If you’re a website flipper, or any kind of internet marketer, you’re probably subscribed to one or two mailing lists, or in my case all of them.

I’ve lost count of all the conference calls and interviews I’ve listened to that are ostensibly trying to teach you something but in reality are nothing more than a long sales pitch for some new ebook or info course.

Still, every now and then I get enough of a nugget from one to keep me tuning into the next one. So, when Yaro Starak recently posted a two part interview with Adam Short, I dutifully listened to all 88 minutes of it.

Niche Profit Classroom

While Adam was indeed promoting a course he and his partner created, the call was much more informative than usual. He walked Yaro step by step through the process he used to create a network of 90+ niche sites generating “well into the 5 figures per month.”

He even, with a bit of prompting from Yaro, provided specific examples of sites he created that are still up and making money. If you haven’t already done so, I’d highly recommend downloading and listening to both parts of the interview.

Just One Nugget

Rae Hoffman often says, if you get even one nugget of usable information out of something, it can be worth the price many times over. And, since I actually gathered a couple usable nuggets from the interview (more on those in later posts) I decided to give Short’s Niche Profit Classroom (NPC) a spin.

As I said, his system focuses on creating niche sites that generate passive income on a monthly basis. While he and his partner keep the sites, stacking the monthly income, I naturally looked at the idea through the lens of site flipping.

Market Won’t Matter

While a lot of flippers are talking about how bad the market for sites is right now, a site with an established history of income, especially passive income, will always sell for a premium.

Now, I’ll never recommend a product or course that I haven’t already tried and found valuable, so I don’t suggest signing up for NPC (at least not yet). However, as a part of their launch, Adam and Alen have made 5 videos available for free.

You will have to opt into their email list, but hey… what’s one more?

Update: If you’d like to try it out along with me, Niche Profit Classroom is offering a $1 trial so it’s pretty low risk.

As you can imagine, with the importance of links in SEO the topic has been discussed quite a bit. In fact, there are guides, blogs, and even businesses devoted entirely to the subject. So, rather than try to list every method you could use to increase the number of links to your site, I figured I’d give you my five favorites.

Submit to Directories

Directory submission was quite popular a few years ago but has recently fallen out of favor. The number of worthless directories out there led Google to largely devalue links from many directories across the web.

Luckily, there are still several high quality directories that provide valuable links. The most popular are Yahoo’s Directory (paid), Best of the Web (paid) and Dmoz.org (free but can be difficult to get into), however, niche or industry specific sites can also provide quite a bit of value.

A common complaint about directory submission is that it’s time consuming. While that’s true, there are services out there that will do the leg work for you.

My favorite, Directory Maximizer, will hand submit your site to a list of over 1,000 SEO friendly directories at a rate of $14 per every 100 directories. And, you can select an option to spread out the submissions over several weeks so you don’t end up with 100’s of new inbound links in a single day, all raising red flags over at the Googleplex.

Blog

While this might seem like an obvious point, you’d be surprised how many sites still don’t have blogs attached to them. Quite simply, if you’re site doesn’t have a blog on it, it should. I’ve heard people talk about how they think blogs make the sites look less professional and  how it’s a hassle trying to keep them updated etc etc etc. Frankly, thats BS.

If you can have a site on the topic, you can and should have a blog. If you don’t want to write on a regular basis, pay someone to do it for you. You’d be surprised what kind of quality content you can get for a few bucks.

No, having a blog does not magically create new links to your site. But blogs, even a bad ones, attract links fairly naturally.

Link Out

Once you have a blog set up, another easy way to gain more links is to link out to other blogs. Whether it’s through trackback links on a post, through the dashboard in the Wordpress admin panel, or sites like Technorati, the blogger you link to will probably see the link. And, as the law of reciprocity states, they’ll be much more likely to link back to you in the future because of it.

Syndicate Content

Another easy method of link building is to create content to place on other sites. Whether it’s guest posting on another blog, or submitting submitting articles to sites like ezinearticles.com, trading content for links is win/win propositions. The webmaster gets fresh content, you get a link.

People often ask how to go about finding these opportunities but the answer’s pretty simple: ask. If you regularly read a blog in your niche and think you could provide useful content, send the blogger an email asking to guest post. I’ve had content published on blogs with tens of thousands of readers, simply because I bothered to ask.

Great Content

With the advent of Web 2.0 and the social media revolution, the spread of information has become even easier. Linkbait, viral content, pillar content, no matter what tag you slap on it, the concept is the same: create remarkable content that people want to share with others. Chris Garrett calls it “Flagship Content” and explains it like this:

Flagship Content … builds its own momentum and delivers targeted visitors back to you. It works as an ambassador for your blog and for your brand. Flagship Content is content that represents you in the most positive light. It’s an authority builder.

This content can take all sorts of forms (ebooks, guides, resource lists, tools, etc) but in the online world, sharing your content and delivering targeted vistors means one thing: links.

While some are easier than others, each of these 5 methods will help increase the number of links pointing to your website.  Even if potential buyers don’t value inbound links as much as an SEO would, the results produced by those links are certain to catch their eye.

Not only do new links provide traffic when clicked, they also help increase the amount of search engine traffic your site receives. Whether your site is monetized with ads or products, increased traffic translates into increased revenue, and revenue is valued by every potential site buyer I’ve ever seen.

More Link Building Resources

• 5 Link Building Strategies that Work
• 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website
• 20 Linkbaiting Techniques

The entire premise of flipping websites hinges on the ability to increase the value of a site you’ve purchased, before selling it off for a profit. While the usual suspects of redesigning the site, increasing revenue, and boosting traffic are discussed quite a bit, one of my favorite methods tends to get the cold shoulder.

Link Building

Ok, being in the search engine optimization (SEO) field for so long has obviously made me a bit biased. I automatically place value on links pointing to a site. However, many of you, and more importantly many of your buyers might not view links the same way I do. So if your buyers might not value it, why am I insisting that link building is still a worthwhile way to increase the value of any site you plan on flipping?

Click Through Traffic

Unless this is your first time on the internet you realize that links are the way the web is traveled. When someone links to your site, they’re telling their visitors that your page or site is worth looking at. Every time one of those links, you’re increasing traffic to your site. If you manage to receive links from popular sites, the increase in traffic can be quite substantial. Obviously not every link will bring thousands of new visitors but click through traffic isn’t the only way links will benefit your site.

Search Engine Traffic

Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and explain all the ins and outs of SEO in a single post. (There are plenty of great SEO blogs you can check out for that kind of info.) But the basic premise is that links pointing to your site (also known as inbound links) are viewed by search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc) as a “vote” for your site.

Each of those votes help your site rank better in the search engines for whatever anchor text (the blue clickable text of the link) the link uses. For example, this link to my Site Flipping Resource List will help that page rank better in a Google search for that term. The higher you rank for popular search terms, the more traffic your site will receive.

More Money

An increase of traffic doesn’t always correlate to an increase in income. Traffic that isn’t unrelated or uninterested in your site’s topic probably won’t provide much value.

However, when someone clicks on a link or a listing in the search engines they usually have a good idea what your site is about. As a result, the visitors will convert at a much better rate than say social media traffic. And increased conversions, whether that’s purchasing a product or subscribing to a blog, are always reflected in the bottom line.

So now that you know the value of inbound links, how do you actually go about building them? Check back Wednesday (or subscribe to the blog via email or our RSS feed) for the second half of this post when I’ll share 5 cheap and easy methods for building links.

“Even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”
~ Robert Burns

As you may have noticed, my self challenge of Creating and Selling a Site in 30 Days has stalled out a bit. However, despite a trip to PubCon in Las Vegas and back surgery earlier this week, I have managed to knock out two more tasks on the project plan that I’d like to fill you in on, creating content and choosing a WordPress theme.

Creating Content

Making a living by creating and selling sites is simply a matter of scale. You can obviously succeed by selling a single site for 5, 6, or even 7 figures but that’s not the only option. Even if you only make a hundred dollars per sale, if you stack enough of those sales together each and every month, you’ll have the financial success you’re hoping for. However, unless you’re a prolific writer and can crank out page after page of great content on all sorts of different topics, creating content for several sites at once is going to be a challenge for you.

For our case study site (RecessionEarning.com) I quickly decided to outsource the writing. While I know a fair amount about the economy and could write intelligently on the subject, I simply don’t have the time. Also, another goal I have for this project is to outsource as much of the work as possible, thereby proving not only that money can be made in a fairly short amount of time, but allowing me to focus my time where I’m most effective.

Unfortunately, this is where my best laid plans first went awry. I outsourced the content job to a company called Cyber Hub Online (when you piss me off, you get a nofollow tag on your link that’s just the way it is). They had been recommended to me by a fellow site flipper and their package prices looked great. I opted for the 5 article package for $15 and waited for the 48-72 hours to pass for delivery.

After a full week of waiting for the content I contacted CyberHubOnline and they promised me that my content would be in my inbox in less than 24 hours and that it was undergoing the final quality review. 48 hours later, I finally did have the content in my inbox but I’d have a hard time believing anyone reviewed it for quality purposes. I’ve published a couple of the articles on Recession Earning but I’ll have to go back and edit them later.

Chalk content creation up as one more area in life where you get what you pay for. I do have a couple more leads for higher quality copywriters that I’ll be trying out and reviewing in the next week or two. If you have any tips on other places to use feel free to let me know in the comment section below.

WordPress Theme

Once I had the first batch of content to throw on the site (even if it wasn’t what I would consider quality content) the next step was to settle on which WordPress theme to use. Aside from actually selling the site, this is probably my favorite step in the entire process. But, if you’re not careful, you can wind up spending a LOT of time playing around with all sorts of themes and before you know it you’ll have to make $1,000 from the sale to cover the time you spent messing with themes.

When trying to decide between themes, I use 4 main criteria to determine which I’ll use on any given project.

Design

Naturally you want to start out with a theme that looks good. A great site design can increase your sale price by hundreds if not thousands of dollars so do NOT make this decision lightly. If you’re a fan of any of those real estate rehab shows on TV, the outward appearance of your theme is your “curb appeal” and we all know how important that is. (They have a whole show dedicated to the topic for crying out loud!)

Flexibility

Having a theme that can be tweaked and worked to fit my needs precisely is critical. There are a lot of great looking themes out there but many of them are so rigid that you end up just keeping the default settings and your site ends up looking just like the hundreds of other sites out there using the same theme.

Ease of Use

While Flexibility and Ease of Use are very closely related, they aren’t the same thing. When I talk about Ease of Use I’m talking about how easy is it to insert an image into a post? How easy is it for me to swap out one ad for another? Is it a chore to edit the footer or to find where to drop a button to allow people to subscribe to the RSS feed?

Price

And last, but certainly not least, you have to consider the price. While it would be fantastic if you could afford a custom designed theme for each and every project, the simple fact of the matter is that 95% of the time, you won’t see a return on that investment. Also, while the developer licenses for themes might not have appealed to you previously, they can save you a lot of money in the long run, especially if you’re planning on buying and selling websites on a regular basis.

Using those 4 criteria I settled on the Thesis Theme by DIY Themes. I had heard a lot of great things about it’s flexibility and it definitely did not disappoint. There are more options in the settings panel than I ever thought possible from a WordPress theme and yet, it’s still pretty simple to use. They also allow you to upgrade to the developer license at any time after you’ve purchased the single use license (which is something I haven’t seen from most of their competitors). I don’t have time to do a full in-depth analysis of the theme, but if you still have questions about it go read Sugarrae’s review and you’ll be sold.

So there you have it, despite a few unplanned delays, Recession Earning is one step closer to completion. Even though these two tasks took more than a week to complete, when all was said and done I actually only used about an hour of my own time. Buying, installing, and tweaking Thesis was a snap. Surprisingly, I actually spent more time hounding CyberHubOnline to fill my order than I spent on all the other odds and ends for the site combined!

Expenditures

As I mentioned previously, the CyberHub articles were $15 and weren’t worth a penny more. For the purpose of the case study I used the $87 single license as the cost, but again, I highly recommend the multi-use developer license.

Obviously if you already own a developer license or a theme you’d like to use instead, you could avoid this cost. However, as I mentioned before, design is one area that you shouldn’t go cheap on. And, when listing the site I’ll be able to use the value of this premium theme as a selling point to drive up the cost.

Running Total: $110 and 2 hours

One of the most common questions about selling a website is when to pull the trigger and actually list it for sale. There are so many unknown elements when selling that even once you’ve decided to sell, it is incredibly easy to begin second guessing yourself. In the end, the decision to sell is ultimately one that you will have to make for yourself. However, I thought it might be useful to discuss a few of the questions to consider, that will hopefully make the decision making process a bit less stressful for you.

While every site and site owner are different, I’ve found that almost all of them fall into one of the following three scenarios:

The Pet Project

The Pet Project is a site that someone created from scratch and likely spent a lot of time and effort creating. And whether the owner realizes it or not, they almost certainly have some emotional attachment to it as well. Most often the site owner has come to the realization that their site holds some sort of value but may not be sure how much or whether they actually want to part with the site.

In my most recent site sale, I found myself in precisely in this position. I had built the site as a labor of love and really hadn’t given much thought to how much it was actually worth. However, when the offer to buy came in, I found the following questions to be helpful in the decision making process:

What benefit do I currently receive?

Pet Projects usually allow the owner to do something they benefit from even if it isn’t monetarily. For example, the site might allow them to learn or teach a topic they love or to connect with like minded people.

How will selling the site affect that benefit?

Once you’ve established what kind of benefit you’re getting from the site, ask yourself if selling the site would change or put an end to that benefit. If the value is in the community surrounding your site, will you still be able to participate in it? Also, if you do decide to sell, is there any other way you can gain the same benefit, perhaps at another site?

Can I handle the change?

This is one of the most questions that somehow seems to fly under the radar but it’s a critical one. Can you handle watching your site change dramatically? You’ve spent a lot of time and effort creating the site and yet once you sell it, chances are it will change significantly. It can be very difficult watching this transition, especially if you don’t agree with the direction the new owner is headed. What would your reaction be if the new owner stopped updating the blog you’re considering selling? What if they decided to plaster it with ads and post lower quality materials? Remember, once you sell your site, you no longer control it’s destiny.

The Business

If your website is an online business, the questions that you have to answer are a little bit more cut and dried. You know how much income the site brings in every month and you also know how much time and effort it requires to maintain. My first site sale fell into this category and while it wasn’t an easy decision to make, the answers to the following questions helped me put things into perspective.

How much am I currently making per hour of work?

This seems like a fairly obvious question but many online entrepreneurs focus solely on the amount of money coming in, not how much time they’re spending bringing it in. For example, if your site makes $1,000 a month and requires only 5 hours of your time, you might be much less willing to sell than if it required 20 hours to maintain.

What will take your site to the next level?

One statement I’ve read countless times when people sell their site is that with a “little work” the site could “easily” be making twice as much. While that pitch might work on less experienced buyers, more seasoned site buyers will see right through it. However, if some extra work would in fact increase your earnings significantly, it might well be worth the added effort to drastically increase your final sale price.

Is Outsourcing an Option?

One of the most common reasons people decide to sell their money making site, is that they lose interest in the topic or get burned out. If your site requires a lot of time and effort, it can be a really daunting task to maintain it day in and day out for months or years on end. However, if that’s the only reason you’re considering selling, outsourcing that work might be a viable option for you. Writers can be hired to take over your blog, students or other freelancers can often be hired to take care of the monotonous day to day activities, the possibilities really are endless in today’s wired world.

The Flip

While a website that you’ve purchased with the intent to “flip” or resell will often have originally fallen into one of the previous two categories, it’s an entirely different situation when you’ve purchased the site. Chances are you don’t have the emotional connection to the site that we see in Pet Projects and you may already utilize outsourcing methods that were discussed as an option for The Business sites.

When deciding whether to list a flip for sale, the questions are pretty simple:

What return will I see on my investment?

Now remember, we’re not just talking financial investment here. If you buy a site and sell it the next day with the only work being a listing fee, you won’t need to make as much from the sale before you turn a profit. On the other hand, if you buy a site and spend 40 hours improving it, you’re going to need to get significantly more from the site to cover the cost of your time.

Depending on the investment, you might also have to ask yourself whether or not you could make more by listing at a later date, whether you should cut your losses and sell now, or several other questions but in the end, they all boil down to maximizing those three little letters, ROI.

Have you considered selling a website recently? If so, did you ask yourself these kinds of questions? Experienced site flippers, what kinds of questions do you consider when debating whether or not to sell? Weigh in with your opinion in the comment section below!