As you may know, I’m currently all about buying internet businesses.
As of writing, I’d say it is the fastest and surest way to make money online (as long as you do your due diligence).
That being said it’s still quite a lot of work.
In fact, let’s take a look at the standard “low hanging fruit” work you’d put in if you were buying a site based on adding to your Pareto Portfolio:
- KW Research and input into a rank tracker
- Spec out new articles for low hanging fruit keywords (keywords you’re ranking between 5th and 30th for).
- Interlink existing content (homepage and main categories, within content in posts).
- Add articles to contributor accounts
- 2nd tier linkbuilding through PBNs (link building the existing links of unpunishable sites).
- Split-test ad placements – REPEAT AD NAUSEUM
If you’re going the route of the Monetization Mogul, you’d do all of the above PLUS the following:
- Setup proper goals and metrics.
- Split-test lead magnets – REPEAT AD NAUSEUM
- Build autoresponder – with a PROPER funnel, split test AD NAUESEUM.
- Investigate lead gen or affiliate possibilities, get on the phone and validate (10 calls minimum!).
- Validate info product possibilities (pre-sell a course if applicable).
As you can see, it quite a bit of work, but if you’re effective you can do it all in a few months.
These are authority sites, and each one takes time. That’s why I prefer to buy bigger sites over a whole bunch of small ones. A site making $100/mo gets the same work done to it as the site that makes $1000/mo.
When I started out, I bought a few smaller sites under 10k, had some successes, and decided I’d go a little bigger and invest 30k. My thinking was, if I were to invest 30k, I could likely buy a site that made $1200/mo, and quite possibly bring it to $2400/mo within 6 months, and maybe even $3600 within 12.
Then it hit me. If I were to take my 30k and team up with someone to buy a site for 60k that brought in $2400/mo, it would take us half the time to pick the low hanging fruit. So I setup a buyer’s pack with a couple old interns/PTC students.
So if you’re an SEO looking for something up your alley that works and works quickly, I highly recommend you look into buying a site. If you don’t have much cash, save. You can team up with someone and start small – each put in 3k, and flip once you’ve maximized the low-hanging fruit , then team up and buy another for 12k and rinse and repeat.
The best part? Even if you don’t improve the site at all, it still represents a 40-50% annual ROI (assuming you’ve done your due diligence).
Want Free 1 on 1 Advice from a Professional Website Investor?
George from WiredInvestors has let me know that he’d be happy to give out some free information about which website investing system might suit you best (here’s an explanation of 6 investment systems he’s identified).
Simply fill out the short 5 step questionnaire below, and George will personally go over your results and let you know which system(s) might work for you. He’s not selling anything, and there are no strings attached – he’s got a new site and just wants to see what kind of questions the audience has. To that note, he’s also indicated that he’d be more than happy to answer any questions that you have about investing in websites.
Ahmed says:
While I agree with you Hayden, don’t you think the due diligence part is easier said than done, considering there are so many ways to falsify earning and traffic data? Is there any resource here or elsewhere you can point me to on that topic?
Much appreciated!
Hayden says:
If you use Flippa and they have Adsense and Analytics – that can be verified by Flippa itself. Also you can always use escrow.com and ask for a live screenshare walk-through. Generally if it’s just payments into a Paypal account that cannot be trusted though.
Thomas says:
Great article. Also good idea with the teaming up to buy a site. I talked to George about buying a site and he really knows his stuff.