p>I want to give a quick shoutout to Her.CEO email list reader and real estate investor Nadav, who I&#8217;d connected with recently and who gave me some real estate tips before I made my purchase.</p>
<p>He told me hasn&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Everyone is coming to Austin.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t help that <a href="https://abc13.com/tesla-in-texas-coming-to-austin-is-soon-be-home-of/6330016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tesla</a>, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/11/oracle-is-moving-its-headquarters-from-silicon-valley-to-austin-texas.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Oracle</a> and others are moving their headquarters to Austin, and that businesses like <a href="https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/02/04/samsung-austin-expansion-chip-plant-seeks-1-billion-taxpayer-incentives/4309503001/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Samsung</a> are continuing to pour billions to expand in the Austin area.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-fed-plans-to-keep-interest-rates-low-for-years-heres-how-you-should-approach-your-savings-strategy-now-2020-10-01" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interest rates</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Real Estate Investing Tips</h2>
<p>Tips From Her.CEO Reader Nadav that are applicable to both real estate and <a href="https://her.ceo/website-investing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website investing</a>.</p>
<p>Nadav, the Her.CEO real estate investing veteran, gave me two real estate tips that I took to heart:</p>
<p>1) <strong>Find Deals</strong> &#8211; In any type of market, even in hot markets, there are always deals to be found. Look out and be patient for those.</p>
<p>2) <strong>Look for things you can Improve</strong> &#8211; Don&#8217;t be afraid of renovation or buying something you need to improve.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>However, it is still possible to find deals if you look hard enough, or if you have good relationships in the space.</p>
<p>Nadav&#8217;s second point, don&#8217;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.</p>
<h2>Website SEO quick wins VS Real Estate quick wins</h2>
<p>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&#8217;ll do an email that goes into that at some point.</p>
<p>One example of a quick website SEO win, similar to one may quickly renovate to make it look nicer on the surface, is: <em>Increasing website revenue per visitor</em></p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>My Austin Duplex Investing Story</h2>
<p><strong>Here&#8217;s how I ended up with my first duplex in the surrounding Austin area:</strong></p>
<p>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&#8217;t make it into even the top 4 cut.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 &#8220;cash-flowing duplex or single family in the Austin or surrounding area, more focus on surrounding areas due to Austin&#8217;s high prices in relation to rent.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>The best Austin Realtor = Chris</strong></p>
<p>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&#8217;m picky with who I work with, and it also took me 3 tries to find my current accountant.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Kind of cheating to figure out what we should bid</strong></p>
<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>How I saved $20K and got an off-market duplex</strong></p>
<p>My bid lost out, so I moved on and kept looking at and bidding on other places. A few weeks later, Chris texted me, &#8220;You want Luther? They terminated on that one. He [the listing agent] said I&#8217;m the first and only one he&#8217;s called.&#8221;</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 &#8220;babies&#8221; that she renovated very well and took care of in terms of property and tenants.</p>
<p><strong>We like to buy from retirees? I do</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I closed on my duplex March 1st.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><a href="https://georgetown.org/2023/05/18/census-georgetown-is-again-fastest-growing-city-in-u-s/">Georgetown</a> is one of the fastest growing cities in Austin, and you can search <a href="https://heartofaustinhomes.com/georgetown-tx-homes-for-sale/">Georgetown homes</a> listed on the MLS if you&#8217;re looking for a real estate investment similar to mine, or you can send me a note and I&#8217;m happy to help with ideas.</p>
<p>Ok, this picture isn&#8217;t great and the day was bleak, but I took it from the appraisal form.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1473" src="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment.png" alt="austin area real estate investment" width="980" height="732" srcset="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment.png 980w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment-300x224.png 300w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment-768x574.png 768w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment-830x620.png 830w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment-230x172.png 230w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment-350x261.png 350w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/austin-area-real-estate-investment-480x359.png 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 980px) 100vw, 980px" /></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As Her.CEO reader Nadav would say, I think I ended up finding a good deal.</p>
<h2>Real estate vs Websites as an asset</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 &amp; 3 of this email, which were too long to include here.</p>
<p>In Part 2 &amp; 3 I&#8217;ll talk about why buying assets right now is very important (in my opinion I&#8217;m not a financial advisor or trying to influence anyone..I&#8217;m simply talking about my own thoughts and actions right now *end disclaimer here*).</p>
<p>Feel free to reply if you&#8217;ve bought any real estate recently, if you&#8217;re buying or selling near Austin right now, or if you have any other questions about my process &amp; as always I love emailing with you all!</p>
<p>You can always send me an email at stacy@her.ceo</p>
<p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wlVDgPxD3AS2MyRMk3HrIPR8xAmyZBLd/view?fbclid=IwAR1oZW4dtKudgTNTPbcz3Ydea1iLX-yLG3VkmtsK_Ja6zbTNCsNSaXNb1ss" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TREC IABS Notice</a></p>
<p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/168WKWr_JST-_hAz6SoOIMwZxifhcEXw9/view?fbclid=IwAR2lZSL8GzDrCtGxgR7dEcgMU-60vRxKKkdqIBGMlmoiV50eC_vngqnP_ao" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TREC Consumer Protection Notice</a></p>
<p>Also, of course my Ad &amp; 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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Financial Disclaimer: *Nothing in this newsletter is financial advice, and I&#8217;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.*</p>
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		<title>Buy Profitable Websites &#8211; Value Website Investing &#8211; The VSOT Value Method</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/buy-profitable-websites-vsot-method/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/buy-profitable-websites-vsot-method/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 21:00:49 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Buy Website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money Online]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1283</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Buy Profitable Website First, this is not investing or financial advice. Anything you do is at your own risk and your own [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2> Buy Profitable Website </h2>
<p>First, this is not investing or financial advice. Anything you do is at your own risk and your own decision. This is simply an example of a mental model I use when I invest in websites. You can read and learn and start thinking about developing your own <a href="https://www.her.ceo/website-investing" rel="noopener" target="_blank">website investing</a> and general investing mental model.</p>
<p>The VSOT method, also known as the Website Value Investing method, is a framework you can use to help determine if a website is a good buying opportunity and to scale growth and earn back your investment as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>This video goes through the VSOT method and explains how the different pillars came to be through my experiences. The article also goes through the method in-depth.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" width="1170" height="658" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fGgEZ7nSsRY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<h2> VSOT &#8211; Value Website Investing Method </h2>
<p>The VSOT method is one way you can walk through a website purchase before making it to help determine if it makes sense for you. </p>
<p>The method allows you to look at the purchase from different angles to help set you up to buy an online business that can actually return money and profit month after month.</p>
<p>The first two sites I purchased I didn&#8217;t put through a rigorous method and ended up making poor investing decisions. That&#8217;s when I started thinking more carefully about how to fully vet sites and what makes a truly good website purchase.</p>
<p>This is when I started thinking about a mental framework to think about what makes a good site purchase, and started developing the VSOT mental model even though I didn&#8217;t think of it that way as an official method yet.</p>
<p>The second two sites I bought more than paid for my two mistakes as well as grew to the point where they paid for and pay for my current lifestyle, so its safe to say I learned a lot from my first and second mistake purchases but that I was able to parlay them into knowledge that has given me a great structure and method I use to make my successful website purchases that fund my lifestyle today.</p>
<p>The method I developed is called the VSOT value website investing method and I’ll go through each step below. It is designed to help you make good website purchases by buying sites that will earn your initial investment back so you can start earning profit from your website each month.</p>
<h2> Verification </h2>
<p>The first step in the VSOT method is verification:</p>
<p>First you need to verify all revenue and <a href="https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/">traffic sources</a> explain how, so you know the site is being truthfully represented and its traffic and revenue and profit.</p>
<p>You’ll need to get access to all analytics and revenue and cost sources and it is best to get added as a primary or secondary user on each account, and screenshots and live video shares can also be supplements at this stage. </p>
<h2> Source Evaluation </h2>
<p>The next step is Source evaluation where you can determine where the traffic and revenue is coming from and how risky the number of channels are and the type of channels are.</p>
<p>Here is where you look at where the site’s traffic is coming from:</p>
<p>You can evaluate the traffic sources and look at how dependent is the site on a single traffic or revenue source. You want more than one traffic source and you want to fully understand how that traffic source works. You also want to understand how you can maintain and increase that traffic source once you own the site and how to add new sources into the current mix.</p>
<p>You’ll look at how diversified is the current traffic mix and revenue mix. If one affiliate program gives the site all its revenue, is there a risk of that going away and how can you prepare for this happening? Same with traffic sources, you need to think this all through and it can help to write this all out. This will be one way to flesh out the risk level.</p>
<p>Is traffic all from <a href="https://www.google.com">Google</a>, or from a certain ad type, or from a specific social channel or an email list? This is the time to dive deep into all traffic sources and determine how healthy it is.</p>
<p>You&#8217;ll need to check what country and language the traffic is.</p>
<p>Ad providers pay more for US and UK traffic and English speaking traffic bc these countries are more affluent, and take the time to check if the traffic is high quality and staying for a long time on the site. If everyone is bouncing or not sticking around you’ll want to know.</p>
<p>It is important to know where all traffic and revenue is coming and going from, and one way to do this is to get out an excel sheet and list the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>List all traffic sources</li>
<li>List all revenue sources </li>
<li>List all expenses</li>
<li>Do you know all the expenses?</li>
<li>Are you dependent on a single affiliate network? Or a trend etc</li>
<li>Are you dependent on a single back link or few back links or PBN or bad links? Link audit is important here too</li>
<li>This is where you dive deep to find what could easily stop your traffic or revenue or profit so you have a clear understanding of the risks </li>
<li>See how dependent your traffic And profit are on A single source this helps you evaluate risk and create a growth plan</li>
</ul>
<h2> Opportunity </h2>
<p>The third step in the VSOT method is O for Opportunity<br />
Opportunity means looking at the opportunity you have to increase the site&#8217;s traffic and revenue. Here you can look specifically for ways the site is currently undervalued or under-monetized. </p>
<p>You can also look specifically for traffic and monetization opportunities.</p>
<p>Opportunity means looking at the the site’s current input, AKA traffic, and its current output, aka monetization, and determining the different possibilities and ways you can increase each as the new site owner.</p>
<p>Your own skills and talents will come into play here. For example, I am experienced with SEO and paid ads, so these are both areas I always audit and look to increase traffic, and profit and decrease costs on.</p>
<p>There are often many Organic traffic opportunities after you buy a site: before buying you can do an <a href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-audit/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">SEO audit</a> – there is often an opportunity here to clean up current keyword targeting, cut dead pages or change keyword targeting on current pages.</p>
<p>You can do a current keyword ranking audit and plan how you can direct more powerful internal and external Links to areas with opportunity for ranking boosts</p>
<p>Additionally this is the time you can start to do keyword research and create a new plan for keywords and content to grow your site over time, think long term and how much room this site has for content and keyword growth.</p>
<p>This is the least sexy or flashy part but the part that has the most benefit over time as you figure out what search engines see your site as an auth for and then continue to publish in that area and see traffic growth slow and steady over time</p>
<p>The site I bought that has been the most successful with the highest ROI got that way not from a flashy ad network switch or a quick hack, but from me adding hundreds of keyword researched articles over a few year time period and I was able to see huge organic traffic and revenue growth over time.</p>
<p>Then if you’re good at ads or social media or whatever you know how to do, you can think about how you would approach that with the new site and what the growth potential for that would be.</p>
<p>For example, does the site currently sell high ticket items and are they running either super expensive ads and wasting ad spend you can quickly cut? Or are they not running ads and missing the opportunity to add a ton of profitable sales each month.</p>
<p>These are things you can test and change once you own the site and are potential opportunities to quickly increase the site’s monthly profit and value.</p>
<p><strong>Another opportunity to look at during this time is to ask the questions:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Is this asset a supplement to something you already own? Another site in a similar niche it can support in brand or in SEO? </li>
<li>Will it boost your brand in a non tangible or even tangible way?</li>
</ul>
<p>Think about how it fits into your overall vision, brand and portfolio and if it adds value in any less obvious way.</p>
<p>Lastly and arguably one of the most important opportunities to think about is <em>monetization</em>. What is the current site doing to monetize and how can you add to this and improve upon it?</p>
<p>Anyway you can add a monetization method or switch monetization methods to be more profitable, do it here. Test test test first and then find what works best for the site.</p>
<p><strong>Organic traffic opportunity:</strong> Do an SEO audit &#8211; there can be an opportunity here to clean up current keyword targeting, cut dead pages or change keyword targeting on them.</p>
<p>You can do a current keyword ranking audit and direct more powerful internal and external Links to areas with opportunity for ranking boosts.</p>
<p>Start to do keyword research and create a new plan for keywords and content to grow your site over time.</p>
<p>This is the least sexy or flashy part but the part that has the most benefit over time as you figure out what search engines see your site as an auth for and then continue to publish in that area and see traffic growth slow and steady over time.</p>
<p><strong>Ad traffic opportunity </strong> Here are some questions you can start by asking:</p>
<p>Are currently making a littler visitor or sell high end products? Consider running ads to your site and test if could be a profitable opportunity.</p>
<p>Is this asset a supplement to something you already own? Another site in a similar niche it can support in brand or in SEO? </p>
<p>Will it boost your brand in a non tangible or even tangible way?</p>
<p>Think about how it fits into your overall vision, brand and portfolio and if it adds value in any less obvious way.</p>
<p><strong>Monetization opportunity:</strong></p>
<p>Anyway you can add a monetization method or switch monetization methods to be more profitable, do it here. Test test test first and then </p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<p>Is your monetization currently affiliate? If its amazon can you switch to a different affiliate network that pays more and Test it<br />
Or can you switch completely affiliate or wholesale? </p>
<p>Are there ads on the site?</p>
<p>If there are not currently ads on the site even if it is monetized in other ways you can often add ads especially on high traffic sites and get a big revenue boost without hurting your other areas of revenue including affiliate or even e-commerce depending on what you’re selling.</p>
<p>May not always work but always a good idea to try and look at overall profit for a few weeks compared to few weeks before and year prior and just see if there’s a lift or not</p>
<p><strong>Test ad networks:</strong></p>
<p>Ad networks pay different rates for different niches. I’ve seen 2-4X increase from switching ad networks and different ad networks pay different amounts per niche so there isn’t one best network overall. Key is to test here, rpm specially if ads are your site’s only revenue source .</p>
<p>Reach out to brands to put banner ads on your site for a monthly fee or in your email newsletter or as a social shoutout.</p>
<p>I was getting $500 flat fee in euros actually when that was higher than USD for a header banner on one of my sites that was also making a few hundred a month from the other ads running on it in addition the flat fee banner<br />
Having brand sponsors can be hugely profitable and often they’ll reach out to you but you can brainstorm who would be a perfect fit and reach out to them to.</p>
<p>Remember when reaching out is not all about you, it’s about how you can help them, they are the hero and winner in the story if you want to close a deal</p>
<p><strong>Social Media &#038; Customer Communication </strong></p>
<p>Next you can look at how the site communicates with customers, look at social media, are there areas you can improve and automate, then look at email.</p>
<p>Does the site have an email list? Start regular emailing build up trust and intimacy.</p>
<p>Use this an an opportunity to build real connections with your Audi be and reply and have conversations. Having conversations also puts your email in more people’s inbox and not promo or spam folders as email providers see that as a real person trust signal.</p>
<p>That’s why my Her.CEO emails have such high open rates (right now 42%+ and land in a lot of main inbox folders), I have other lists I didn’t do This with and took over when I bought with much lower 10-13% open rates and get pushed into the promo folder as a default.</p>
<p>Add more value than trying to sell in every email or social post. Every so often you can send a sales email for something you know your audience actually wants  and people will stay because they like your emails, even the sales ones because At that point your sales emails aren’t selling Anymore because you’re giving your readers what they want to pay for anyway.</p>
<p><strong>Create a product</strong></p>
<p>Then there’s the under-appreciated monetization opportunity which is to create a product- Your site has traffic in a spec niche but no revenue or only ad or affil rev? you can start offering a wholesale product or even take The step after wholesale which  can actually be more profitable than wholesale which is to create your own product.</p>
<p>Your site has traffic in a spec niche but no rev or only ad or affil rev? The step after wholesale and can actually be more profitable than wholesale is to create your own product.</p>
<p>First of all, do you think the people running ads on your site are doing so out of charity because they like handing you free money Each month? Obvs not! There is so much tracking available online these days they know what they’re spending and the profit they’re getting from running ads on your site.</p>
<p><em>What if</em>, you decided to sell what they’re selling using your traffic generating site as the vehicle?</p>
<p>What? </p>
<p>I never thought of that you’re thinking! Genius!</p>
<p>Why thank you, </p>
<p>You can always step your site monetization game up a level from ads to actually selling something whether that is wholesale or your own physical product or even service or ebook or non physical product .</p>
<p>If you have traffic you can monetize it all you have to do is brainstorm every possible way then test every possible way then pick the winner.</p>
<p>For your long term revenue source, and try stacking revenue methods by doing more than one at the same time.</p>
<p>For example you can even triple dip and run ads on your site while promoting affiliate products while selling your own products on your site and you may find you make the most money while doing all three at once as opposed to only picking one at a time and you’ll never figure that out unless you try and test it.</p>
<p><strong>Create supplementary videos</strong></p>
<p>More opportunities include generating traffic through other channels, and you can do this by repurposing content or crating new content in the form of videos.</p>
<p>Think about how you could Create supplementary videos in the website’s niche.</p>
<p>One site I own I created a viral 600K video for expecting the video to drive site traffic and sales, which it did in a small way but this also added an entirely new monetization method to the site and the video itself ended up earning more in Youtube ad revenue than the website earned the first year in affiliate income.</p>
<p>Getting more eyeballs to your site with videos can drive more sales and more revenue just from the videos themselves in some cases worth a try </p>
<p><strong>Sponsored posts</strong></p>
<p>Reach out to brands to put banner ads on your site for a monthly fee or in your email newsletter or as a social shoutout. I was getting $500 flat fee in euros actually when that was higher than USD for a header banner on one of my sites that was also making a few hundred a month from the other ads running on it in addition the flat fee banner.</p>
<p>Having brand sponsors can be hugely profitable and often they’ll reach out to you but you can brainstorm who would be a perfect fit and reach out to them to. Remember when reaching out is not all about you, it’s about how you can help them, they are the hero and winner in the story if you want to close a deal</p>
<p>You can always let brands reach out to you for sponsored posts or reach out proactively to start getting sponsored posts on your site. Having more traffic helps with this and having an uber specific niche also helps.</p>
<p>Lastly, you can always think of more ways to monetize the site, there isn&#8217;t a limit on what you can do. My list includes ones I’ve personally done or thought of but the list is endless and only limited by your creativity and what your audience does, wants or needs, and think of how you can best serve them in a way that also allows your site to generate revenue. </p>
<h2> Timeframe </h2>
<p>The next step in the VSOT method is Timeframe.</p>
<p>Timeframe is how long it will take to earn your money back. You can determine the timeframe and the subsequent Value of a website by looking at what multiple is the site priced at? If nothing changes how long will it take you to earn your investment back?</p>
<p>For example, if the site is priced at 30X its monthly profit multiple that means if nothing changes it will take you 30 months to earn your investment back assuming your site is not hit by a traffic or monetization penalty that you already evaluated the risk of in the step 1 the Verification step in the VSOT method.</p>
<p>I always plan for say none of my optimizations work or nothing changes, I’ll make it back in X months.<br />
You need to be ok with that because nothing is ever guaranteed.</p>
<p>I’ve bought most of my successful sites at either 10 or 20X monthly profit valuation. New French Affiliate site I bought Was at 30X valuation but was lower price so I knew it’d be ok even if my plan to wholesale didn’t workout, but also easier to justify because going from a few dollars profit to 10-20X+ that per sale would mean earning back my investment in less than 2 months If my wholesale and estimates worked out. </p>
<p>Run through a few situations using the opportunities you found as well and figure out best case scenario earn back time period as well.</p>
<p>Using These estimates as a range can help you decide if the investment seems worth it to you.</p>
<p>I’ve bought most of my successful sites at either 10 or 20X monthly profit valuation. The new French Affiliate site I bought was at a 30X valuation but it was also a pretty low price and there was a huge revenue opportunity to move from affiliate to wholesale so I knew it’d be ok even if my plan to wholesale didn’t workout. It is also easier to justify because going from a few dollars profit to 10-20X+ that per sale would mean earning back my investment in less than 2 months If my wholesale and estimates worked out.</p>
<p>Everything is risk reward and you can use these steps to help you make an informed decision but you also have to realize there are risks involved in any purchase.</p>
<p>Let me know what you think of the VSOT value website investing method – this is something I’ll be continually updating and adding more detail to as I go along – let me know in the comments the #1 thing you look for when buying a website.</p>
<p>Get the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/17MRovWHZqfcM3h9SFtcSOH_8PBITBhR5R0vvDj09m7Q/edit?usp=sharing" rel="noopener" target="_blank"><strong>Website Investing Checklist</strong></a> here.</p>
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		<title>How to Start a Cleaning Business: Case Study &#038; Tips</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/how-to-start-a-cleaning-business/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/how-to-start-a-cleaning-business/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 20:53:51 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Case Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money Online]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1299</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[How to Start a Cleaning Business From Scratch Christopher Schwab started an outsourced Cleaning business from his college dorm, and grew it [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2> How to Start a Cleaning Business From Scratch </h2>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/cschwab1/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Christopher Schwab</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>He shares his experience starting a cleaning business, growing it, hiring VA&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2> How to Find a Virtual Assistant </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>For example, my <a href="https://inovalocal.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">VA company</a>, we focus on admin work for local businesses, we&#8217;re not a sales VA, or a real estate VA. Instead we&#8217;re really Office Admin for local businesses. So we don&#8217;t need to specifically hire a local business VA.</p>
<p>This means we can hire someone who&#8217;s helped run a family business, or who&#8217;s done admin work for much of their career, or who&#8217;s worked as a specific type of secretary. And then we can train them on the virtual aspects.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s a VA and then teaching them the underlying skills that we need.</p>
<p>I think a lot of people get that wrong. And so we focus on the underlying skills.</p>
<p>So for someone who&#8217;s qualified and has the experience, we look for people who aren&#8217;t really marketing themselves as vas, but who can become the best VA that we need.</p>
<h2> Common VA-based Business Mistakes </h2>
<p>The most common mistake I&#8217;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.</p>
<p>I&#8217;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&#8217;s just not a realistic thing to offer.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;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&#8217;re a generalist to all of them, and that&#8217;s fine.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>So you have marketing VA&#8217;s, you have econ VA&#8217;s, and funnel VA&#8217;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.</p>
<p>And this is not just true to the industry, but it&#8217;s particularly true of the VA industry. So what led me to start thinking it&#8217;s what I want you to do for that is Google <a href="https://sidehustleschool.com/episode/87/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Think Maids Side Hustle School</a>, there&#8217;s a quick five to six minute interview that Chris Guillebeau of Side Hustle School did that answers questions three and four.</p>
<h2> Why Should You Start a Cleaning Business? </h2>
<p>Starting a cleaning business allowed Chris to become location independent and fulfill his dream of working for himself. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Comment below if you have ever thought of starting a cleaning business and your experience so far.</p>
<h2> When Should You Start to Outsource Your Business </h2>
<p>You can outsource any type of business tasks, including cleaning business tasks, as Chris did.</p>
<p>Here is some detail to help you figure out if your business is at the point where you should outsource.</p>
<p>When you should start outsourcing your cleaning business or any VA-based business entirely really depends on the business model that you&#8217;re running.</p>
<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;s just terrible advice. </p>
<p>Because it&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s an enormous mistake.</p>
<p>Of course my specialty is local businesses. So I will stick to that but if you local service business, you shouldn&#8217;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&#8217;s fine.</p>
<p>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&#8217;re an owner, you really need a solid foundation built, meaning you&#8217;re profitable, meaning you have a base of recurring revenue every month, and you have clients that are with you a long time.</p>
<p>You also need to be consistently closing sales and growing. You don&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;re just spending so much time on the basic running of the business. And when you get to that point, that&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s bad because the VA is only good at certain things. And you should only offload the things that they&#8217;re good at. So if everything but to it&#8217;s bad, because I see the owners become complacent. And they don&#8217;t take the extra time that they gain from hiring their VA to refocus on growth. And that&#8217;s when their business starts to crumble. So before the that stage, money should be reinvested back into marketing and sales for quicker growth,</p>
<p>Until you&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;re just wasting money that needs not be spent otherwise.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m a big fan of systems and automations but you shouldn&#8217;t do it with everything. You know, if you ever call a bank, and you can&#8217;t get a hold of a human, it&#8217;s a really frustrating experience. And it almost it just makes you angry. So there&#8217;s certain things you should not automate. But there&#8217;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&#8217;re saving all that extra money, because you&#8217;re not having your VA is having to work two hours a day instead of four, six. So that&#8217;s a big one.</p>
<h2> Outsourcing Cleaning VA&#8217;s vs Hiring Full-Time Employees </h2>
<p>In terms of outsourcing and using a VA or a full-time employee, what makes more sense?</p>
<p>If you are a bigger business, you know, if you&#8217;re running seven figures in most industries, e-commerce is a little different, because there&#8217;s so much volume and not that much profit, but manufacturing too.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re a bigger business, it&#8217;s better to go with employees generally but it differs by industry and is not something to generalize.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s grow really well with you, they&#8217;re really adaptable.</p>
<p>And you can build a specialized team of the A&#8217;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&#8217;re only doing $10,000 a month, you can&#8217;t afford an in office employee, you can&#8217;t afford it in office marketing team, you can&#8217;t afford it in office salesperson, you might have one or two marketing platforms that you&#8217;re using, like Facebook ads, you might have a VA that&#8217;s helping with a couple hours of admin work.</p>
<p>But at that revenue, you can&#8217;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&#8217;re paying them a set salary every month, you know what&#8217;s gonna cost and they&#8217;re in the office with you and they&#8217;re able to work more closely on your business goals. Instead of just viewing you as a client, they&#8217;re viewing you as their employer.</p>
<p>So when you&#8217;re bigger it&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>But with international VAs, it&#8217;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 <a href="https://www.virtualassistantassistant.com/philippines-virtual-assistants" rel="noopener" target="_blank">VA $5 to $7 an hour</a>, which is okay. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with that. I know this is a, a big debate in the industry. But there&#8217;s nothing wrong with paying someone a good pay rate for their country. Right. It&#8217;s just geo arbitrage.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s increasingly common, where people come to me that their VA from the Philippines or from somewhere else, has ghosted them. And they don&#8217;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&#8217;t hear anything. So their customers weren&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;t tend to ghost you as much. It&#8217;s just what it is.</p>
<p>Another con is reliability. If you&#8217;re hiring internationally, it is just less reliable. There are so many good days and so many good companies internationally, but they&#8217;re less generally reliable in the US. So that&#8217;s another con if you&#8217;re hiring internationally, for a VA, especially as you get bigger becomes mission critical to have that reliability.</p>
<h2> Where to Find a VA </h2>
<p>For us, we look a few different places from sourcing VAs.</p>
<p>Where we actually source vas is a mixture of <a href="https://www.craigslist.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Craigslist</a>. It&#8217;s a mixture of indeed, it&#8217;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.</p>
<p>There people who&#8217;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&#8217;s not so new. Now, it&#8217;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&#8217;s in the late 90s. So you know, this is not a new industry now. But it&#8217;s fairly new to most people as of the last 10 years or so still, maybe even the last seven or eight.</p>
<p>Having said that, we find if price is not an issue, VA societies and VA forums are a fantastic source for more experienced VA&#8217;s who have industry experience as well.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Facebook Groups</strong></li>
<li><strong>Craigslist</strong></li>
<li><strong>LinkedIn</strong></li>
<li><strong>VA Societies</strong></li>
<li><strong>VA Forums</strong></li>
<li><strong>Facebook Ads</strong></li>
<li><strong>Recommendations</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>We find Facebook groups are okay. But the but it&#8217;s mostly newer VA&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Having said that, if you&#8217;re bringing them on in house as an employee VA versus a subcontractor, you&#8217;re that&#8217;s okay, because you&#8217;re able to train them on your processes. But for us, it&#8217;s a mixture of Facebook groups, Craigslist, LinkedIn, and VA societies and forms. Those are the main ones. We&#8217;ve played around with Facebook ads, and we&#8217;ve had some success. But we don&#8217;t really use that unless we&#8217;re in a pinch, just because you know, it&#8217;s a more expensive option to get applicants through. Those are kind of the sources that we use.</p>
<p>Other ones just include asking our current fees if they know people who are reliable that they&#8217;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&#8217;s kind of how we source for it. There&#8217;s no secret sauce there that you could look for. It&#8217;s pretty standard sourcing.</p>
<p>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&#8217;re not currently VA&#8217;s but they&#8217;re very open to becoming VA&#8217;s. And so that&#8217;s been a great source of new ways for us.</p>
<p>I know Craigslist has a very bad reputation. But that was the early days of Craigslist. It&#8217;s a very different place now there there are still scams that go on. There are still people who reply who aren&#8217;t serious. But Craigslist has evolved as a platform and become a very good source of job applicants. So it&#8217;s a good tip for people looking for ways outside of the typical Facebook or LinkedIn.</p>
<h2> Cleaning Business Operations Roadblock &#8211; Case Study </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I wasn&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s called off last minute to be with their family, which is perfectly understandable. I just didn&#8217;t have the foresight to ask them ahead of time.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;t thought about before as a business owner because I&#8217;d only been in business a few months. So this was a big roadblock for me.</p>
<p>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&#8217;t the problem. But there&#8217;s all these other parts of running the business that maybe I wasn&#8217;t doing a good job on.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re actually my strengths now. Our operations, our customer service, our teams, those are our main strengths were even better that than that. We&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
<h2> Taking a Cleaning Business Remote </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But the moment that I&#8217;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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;t tell you the process, I realized I&#8217;d actually hit that myself. And I did it myself.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s the proudest moment.</p>
<h2> Adding Cleaning Business Services </h2>
<p>And we&#8217;re looking forward to adding additional services we&#8217;ve played around with carpet and window cleaning these past few years. It&#8217;s something that I want to make a permanent offering what we do as well. So that&#8217;s a major focus of this year, it was a major focus last year.</p>
<p>But between my other businesses I just didn&#8217;t get around to it. So for think Nate&#8217;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.</p>
<h2> After Outsourcing Cleaning &#038; Adding New Businesses </h2>
<p>Yeah, so for my <a href="https://www.localbusinessmba.com/local-business-mba" rel="noopener" target="_blank">local business MBA program</a>. This is for people who either want to start a local business from scratch, or people who&#8217;ve been stuck in their local business for years. In so in one case, we&#8217;ve been helped a lady who&#8217;d been stuck since 1989, at the same place.</p>
<p>This is a program for people who are really stuck or new. And the people who are stuck when they join with us, it&#8217;s to rebuild the foundation of their business, they often haven&#8217;t, they&#8217;ve often been good at sales or marketing, or they&#8217;ve been good at word of mouth or just teams, they&#8217;re usually good at one or two things and bad at a lot of things.</p>
<p>This is for people who plowed ahead being good at one or two things, but never did the basic foundational work of their business.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s about implementing the right systems, of which I have many detailed tutorials for everyone goes through it.</p>
<p>And it&#8217;s about removing yourself from the day to day, that&#8217;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&#8217;re more of a business owner and less of a business manager. So that&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Comment below if you have started a cleaning or VA based business and your favorite takeaway from this article.</p>
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		<title>Buy and Sell Websites: Tips How &#038; Where + My Case Study</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/buy-and-sell-websites/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/buy-and-sell-websites/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 19:54:08 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Buy Website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Case Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money Online]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sell Website]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1313</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Buy and Sell Websites How to Sell a Website &#8211; Tips How &#038; Where to Sell Your Website + How I sold [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2> Buy and Sell Websites </h2>
<p>How to Sell a Website &#8211; Tips How &#038; 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.</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" width="1170" height="658" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vOIslcn_A6c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>You can also sign up for my email list if you want to <a href="https://www.her.ceo/website-investing" rel="noopener" target="_blank">buy a website</a>, as I send website buying tips and deals.</p>
<h2> Starter Sites vs Established Sites </h2>
<p>There are two types of sites you can sell, one is a <strong>starter site</strong>, which is one that you either custom make or that you&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Depending on how you position it you can still sell it for a lot of money, especially if it&#8217;s a custom site for someone.</p>
<p>Th second type of <strong>site is one that has traffic and is making money</strong> already so it&#8217;s actually worth something on its own. </p>
<p>Personally, I only like to purchase the second type of site which is a site that already has traffic and already has revenue.</p>
<p>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&#8217;ll be able to sell it.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>How to Sell a Starter Website</h2>
<p><strong>Sell on Motion Invest for Quick Cash:</strong></p>
<p>If you choose to ignore my advice then you can still sell a site not getting any traffic. <a href="https://www.motioninvest.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Motioninvest.com</a> 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.</p>
<p><strong>Sell on a Facebook Group:</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>If you have a site that does have some sort of traffic or revenue then you have a lot more options to sell it.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2> How to Sell an Established Website </h2>
<p>How to sell a website that already has traffic and revenue:</p>
<p><strong>Email Stacy@Her.CEO</strong></p>
<p>The first thing you want to do is email me stacy@her.ceo, and we can start a conversation and see if there&#8217;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&#8217;s something I&#8217;m interested in.</p>
<p><strong>List Your Site on a Website Selling Platform:</strong></p>
<p>You can also choose to sell it on a website investing platform. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>I ended up selling my site using a broker at <a href="https://www.latonas.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Latonas.com</a>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s important to do your research for each platform to figure out the fees you&#8217;ll have to pay for listing and sale success fees as it differs by platform.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;re going about your site and going to make sure it&#8217;s exactly what they want to sell to their audience. You might not even get accepted with Empire Flippers since they don&#8217;t accept all sites to sell.</p>
<p>Getting accepted by them is also not a a guarantee of a sale, although you&#8217;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&#8217;s a really high chance that someone will want your site.</p>
<p>I was looking at EmpireFlippers.com and it says that out of all the sites they&#8217;ve approved, they&#8217;ve actually sold 89% of the ones that they&#8217;ve listed, so still your site could be in the 11% that doesn&#8217;t get sold.</p>
<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;t approve my site for their platform. They actually don&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;re going to get to keep more of your total selling price.  </p>
<p>It&#8217;s something I&#8217;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.</p>
<h2> Where to sell your website </h2>
<p>There are many platforms and places you can sell your site. Here are a few you can research and try:</p>
<ul>
<li> Her.CEO </li>
<li> Facebook Groups </li>
<li> Private Deals </li>
<li> Flippa </li>
<li> Empire Flippers </li>
<li> Latonas </li>
<li> FE International </li>
<li> Motion Invest </li>
<li> Quiet Light Brokerage </li>
<li> Investors.Club </li>
</ul>
<h2> My Experience Selling a Website </h2>
<p>Latonas.com is where I actually ended up selling my site.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, &#8220;You know what, I just I can&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t want to do this anymore and I want to take my money out.&#8221; He got cold feet, and he said it was because the site didn&#8217;t comply with GDPR.</p>
<p>He said, &#8220;You need like a controller, someone to manage the data GDPR&#8221;. GDPR is very complex, however if you don&#8217;t think a website complies with GDPR, you probably aren&#8217;t going to be able to buy any website, because even Google has had the GDPR lawsuits and they&#8217;ve had to pay huge fines.</p>
<p>If Google has its huge team of lawyers and they weren&#8217;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 <em>any</em> 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&#8217;t have anything to blame it on they still could have pulled out of the deal.</p>
<p>The buyer was  able to take their money out of escrow, and then I transferred everything back even though we had airtight contracts. It&#8217;s not worth it to get into a lawsuit over something like this &#8211; I&#8217;m not going to go after them with a lawyer to try to make them follow through with the transaction.</p>
<p>I guess it&#8217;s good to know that contracts, at the end of the day airtight contracts don&#8217;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. </p>
<p>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&#8217;t have sold to that person and there ended up being issues later on which I won&#8217;t go into here.</p>
<p>At the end of the day I don&#8217;t regret selling the site however I do wish I had waited for a different buyer and went for a higher multiple.</p>
<h2> Website Selling Takeaways </h2>
<p><strong>Takeaway 1: Choose a high-multiple broker with low fees</strong></p>
<p>When selling my site I do wish I&#8217;d chosen a higher-end broker so I could have sold at a higher multiple.</p>
<p><strong>Takeaway 2: Be Patient, there will be a buyer</strong></p>
<p>I do wish I&#8217;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&#8217;re selling your site.</p>
<p>In conclusion, if I could go back in time and give my old self advice before selling the site I would say, &#8220;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&#8217;t really airtight until the money has been not just put in escrow but literally released from escrow.&#8221;</p>
<p>Comment below if you have ever bought or sold a site and your experience with your listing platform.</p>
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		<title>How to Increase YouTube Views: Make a Viral Video w/ ZERO Subs</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/how-to-increase-youtube-views/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/how-to-increase-youtube-views/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 19:18:29 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money Online]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Organic Growth]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1309</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Free YouTube Views How can you make a viral YouTube video when you have ZERO subscribers? This article goes through a case [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2> Free YouTube Views </h2>
<p>How can you make a viral YouTube video when you have ZERO subscribers? This article goes through a case study of my video went viral and teaches you the process to make your own viral videos and get free organic YouTube views.</p>
<p>You can watch the case study and viral video process tips below, or read the article for more detail:</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" width="1170" height="658" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3pwDcT2gG4Y?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<h2> How to Get More Views on Youtube </h2>
<p>You can make a viral or semi viral video in really any niche, even boring ecommerce ones like I did.</p>
<p>Viral videos have a few things in common – the first being they inspire people to share the video. This is the #1 characteristic of viral videos, when a video gets shared it starts to go viral. People want to share videos that cause them to feel any emotion strongly, whether that is:</p>
<ul>
<li>laughter</li>
<li>happiness</li>
<li>sadness</li>
<li>fear</li>
<li>surprise</li>
<li>or any strong emotion</li>
</ul>
<p>If your video makes people feel something, they will naturally want to share it with others.<br />
People also share videos that are super helpful, such as how to videos, and videos that helped them with a specific problem or solution, so even if your video doesn’t evoke strong emotion, you can still make it helpful enough to go viral.</p>
<p>Viral videos also have a unique angle that makes people want to watch that specific video even if there are other similar videos out there. Meaning you need to make your video different from any other similar topic video out there – you can do this by injecting your own case study or experience into it because no one else has had your exact experience with a situation.</p>
<p>You can also curate other people’s data or experience in a unique way that’s never been done.  The key is to take a unique approach that makes people drawn to your video over any other video in your niche to increase the chances they choose to spend their precious time watching your video as opposed to any others.</p>
<p>People have a lot of things vying for their attention so if they don’t have a clear reason to watch your video over all the others, they simply won’t watch it so give them a reason to watch yours.</p>
<p>In addition to strong emotion, if you make them learn something about themselves or feel a strong bond they will also want to share and watch your video:</p>
<ul>
<li>Identity</li>
<li>Bond</li>
<li>Learn about yourself</li>
<li>This is us</li>
<li>Family</li>
</ul>
<h2> How to Increase YouTube Views </h2>
<p>The way to make a boring niche viral video, like I did with my ecommerce store product demonstration video is to make it super relevant and exactly what the watcher is searching for, make it interesting, make it helpful, and optimize it specifically for youtube search. </p>
<p>If your niche is boring, you actually have an advantage because you can have fun while making your own video and make it interesting and fun.</p>
<p>When you make it fun and start incorporating your own experience and story into then people watching it start to have fun with you, and then suddenly your boring niche becomes more fun and people start to emotionally connect with it, making it even more likely to stand out from your competition and go viral. So don’t assume your boring niche is actually boring and make a boring video to represent that.</p>
<p>No, instead, have fun with your boring niche and make your video be helpful in a way that is a compelling story for your audience so they stay engaged and want to watch the whole thing.</p>
<p>A compelling story can be from your own personal experience or it can simply be a transformational before after visual story such as a makeup tutorial presents- people are always intensely interested in before after visual stories as you can see from any makeup or home improvement channel, as well as engaging personal experience stories which you can inject into any niche, not as a side note, but as a way to tell the entire video in a story arc to keep people engaged.</p>
<h2> YouTube SEO </h2>
<p>You can have a viral video that goes viral from just people sharing it, and you can have a video that goes viral from being correctly optimized for YouTube SEO.</p>
<p>Here is how to optimize a video to go viral through YouTube SEO, which is how my specific ecommerce video went viral:</p>
<ul>
<li> <strong>Keyword research</strong>
<p>Keyword research is a huge part of viral YouTube SEO. Search for keywords in your niche on YouTube and choose a video topic, keyword and title that is not overcrowded.</p>
<p>This means choosing one where there are not too many videos uploaded for the keyword already, and especially not too many good or similar videos already uploaded on it. You need to know you can make the best video, with firsthand experience preferably so yours has a chance of living on the first page in a high-ranking position. It is important there isn’t already too much super good competition because otherwise you’ll never rank organically without an ad budget, and why add more noise to some thoroughly and well covered already if you don’t have anything unique to add.</p>
<p>If you can take a super interesting unique angle on a well covered topic, that is a good play to stand out as long as you make that super clear in your title however.</p>
<li> <strong>Video Title</strong>
<p>The video title is very important for ranking in YouTube.</p>
<p>For your keyword research in the title, the key is to have your most specific keyword at the front of the title because that will carry the most weigh tin search results, and this will increase your watch time which increases your video rank which I talk about more later on.</p>
<p>After the specific keyword you want to rank #1 one on then put an interesting short  phrase that highlights your unique experience and results try to include an interesting question or number or something that makes people want to click, then you can insert one or two  more broad, more general keywords in the title so later on once people start liking and watching your video, youtube will start to rank you for your broader keywords in addition to your general keywords. This is a great way to structure your title for maximum views so you get people’s attention so they want to watch and click, and you get the super specific high quality views plus set yourself up with the opportunity to rake in broader keyword rankings and views as well.</p>
<p>The title has to be relevant to the high traffic keywords with as low comp as possible so your video will show. Try putting a specific number or result in your title when possible so people see you as credible and with experience. People like watching those who have direct experience in the area so they know the advice will actually work and it makes watching the videos more interesting, make the title something they want to click.</p>
<p>I create a standout title by looking at the currently ranking page of YouTube videos where I want my video to show up based on the keyword I’m targeting. I then picture my title on that page near the middle and ask myself, &#8220;would I click that title to watch it? Would I click that thumbnail? What would make me want to click and watch that’s NOT clickbait?&#8221;</p>
<p>Not having a clickbait title, but actually being able to follow through on your title in the video is key because visitors have to click and watch and then be hooked and want to watch more and trust you, not feel duped into thinking they clicked and then go to a horrible video that is boring and not relevant.</p>
<li> <strong>Video Thumbnail</strong>
<p>The video thumbnail is super important for YouTube SEO because without a good one, even if your title thumbnail and keywords are spot on, you’ll never rank long term.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s important to look at the videos already ranking on the page you want yours to rank and then see how you can make your thumbnail stand out.</p>
<p>Choose a different color, choose a captivating statistic or word you can add to your own thumbnail. The key is to make your thumbnail stand out and be the best on the page, the one you&#8217;d want to click if shown the search result page. </p>
<p>This will increase your video CTR which will increase its ranking long term as long as people actually watch your video and it&#8217;s not clickbait.</p>
<li> <strong>Captivating Content </strong>
<p>Having insanely interesting content that draws the viewer in for the majority of the video is the #1 ranking factor and without it your video has no chance of ranking even if you ace every other single ranking factor.</p>
<p>You have to make your video interesting with no pauses or ums or boring filler pieces. People will stop watching if you even have a second or two of filler or confusion.</p>
<p>Let me say that again. Every second of your video has to have a purpose. Every second has to capture attention, add value and be interesting. The second you start rambling or didn’t know what you were going to say, or didn’t edit a pause or put in excess filler info, the viewer will stop watching.</p>
<p>Youtube videos are different from podcasts in that people want an answer or help and they want it now, they don’t want to listen to you ramble for an hour and then get a few key takeaways like people do on podcasts or longer form content.</p>
<p>You probably know from your own experience, if you’re watching a youtube video for a specific reason and the person starts talking about something else or is super boring you simply stop watching and find a different video. The youtube algorithm takes this into account in a huge way because of the enormous volume of content that is uploaded each day and the fierce competition for each keyword.</p>
<p>Youtube wants to give viewers the best possible content and they do this by measuring metrics including click through rate on title and thumbnail and even more so by measuring view time and video engagement including likes and comments.</p>
<p>Youtube will drive more traffic to your video when people watch most of it or the whole thing because this is a huge signal to them that your video was good because someone took the time to watch the whole thing. If your viewers are all clicking out because you clickbaited them, or because you’re boring or pause a lot then you’re not giving your video even a chance to start ranking.</p>
<p>Another huge bonus When people love and watch your whole video, youtube starts expanding the keywords it shows for so you can start gaining more views than you even originally tried to target</p>
<li> <strong>High Production Value: Lighting &#038; Sound</strong>
<p>Probably the least important ranking factor, but it will help, and it will add to how long people watch your video which will help boost it in results.</p>
<p>Lighting is key because if people have trouble seeing you or think you look strange they&#8217;ll likely click out and find another video with good lighting to watch. My first viral video had insanely good lighting even though it was my first youtube video because I bought lightbulb lamps at Home Depot and a white tarp for my background so it looked professional and clean and super well-lit which was even more important for a beauty product video, but is also important if you want any type of viral video.</p>
<p>Sound isn&#8217;t as important and my first viral video had OK sound from my computer, but if you&#8217;re producing more than one video you might as well invest in a lavalier mic to increase your production value. </p>
<p>Let me know if which viral video ranking factor you think is most important in the comments!</p>
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		<title>Flippa &#8211; I&#8217;ve Spent $35,700 on Flippa, What did I learn? Avoid my mistakes</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/flippa/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/flippa/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 18:57:19 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Buy Website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Case Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Entrepreneur Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Income Reports]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money Online]]></category>
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					<description><![CDATA[Flippa Flippa &#8211; I&#8217;ve Spent $35,700 on Flippa, What did I learn? Avoid my mistakes. Learn from my experiences on Flippa by [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2> Flippa </h2>
<p>Flippa &#8211; I&#8217;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:</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" width="1170" height="658" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CHzwZtr6dOA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<h2> Pre-Flippa: My 9 to 5 Background </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I graduated from <a href="https://www.bc.edu/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Boston College</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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&#8221; 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.&#8221; I remember being flabbergasted that he would even say that. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2> Flippa Mistakes: My First Flippa Purchases </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This is the time I read a Niche Pursuits blog guest post article where I learned about <a href="https://www.flippa.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Flippa</a>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br />
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I realized pretty quickly he had lied about the site profit and revenue and that I&#8217;d fallen for a <a href="https://her.ceo/flippa-scams/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Flippa scam</a>. </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-website-valuation#:~:text=At%20the%20heart%20of%20any,for%20healthy%2C%20profitable%20online%20businesses." rel="noopener" target="_blank">profit valuation multiple</a> when I thought I was paying a 4X multiple, and had been lied to about site revenue.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
<p>Even though my first purchase didn&#8217;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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Lesson 1: Dive Deep into Verification</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Lesson 2: Don&#8217;t Ignore your Gut or Red Flags</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Lesson 3: Only make investments with a clear, calm mind</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Lesson 4: Weed out sites early on using Flippa&#8217;s Verification Features</strong></p>
<p>This website also wasn’t using any of <a href="https://flippa.com/blog/new-feature-verified-google-adsense-revenue/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Flippa’s verification features </a>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.</p>
<p><strong>Lesson 5: Buy sites with long-term potential, not fad or trendy</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2> My Second Flippa Mistake &#8211; Site Purchase #2 </h2>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Again, my desperation this time combined with over-confidence lead me to make the purchase.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Main Lesson: Focus on sites that are long-term investments, not short term money plays</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2> How to Have Success with a Flippa Purchase </h2>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>You have to remember that there are tons of good listings on Flippa, you just have to know what you&#8217;re doing and understand the space to make a good purchase.</p>
<p>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&#8217;s in the Chicago suburbs.</p>
<p>The site was in a great niche I was able to expand using SEO and consistent content publishing over time.</p>
<h2> Flippa Success Lessons </h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Lesson 1: </strong>Use what you&#8217;ve learned from previous sites, investments and purchases to improve your decision making</li>
<li><strong>Lesson 2:</strong> Implement quick wins such as quick SEO wins, ad network changes &#038; placement changes to quickly increase revenue</li>
<li><strong>Lesson 3:</strong> Look for long-term value in sites</li>
<li><strong>Lesson 4:</strong> Use long-term SEO and content adding to grow sites over time</li>
</ul>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Flippa assets, and website assets in general, tend to be undervalued as compared to any other type of asset, real estate, you&#8217;re lucky if you make your investment back in five or six years in my two successful website investing cases.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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&#8217;re a great asset. You can also plan on improving and then selling the site as the multiples keep going up.</p>
<p>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&#8217;t vet sites so you have to take on the vetting yourself, and that means you can actually find better deals.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>You guys can let me know if you have you bought a website from Flippa in the comments.</p>
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		<title>Pinterest SEO: How to Get More Pinterest Impressions &#038; Views</title>
		<link>https://her.ceo/pinterest-seo/</link>
					<comments>https://her.ceo/pinterest-seo/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stacy Caprio]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2020 20:53:41 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Case Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ecommerce Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Make Money Online]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://her.ceo/?p=1311</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Pinterest SEO How to Get Pinterest Traffic &#8211; My 2,570,000 a month Pinterest Traffic Strategy In the past 30 days I received [&#8230;]]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2> Pinterest SEO </h2>
<p>How to Get Pinterest Traffic &#8211; My 2,570,000 a month Pinterest Traffic Strategy</p>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" width="1170" height="658" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rJtXmj3X7B8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>In the past 30 days I received 2.57 million monthly pin views! How did I do it?</p>
<p>Here I go through the exact steps I took to create viral pins and get millions of free organic Pinterest impressions each month.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-1024x458.png" alt="pinterest analytics" width="1024" height="458" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1403" srcset="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-1024x458.png 1024w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-300x134.png 300w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-768x343.png 768w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-830x371.png 830w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-230x103.png 230w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-350x156.png 350w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pinterest-analytics-480x215.png 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p>
<h2> Get More Pinterest Impressions </h2>
<p>I just checked and this month my account has received 2.57 mission impressions.</p>
<p>My top 5 pins for the past 30 days have all received over 100k views, with the top one receiving 353,626 impressions. These are all organic and I haven&#8217;t touched my account in years. </p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-1024x478.png" alt="pin impressions" width="1024" height="478" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1405" srcset="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-1024x478.png 1024w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-300x140.png 300w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-768x358.png 768w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-830x387.png 830w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-230x107.png 230w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-350x163.png 350w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-impressions-480x224.png 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p>
<p>It’s even crazier because I don’t post on my account anymore or schedule pins. I literally don’t touch the account, although maybe I should touch it more because here it is humming along with 1.6 million monthly views for  one of my niche sites.</p>
<p>I created rich pins a few years ago and did some bulk scheduled posts and joined group boards and had this active for a few months in a row and now here we are years later with over a million monthly views still, and my site still gets consistent Pinterest traffic.</p>
<p>The particular site this account is connected to has also gotten over 15,000 free organic website visits from Pinterest over its lifetime.</p>
<p>My top pin received 1,544 link, clicks in the past 30 days with the other top pins receiving 100 or more clicks as well. </p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-1024x465.png" alt="pin clicks" width="1024" height="465" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1404" srcset="https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-1024x465.png 1024w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-300x136.png 300w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-768x349.png 768w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-830x377.png 830w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-230x104.png 230w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-350x159.png 350w, https://her.ceo/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pin-clicks-480x218.png 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p>
<h2> How to do Pinterest SEO </h2>
<p>The goal of Pinterest SEO is more Pin impressions and website visits.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to be successful on Pinterest, and you’d be surprised how some upfront work can produce views and traffic for years after even if you completely take your hands off the wheel like I did with this site.</p>
<p>Here are the pillars to follow to set up a strong Pinterest SEO foundation and get more views, clicks, repins and site visits:</p>
<ol>
<li> <strong>Create a Business Pinterest Account &#038; Use a Business Email</strong>
<p>First create a <a href="https://business.pinterest.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">business Pinterest account</a> using an email that not’s your main email.<br />
It’s also good to have a separate business Pinterest account because the Pinterest algorithm favors an account when it is super focused around one topic.</p>
<p>It’s good to create a business account type which you can switch a personal one to at any time because you get more detailed analytics and you can run paid promotion at any point with a business account whereas you don’t get those analytics or paid ad options with a personal account type.</p>
<p>The reason you should use a different email than your main personal email to create your  Pinterest account is but also because any time you’re running a growth focused Pinterest account there is the possibility Pinterest will shut your account down at any time for any reason and they don’t have a great support team so it may take months or never to get it back.</p>
<p>I personally have had an account shut down and it took months of me emailing them on a weekly basis for them to reinstate it and I guess I’m lucky they did end up reinstating it.
</li>
<li> <strong>Niche your account down, make is super specific</strong>
<p>This is because more people will follow you when they are interested in your specific niche and can see you only post about your niche because they don’t want to be spammed with random topic pins.</p>
<p>Having a super focused account will help you gain followers, repins and support because people will be genuinely interested in all of your pins which will help your account grow.</li>
<li> <strong>Create amazing pins and content</strong>
<p>The key to having a successful Pinterest account is providing amazing content that those following you want to see.<br />
That’s part of why it is so key to have a super specific niche you post about so every post can be a direct hit home run as opposed to having a bunch of lukewarm posts that don’t resonate with your audience.</p>
<p>The real key here to success on Pinterest is posting incredible content. Post the content you’d want to see if you were in your niche. </p>
<p>I find the best images I can – remember here that copyright free or using your own is the best option with creating your own images and video being the absolute best option as long as you can make it insanely high quality. Then I use my free canva.com account and they have a size Pinterest size option which is 1000px by 1500px.</p>
<p>I personally create my own dimension of 1080px by 1920px because a long time ago I did some research and that was the best size for visibility and repins. Then I upload the images into Canva and add copyright free text and design the pins all in the same Canva folder for easy export. </li>
<li> <strong>Do Pinterest Image &#038; Keyword Research</strong><br />
One additional trick to position your pins for success is to search your target keyword on Pinterest before creating the pin, and make your image the best image and make it stand out in color and how you compose it.</p>
<p>The key is to make it what you would click on if you visited that page on Pinterest and had the option to click on any pin. When you make your pin stand out and make it the absolute best pin for your target keyword, you will get more views, saves, repins, clicks and site visits from it.</li>
<li> <strong>Create Rich Pins &#038; Upload them to you Site</strong>
<p>Then you need to upload the pins to your website and put them on a page as <a href="https://www.melyssagriffin.com/easy-way-set-rich-pins-pinterest/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">rich</a>. This part is even more important part than having incredible jaw dropping content because for best results you need the pins to be in rich pin format.</p>
<p>You also need to have all your pins posted on your website so you can pin them directly from your website onto your Pinterest boards. There is simply no point in even pinning a pin if you don’t pin it directly from your website because you lose the rich pin benefit and you lose the site traffic benefit if you don’t do it this way. </p>
<p>You can create a pin page on your website where all you do is post rich pin images, or you an integrate pins into your blog posts. I can&#8217;t emphasize this enough. You have to post the images on your own site, and post them using rich pin format which you can easily google how to do.
</li>
<li> <strong>Add Pinterest Social Sharing to your Website</strong>
<p>Then, you’ll need to install a social sharing Pinterest plugin on your site so you most importantly, and then second most importantly anyone else visiting your site can pin your website rich pin images images directly to pinterest<br />
The key to start gaining a following and traffic is to go to directly website every single day for a month and click to pin 5 or so RICH PIN images by clicking the image on your site and pinning it directly to a board on your account.<br />
I personally used PinPinterest’s $5 a month plan so I went in one day and pinned 180 pins in one sitting so 5 were scheduled to go up on my boards every day for a month.
</li>
<li> <strong>Schedule 5 Pins to Post Each Day</strong>
<p>Scheduling using <a href="https://www.pinpinterest.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">PinPinterest</a> took a lot of the manual busywork labor  out of it for me and made scheduling a month worth’s of pins super easy and cost effective.</p>
<p>Then, once you have a few months content on your own boards and site, you can start joining group boards that have thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers in your niche and posting one or two a day to every group board in addition to your own boards to really start getting exposure for your pins.</li>
<li> <strong>Join Group Boards in your niche</strong>
<p>I used the website <a href="https://www.pingroupie.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">pingroupie.com</a> where you can easily search for group boards in your niche.</p>
<p>How it works is you search for a keyword in your niche and it brings up a list of group boards that have that keyword in their title, you can then filter by number of followers, number of board collaborators and number of pins.</p>
<p>The sweet spot is to filter by number of followers a board has, then go down the list and choose ones that have 10 or more  board collaborators to reach out to. You want to request to join and reach out to boards that have 10 or more collaborators because that means the admins have actively approved at least a handful of people to collaborate on the board.</p>
<p>This means you have a better chance of getting approved to pin on the board the more collaborators the board already has.</p>
<p>I personally requested to join and sent a personal personalized message to dozens if not over 50 or 100 group boards and was approved by around 10% of what I applied to.</p>
<p>Once they approve you, don’t spam them. Instead schedule one pin every day or every few days  and start with great content that has already performed well on your own boards, every few weeks you can pin a semi-promotional pin but it should really still have insanely good content. If you post bad content or too promotional of content on grojp boards you will get removed and there’s no point in doing it because your bad or overly salesy content won’t perform well on the boards anyway.</li>
<h2> Important Pinterest Takeaways </h2>
<p>If you post <em>amazing</em> content that stands out that you would want to click on and read, and post your content first in rich pin format on your website, pin it at a rate of 5 pins a day onto your own Pinterest boards, join a few dozen group boards and post one a day per group board, you will start to see your impressions, repins, clicks start to grow!</p>
<p>Comment below your favorite takeaway from this video and like this video if it was helpful because that helps more people see the video and it gives me the ability to make more posts and videos for you guys. Good luck with your pinning!</p>
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