Each week, I will post an inspiring success story from an entrepreneur who is growing and selling an online business. It's fun to follow me and learn how they got started and how they made the jump from traditional jobs to their current careers.
Website flipping is an entrepreneurial practice similar to real estate flipping, but done in the digital space. It involves the following steps:
Website renovators must have a wide range of skills, including market analysis, website development and design, content creation, SEO and online marketing. A successful website renovation can bring significant rewards, but it also comes with risks, as a website's profitability and traffic can be affected by a variety of factors.
His journey is both inspiring and relatable. There are millions of people in traditional jobs who want change, and Will's story proves it's possible. He adapted and developed his career by learning new skills and taking advantage of available opportunities. Many people who have yet to embark on a website renovation will be attracted to Will's approach because it is low-risk and uses a relatively small investment.
So far, he has focused primarily on improving the monetization capabilities of the sites he purchased, with notable success. From the classroom to the internet In 2017 Will Williams, a teacher from Liverpool with 10 years’ teaching experience, started a part-time business providing face-to-face group training for teachers. He offers training in the evenings or on weekends. For about a year, he grew the business while teaching full-time.
After a year, Will quit his teaching job to devote himself to the business full-time. Over the next two years Will continued to grow the business by leading training sessions across the UK. Will built a website for his business and added a blog to increase traffic. He didn't know much about blogging at the time, but he discovered that he enjoyed learning about traffic generation, social media, and SEO.
In 2020, the new crown epidemic broke out, and Will's face-to-face training courses were suddenly canceled. He needed to quickly adapt to the changes and began making training videos to sell on his website. Meanwhile, Will continued to work on the blog and was successfully growing traffic. Eventually, Will's website was monetized through Mediavine ads and digital products. Revenue fluctuates seasonally during the summer holidays as traffic decreases, but overall, the site averages about $6,000 per month.
After running the site for a few years, Will decided to sell. Speaking about the decision, Will said: "I've been working in education for almost 15 years, either as a teacher or as a consultant or as a website owner. I'd love to take a break. In the meantime, I have several other projects Businesses are running, and the education website is the most complex to operate.” At the end of 2022, Will listed the website on Motion Invest and sold it for about $160,000 (about 30 times the average monthly income).
A few years ago, while still running his educational website, Will purchased another website to apply what he learned through his main business. Although he didn't realize it at the time, this began Will's transition from online business owner to website renovator.
As of November 2023, Will has sold three websites: his educational website for $160,000 at the end of 2022; a small pet website for $4,500 at the end of 2022; and an outdoor website for $82,000 in March 2023 USD FOR SALE At the time this article was published, Will also had another site listed for sale. Although he is creating educational websites from scratch, Will's typical approach now is to purchase existing websites and blogs.
So far, he has purchased five sites, all selling for under $20,000. Will found three of the sites through the SEO community and purchased them privately from the previous owners. He also purchased a website through Flippa and another through a broker.
You might think you need a lot of money to start buying and renovating an existing website, but Will proves that a lot of success can be achieved with relatively small acquisitions. For example, an outdoor site he bought for $5,000 sold two years ago for $82,000. Will improved the site, made money from it, and two years later, sold it for a very handsome return. Will buys sites with the intention of improving them and selling them, rather than owning them long-term. He prefers this approach because it reduces risk compared to keeping the site and gives him extra motivation to work toward the end goal.
When asked why he took this approach, Will said: "I find that if I hold businesses, I can probably muddle along. If I know I'm going to sell them in the future, then I'm more motivated and prioritize what I want to sell. Doing things that make the business as profitable as possible right now. I also like buying new sites and figuring out how to monetize them. I think site monetization is a fundamental skill when it comes to evaluating sites for potential acquisition. Will pays special attention to specific details. He likes sites with ready traffic because his focus is on increasing monetization. A website with existing traffic allows for quick revenue when properly optimized. External links are also an important detail for Will. “I’m not an expert at building backlinks, so if I can buy a site that already has a lot of authority, it takes the pressure off and I can focus on content and monetization,” he said.
Will also likes to see well-branded sites with existing email lists or other traffic sources besides organic searches, which he sees as a bonus, while existing traffic and backlinks are still the main criteria. Although Will looks for sites with existing traffic, he still works to increase traffic after purchasing a site. He focuses primarily on organic search traffic from Google, but will also look to build secondary traffic sources for each website, often using social media platforms like Pinterest or Facebook.
One of Will's most successful techniques is taking advantage of opportunities that often go unnoticed. He monetizes his site through Raptive ads, and as an existing Raptive user, he can get approved more easily than someone without a Raptive account who only has about 30,000 page views for a secondary site. Raptive typically requires sites to have at least 100,000 page views per month to join their network, but existing users can get approved for other sites with as little as 30,000 page views per month. He said: “If you can buy a website that gets about 30,000 to 60,000 page views per month, that is currently running Ezoic ads (or similar ads), when you run Raptive ads, that will almost always result in one Nice and easy way to increase revenue. In my experience, Raptive and Mediavine ads usually increase revenue from Ezoic or AdSense ads by 2 to 4 times. ” In addition to advertising revenue, Will also uses other monetization methods such as affiliate programs and digital products (depending on the site), and he has recently begun soliciting email sponsorships. For digital products, Will says, "If I know a lot about a subject, I'll try to create an e-book or course on it myself to drive traffic to the product. Otherwise, you can pay an expert to do it. Work with previous website owners This can work well if they are experts in the field."
For now, Will is enjoying renovating the site with no clear long-term plans. He said: “I used to think long-term in terms of the website, but with the pace of change in the online space and Google updates, my focus now is just on being profitable every year and moving money out of the business into investments that are as long-term as possible. Renovating helps you keep a lot of money, and you're less dependent on algorithms and other things. Being a renovator also means you can switch directions quickly if needed (I've had to switch directions a few times in the past five years). ” In addition to adding to the several sites he has purchased, Will is currently working on a new site called Flipperfy that will serve as a resource for anyone looking to gain information on site renovations.
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