Long Term Potential

Discovering the Secrets to Long Term and Short Term Website Flipping Strategies Flipping a blog is something that many people assume is done in the blink of an eye.

Buy it, boost it, and then flip it – that’s the standard procedure of website flipping!

Put that way, it almost sounds as if you could do all of that in a minute, or less, but this is pretty much never the case. Time plays a factor in every one of those steps, and you’ll find that if you try to rush things, you may end up making some very bad mistakes.

After all, it only makes sense. Even if you know absolutely nothing about flipping, you should know that it will take time for you to shop around, evaluate websites, and find one that is worth buying.

And subsequent to that, you should probably expect that ‘boosting’ the website, in whatever way that you decide upon, would take yet more time.

Finally, even selling your website could be a lengthy process.

Even this is barely scratching the surface of what goes on. Contrary to popular belief, flipping is hardly as simple as it sounds, and the people who are best at it all approach each flip in a distinct manner.

That’s because every website is different, and each one will have certain quirks that require a different approach.

Commonly, this is known as the flipping strategy.

Generally speaking, there are two main approaches that can form your strategy, and mastering both will be highly beneficial. Just for the record, these are: 1. Short Term Flipping 2. Long Term Flipping Both of the names are fairly self explanatory, and over this guide we’re going to be looking to both, and giving you a firm idea of what each entails, as well as how you should plan things out, and accomplish them.

Also, you’ll soon see that there are several advantages to each approach as well, which forms an important basis to help you decide which type of strategy you should be going for, and in what situation.

But before we even think of getting into all that, let’s start from the groundwork, and fully explain what website flipping strategies entail!

An Introduction to the Strategy of Flipping Most beginners make one common mistake when they start to flip websites: They don’t plan it out.

Instead, they just head out there, find a website that seems to be affordable, buy it, and then try to sell it off for more. As you probably notice, these beginners tend to miss out that allimportant middle step of actually improving or ‘boosting’ the value of the website.

Frankly, more often than not, this approach results in nothing more than failure.

In this situation, most often the website that was bought is eventually found out to have been priced higher than it should have been, and not worth nearly that much. Therefore, in turn, when it comes time to sell it off, trying to find a higher price, or even breaking even, seems close to impossible.

All this could be avoided if instead of leaping before looking, a little judgment was applied and a strategy formulated.

Being the key to any successful website flip, the type of strategy that we’re talking about is just a plan of action as to how to proceed with a website flip.

So that means that it should start from the beginning, i.e. the purchase of a website, and then wind its way down to the improvements that are going to be made, before finally coming to an end at the actual sale.

Frankly speaking, the foundation of any strategy involving flipping ends up taking the following rough form: 1. Evaluating the potential of websites that are for sale Needless to say, this takes place during the buying stage, and it is, quite frankly, one of the most important parts of your strategy, because it is going to form the foundation from which your plans are based.

When you evaluate a website, you need to remember that you’re not just going to be thinking about how much the website is worth.

Instead, what you should be thinking about is how much the website could be worth too!

After all, the final goal of your evaluation is to determine whether or not the website is suitable for flipping. That means that you’re interested in how much it is worth now, and how much it could be worth after you’re done improving it.

Of course, the question of what a website could potentially be worth is very subjective, but with every evaluation, you should be able to pinpoint some areas of improvement, and be able to at least hazard a guess as to how much you could improve those areas.

Naturally, these areas will be what you concentrate on in the next step…

2. Carrying out improvements and ‘boosts’ Once you’ve picked a website that has the potential you feel is needed, the next step is to actually put into action the improvements that you thought you could make, while looking for additional ways to improve on the website too.

As you would expect, there are many areas that a given website can be improved upon, but for now we’re going to stave off from getting too specific.

Why? Well simply because we’re just discussing the general strategy right now, and you’ll soon see that more specific strategies would focus on more specific areas of improvement.

So for right now, just bear with the fact that a general mention of these improvements is going to have to suffice.

3. Packaging together the website and selling it Contrary to popular belief, selling a website doesn’t just mean saying somewhere that you have a website for sale, sitting back, and hoping that someone bites.

Instead, you’ll want to actively sell the website, and make sure that any potential buyers are aware of why they’d want to buy your website, in terms of what your website could offer them!

Course, you’ll be including each and every strong point of your website, but your focus will probably be on the improvements that have been made, since the prime reason for those improvements is to enhance the value of the website.

And this is where they come into play.

All in all, this part of the strategy is the culmination of every part that preceded it.

Being aware of the general approach and strategy is really just the beginning. From this, we’re going to start venturing deeper into what actually should be going on in the planning stage of any website flipping endeavor.

To do this in a way that you will be able to fully grasp, we’re going to need to cover some other concepts first though.

Before we proceed, be sure that you’re comfortable with the ideas that we’ve discussed so far.

Then, once you are sure that we’re on the same page, let’s start looking at what type of factors actually form part and parcel of the evaluation stage.

Factors Worth Evaluating for a Website Purchase On the heels of our more general discussion just a minute ago, you should be comfortable that two main things are evaluated to ensure that a website really is worth buying.

These are: 1. Current value of a website 2. Potential future value of a website Combined, the two will present a vision of what your website should look like once you’ve finished all your improvements and are ready to sell it off. Naturally, it would be foolhardy to expect that things will turn out exactly as planned, but with experience, you’ll find that you can predict this quite accurately.

Until you’ve reached that level of experience though, you’re going to have to operate on a bestguess basis, and so the best approach to use is to underestimate, rather than overestimating.

By underestimating, if things work out better than your estimation, then you’re going to be even better off than you hoped to be. However if you overestimate, and don’t hit that target, then you might have made decisions that would mean you’d end up making a loss.

Anyway, judgment is something that will come in time, so don’t worry if your estimations are slightly off to start with.

Instead, let’s focus on the factors that are bound to be playing a role in your estimation of value. There are, to be honest, three main ones:

1. Profit As it is the prime reason why websites are purchased, profit is going to be what you base most of your estimation on. Generally speaking, websites can be sold for anything from 1 to 3 years worth of their profits.

Of course, other considerations come into play, such as the sustainability of the profit, the revenue model used, and so on, but we’ll get to that soon enough.

2. Traffic Next up is traffic, which is, as you well know, the lifeblood of websites. In this case though, profit definitely holds more importance, as it is proof of the usefulness of traffic.

Still, traffic does have some value, though once again other considerations are at work, including the sustainability, as well as how targeted the traffic is.

3. Brand Value Many people give this a miss, purely because most websites that are flipped have little brand value to speak of. Still, it definitely is a factor, as a good brand value could be more important than the other two combined.

Naturally, it has just as many other considerations attached to it too.

From what we just mentioned though, however general it was, you should be able to grasp the fact that these three factors form the focal point when you make your purchase. And each must be evaluated not just in terms of their current performance, but also in terms of what you think their future performance could be.

That’s the tricky part, but we’re going to help you along in that regard very, very soon!

Knowing these three factors, and knowing their importance, should also clue you in on another fact: They’re the same thing that your eventual buyers are going to be looking at!

Needless to say, this only doubles the emphasis that needs to be placed on them, and should tell you why they’re going to play a very big role in your strategy. Speaking of that, it’s about time we started to look at the specifics involved in long term and short term flipping strategies.

First up – we’re going to discuss short term website flipping.

Perfecting the Short Term Flip Now that we’re on to the real meat of this guide, you should be prepared for everything that follows.

To put things into perspective, you now know the stages that a strategy takes into account, and so you know that you not only need to know what to look out for when buying websites to short term flip, but you also need to know how to improve them for the flip itself.

Couple this with what we just covered regarding the factors that contribute to value, and you should see that you also know the specific areas that you’ll need to focus on.

Both of these are going to be the key concepts that we use to help you perfect the short term flip.

With all this in mind, right here and now, let’s take a look at what a ‘short term flip’ strategy actually is…

Introducing the Short Term Flip From the name itself, you have probably already gathered that the short term flip is a strategy that takes a relatively short amount of time to accomplish.

No – this does not mean that you’re going to be able to carry it out in minutes, and it may even take weeks, or sometimes months (and this should give you an idea of what a long term flip entails too).

Anyway, the idea that underpins the short term flip is that you’re going to buy a website, enhance its potential as quickly as possible, and then sell it on.

Because the focus is on quickly ‘boosting’ the value of a website, you’re going to be severely limited in the options department. Instead of being able to take your time, and gradually build up advancements, you’re going to want to get results as quickly as possible.

Needless to say, this is a drawback, as limiting your options is never a comfortable thing to do.

However, the short term flip is the most popular variety of flip to date, and this is simply because of the relative speed, and ease of execution. In short, you won’t have to put in a continuous effort on an extended basis, and that has no small amount of appeal.

All in all, you could buy a website, enhance it, and flip it on in just a matter of weeks if you really know what you’re doing, and find a good enough website to do it with.

Otherwise, it could take a few months, but you’ll find that most of that time isn’t spent working on the website 24-7 but rather waiting for some of the results to ‘hit’.

Due to this additional fact, you should be able to carry out multiple short term flips simultaneously, which is going to substantially improve the profits that you are able to obtain at the end of the day.

In order to carry out the short term flip to perfection though, you’ll need to know enough about it first…

Ideal Websites for a Short Term Flip On the whole, the short term flip strategy focuses on one type of website in particular: ‘Fixeruppers’.

Essentially, this means that the type of website that you’re looking for is something that is already fairly decent, but has some flaw in it somewhere, or something that is less than appealing about it, which you can then fix.

Using what we discussed about value as a base, you should see that the 3 main areas that we mentioned still apply, though you can safely discard branding from the picture as it is definitely something that isn’t a short term option.

So the two areas that remain are: Profits, and traffic.

In any given website, there are so many areas of profit and traffic that are worth considering.

And each of these areas could have a potential flaw contained within them – which is something that you’ll have to learn to spot when you’re evaluating websites.

Very few websites out there are completely ‘perfect’, but instead of spending time looking for a needle in a haystack, you’ll want to first focus on the big-ticket items.

Later on, you can always go back and comb over the website with a finer brush.

Right here and now, let’s go over some of the areas of profit and traffic where you might find something that you can ‘fix’ in order to enhance the value of a given website: 1. Design and outward appearances Don’t laugh – looks are very important, especially in an online sense. If your design isn’t up to scratch, then you’re going to be losing traffic, which means that you’ll be losing profit in turn.

After all, how many times have you yourself probably come across a website with a lousy design and ended up just closing the page?

Bounce rates are a partial indication that something may be amiss with the design of a website, but at the end of the day, you’re going to have to use your own judgment.

2. Navigation and user-friendliness Although it is somewhat related to the design, the navigation and user-friendliness of a website is something that is so often overlooked, despite it being of the utmost importance.

In short, you want your visitors to be able to find what they’re looking for without having to jump through any hoops.

Once again, you’ll need to use your own judgment to determine just how good or bad a current navigation system is, but this shouldn’t be too hard.

3. Quality of sales copy Assuming that the website in question is selling something, then how good is their sales copy? Is it benefit oriented? Are there any major flaws in the sales copy that might put off buyers?

All these questions need to be answered, because your sales copy is going to be heavily affecting your conversion rates, and therefore your profits.

4. Types of monetization What options is the website using to monetize itself? Some monetization options work better than others in certain niches, and you might even want to try combining two or more monetization options onto a single website.

By adding or removing monetization options, and tweaking them, you may find that you can dramatically increase the website’s profits.

5. Sustainability of profits If a websites profits don’t appear to be sustainable, then its value is going to be very harshly affected.

Some profits are seasonal, others vary greatly over the course of a year, but so long as they’ll be pulling in a decent average, this doesn’t matter so much. What does matter is

if there is a reasonable enough risk that a certain change could alter the stability of your profits, and possibly even reduce them to practically nothing.

6. Targeting of traffic Not all traffic is equal, and the type of traffic that is best for any website is traffic that is highly targeted. In other words, the people who end up visiting your website should be genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

Although this ties in with multiple other considerations, it is the key to increasing the value of your traffic.

7. Sources of traffic While it may be tempting to look at traffic as a big and single entity, the truth is that each stream of traffic, from each source of traffic, is very different, and that’s why it is best to view them individually.

With each source, you can then determine how targeted that given source is, and also…

8. Sustainability of traffic Naturally, this ties in with what we just mentioned about various sources of traffic beign different. In fact, it also touches on the sustainability of profits because, if your traffic is unsustainable, your profits are going to dip along with it!

Some types of traffic are highly sustainable, such as search engine traffic, PPC advertising traffic, and so on. Others however, such as forum posting and blog commenting, can take a lot of time.

Ensuring traffic sources are sustainable is something that isn’t easy – but it is definitely worth evaluating and catering to the strength of sustainable traffic, as well as the value attached to it.

What we just discussed are the areas where you may find things to fix or improve. Did you notice how many of them there are?

Truth is there are other areas too, but within the 8 that we mentioned, you’ll find that you’re able to accomplish some truly astonishing changes. Each of these 8 represents a huge area, and so you’ll want to scrutinize them one by one.

Assuming you’re still slightly lost, then maybe an example would help, and so let’s move on to the execution of your strategy…

Putting the Short Term Flip to Work After you discover one or more area where you can improve, you’ll need to, if you feel good enough about it, go ahead and buy the website in question. Then, you’ll have to start applying the ‘fixes’ that you’ve identified.

How about an example? Let’s say your sales copy seems rather weak because, despite the fact that your traffic is highly targeted, you’re just not getting a good conversion rate. By elimination, you would easily figure out that this would mean the culprit is the sales copy.

Improving that would improve your conversion rate, which would in turn improve your profits.

So you could then go about split testing and find out exactly where your sales copy lacks the required ‘oomph’, and how you could revamp it so that it is enhanced enough that your profits begin to increase.

Of course, this is still only one example, and you’ll find that there are many other areas where you could put the short term flip to work.

Each of these areas depends on the potential ‘fixes’ that you identified though.

Things like mistakes in the SEO, untargeted traffic sources, and unsustainable profits and traffic, are some of the most common mistakes that are made.

By identifying these factors, during this stage of the short term plan, all that you need to do is find some way to fix them. Then, when it comes to the execution, all that will be left is to implement these fixes.

Simple enough, right?

Anyway, we’ve dealt with the short term flip quite comprehensively up to this point, so it’s about time we start looking at the other strategy that is on the table right now…

Employing the Long Term Flip Lethally Once again, let’s just recap quickly so that we’re back on the same page. Ignore short term flips for now – they’re irrelevant!

Instead, remember that you know that the best plans require you to evaluate and then improve upon websites, before you flip them. Also, you undoubtedly have a very firm idea of the factors that should be improved – so there’s not much more that needs to be said in that regard.

Soon enough, you’ll see how these two key concepts once again form the core of the ‘long term flip’.

But of course, before we move on, we should definitely go over what exactly the long term flip entails. Pay very close attention now, because this is one place that many people end up losing their way!

Introducing the Long Term Flip Most people think that a long term flip is just like a short term flip, but over a longer period of time.

In some ways, this is slightly true, but it is better that you don’t think of it in that way at all. By associating the long term flip with the short term flip, all that you’ll end up doing is painting a skewed picture regarding it.

Just so that we clear the air completely, let’s just say this: What the long term flip and the short term flip share in common is the fact that they involve buying a website, enhancing it, and then selling it on.

That much is, essentially, what flipping is all about.

But the long term flip really takes this a massive leap further.

To understand it fully, you need to know a little bit about markets. Loosely defined, you could say that a market is a niche. Therefore, if your niche is something like, for example, snow globes, than your target market is anyone and everyone interested in snow globes.

Be aware though that all markets are finite, i.e. they are a fixed number of people in the world that are interested in snow globes.

Now while the long term flip shares the same rough goal as the short term flip, in that it aims to sell on the website for an increased price after making enhancements, it approaches it very differently.

With the short term flip, all the enhancements made were ‘fixes’ that were essentially aimed at improving the slice of a market that the website could reach.

With the long term flip however, the enhancements are focused on reaching an actual market threshold. This means enhancing the website up to a point where further enhancement either isn’t possible, or isn’t going to produce any tangible results.

Basically, it means that you’re going to be taking a website, and pushing it as far as it can go.

As you can well imagine, this is going to take some time, hence why it is aptly called the long term flip!

At this point, you’re probably wondering why you would want to do this. After all, it seems like a lot more work and effort just to flip a website, especially when compared to the short term flip.

But the fact of the matter is – the long term flip has a huge potential for profit.

Partly this is because along the way, you’ll be profiting from your enhancements too. Whatever improvements you make, will be improving the profits, all of which will be going straight into your pocket.

Thus you’ll be continuously improving on your own earnings.

Then, once you’ve reached that pinnacle from which you can’t really improve on your earnings any more, you’ll be able to sell off the website, get what should be a huge final profit, and move on to your next endeavor.

Honestly, this is the preferred model of many expert marketers. How often have you heard of businesses being built up and then sold once they’ve reached a certain threshold? A good example of this would be Hotmail, which Microsoft bought over, and even more recently, YouTube, which was bought over by Google.

Really, the appeal of this type of flipping is that you’re going to be pushing for every ounce of profit from a website. And once you can’t push any more, you’ll be able to sell that website for the maximum value of its potential.

Anyway, now that you can readily see that the long term flip is a very different kettle of fish, you should also realize that it is going to entail thoroughly different requirements…

Ideal Websites for the Long Term Flip Frankly speaking, the ideal website for a long term flip is… practically anything.

Because you’re looking to take a website and maximize its profit anyway, you’re not exactly going to have to worry about whether or not it is a ‘fixer-upper’ or not. In fact, the question as to whether or not there are flaws to exploit doesn’t even arise.

When you’re buying a website for a long term flip, you’re most interested in the market that it is focusing on.

Some of the key points to consider in this regard include:

1. How big is the market?

2. How profitable is the market?

3. How much competition exists?

4. Are there any major competitors that are already established in the market?

5. How established is the website within the market?

6. Does it have a good existing brand value?

Each of these questions should tell you what you need to know about the market that your website could be in. Needless to say, if your market is small, not profitable, and has a lot of competition (some of which are major competitors that have had the chance to already establish themselves), then you might want to look at other websites.

But if you feel that the website you’re looking at operates within a big enough and profitable enough market, and that you can overcome the competition that exists within it – then you have a winner!

Once you’ve found a website that fills the market requirements that you’re looking for, you needn’t worry too much about the rest!

Why? Well, simply because the main thing that you’re looking for is how established the website is in terms of the market. And as we discuss how the long term flip can work for you – you’ll see why!

Putting the Long Term Flip to Work In contrast to the short term flip, you already know that the long term flip is going to involve a lot more work, spread out over a much longer period.

That makes planning it all out the absolute-most-essential thing that you have to do.

So where do you start? Well, you could start at exactly the same place that you did with the short term flip to be honest!

After all, there are bound to be overlooked portions of key areas, and flaws in certain aspects of the website, and so going over each and every one of these with a fine comb will allow you to unearth and fix the most basic parts of your website.

Furthermore, since you’re no longer limited time-wise, you can afford to undertake any option that may present itself!

Still, initially at least, you should try to make your efforts as orderly as possible. A good rule of thumb to follow is to develop a rough system of changes, and rank them according to how big an affect the change could have on your website.

Naturally, you’ll want to get the ‘biggest’ items done first – since they’ll be boosting your profit margins more!

Focus on everything that we discussed about short term flipping, and also all of the areas that we mentioned prior to that. Part and parcel of the long term flip is the fact that nothing is irrelevant, and everything will have to be dealt with at some point or other if you want to reach the market threshold.

If you remember, the three areas that we were mostly concerned with were profit, traffic, and brand value.

Right now, you’re already familiar with the first two, but we have mentioned very little about the final factor, and if you’re undertaking a long term flip, it is really going to be something that you’ll want to put some effort into.

Developing a brand name is somewhat like developing a reputation. In online terms, a brand name is often reflected by the URL of your website, and you’ll want that to be as memorable as possible.

As the reach of your website grows throughout the market that it is tapping into, the exposure that your brand is obtaining will increase too. To help it along, you could use various brand tools, such a logos and distinctive designs.

All in all though, it is the spread of your brand that you should be most concerned with, and that will happen naturally.

Just like any reputation though, you’ll find that your brand needs to be nurtured. What you are aiming for is for that brand to be associated positively to your website, and so you’ll need to give people reasons for that positive association.

By providing helpful advice, amazing content that really stands out, freebies, and so on, you’ll be able to build your brand from the ground up with little problems.

Once your brand is strong enough, it will form a huge value-factor for when you eventually do decide to finish off your long term flip, and sell the website.

Think of brands such as Nike, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Guess, Prada, and so many others – each of them have successfully built up their brands to an amazing height. Granted, you’re probably not going to be competing with any of these, but it serves to illustrate how, eventually, your brand name could end up being the most valuable thing about your website!

Especially once it is known throughout your target market.

And this, all of what we’ve covered up to now, is what the long term flip is all about!

Choosing the Right Strategy and Making it Work for You! Congratulations, you now officially have discovered the secrets of the short and long term flipping strategies.

Chances are, you never heard of some of what we discussed, especially regarding long term flipping – and that’s simply because while they may not exactly be ‘secrets’, they certainly aren’t the common approaches that are used.

They’re much, much better than most of the ‘simpler’ website flipping strategies.

Right now though, you should make a choice. While it might be tempting to rush off and conquer a marketplace with a long term flipping strategy, the truth is that it is a very big endeavor for a beginner to take on.

So it might be a good idea for you to cut your teeth on a few short term flips, and then use that experience as a base from which to try out your very first long term flip!

End of the day though, you have all the knowledge you need, so right now the only thing you need to do is choose the right strategy for yourself. Because when everything is said and done, you should be comfortable with the path that you’ve chosen, and also, you’ll find that you excel better at something you enjoy doing!

Go ahead and go over some websites that are for sale, scope them out, and see if anything strikes you as being a good option for a long or short term flip.

Who knows – it might help you arrive at a decision.

Either way, be sure to plan out your strategy, and apply everything that you’ve learnt in this guide.

Good luck!