|pros • per • ly|

Back toward the end of the real estate boom I was working on a project with a guy that was an absolute master when it came to buying and flipping real estate. He had perfected an evaluation system that basically made it easy enough for almost the layman to go to a house, fill out the spreadsheet, and have it pump out a thumbs-up/thumbs-down on the house.

He bought and sold 90 houses (clearing about $7k on each) in 2004, 120 houses in 2005, and 185 houses in 2006 (also, in 2006 he was clearing about $12k per house — mainly because he could be pickier).

He spent the vast majority of his time evaluating potential deals. He was always evaluating deals. He had a special phone he carried with him that he affectionately called the bat phone. Since they were paying for leads, and leads came on a round-robin system to him as a franchisee through that phone, he ALWAYS had it with him.

Now the question that you need to ask yourself is, what’s your bat phone? And are you spending the majority of your time on tasks that only YOU can do, that are adding value to your internet business?

We spend the vast majority of our time evaluating websites for sale, potential industries to get into (and then related websites for sale), and contacting websites that aren’t even listed for sale (more on that later). Also, when you can focus on one simple success metric, it makes it that much easier to have that laser-like focus.

As you begin to buy more websites your portfolio will obviously grow. If you’re careful, your total time invested will remain about the same (there is ALWAYS an incremental time cost when adding to your portfolio unless you just let a site grow moribund and die).

If you really want to run a successful online business you need to make sure you’re focused on the things that matter most. At Prosperly we have a laser-like focus on one metric only:

Revenue per Visitor

One of our employee’s job every morning is to run the previous days stats, calculate the total income derived from all sources for each business and then divide that by the unique visitors.

Each industry is different. Some have a naturally high revenue per visitor, others aren’t so high (though still highly profitable because traffic acquisition is easier — obviously).

One thing this has done for us at Prosperly is really help us recognize what is in our control. We can control revenue per visitor much more readily than we can our rankings in the search engines. We control revenue per visitor more than any other aspect of our sites because we have complete control over the site.

There have been times where we’ve made changes to a site and then watched our income fluctuate (up or down) — growing antsy with the change. Was it right? Will this be more profitable? We didn’t always focus on traffic AND revenue (which revenue per visitor is). So we’d see a dip in profits and be worried that a site change was unsuccessful. In reality, visitors had fluxed.

Now, realize that when you’re simply looking at one site day in and day out, it’s easy to monitor several metrics separately (conversion rate, revenue, traffic, search engine rankings for key phrases, etc.). However, as I mentioned above, your portfolio growth will necessitate that you dial those metrics down to one (maximum two) that truly matter. As you become dialed in on the metric that determines your online business success, you’ll see decisions are made more quickly, with better outcomes.

Getting into the internet business world can be a daunting task. I realize there is a lot to learn in order to feel comfortable and make a good living online. As I have helped people get started by buying their first website I have realized that a step by step “things you need to do” is in order. Hence this post.

So you and the website owner have agreed on a price. Here is what you need to do to get the website transferred so you have full ownership.

1. Pay for the website. – It seems like an obvious first step but there are always worries that the person may take your money and never transfer you the site. This can be a big concern especially if you contacted them out of the blue so I would recommend that you always use Escrow.com. This is the fail safe way to buy a website without any risk. They do charge a small fee to use their service but when your shelling out a lot of money it’s better to be safe than sorry.
2. Get the domain transferred to you. After you have paid, Escrow.com takes your money and holds it. Then they contact the website owner to transfer the domain. You need to contact the seller directly to find out where they have registered the domain. If they have registered the domain through a registrar you have never used before, you need to go to that registrar and sign up for a free account. Then they can transfer you the domain. This is such a common practice that most registrars have a simple process to do this.
3. Get the files transferred to you. After you have received confirmation that the domain has been transferred, the website owner will try to get you to release the funds with Escrow.com. IMPORTANT: Do not release the money to the person until they have emailed you all of the files for the site. They need to send you a zip file that has all of the website files that way you have full control of the website. Now you can release the funds through Escrow.
4. Set up hosting. You have two options on how you want to set up hosting for the site. Some website owners were hosting their websites themselves and offer to continue to host the site for you for a monthly fee. I personally would rather have the website completely under my control so what I do is go to my favorite hosting company and sign up for a new hosting plan. I then upload all of the files they sent me to the new host. Then  I go to wherever the domain is registered and change the DNS settings to point to the new host. The hosting company can give you the DNS settings you need. If some of this sounds confusing the hosting companies should be able to guide you through the process.
5. Make Improvements. Once you have the website under your full control it is time to go in and make SEO improvements as well as internet marketing improvements that will increase the amount of money you make from the site.

Good luck in your website buying journey!

I couple of weeks ago I wote a post about how you should be ready to take advantage of the great deals on websites for sale that would surely come because of the downturn in the market. Even though we have been “in a recession” for a year now, people seem to be feeling the effects of it more now that ever.

Personally, I think this recession is media made and although certain industries may be in a recession I don’t think everyone is. But I digress.

So back to the good stuff. I made a goal to acquire or build at least 16 websites by the end of 2009 that all make at least $100 a day. Naturally with this goal in mind I have been looking at websites to purchase much more aggressively.

I spend a lot of time on Sitepoint.com’s marketplace looking at the current listings. In fact I have made 3 acquisitions since that last post. The common thing on all three websites is that we were able to negotiate a purchase price that was far below what the person was asking. Was it our superior negotiating skills or just desperate website owners in a bad economy? Probably a combination of the two. But here is how I did it.

I would see a website up for sale and after doing background research on the industry and deciding that I was interested I would contact the seller. Keep in mind that I usually will only pursue websites where there is not a lot of bid activity which makes the seller more motivated. I ask him what it would take to part with the site.

They all came back with a figure to which I replied to the email and said I need to discuss it with my business partner. Then I wait a few days and come back with an offer that is way below what their price was. All three website owners agreed to my price without any further negotiation. This technique seems to work well.

For example, we recently purchased the website OrlandoTravel.org. I did the preliminary research and recognized that the term “orlando travel” gets high search traffic and based on the fact that Google gives domain name an unfair amount of weight in rankings we decided to make an offer. I noticed on Sitepoint that his opening bid price was $500 and his buy it now price was much higher.

No one had placed a bid so I went through that process with him that I described above. He told me that he wanted a quick sale and would let the site go for $650. I replied that I needed to talk to my business partner. I came back and said I would give him $500 for the site. He replied sounding a little upset because he purchased the domain alone for $550 but he still took the deal for $500. To quote a line from the movie “You’ve Got Mail”, it’s not personal, it’s business.

Anyway, if you are making any website acquisitions, try this tactic out, it has worked for me.

I get tired of hearing about the “recession” and “economic downturn” from the media people that want you to believe that we are all doomed. I personally have never had such a stretch of economic success in all of my life. I will admit that certain industries (house, auto) are struggling but that doesn’t mean everyone is doomed to poverty.

Having said all of that, peoples perception of the economy is their reality. The reason I am writing about this is because there are going to be really good opportunities for gaining wealth in the near future. Specifically, alot of people who are running somewhat successful websites are going to be willing to part with their site at a bargain to get cash in their hands. During the great depression was the largest transfer of wealth in the history of US. Some people were getting richer and richer because they were buying while everyone else was selling.

My suggestion to any readers of this blog is that you put some money aside and be ready to pounce when the great deals come around. Be a buyer when everyone is selling and build up a portfolio of money making websites and you can build up and make even better. My personal goal is to have 10 prosperly websites that all make $500 a day. Set your own goal and then make it happen. There is no need for you to be in a recession.