5 Easy Ways To Increase The Value Of Your Site Flip

5 Easy Ways To Increase The Value Of Your Site FlipHappy Monday to all.  If you recall my first site flip experience 2 weeks ago, I was able to build a blog based around a targeted niche phrase/market, fill it with keyword driven posts and get it indexed on the first page of Google for the primary search phrase.  I know some of you are thinking “First page of Google, I can’t do that!” and all I have to say is if I can do it with 3 hours of sleep per night, and collection agencies ringing my phone off the hook during the day time – you can do it too, and here’s how:  Value.

What?  Who?  Yes my friends, we’re going back to sales 101 and the good ol’ concept of “value proposition” and what that means to you and your potential client/buyer.  Value is everything when it comes to sales and it’s no different with selling online – whether it’s affiliate marketing or site flipping.  When consumers are in the buying mode, and you’re attempting to sell them a service or product that they weren’t specifically looking for you need to be able to answer these four questions:

  • Who the hell are you?
  • What the hell are you selling?
  • How much is it?
  • What do I get?

I’m sure you’ve seen different questions displayed in various sales bibles and manifestos but I assure you they are all reaching for the same end result – the sale – and since we’re talking about website flipping, or selling websites for profit, I wanted to focus on ways that you can increase the value of your site within a couple hours and how you can easily build and sell your first website within a weekend.  Before you go ahead and read my 5 steps to increasing value, I want you to visit SuiteJ.com and read his post titled 5 Simple Steps To Get Started Website Flipping This Weekend, make some notes and then come back and read the rest of my post.

The reason I’m asking you to do this in order is because SuiteJ provides the foundational steps to complete your first site flip – and I’m not going to be covering those steps, but rather elaborating on the core process to increase the value and help you get indexed faster, and sell your site for more money.  So assuming that you have listened to me, instead of flipping me off in your head, here are 5 easy ways to increase the value of your site flip:

  1. Keywords for categories – After you’ve found your key phrase that your niche site will be focused around, and you’ve purchased your keyword rich domain name, log into Wordtracker (or your keyword tool of choice) and expand on that key phrase compiling a list of 10-20 high search/low competition keywords which are niche related for naming your site categories – This is a process that I’ve practiced on every single one of my Build A Niche Store eBay affiliate sites and it helps greatly with the indexing and how much organic search traffic that I receive early on.  Don’t forget to include your primary search term in every post title and at least once or twice in your content (don’t overdo it though) and remember that making a keyword bold or underlining it in your content let’s the search engine spiders know that you are putting emphasis on that phrase – and we want that!  Also, use these keywords when submitting your site to social bookmarking services.
  2. Design a custom logo – When you’ve decided on a WordPress theme for your site flip, and checked the license, take the time to go through the image files and make note of any changes you would like to make.  At the very least, I would suggest creating a customized logo and favicon for your site.  Yes some themes (like ours) have the generated “blog name” text appear fashionably enough that you can live with it for a while – but when increasing the value of your site flip a customized logo and favicon can go a really long way.  For an easy tutorial on designing a quick logo visit SuiteJ.com, and for a brief outline on how to make your own favicon image visit FaviconGenerator.com.  If your design skills are intermediate you can also go as far as rearranging and designing custom banners, ebook covers and RSS icons.  Click here for the absolute best collection of free premium RSS icons available from ProBlogDesign.com.
  3. Build a Squidoo Lens – Yes it might sound retarded to some people, but the value of Squidoo Lenses are increasing day by day.  On my first website flip I created a keyword packed Squidoo Lens which linked to the site, and the next day I was in the first position for my main key phrase in Google.  What does this tell us?  Well to put it plainly Google loves Squidoo! And if this is the case we want to have one or many Lenses with links pointing to our site as this will greatly increase the importance in Google’s eyes, and improve the organic ranking.  Having a site ranked number one in Google for it’s primary search term is value – and when flipping sites don’t forget that value is worth money!  If you know squat about Squidoo you are going to visit my friend Wordvixen at TheNicher.com, subscribe to her blog and get reading her Squidtorials.  Don’t forget to tell her Elijah sent you!
  4. Create social networking accounts – At the very least you want to create a myspace page with your search term in the url like www.myspace.com/searchterm (if available).  I’m pretty sure I don’t have to go into great deal explaining why social networking is important but for those of you who are new let me just say that having social networking accounts set up, and focused around a particular site is the equivalent to having several organic traffic funnels dumping hordes of targeted surfers to your desired location.  Would’nt that be considered valuable? Heck yes!  Set up an email address for your site like domainname@gmail.com and use that domain to set up your social networking profiles and when it comes time to put your site up for sale you will include the myspace account and corresponding email address with the auction or as a bonus if someone chooses the buy now option.  P.S.  don’t forget to take some time and join a few myspace groups and add some friends within your sites niche.
  5. Write an article – I find it hard to understand why people don’t grip the importance and effectiveness of writing a good article.  Not only will article directories provide one way links to your site, but if the article is good enough other webmasters will start to publish it and it will go viral.  Most of the major article directories have a high page ranking, so write an article which contains your keyword in the title and throughout the content and submit that bad boy to 4 or 5 of the top directories.  You will mention this in your auction, and could even go as far as including the article content in the zip file which you send the auction winner – just make sure you state what type of writes you are giving them in regards to the authorship of that article.

There you have it kids.  I don’t think there is much more to say on increasing value, and I’m sure you get the point I’m trying to make.  Going the extra mile on building your sites will not only entice potential buyers, but it will also set the standard for your future auctions and allow you to increase your “Buy Now” and reserve price points because people will know that they are getting their “money’s worth”.  Value is a beautiful thing my friends…  Don’t take it for granted.

Cheers,

Elijah

Site Flipping Madness – The Cherry Popping Report

Site Flipping MadnessI’m back and ready to rock!  I made a conscious effort to take this weekend to relax and unwind with Veronica, and we did just that.  Friday night we went with some friends to see a Bedouin Soundclash show, Saturday we spent the entire day in bed watching television, and Sunday we went out for a great lunch and impulsively bought another laptop.  Sweet!

Before I get into my site flip report, I just want to say how much Veronica and I appreciate the support from each and every one of you.  Your words of encouragement really kept me going over this last week, and a few of you even went as far as emailing me personally and sharing tips and tricks you’ve picked up through your own site flipping experiences.  I’m not going to mention names, but just know that I know who you are, and I want you to know that the kindness will be reciprocated at the first opportunity.  I never forget!

Time for the report…

If any of you are just tuning in, last week I challenged myself to generate $84.85 (the money Veronica and I spent on groceries) by the end of day September 15th – this was shortly after I posted a minor freakout with regards to never following through, and my fear of failure with making money online.  After a few adjustments I ended up taking the route of building a blog, getting it indexed in Goolge for a high search/low competition key phrase, and then posting it up on the Sitepoint Marketplace in hopes that someone would have an interest and purchase it.

After conducting some ninja research with the best keyword tool in the universe, Wordtracker, I decided I would base the site around the competitive, but super profitable Tattoo niche – with my golden key phrase being Russian Mafia Tattoos.  Why did I choose that key phrase?  Well to put it plainly, Wordtracker told me to.  That particular phrase has over 600 searches per day in Google, with less than 1100 competing websites listed in Google and this means two things – it won’t be too difficult to get on the front page of Google because the competition isn’t that fierce, and 600 searches per day is a great number in terms potential organic traffic should I get the number 1 spot.

So what happened?

I posted the auction up on Friday at 3:36 pm with a $0 minimum bid, a $97 reserve and a Buy Now price of $127 – which is higher than my initial $84.85 goal.  At 5:47 pm I received an email from Sitepoint notifying me that my auction had been won!  Not only did I sell the site in under 3 hours, it was purchased at the Buy Now price which means there was zero bidding going on.  I was so shocked when I got the email that I called Veronica, who was on her way home from work, and starting laughing frantically like a Priest who accidentally walked into the “little girls room” at Bible Camp.

(Insert uncomfortable pause for those who are sensitive)

Here is everything I did spread over 4 days, from beginning to finish:

Day ONE

  1. Logged into Wordtracker’s Keyword Researcher Tool and conducted a search using the keyword “Tattoos”
  2. Filtered the results to list from the highest to lowest KEI – or the most to the least profitable
  3. Chose the term “Russian Mafia Tattoos” which has the 3rd highest KEI, because my best friend Dmitri is Russian and I thought it would be fun to school him on his own history.
  4. Went to Godaddy.com and searched for RussianMafiaTattoos.com – it was available so I bought it and pointed the DNS servers to my Hostgator account.

Day TWO

  1. Called J-Weezy from SuiteJ.com, told him about the domain I purchased and asked him as many questions as I could regarding flipping sites, increasing value, transactional procedure and writing a killer sales letter/auction page – if you need to learn about site flipping go to his blog and get reading.
  2. Logged onto Skype and started trading links to old school hip hop videos with SutieJ via the instant messaging feature.
  3. 3 hours later I realized how unproductive we were being and told him I had to go get some work done.  Once he was finished crying I logged off of Skype and began searching for WordPress themes.
  4. After sifting through a few I decided to go with a super functional theme by Alexandru Cosmin.
  5. I logged into my cPanel admin and installed WordPress on RussianMafiaTattoos.com.  I uploaded the theme and all my ninja plug ins using Filezilla, activated everything, and configured the settings to my liking.
  6. I immediately began researching the Russian Mafia, and collecting Russian Mafia Tattoo images in a folder for use on the site.
  7. I wrote 12 key phrase focused posts for the site and post-dated the settings to publish two per day – one at 10 am and then again at 10 pm spread them out over the following 6 days.

Day THREE

  1. I wrote a 300+ word article, using my key phrase in the title and strategically throughout the content, and submitted it to 4 high traffic, high ranking article directories.
  2. I created a medium sized Squidoo lens based around my topic.
  3. Using Adobe Fireworks I created a custom logo, affiliate banner, and favicon icon for the site, and replaced the default images which were provided.
  4. I went to Clickbank, gathered my affiliate links and banners, and incorporated them skillfully throughout the site.  I also set up my adsense and incorporated the code into the posts and sidebar.
  5. I created a Myspace page for the site, and put a few posts in the blog section with links.
  6. I submitted the site to a handful of social bookmarking sites, and a few blog directories.  You can visit the sales page for more details on which ones.
  7. I found a few do-follow blogs in the same niche and spent some time commenting on their posts.

Day FOUR

  1. I realized I had the number 1, 2, and 5 spot on the first page in Google for “Russian Mafia Tattoos” in quotes and the number 5 and 6 spots for the same term without quotes.
  2. I created an account on Sitepoint.com, and started studying some auctions and sales pages that I liked and began to construct my own.
  3. I almost finished the best sales page ever written and accidentally clicked on a link that took me away from the page (which was saved) and I had to start all over again.
  4. I contemplated throwing my laptop through the window.
  5. I proceeded to finish the sales page, take the necessary screenshots, and post up the auction.

Wow, that was a lot longer than I anticipated.

I don’t feel like writing anymore.  I’ll finish up my thoughts later.

Cheers,

Elijah

Site Flipping Madness – Bum Marketing Update 837

Hey guys.

I don’t have too much to say right now except that I’m exhausted, and would have preferred to do a video post but I can’t find the SD card for my digi cam – dammit Veronica!  Anyways, I have successfully flipped my niche blog and it is now live and active on the Sitepoint Marketplace.  I’m nervous, tired, and accomplished all in one breath.  This was a great experience and I look forward to my next flip, but first things first..

I’m going out tonight to see the Bedouin Soundclash in concert – for those of you who’ve never heard of them they are a local ska band from Toronto who rock with good vibrations.  Check them out.

Time to get drunk.

Cheers,

Elijah