Flipping Websites can be extremely profitable, which is why it’s such a hot topic around webmaster forums. The Buy, Sell, and Trade forums are teeming with turnkey sites for sale. The most highly regarded are blogs with proven revenues of tens to hundreds to thousands per month. These sites can easily sell in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. But these valuable blog flips are not where you should start out. If you want to decrease the risks, gain experience, and still make a profit, then flipping blogs should be near the bottom of your list. At least until you get a good feeling of how the business works.

When starting out, I highly recommend you stick to flipping the most basic of websites. Even though you can put these websites together in a matter of hours, they can still be sold for a profit (though small). And at the same time, you gain all the necessary skills to later flip more valuable websites.

The benefits of creating these simple websites are that you don’t really need to promote or customize any of these sites. For the most part you should be using free templates with free/relatively cheap scripts and eBooks. All it requires is a domain name and an install to sell. Blogs on the other hand require traffic, content, and, above all, revenue to sell. Creating all these things takes time, effort, and experience. Believe it or not, people will buy simple turnkey sites without any of these.

While you won’t truly profit form these types of flips (you should only be making a few dollars on each sale), this is the best way to start out. The benefits of flipping non-blogs when you’re inexperienced can’t be argued.

Benefits Of Flipping Low-Cost Sites

Build needed experience.

This is by far the first and foremost reason to flip small sites. Remember your first blog? How much did you learn along the way? This is the same thing. When you first start out, it is impossible to know everything that is expected by you. By starting slow you can learn the small things, the basics – how to best execute a sale, transfer a site, negotiate, etc…

Gain reputation quickly.

People like to do business with people they trust. In the internet world, where you’re doing business with people from all over the world, you need to rely on some form of e-trust. This is through reputation or iTrader. If you have never heard of iTrader, it’s like a reputation for trading, an eBay style feedback system. Building up a reputation will help build your trust factor, which will cause people to be more likely to trade with you in the future.

Less Risk Involved in smaller sites.

Another great reason for starting out slow. What if you decide to create a content site, so you outsource the writing (to get it done quickly) and spend between $XX-$XXX building the site. Now, if you get scammed – and you will at some point – you lose both time AND money. On the other hand, if you’re only flipping $5 – $10 sites, when you get scammed all you lose is a few minutes of work and a couple of dollars. When this happens, you can look on the bright side, and let it further your experience, there will be less chance of this happening in the future.

Potential of additional sales.

Why not try to sell low-cost, easily made websites at bulk? Try giving away a free site when somebody buys 5 at once. But that’s not the only way to further your sales. When you’re selling low-cost turnkey sites, there is a higher chance that you will come across another inexperienced buyer. This can greatly increase your chances of a further sale, through affiliate or eBook sales. For instance, let’s say that they ask you about increasing sales or gaining visitors, point them to your new eBook or maybe to your blog. If the sale was friendly, there is a chance you could hang on to them and turn them into a regular visitor to your blog.

Is it right for you.

By sticking to low cost sites, you don’t have to worry about spending a fortune just to see if you like it. It’ kind of like a try before you buy. If you flip your first website and find out that it isn’t for you, then just move on. Even if you can’t sell your first site, you’re only out a few bucks and a couple of hours at most. At least you’ve gained some necessary experience.

What Type Of Turnkey Sites Can You Flip?

Flip a script site.

These are by far the easiest sites to create, flip, and sell. What do I mean by script site? Take a script, throw on a template, and sell! It’s really that easy. If you want to save time you can buy a script (don’t pay over a few dollars per script), but if you are at all programming savvy, you can do this part yourself. HotScripts is full of free (or paid) website scripts just waiting to be used. Once you have your script, find a free template and install. Once you have a bit of experience, you should be able to do this in no more than an hour or two. Looking for ideas for scripts? How about a trivia site? Or maybe a quote database? These scripts are all available for free.

PLR eBook Sites.

These are quite easy. Get out there and grab some PLR content (it can be cheap, no need to spend more than $15 on volume full of individual eBooks). Now build a quick template site surrounding your new eBook. Do a little bit of promotion, maybe (hopefully) sell a book or two to show that the site can sell. You don’t need sales, but they certainly help. Once you’re ready, put the site up for sale. You should be able to get upwards of $20-50 out of a PLR eBook site.

Proxies. Lots of Proxies.

Start with a half decent, cheap top-level domain name (the cheapest out there right now are .info’s – perfect for this sort of thing). Next, grab a free proxy design, and there are tons out there. And finally, sell it. Proxies are one of the harder sites to sell, as they have a high turnover rate. Once they get listed and used, they quickly get blocked and discarded. Therefore you won’t make much flipping proxies, but as long as you sell it for more than you put into it, then you’re making money. And at this point, it’s more about experience and playing around than making big money.

The Next Step – Moving On To Bigger Things

With these tips you’re more than ready to start flipping your own low cost sites. You will get a foothold in the business and gain the necessary experience towards flipping more premium websites. Starting slow is the key to success, if you jump in too quickly you will be sure to fail. Keep it up though, don’t get discouraged by scams or speedbumps, and pretty soon flipping blogs can become not only possible, but profitable.