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Once you have your list of favorite sites, the contact information, etc. you begin reaching out to each seller.  It’s okay to be fishing multiple offers for the same niche simultaneously.  You obviously are not contractually obligated to purchase if two sellers come back at the same time.

Here’s where you can use your negotiation prowess.

A few quick tips re: negotiation:

• If possible, get the person to name a price first.  Since you’re likely soliciting the purchase, the odds of that happening are slim (unless you’re dealing with a complete nitwit).  I love when people contact us to purchase one of our sites:  “How much would it take for you to part with yourdomain.com?”  Yeah…right.  BUT, if you can get them to show you a card, go for it.
• In relation to point one, use anchoring.  Retails shops do this all the time when they post the retail price and the sale price. Ever heard of the MSRP? Yeah, car dealers do it too all the time.  Anchoring doesn’t need to make logical sense.  In the book Winning Decisions by Russo and Shoemaker, they prove statistically that the anchor still works even when completely baseless.  How could you anchor your prospect?  Giving them your “budget” is one way.  Even letting them know you’ve bought sites for as much as $### works.  Again, it doesn’t need to make logical sense, but it still works.
• When you’ve been given a good deal, take it.  Don’t be greedy and don’t burn bridges.

To make our job easier, we actually have templates that we’ve perfected (you should especially perfect your subject line — a lame subject line means your email is ignored.  “LOVE YOUR SITE!” is not effective) when pitching to potential sellers.

This isn’t rocket science, simply let the seller know you’re interested in purchasing their site and were hoping to open a dialog between them.  Some emails will bounce, some will be ignored, etc.  This is all just part of the game.

When you have a seller that bites, you’ll need to do a bit more due diligence about that site.  The best thing you can do is have the seller give you read-only access to their website stats.  If they’re using Google Analytics (you can tell this by looking at their site’s source and checking for the GA code) then simply have them add your gmail.com email address as a user.  You’ll then be able to dig to your heart’s content.

If the seller is not willing to give you as much traffic data as you’d like, walk away.

We’ve found 95% of sellers are more than willing to give you any information you need to help the deal go through.

So, once you’ve done your due diligence, seeing that what you had originally surmised is true, or close enough, you can make your first offer.  Give the seller your lowest fair offer.  Adam and I have lost opportunities to buy a website because we low-balled the potential seller so badly they simply ignored us.  If you’re trying to purchase a site and would reasonably pay $12,000, do not offer $750.  It’s counterproductive.

If the seller accepts, get a contract to them so everything is legal and straight-laced.  We have a standard contract we use.  You’re welcome to use it as well if you’re part of the Prosperly Beginners.  We’ve lost out on some great deals in the past because we didn’t have the buyer (in this instance) legally bound to purchase and they walked without giving any reason whatsoever.

In the next step, we’re going to talk about the mechanics of the purchase and the importance of taking control as quickly as possible.

All right I have finally decided to post this. I apologize for making you all wait this long but we had very good reasons which I will not go into here. Considering how much you are paying for the info I knew you would understand. :-)

Now that you have chosen your industry and found out that there is real potential to see if you could make money in that industry, the next step is to go out and find a website that will work for you.

This is when you need to make the decision on whether to buy a website or build one from scratch. In my estimation it is always better to buy an established website rather that build a new one. You let someone else do all of the grunt work and then you step in a make the necessary changes and increase the value of the site quickly.

The only time I would say that it makes sense to build a website from scratch is when you are entering an industry where nobody really knows SEO that well and you are confident that you can quickly enter and move up in the rankings quickly.

The only other reason would be if you look and look and just can’t find a suitable website to buy in that industry and still want to get started.

I have created a video that explains one of the ways we actually go about looking for websites to buy. There are other ways than the one I talk about here but it will give you a good start.

Before I show you the video I need to tell you that we have been contemplating long and hard on whether or not to even continue with this series. We know that some people have begun to abuse the information we have given out and that has disappointed and demotivated us in our efforts to teach others.

The information on internet marketing and website flipping is valid and valuable. We really do want to help others succeed online but there are always those few who ruin it for everyone else.

We have decided to create a Prosperly membership and allow only members to access the video for step 3. The membership is free but we need to be in complete control of who gets access to this free information.

If you still wish to proceed and don’t mind becoming a member at Prosperly then click on the link below:

Watch step 3 video

Many of you have emailed me wondering where step 3 in flipping websites is…well I can tell you it is coming. We have been busy selling another site. Now that the website has sold we can get back to business.

I will have step 3 for you in the next day or two.

P.S. The site we just sold we bought for $500 and in less than a year sold it for $150k.

All right, you should have your list completed from Step 1. Now that you have decided the areas you want pursue we need to find out if there is any money to be made in those industries. For example if collecting donkey socks made your list, there may not be a market for that online right now.

So in order to make sure that all of your internet marketing efforts don’t go to waste we have created a video that explains some of the things we do to evaluate whether there is demand in a certain niche and if it is worth our time to pursue it.

Check out the video below and leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Don’t Buy Into The Hype - You Can Still Make Good Money

I don’t watch the news. Partly because I don’t have time but mostly because I don’t like the way it makes me feel. I’m so sick of hearing the doom and gloom of our economy. What I have realized that it is the hip thing to say “Well the economy is down so…” or “we couldn’t do this or that because of the down economy.”

Honestly the more I hear it the more I think people say it because it is the thing to say. Here is a newsflash…the economy is not down in internet marketing. Jesse and I have created a business model that has proven to work over and over again even in this “down” economy.

I’m not denying that things are bad for many people in many industries, the point I am making is that you don’t have to submit to the idea that it is impossible to make money in 2009. I can tell you with 100% confidence that 2009 is going to be my best year financially ever…in fact it already is guaranteed to be so.

So how in this “fledgling” economy can I have my best year ever? Like I have mentioned  before in previous posts, we have a great system in place that allows us to acquire websites, fix them up, take home the revenue increase and eventually sell the site.

How To Make Money Flipping Websites

When people ask Jesse and I what we do we always say “we flip websites”. Then when they realize they didn’t mishear us, they give us an “I don’t get it” look and we explain that it is like flipping real estate only with websites.

I have seen alot of programs out there that supposedly teach you how to flip websites but the tactics they teach are short-term minded and the profit is minimal (in the hundreds of dollars) per transaction. Our system takes a more long term approach and has allowed us to do things like buy a website for $500, spend time increasing it’s value and about a year later flip it for $150,000. That’s the kind of increase that we have experienced over and over again.

Website Flipping Tools That Work

Now I will say that we are at an advantage because we have created some awesome website flipping tools that allow us to quickly evaluate websites, find hidden gems on the verge of being big money makers, and tools to help us optimize and increase rankings of websites we buy.

Whenever I show friends these tools the first thing they say is “can you send me the link to that?” We have never made these tools available to anyone else because we never really thought we should and because we have been too busy developing them and using them to make money flipping websites.

You Can Get Access To The Prosperly Tools

Now that we see how useful these website flipping tools are and how much success we have had using them we are seriously thinking about making these available to all of you in the near future.

If this is something you would be interested in, enter your email below and we will let you know when we are ready to make them available to you.

Also, after you sign up I will immediately send you the report we wrote entitled “Striking Internet Oil” where we tell you exactly how we took a website we paid $150 for and in less than 2 years sold it for $250,000. (see “Clarence” in our portfolio)

One other thing - we hate spam as much if not more than you do. Your email is only going to be used to let you know when we have the tools ready.