Have you ever heard of the term "flipping websites"? Or flipping Virtual Real Estate (VRE)?

You know, this is where you can earn money selling websites. In other words, create a site, add content, get some traffic, then sell it for a pretty big net profit.

The term "flipping websites" stems from the term "flipping real estate" where you purchase a dump, then renovate and sell it for big profits. Except in the case of selling websites, you don’t need to fork out a ton of money or put your credit on the line to earn a decent income. And best of all, you can flip virtual real estate from the comfort of your home office.

So, what does this process of creating and selling a website entail?

1. First you need to find a niche market you would like to target. I’ve covered some resources on where you can find profitable niche markets
2. Complete your keyword research and competitive analysis based on the niches that you’ve found in step 1. If you would like more information on this, check out my article on Keyword Research & Analysis. By the way, when picking keywords for websites you want to flip, be sure to target higher volume 2nd or 3rd tier keywords with at least 150 - 250 searches per day (preferably more for your main keyword phrase).
3. Be sure people are advertising for the keyword. Use the Google Keyword Tool to see if people are bidding on the keyword phrases (as shown in the article on keyword analysis)
4. Create content around your chosen keyword, e.g. unique articles 250 - 400 words in lenght. If you are looking to flip a lot of sites, I would stick to writing 5 - 15 articles to build a site of as many pages.
5. Add Adsense to your website and display the ads in prominent positions for quick profits. The intention here is to sell your site for higher profits, so for the time being, focus on ad placement (preferably above the fold). Get your site earning a minimum of $1, preferably $3 per day for at least 90 days.
6. Get your site indexed quickly… I would also recommend that you add a Google Sitemap and submit the sitemap to Google (see Google’s Webmaster Tools or do a search on Google Sitemap). If you have already have a site that gets crawled often, I’d recommend that you put a link up for a few days from that site pointing to your new site for quick indexing (once your site has been indexed be sure to take the link off).
7. Generate some quick traffic to your pages using Social Bookmarking (use Onlywire.com). This step can also help with quick indexing (step 6).
8. Once you can show profits ($1 - $3 per day), you can offer your site up for sale at places such as DigitalPoint.com forum or the SitePoint.com forum (the latter charges a nominal fee for this) 

If you would like to add more value and increase profits, complete the following steps:

• Create pages at Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com for your niche (using a new user id) and populate it with unique content / articles. Point links from these to your niche site using appropriate anchor text for the links. Also make sure you bookmark these pages using Onlywire. Creating a new User IDs for these pages are important as these are to be sold with the website. This means you are now not only selling a website but rather a "network" of sites, which give you a lot more perceived value (and it’s such a simple thing to do).
• Submit site to link directories (for a list of popular web directories, go to: http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html)
• Submit 3 - 5 articles to article directories for high powered links back to your site. Use article directories such as: EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, Buzzle.com, Searchwarp.com. If you feel really motivated, create a few more articles and point them to your Hubpage and/or Squidoo lens as well.
• Create additional articles (must be unique content) to bundle with your site as a bonus.

Tip: It is sometimes advisable to wait for the next PageRank update to make sure your site gets Google PageRank as there’s perceived value there. Alternatively you could purchase an expired domain name with PageRank as well.

You may be thinking, "Can I really earn money selling websites?"

The answer is simple… Anyone who has a bit of motivation can earn good money selling websites. It is a business model that has not yet reached it’s peak and very few are taking advantage of the opportunity that’s available here.

So, how much money can you make?

Well, It is largely tied to the profitability of the site. If you can show proof of income over an extended period (3 - 6 months or longer) the more money you can expect to earn. Also, if you are getting organic traffic (as opposed to paid traffic from sources like Google Adwords) the site has a lot more value.

You can expect to sell the site for 6 - 12 times the amount it earns per month. In other words, if you have a site that earns $30 per month ($1.00 per day in Adsense) you can feasibly earn $180 - $360 for the site.

That’s a pretty good interest rate if you ask me, considering a site like this will only take 3 - 6 hours to make. Another advantage of this method is that you can get this started with a relatively low investment, since the only expenses you have are the cost of a domain name ($8 for a new one) plus a few months of hosting (which you probably already have). The rest is all up to you…

Of course, if you wanted to speed things up a bit or have some money to invest, you could outsource the content creation and some of the linking (such as link directory submissions).

By the way, in case you’re wondering. This is a very solid business model and is something I have done off and on for the past year. However, I take this plan a bit further by:

A. Creating a larger site (usually 20 - 30 pages of content)
B. Get a PLR (private label rights) product that can be sold on the site. This is a great way to generate even more revenue faster.
C. Keep driving traffic to the site until it earns around $5 per day ($150 per month) spread between Adsense and ebook sales).
D. Allow it to mature for 4 to 6 months before selling the site. It can then be sold for $600 - $1500 or more depending on whether you include a product to be sold on the site; and/or sell the network with your site (Hubpage and Squidoo page etc.)

Believe it or not these four steps can increase your revenue dramatically (easily over 300%) for just a little extra work, so it is well worth the effort. Particularly if you outsource the content.

I guess the only "downside" to this whole method is that:

• it will require some effort (unless you outsource work)
• it requires a small investment - in domain name, hosting, PLR material and possibly a new ebook cover (highly recommended)
• it takes about 120 - 180 days or longer to cash out

You know, the nice thing about building websites to sell is that out of these you will all of a sudden see some big performers. And when you do, it might be time for you to hold on to it and scale it up. In other words, start building an authority site on the topic.

So my question to you is this? How many of these sites could you build in a month?

I’d love to hear if any of you have had success flipping websites…

To your success,

Steven

P.S. If you are interested in learning more about flipping websites, I highly recommend Tim Phelan’s book Flip Websites: The Definitive Guide. Tim walks the talk and knows what he is talking about.  Highly Recommended.

Tags: virtual real estate, flipping websites, flip website, earn money selling websites, internet marketing

Written by: StevenR - AffiliateMarketingDiary.com : Your Resource For Internet Affiliate Marketing
Original Article: Make Money Selling Websites - 8 Steps To Flipping Your First Website