This Site Just Sold For $75k After Making $7k For One Month…Bad Deal?

I was just at one of the online website marketplaces and noticed this website that sold for $75k.

Anytime a website sells in the high 5 figures it gets my attention. So after a closer look let me tell you why I think one party got the better end of the deal.

The website is dogfood.guru. It is basically a website that talks about dog food recalls and does reviews etc.

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The website was started literally just a year ago. As you can see from the traffic chart here it ramped up pretty quickly.

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Within 5 months of starting the website is was up to 20,000 visitors a month. In case you were wondering that was really good. At the 10 month mark their website traffic doubled. Then as you can see 1 month later it doubled again.

This is not normal growth. The traffic growth of this website was phenomenal. It is rare to see a website grow that quickly being that new of a site.

First Red Flag

Here is a chart of the breakdown of traffic sources:

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The most interesting thing here and my first major red flag is the site gets 86% of its traffic from search engines. It doesn’t say which ones but it is most likely Google. The reason this is a major red flag is because that means there is no traffic diversity and one Google change could erase all of the traffic instantly.

Think about it. If they lost their rankings the site would go from 150,000 visitors a month to just 21,000 per month and it would be even lower than that because a lot of the direct traffic comes from people who found the site through Google.

It is a major red flag for me because this is exactly what happened to me on a site that was making $1000/day, believe me it was not cool.

I am very surprised to see how a website that is barely a year old could grow in the search results like that. If a new site can move up in the rankings that quickly, I may have to rethink my entire philosophy of buying existing undervalued websites and just start one from scratch.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there probably wasn’t a lot of competition in the “dog food reviews” space so it made the barrier to entry much smaller.

I just wouldn’t trust that this traffic or the search rankings were going to stick with such a small amount of history. Show me that kind of traffic for 2 or 3 years, then I am much more interested.

Red Flag Number 2

The second major red flag that jumps out at me is the revenue from the site. As you can see from the chart below the site made $6800 last month.

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Even if I just look at the last 3 months of revenue and take an average a 10x multiple (which is pretty standard for online businesses) would be about $40k.

The buyer of the website based the multiple off of just one month’s revenue history. That is a GREAT way to get yourself burned and lose a lot of money.

Instead what the buyer should have done is averaged out the 6 months of revenue data and based his 10x multiple on that, which would have been about $27,000.

Now I can understand that you have to factor in the growth of the site and how you could probably make the assumption that the site will at least hold where it is at right now and that might drive up the price a little.

That is why selling a website at auction can sometimes be the best way to go. Get different people bidding against each other based on potential.

Who knows, if this things stays where it is at or continues to grow this website could bring in $100k in a year which would be an amazing return on investment.

That is the risk the buyer is taking. They are probably much more familiar with the dog space than I am.

What I Think The Website Is Worth

If the owner of this website came to me and wanted me to buy, after looking at all of the data and the industry and looking at the revenue channels that exist in the dog food/pet space I would probably not be comfortable paying $75,000 for the website.

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I would be much more comfortable coming in at about the $25,000-$35,000 range for this site. That way if things stay exactly as they are I can make my money back in 4 to 6 months but if in a month or two things take a dive, my risk is mitigated.

Again, the pet space is not one I have spent much time in so I would be much more risk averse on this one. If it was an industry I knew more about I might be willing to go higher.

 

Want To Learn More About Website Flipping?

I have been helping people quickly get started online by teaching them how to buy low priced websites for pennies on the dollar and then fixing them up so they make money fast. Get access to my email course to learn how you can do it too.

3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Start An Online Business From Scratch


I was doing some key phrase research with Google’s keyword planner the other day and was intrigued to see the huge number of people searching on Google how to start an online business. That phrase, “how to start a business” gets over 40,000 searches a month by itself, while “how to make money online” was also over 40k searches.

It’s great to see the entrepreneurial spirit alive and well. The sad truth about starting a business is that 80% of small businesses fail, and they fail quickly. Or people see just how much money it costs to actually start up a business and decide it is not worth the risk.

Starting an online business is a little different because you don’t have all of the overhead and real estate costs associated with brick and mortar businesses. That makes the barrier to entry smaller. But whether you are trying to learn how to start an online business or a brick and mortar company there is something you need to know that will get you to profitability faster than you ever thought possible.

One of the accidental revelations that came from me buying and selling websites over the last 7+ years was learning why you should never start a business from scratch, especially an online business.

1. Let someone else do all of the initial work for you
The ramp up stage of running a successful online business can be both daunted and demotivating. Especially if one of your main strategies is SEO as getting to the top of the search engines takes time. You can take advantage of someone else’s demotivation as they have waited through that ramp up time and buy when they are on the brink of success.

This works because people are not as emotionally attached to a website because they are so cheap and easy to get set up. So you swoop in and offer them a sum of money to buy the online business from them when they had most likely given up on ever making anything from the website. Now you can take it over and take the business to the next level much more quickly than starting from scratch.

2. Take advantage of disheartened owners
I helped a friend do this exact thing. He wanted to start an SEO consulting agency. He was good at SEO but knew that trying to get a new website ranked in that category would take years. So he did exactly what I described. He went out and found 3 or 4 SEO consulting websites that had been around for at least a year and contacted them all. Sure enough he found 2 that were willing to sell at a steep discount. So he made a deal with one of them and bought a SEO consultant website from the disheartened owner for under $500.

I helped him take the site over and apply SEO knowledge to the website and it quickly moved up in the rankings. Now he makes thousands of dollars every month consulting. Can you imagine being able to walk into a business that is primed to make money right now?

3. Going After A Proven Model
Another reason that this strategy is so awesome is that you can pick any industry. You can choose an industry that you know is very lucrative. For example, let’s say you want to be a realtor. You know there are thousands of other realtors out there right now that you are competing with.

That also means there are many realtors who have decided the competition is too much and they are moving on to other things. These realtors have all done the work building and promoting a website. So you as a brand new realtor can sneak in and snatch up a disheartened realtor’s website and then be in business in no time. There is no reason to sit through ramp up time on any business.

If you want to know how to start an online business this is how you do it. Buy your way in but the key is to buy low. I once bought an online business for $500 and within 9 months sold it for $150,000. All I had to do was fix up the site and do some awesome SEO and I was rocking and rolling in a couple of weeks. I have repeated this same model many times and had the same result many times selling 14 internet businesses over a 5 year span.

If you’re interested in learning exactly how I did it visit this page here

About The Author

adam whiteAdam White is the founder of Prosperly Method, an online course that teaches people how to buy and sell (flip) websites for big profits. He has worked in the internet marketing world since 2000 and in his spare time wrote and directed a feature film. He lives in Arizona with his wife and 6 children.

If You’re Not Sending Emails This Way You’re Losing A Lot Of Money

A growing proportion of EDMs are being opened on mobile devices. However, improperly targeted and formatted content will often result in churn — readers lose interest quickly if they cannot find useful and actionable information. This article shares some best practices in optimizing email messaging with a mobile audience in mind.

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Mobile is at an uptick, and the trend seems to have no end. According to figures from Emailmonday, mobile email accounts for up to 70% of email opens, depending on target audience – a figure updated as of September 2015. Other statistics also cite that more emails are read on mobile devices than desktop.

Perhaps the more important usage statistic is the impact on conversions. According to email marketing platform GetResponse, 42% of emails will be deleted or blocked due to inappropriate targeting and formatting. Readers lose interest quickly if they don’t find useful or actionable information.

This underscores the importance of properly knowing your audience, and appropriately targeting your messaging to users of the correct segments.

In my years of experience in marketing, segmentation, targeting and optimized landing pages are among the key concepts brought up whenever clients discuss concerns and strategies in email marketing. This means you have a good grasp and coverage of your audience from end-to-end, thus ensuring a better chance of converting customers, reducing potential churn, and also keeping your brand at top-of-mind for potential customers who are not yet ready to make a purchase.

Segmentation

When it comes to email marketing, the one-size-fits-all approach is not an optimal way to reach the audience. While a majority of email readers now access messages through mobile devices, for example, there are those that still prefer desktops, laptops or other devices. Among desktop users, there is a disparity among those who prefer to access email through webmail and those who access through email clients. Even mobile users access their emails from different apps, interfaces and screen sizes.

And then there is the difference across time zones, geographies and markets. You cannot simply send a business-oriented email that will be received in the middle of the night. You will need to find the best times of the day that gets the highest response or conversion rates.

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The best way to deal with this is to segment your audience according to different factors, so that you can deliver the best message at the right time. Segmentation involves using analytics to separate your audience depending on their preferences, geographic location, preferred device type, and other factors. This way, your EDMs are not all sent in one go and in one static formatting that does not conform to device size and type. Rather, you can choose which audience to target, depending on the appropriateness of your message. For instance, you can send a different message and call-to-action for repeat customers, and then send a different one for first-time potential buyers.

When dealing with mobile readers, it is also important to consider cultural factors. For example, programmatic ad network platform imonomy has discovered a disparity in weekend mobile usage between the U.S. and other countries like Argentina. In the U.S., there is a lower proportion of mobile traffic during workdays, while the reverse is the case with Argentina. This means it might be better to target EDMs at desktop users in the U.S. during the weekdays, instead of mobile.

It pays to know your audiences!

Targeting

We are already familiar with responsive design, which is meant to automatically adjust to screen size. In designing an EDM with responsive design, you can be assured that the reader will receive the message with the right formatting, and will not lose out on any details.

However, consider length and positioning, too. Someone reading an email on their desktop will be able to easily skim for important details or highlights. A reader on mobile, however, will have somewhat limited screen real estate. Be direct-to-the-point. Highlight your call-to-action early on in the message.

Another consideration is the overall look and feel of your email. What is the impact you want from your messaging? What feeling and what effect do you want to evoke?

Color can have a very strong appeal to emotion. Take advantage of the different color concepts in designing your EDMs.
Herein also lies the importance of segmentation. To illustrate, pink-colored themes have been found to increase conversion rates among female buyers, thus improving revenues by 86 percent, as per a campaign by Conversioner. Thus, you can send differently-colored EDMs to male and female audiences, for example.

The same effect can be found on buyer type. Impulsive shoppers gravitate toward black, red, orange and royal blue. Budget shoppers are influenced by blue and teal. Thus, the ability to segment your audience properly and thus target your message plays a big part in successful clicks and conversions.

Optimized Landing

Lastly, your landing page will play a big part on whether clicks will result in conversions. According to data from GetResponse, a good mobile landing page is concise, with a visible call-to-action. The landing page should also include your logo or branding above-the-fold, ensuring that your brand is at top-of-mind.

Going back to our discussion on colors, a good landing page will also have enough contrast, with buttons and hyperlinks standing out compared to background text. The importance here is that users should know what exactly they need to do, and what next steps they are being asked of, if any.

Conclusion

To recap, an effective mobile email marketing campaign will involve knowing your audience, targeting your message correctly, and giving them an easy way to act on your message. This is true even for desktop users, but when targeting a mobile audience, you have certain limitations and advantages. You have a potentially bigger audience, with the prevalence of smartphones and tablets in all kinds of settings (school, work, home, commute). However, attention spans are thinner, and device screen sizes are smaller.

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Of course, the best way to optimize your mobile email design and landing pages will be to conduct A/B testing on the elements that are most likely to affect the readability and actionability of your EDMs. These include headlines, color schemes, button design, timing, and the like. Even minute changes that seem insignificant will have a certain psychological effect to the reader. Thus, it pays to test, test, and test!

Just bought another website

Many people ask me if I have retired from website flipping. In fact I saw a forum thread over at Warrior Forum where people were asking what had happened to me.

It is true that I took a year off from website flipping to pursue my dream of being a filmmaker. But my movie has long been released and is out on dvd so I am ready to get back into the mix of finding undervalued websites, fixing them up and then when the revenue is kicking, selling them for great profits.

I found a website that was on the verge of being really good and the guy needed the money so he sold to me. I can’t reveal all of the details now but I was thinking about doing a members only thing where I let you look over my shoulder and see how I work with the website from inception to sale.

I’m still not sure if that is what I want to do but I will see if enough people tell me they would be interested in something like that.

Anyway, in answer to all of the questions of whether or not I still flip websites or just sell training on how to do it, yes I do still flip.

Buy A Website or Start One From Scratch?

A couple of years ago Google hit websites really hard that had done a lot of SEO. This caused many websites in almost every industry to drop from the rankings and websites that hadn’t done a lot of SEO to rise to the top of the rankings.

This created an interesting paradox in the SEO world. Should you try to work to recover the rankings you worked so hard to get and now have lost? Or should you give up on a site and start a new one where you can control exactly how much SEO has been done on a site?

I was recently looking at one of the website marketplaces at a site that was ranking #1 for a phrase that was the biggest phrase in this website’s niche. I was impressed at the ranking because the website seemed pretty simple. As I looked at the details of the site I realized the site was only 4 months old.

4 months old? So what Google is telling us is you can start a brand new website and within a few months get to #1 for a top tier key phrase?

Now before you go out and start 10 new websites I have a word of warning. We have no idea what this website owner did to get that site to #1. They may be employing some serious black hat technique that will get them banned. But it may be worth a test to start a new website and see what kind of dent you can make in the rankings in the first few months.

It could be that since so many sites were penalized you just don’t have a lot of competition in the different niches.

I still prefer to buy a website than to build one from scratch but I probably will build one soon to see how it goes.