Tips for Speculating on Websites to Flip for Profit

Real estate speculation is something that has been around for a long time and, prior to the recent housing bust, was very well understood as a good way to turn a profit by speculating on homes and then flipping them. The only problem is that homes are so expensive that both the initial investment and the risk are far greater. Speculating on websites to flip for profit is a very different game with lower investments and lower risk. Here are some great tips for how to speculate on the worth of websites in order to flip them for profit.

The first thing that you have to understand is that key elements that make up the value of a website. These include, but are not entirely limited to, the following:

1. Proof of revenue. The general rule, for an established website, is that the going rate will be 10 months profit assuming that the work required to maintain the site is fairly low and the traffic is organic, or not paid for. If you find a website that you can grab for 6-7 months profit then chances are you will be able to flip this site for a profit.

2. Proof of traffic. Traffic is also very important. People want turnkey websites which do not require money or extensive work to maintain current traffic levels. Always check the traffic numbers as well as the referrer data. An ideal website to buy is one that has 80%+ of its traffic from Google.com/search or other search engines such as Yahoo! and Bing.

3. Established website. A few things about the website are also important, beyond traffic and revenue. These include how long the website is established, how many pages it has indexed, how many backlinks are shown to it in Yahoo! site explorer and what the PR, or Google PageRank, of the website is.

Now that you understand what makes for a good website you are ready to begin your speculating. The best places to find websites for sale are SitePoint.com and DigitalPoint.com. SitePoint is by far the largest website marketplace out there so competition may be fierce, but so is variety so you stand the chance to get something that you better understand. DigitalPoint.com is a great place to pick up very cheap websites, which is of course a great place to start. You can pick up many websites from DigitalPoint.com that are well established but have little revenue or traffic and then build the traffic through standard SEO techniques and properly monetize it. After this you can flip the website for a profit and keep any money that you may have made in the mean time!