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Building a Killer Member Site

by justin

Around two weeks ago, after over a year of blood sweat and coding, we finally launched Internet Tycoon, a community, an online learning resource and a set of tools for people with an interest in buying, selling and growing websites, apps and software.

This post is about the nuts and bolts of building a community, what tools we used and what marketing insights we discovered from our split tests.Even if you never intend to build a member site this should still be a useful resource on building an information based web business in general.

Tagged as: Auction Listing Tips, buy website, monetisation strategy, sell websites, tutorial, website acquisition, website not selling, writing an auction listing

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Lessons in Fast Growth for Internet Businesses

by justin

If you had to start from scratch, what would you do if you wanted to be as profitable as possible in the shortest time?

I’ve always been fascinated by how some companies manage to grow so quickly with the same or sometimes less resources than we all probably have available to us. The idea behind this article is to take a look at some of the fastest growing companies that sold, see what they had in common, and show practically how we could replicate that success.

Tagged as: monetisation strategy, quantum growth, traffic, website ideas

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Feb 2012 – Latest Website Acquisition Opportunities from the A-List

by justin

This month saw the launch of the new look A-List, a monthly round up of noteworthy businesses for sale typically, but not always, with a value above $10K.

In this month’s issue we look at an emerging opportunity in ‘digital portfolio’ management , what sold for the highest prices and what they had in common, what was most popular amongst lower end buyers and how single page Clickbank sites seem to be making a splash lately. There are also four Internet Businesses for sale on review and a summary of the best of the web in Jan including How to build a startup without learning code, the guy who sold his two year old company for $75 million and Why The Loooooong Sales Letter Works And Other Surprising Sales Hacks – with Ramit Sethi.

Tagged as: a-list, buy website, Flippa, sites for sale, websites for sale

Post image for Flippas Price Increase and the numbers behind Brokered Sites

Flippas Price Increase and the numbers behind Brokered Sites

by justin

A recent post on the Flippa Blog revealed some changes that I’m pretty sure will get the silver (or based on the amount of sites some people sell – platinum) tongues wagging in our industry. This post looks at the actual numbers behind the alternatives and tries to answer the question, whether or not Flippa still represents value for sellers of + $10K sites.

Tagged as: brokered websites, buy website, Flippa, website marketplace

Guess what Died?

by justin
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I would have much preferred to call this post something clichéd and ‘link baity’ like ‘Website Flipping is Dead’ but that’s not really true and it’s probably been done on a million blogs already.

Whether you’re new to the game or you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ve probably noticed that finding good sites at below x times monthly profit just isn’t happening a lot lately. Here’s why, and what you can do to guarantee that you still trade profitably.

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How to get Scammed Buying a Site Privately

by justin
Website Scam

A short while back I kind of got scammed. I say kind of because if it hadn’t been for a complete stroke of luck I would have handed over nearly £8,000 ($12,000) for a complete turkey of a site and whilst I’d like to claim skill and experience prevented it from happening, it really was just luck.

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$56K in 4 months from renovating Ecommerce sites

by justin
Buying Ecommerce Sites

About three weeks ago I got an email from a friend in Holland about a seller on Flippa who was making in excess of $160K per year (pro rata), from what was a fairly simple, but under the radar strategy of buying average, often mediocre ecommerce sites from specific places, applying the same simple formula, then selling them less than six months later for up to 12x what they paid often without any significant increase in revenue or traffic.

If you’ve been finding it more difficult to find good undervalued sites at auctions with so many more people now bidding, hopefully this post will give you a little inspiration.

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Business and Boobs

by justin
Adult Websites for Sale

This week online adult webmaster portal Ynot Group announced plans to launch a marketplace for buying and selling websites and domains.

If you’re expecting a Flippa clone, you could be out of luck, as the Ynot Marketplace will exclusively feature porn related online businesses, filling a gap currently left open in our niche.

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Inquisitr.com sells for $330,000 on Flippa

by justin
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It’s good news all round for b2Media co founder Duncan Riley, who last night sold his site, Inquisitr.com for $330,000 on Flippa to an ‘unnamed Israeli media buyer’. The site received a relative amount of ‘comment action’ but ended with only 1 bid and at time of writing is “sold pending settlement via Escrow and transfer of assets”.

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And the Winner is…

by justin
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Reasons for people selling their sites just get weirder and weirder.

The following are the strangest reasons for a seller selling their site, mostly taken from Flippa, Digital Point and a few unnamed Blackhat forums.

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Growing and Selling Forums – An Interview with Tyler Cruz

by justin
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Forums and Community sites rarely make the list of top website sales, simply because they tend to be so difficult to get right. This is an interview with Tyler Cruz, owner of Merendi Networks Inc, which operate a portfolio of approximately 15 community driven sites.

As someone who has successfully bought, sold and grew forums systematically over the last few years, this interview has a special focus on community driven sites and contains some juicy pointers and insights for making them work.

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Buying Wholesale | Finding unlisted sites directly from their owners

by justin
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Finding a website for sale direct from the owner almost always offers better value than buying through a marketplace or broker.

If you buy sites on a regular basis, you’re about to enter a new niche or if you want to expand within one you’re currently in, it’s often worth spending the time to see what’s available privately before shopping on the general market. This article aims to take you through a simple system that you can use to identify, find details for and negotiate on websites that aren’t publically for sale.

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Ratios for buying an Internet Business

by justin
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Analysing an offline business is primarily focused on ratios, but using this same technique for online businesses is often flawed or difficult for several reasons.

We need a new set of ratios for quickly assessing the health of an online business, that can also be benchmarked if we collect enough data. This article explores two different calculations, and shows their practical use in a real situation.

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New Tools added for FlipFilter Users

by justin
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This week we’ve added three new modules for users, and I hope it will not only save you time in doing your research, but also save you money. Under the tools menu after you login, you will now have access to SEM Rush Pro Reports, Estibot Domain Appraisals and a Website Auction Archive. The idea [...]

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An Evolution in Selling Internet Businesses

by justin
Evolution of Websites for Sale

Lately I’ve studied hundreds of solid, profitable websites for sale at the $10K – $150K end of the spectrum, but looking at the market on the whole there’s a definite change from this time three or even just one year ago.

The following is a summary of what in my opinion are the most important changes to happen over the last year. This is in the hope that if we can see where the market is generally heading, we can design offerings better placed to give people what they want and ultimately sell quicker and for more revenue.

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New Arrivals on the scene

by justin
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Over the last few years we’ve seen a few good dedicated forums and marketplaces appear, and I’ve recently come across three that are showing some promise.

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Anatomy of a $20K per month seller

by justin
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This article dissects the business model of website traders who list frequently and ALWAYS sell, earning upwards of $20,000 each month, every month.

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FlipFilter V2 Preview | Aged Domains, High Value Sites and a heap of bug fixes

by justin
FlipFilter V2

Over the last few months I’ve been working on FlipFilter V2 (due January 2011) which builds on the idea of FlipFilter, but implements some pretty useful features to provide more of an overall experience in building an online portfolio.

This post runs through the main updates and additions, including the new Aged Domains and High Value Brokered Sites section and a mixed bag of new modules.

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Using Advanced Due Diligence to avoid Buyer’s Remorse

by justin
Buying a Website without Buyers Remorse

Whilst many of the articles on website due diligence cover the basics well, few guides exist that cover the more long term discoveries that often lead you to have buyer’s remorse.

The following article covers some of the ‘things they don’t seem to tell you’ factors to look for during your due diligence on a site. If you find a site with a vulnerability in any of these areas, it’s certainly not fatal, but you should know the cost of remedying it should the worse happen and have an action plan in place, especially if a good part of your livelihood relies on the site’s income.

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Achieving Quantum Growth, trading up and knowing when to sell

by justin
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Have you noticed that some people seem to hit ‘gold’ far quicker off the starting block than others, irrelevant of their business, market or even personal situation?

This article looks at a practical way we can speed up the process of accumulating wealth in what we do. The idea is simple and based on the theory of leverage. A site that earns $1,000 per day, doesn’t require 1,000x more work than one that generates $1 per day, so our focus should be to maximize our time investment by putting it into a project that gives us the highest return, and we can get this project through ‘trading up’.

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