Happy 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- 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
