| I have $500, I'm also a web developer with all the skills required to do this. I still don't see how you can make money off them? Would the plan be to buy up 1 to start, customise it maybe give it a refresh, fiddle with the SEO then leave it for a month and try to see returns of the $500? Or would it be considerably less? Would the ROI be $500 over 3 months? Whats your usual ROI? | For the sites I sell on Flippa (quality, aged, established traffic/earnings) You can expect to buy the site for 30x monthly earnings. |
| How Do you buy a website that has already got an owner? Is there a website market? Do you approach them? | You can email them and offer to buy there website. |
| Thanks for the fast reply, so the ROI is fairly low... I don't see how you can make money this way without somehow getting 30x more traffic to offset the bad earnings. What's the usual strategy when you buy one of these things? | Tweak the ad placement/units, mess around with layouts, tweak SEO. |
| A 2.5 year return on investment isn't bad at all. |
| I am not sure why you got downvoted, but I think this will be interesting! If I were to get into something like this, how would I start? Thanks | If you have $500-$1000 to jump in with, I'd suggest buying some site so that you throw yourself into the deep end. Start looking through sites at Flippa.com. Since they are established websites for sale, they will be disclosing EVERYTHING. Earnings, traffic, how they get the traffic, etc. These are great examples to get you in the mindset of a web entrepreneur. |
| I've visited Flippa many times, most of the sites that claim to be making money with the classic "I'm focusing on other projects which is why I want to sell" seem like complete BS to me. Aren't the only people making money the guys selling the sites? | Not true at all. I actually sold off my inventory of 40+ sites because I'm literally too busy with other projects. The people who bought my websites are now enjoying the cash-flow that I used to have. |
| Also, there's pretty much no such thing as a "Set/Forget" website that makes you money. Everything needs some level of maintenance, and every site has the potential to stop making money overnight if google changes it's logarithm. |
| I'm not very familiar with all of this but it does look interesting. Can you break down what exactly it is you're doing? How are you earning money from this? So you buy up websites, place ads on the sites, and get money from the traffic? Am I getting this right? | Spot on! |
| I looked briefly at one of your links and you said that you work around 40-50 hours a week. | My hours fluctuate considerably. Some weeks are 10, some weeks are 50. |
| Is this something I could do on my spare time if I just wanted a little supplemental income? Can I just do 1-3 websites and monitor them occasionally? Is it a situation where unless you spend a lot of time and money on it, you won't see results? | I started my business part time while I was a full-time student with another part-time job. You can easily start up with 10 hours a week. Just depends on how big you want to go with it. |
| Will you be my dad? I'm probably the same age as you but I think we can make it work. | That depends. How hot is your mom? And do I get to have sex with her? |
| Another internet marketer here - congrats on your success bro. :) I never mess around with search or anything SEO related because I feel like it's too unreliable to rely on Google's (constantly changing) SEO algorithm. Just last month, thousands of people lost their entire income through that BMR debacle. Do you think you'll be able to keep up your income forever? | SEO can be unreliable if you are trying to cheat the system. I pretty much follow Google's golden rule of creating quality content for the user, and they have had my back so far with every update. |
| Can I have $200? | What are you going to do to earn it? |
| Do you have a background in graphic/web design? What niches did you find that pay the best and what the worst? How much traffic do you get a month? How do you market the site and generate traffic? SEO, social media, PPC, etc? Approximately how many hours do you put into the site a week and how long has the site been around? Do you need any additional help? If so would you be open to a possible partnership? | No, I actually studied Construction Management in college. - Best paying is like forex, mortgages, foreclosures, mesothilioma (sp?) etc. Worst are education, kids stuff, etc. But it doesn't matter what the niche is, you can still make money in any. And the higher-paying niches have MUCH more competition. - I get over a million visits a month. - SEO, Social Media, no PPC. The sites I buy, I do no marketing since they are already getting traffic. - My main site has been around 6 years. I probably put 10-30 hours a week into it. - Not interested in partnerships. I've got a few employees but don't need anymore. |
| I own loser.com ...there must be a way to monitize that. Any thoughts? | Probably sell it. I'm sure someone will pay a small fortune for it.. |
| I make around $450-$500 a month off two sports forums. | Forums are better to get more user generated content. It's usually lower quality, but you get it for free. Forums are also typically harder to monetize because forum browsers know not to click on the adsense units. |
| Are forums or blogs better for adsense earning? Should I concentrate on bringing in more posters to the forum, or more readers to the blog? | Blogs can be tough because you have to do ALL the writing, however you can have higher quality content and probably more clicks since blog readers aren't quite as internet savvy as the interactive forum users. |
| Fuck dude, did I read that right? One hundred thousand pages of unique content? How much content constitutes a page, on average? Are we talking several hundred word articles? I can hardly think of any sites that approach that size, except social networking sites or forums. Did you create fmylife.com or something? | Reddit probably has several million pages of content. Many of the pages are forum threads. Not all the highest quality content. |
| If I were to buy a site from flippa, for example one of yours (to make things easy), what happens after I 'win' the bid? I get the domainname, the site, the hosting? Do I just need to replace your adsense-ID (and/or others) with mine, or do I have to place them manually? | Exactly. You can just replace the adsense ID with yours. You'll have to get your own hosting account, but that is relatively easy. I don't currently have any sites for sale though. |
| Be sure to look through Flippa for a while to get a feel for what is out there. There's a lot of junk, so it might take a while to find a diamond in the rough. |
| I'm kinda hesitant about buying one in the first place, I kinda read these horror stories about G banning these sites after the transfer was complete. | Just make sure you aren't buying some crappy site. Look for history of traffic/earnings. |
| How can you tell if they post legit traffic and earnings information? They could pad their stats a lot or a little, or the info could be legit -- but inflated because the owner buys traffic through Adwords, etc. | You can ask for access to their Google Analytics account. You can't fake that. |
| Is that what you usually do when buying a site? Can you describe your due diligence when purchasing? I researched site flipping, domaining, affiliate marketing etc etc ad nauseum a few years ago, but I didn't want to just throw my money away. There's a lot of devil in the details. | Also, use SEMRush.com, Quantcast.com, Compete.com, Alexa.com to verify that their site actually gets traffic. |
| Would you mind to give detailed practical tips to earn a 10th of what you earn? I understand the whole process might be complex, but I am sure there are certain tricks or considerations you could share. Finding a nice niche is the main thing as it appear... What cms do you use? -Where do you host your websites? vps, dedicated server? -Do you consider it "easy" to make a couple hundred a month? I am a computer science student, and I feel comfortable with administering servers, cms and programming. I've been thinking for a long time to start some useful website that could bring me some earnings, and I have a couple of ideas. But when I search for something like what I want to create, it seems everything is already invented, and I am late. One of my "brightest" idea, was to copy the concept of some rather simple foreign website which I liked and create the "spanish" version. What kind of website do you recommend? (forum, social website, a kind of wiki) | I prefer Wordpress for sites where I'm writing the content. - You can use any host. If you aren't a high traffic site, then anything will do. - It really depends how you spend your time. - Forums are easy to set up, and once you have a userbase established, they typically grow over time. You don't have to do all the content for forums as well. |
| People actually click the advertisements on websites? What the hell..... | Seriously! Just watch some internet newb surf the net. Literally ask them to google something, and stand behind them silently as they try to figure it out. |
| What's the advantage to doing this rather than say, buying domains that are typos of other major sites and putting a shit load of ads on them? | You aren't really creating any value in the internet by doing that. |
| My Adsense account has been disabled due to "false clicks" or however they put it. I never clicked on ads myself, and asked for proof, but they have never responded nor have they ever reinstated my account. Have you ever had this issue, and if so, how did you solve it? | Create a corporation, get an EIN and use that to sign up again. Or sign up as a friend/relative. |
| Where do you find outsourcers to write content for your lessor properties? Do you do any SEO at all to your sites or just hope for the best by having great content? Are you a BHW regular at all? | I find contractors through ODesk. Some are crap, but sometimes you do find a diamond in the rough. I also don't do much content creation at all. |
| I do basic SEO things, but other than that I hope for the best with great content. |
| Don't know what BHW is. |
| How do you feel about flash game portals? I've owned one for a few years, only spent 2 days making it, and haven't advertised it since. It's only making $5-10 a month, but I've been thinking about upgrading it lately and advertising again. Worth it? Tips? | Don't have much experience, but I know that flash games portals typically have low-quality traffic. Unless you are seeing huge traffic numbers, the traffic probably isn't worth a terrible amount. |
| Did you buy any cool "toys" with your earnings? | 2000 BMW M5. |
| And the rest just sex toys. |
| I know the best way of getting into it is to jump head first, but what all is required for the maintenance? I'm sorry i'm totally ignorant to how this works but is it programming (more so what language i think it would be html?)? Or do you just alter the info of the website. | I've answered this several other places. I'll probably add an FAQ to the body of the post. |
| Do people ever buy specialty retail sites on Flippa? Or would they only be interested on autonomous ones (drop shipping, etc)? What is the value rate on such sites? | All types of sites are sold on flippa. No idea what the value rate is for those. |
| Can a brotha get a loan? | Try prosper.com or lendingclub.com if you are seriously interested in getting a hard money personal loan. |
| Did you just make this to piss off $500 a month guy? | Hahaha, yes, that is what inspired me to do this today. Although I'm not making it up. |
| How to best estimate what to pay for a website? I found some abandoned websites that I would like to buy, both without analytics and without adsense, but with great content. How to decide what to offer the current owner? | Use Alexa.com, SEMRush.com, compete.com, quantcast.com, etc. to estimate traffic then go from there. |
| So do you just sit at home and make a shit ton of money? please teach me? | It is my full time job. Read this thread - there's a lot of info I and others have been sharing. |
| What is adsense? | Google "Adsense" |
| I apologize if someone has asked this already, but how many unique visitors do you get a month on your main site? | Over a million. |
| I'm going to manage an affiliate program soon. Do you know of any good books with email templates? I'm looking for ideas for contacting potential affiliates. Any information on managing affiliates would be great. I'm in NV also. | I don't read any books. Too short of an attention span. When you contact potential affiliates, make sure that you are offering them value and have a customized email. I get emails for affiliate programs all the time and just ignore them because they are either recycled letters or don't fit my site at all. |
| NV rocks for business! |
| I've been interested in creating a site about something I am interested in. The only problem is that since I am interested in it, I've found many online resources that pretty much suffice. Is it worth making an online resource (for say, a hobby/sport) when there might already be some decent but not prevalent info out there? | Definitely, especially if you can do it better than the other sites. There are 10 google positions on the first page, so even if you have competition, you can still nudge your way in. Also, there are billions of search terms that people use to find different stuff... |
| Hopefully I didn't get here too late. I could put about $3000 towards a site. How much traffic do you think an average $3000 site would generate and how much would you expect to make monthly doing the things you've suggested in this thread? | If you bought a quality site for $3000, you could probably be looking at a starting cash flow of ~$100 a month. You could probably increase it, but there are too many variables so it really depends on what you buy. |
| What about if you made a domain that was the same as another other than the extension? Ie. "startknitting.com" exists but sucks balls and is out of date. Would "startknitting.org/net" still be a good idea? | You'd probably run into some legality issues there. I'd start with a different name and then try to blow them out of the water. Will take time though. |
| All right, I'll bite. I'm a graphic/web designer with far more coding experience than I'd like, and in that same vein I've ended up spending a good chunk of my time on SEO/staring at traffic graphics. How easy would it be for me to buy a site, flip it, and start earning money? | Given that you already have the skills, pretty good. My strategy was never to buy/flip. It was always to buy/hold, but eventually I decided to change that strategy to just holding onto one site. |
| Is there any particular industry I should be looking at for this venture? Or is it just "pick whichever site looks promising?" This wouldn't be something I'd want to focus on full-time, but I'm a freelance designer so I would be able to allot hours to work on it between projects as needed. What does typical maintenance work look like for you? | Pick something that looks promising, and also something that interests you at least somewhat. |
| What do you have to learn in order to start out doing this. Like, which books, websites should one read/study? | I just jumped in head first. Learned along the way. |
| I never read books. Just figure stuff out as you go along - Googling things works best. |
| Could you explain what affiliate links are? | For example, a link to a product on amazon with my Affiliate ID on it. If you click it, and then buy that product, I get a commission. |
| Could you please draw and post an image of how you have your google ads placed around / inside the content. Also, what link color schemes do you find works best? | Color schemes that match the site are best. I typically put my adsense units in the top left, above or in the middle of the content. |
| I have an established (10 years) useful user-generated content site that gets ok traffic (1500 uniques a day) but only generates 800-1000 a month between AdSense and TextLinkAds. I've had no luck whatsoever with Affiliate programs, very few clicks and no sales at all, with thousands of views. Any advice to increase my earnings? | Take a look at the FAQ. I don't give personalized advice. I've already answered questions like this all throughout the thread. |
| Are you, by chance, a local mom? | Hahaha, nope. I see those scammy biz opp ads all the time too. Freaking gives making money on the internet a bad name. |
| Can you give an estimated "$/pageview" on some of the sites you've had ? :) | All over the board. Sometimes a fraction of a cent, sometimes 10 cents. |
| Do you need to live in NV to have an S-Corp in NV? | You should be a resident or else it might look suspicious. |
| Wait, isn't it against the Adsense TOS to say how much you've made? | Already answered this a dozen times. |
| Do you actually make/work on/improve sites you own (other than your blog) to make money or just buy sites that are already making money? | Yes, I work on my own site. |
| Spare change? | Can you do a dance for me? |
| How do you actually make money though? Sorry i just wasn't sure by what you wrote on your blog/ | Google "Adsense" |
| Are you a single mom that earns $5,000 a day from Google? | Stay at home mom. |
| So every once in a while someone comes along and says "hurr durr guys I make X thousand dollars / month off ads". "Invest Y thousand dollars and get 50% return within months!" How full of shit is this on a scale of bullshit to horseshit? | I don't see where I said anything about investing... |
| I didn't say you did. | I'm not sure I understand what you are asking then. |
| Other than buying a site, are there other significant costs involved in getting started right away? | Time! |
| How do you get a website to the top of the google results? | SEO. |
| Can I get my friend to write me a script or code for this? | Not sure if troll Or just extremely lazy. |
| Would I be able to sell my site, DominateDominion.com for anything? Getting tired of the game. It has a sponsorship from the creators of the game for weekly tournament prizes if that increases the value. | Check the FAQ. I don't offer personalized advice. You could try listing it on Flippa. |
| Alright, well are the sites that claim to value it accurate at all? | Hit or miss. Sometimes they get lucky and happen to be correct, but otherwise are pretty outlandish. |
| These are almost as bad as the "what you need, when you need it" spam sites. Thanks for polluting the Internet with your shitty web sites. | That is not at all what I do. I actually run a very helpful online community. My success is partly attributed to the fact that my site is extremely helpful for people. |
| You may be able to fool some people with that description, but it's a load of crap. These sites are, in your own words, "hands-off" and "auto-pilot". I'm willing to bet the content of most of those sites have changed very little, if at all, over the years. | How does that make it low content? |
| Have you ever thought of of shoring yourself and your employees to increase profit, there is some great talent out there in parts of the world where the average wage is significantly lower than the US. | I've used some overseas contractors with limited success. I do business primarily in the US, so going overseas would just complicate things in terms of taxes. |
| He got downvoted because he's a parasite. It is SEO at its basest, simply there to make ad revenue. Microsites provide nothing of value. | I don't have any microsites. Thanks though. |
| Um, you might want to watch out. It's against the TOS to post your adsense earnings, and with those exact figures it's fairly easy for them to trace it back to you.. Last thing you'd want is your adsense account blocked because of this :) | Do some more research. You can't post more details like the click-through rates, etc. It is perfectly fine to share your total earning dollar amounts. |
| As a 14 year old, AdSense is also my main source of income. I'm pretty sure they don't want us to disclose how much we make, but it's great that someone my age can make money on the internet. I get it through YouTube, personally, but it still pays with AdSense. | Nice man! Its great to see kids doing something productive! Don't let it get to your head though. Stay in school. Enjoy your young age. |
| I don't mean to be a party pooper, but 3 friends of mine were making $20-30k/mo on adsense per month, one day Google changed their rules and they are now ruined. Just be prepared, don't count on this success for life, and save money. | Thanks, but Adsense only accounts for about 20% of my income. I'm also not doing anything sketchy or against the rules, so I'm not too worried about it. |
| Looks good man. I was making $2k a month up until 2 months ago when my adsense got banned. Some guys who I had a bad business deal with decided to sit there for hours and click my ads over and over. This turned into google thinking that I was cheating the system and banning me :( | Sucks! Try signing up again under a different EIN. |
| How do you build sites with user generated content. Perhaps give us an example, real or made up. The tools you liked are good for proving and tweaking, but making something that generates its own content seems difficult, and key to the process. | Reddit.com.... |
| I'm currently making ~$400 in a small niche where I have the #1 position. Any advice on scaling (general advice) in an attempt to get rich like a playyaaaaaaaaa. | Rank #1 for more keywords! Go broader. |
| Congrats srnc! I'm very pleased for you. I wish I was pulling in that kind of revenue. I have a site that does about $10 a day with a .23 click rate. If I could get that up to 5% I'd (theoretically) be doing $200 a day. But I've tried everything and it's just not an Adsense type of site I guess.. | The only advice I have is to move your adsense unit around, try different sizes and different colors. |
| Man, I have tried everything, including compete site redesign. This is a site I developed myself, so changing look and feel isn't easy.... I just don't think it's an Adsense site.... | Might not be. Try some CPA offers or affiliate promotions? |
| I think you broke Google's Terms of Service by telling us all this. | Nope. Look more closely. You can't share some of the finer details... clicks, impressions, CTR, CPM, etc. |
| In before the next dot-com bubble bursts. | Hurry! Why do you think I'm selling everything? |
| there was spam, now there is googleadsense, and a labyrinthine expanse of well-indexed garbage websites that clutter the google results. Using google now is like wading through a septic tank filled with liquid waste and floating shit so that parasites like 'srnc' can have their little payday. | Not at all true. My main site is an authority site because it has been providing quality content to visitors for years. |
| 'Quality content' produced by others, for you to exploit and parasitize. | Someone is a little jealous! |
| Is reddit exploiting and parasitizing the content you create for them? |
| Sorry mate, you've already described your modus operandi in how you acquire these websites and set them up as cashcows/google clutter. There is no real contribution that you make, or any added value to be found in your net activities. You're basically the equivalent of a spam-sheister. | Again, jealousy/ignorance coming through. You have no idea what I do and are just upset that I make more than you do. |
| Money for nothin' and chicks for free. | False on both counts. |
| Nice try, google ad. = . = | I can't imagine that Google is trying to spam Reddit... |
| I make you zero money by blocking ads. Ask me how! Oh fuck you, just use adblock plus. | Thanks. Glad that not many people have that. However my affiliate links which make the bulk of my money are never blocked by your addon! Muhuhahahaha. |
| Commenting to come back later cause im stuck at work, and want to learn how to make 5 grand a month doing this shit. | Cool. Be sure to read through this thread. Already answered a LOT of questions. |
| Keep working at it. Join us at the 4-5 figure daily profit club. It's pretty damn nice. Think more affiliate related stuff for expansion. | Thanks man! I want to hit 1M/year soon. |
| Could you go into more detail concerning the SEO work. This seems like the most important and time consuming aspect of making a website get the traffic it needs. | I just do basic SEO stuff with my main site. Keywords in the title, fresh content linked to from the home page, etc. |
