This is part two of the site flipping series and you guys should all know this one: How to pick a domain name and registrar. I’m sure a bunch of you guys still use dot blogspot blogs but technically you can’t sell those sites. And when I say “technically”, I think it’s actually against their TOS to sell it so accepting money then transferring is still illegal.

There are plenty of domain registrar sites to buy your domain name from and people prefer ones over others for whatever reason. I tend to go with reputable sites because I’m a name brand type of person (most of the time). I feel as though you get what you pay for. It’s almost equivalent to cheap hosting, in the long run you’re probably going to get screwed.

You guys should all remember my post “This is Why You Should NOT Get Cheap Web Hosting.”

Which Domain Registrar Do I Use?

Personally, I usually go with GoDaddy but with all the additional things that come with it, it gets expensive. I mean, keeping your information private, business stuff, etc. But the good thing about them is the fact that they always have coupons and discounts to save money.

The other one I started using half way through last year was Name.com. The reason why I started using them is because they started off at like $5.99 for dot com names. Next thing you know it just keeps inflating until $8.99.

Though, that’s still pretty cheap especially the fact that the private WHOIS (where they keep your information private) is completely free. In addition, you can use Google accounts with it as well at no additional charge.

So in the long run, you pay $8.99 and not $8.99 + $4.99 + $6.99.

How to Pick a Domain Name

Honestly, this all depends on the person. You can use just about any domain name if you know exactly what you are doing but essentially, you want to pick a domain name in which people would remember. You want it to be brandable and if you have a specific keyword/niche you’re trying to target, you might want to try to include that within the domain, if you can.

There are a bunch of ways and methods I use to pick a good domain name.

Use your Main Keyword as the Domain - Let’s say you already did your keyword research and say your main keyword is “Xbox 360 Cheats”, you would try to get “xbox360cheats.com”.

Of course, this is extremely hard because most of the highly searched for keyword domains are gone. But there are still a lot of them left. Plus, you can always try to go with something like “BESTxbox360cheats.com” that way you’re still including your targeted keyword within the domain.

The reason for this is because having the keyword in the domain name could potentially help you rank in search engines. I’ve done it a bunch of times on smaller sites and it actually works with very minimal linkage.

Shorter = Better? Not necessarily but if you can get a domain name with four characters or less, that is pretty rare. Honestly, if you can, I would consider just selling the domain name instead of creating a site for it. I’m sure you can get some decent money just off of that.

Brandable and Easy to Remember Domains - If you are creative (or lucky), you should have no problem with this one.

Like I mentioned, if you can get a short domain name then that’s golden. Unfortunately, nowadays you won’t be able to find a three letter or even a four letter domain name that is available. If you can, then you are one of the lucky few!

But just because it’s not short, it doesn’t mean you can’t get a easy to remember or brandable domain. You want to come up with something catchy, that sticks in people’s heads. Who cares if it’s corny or cliche, they will still remember it.

You guys remember “ListLunatic.com”, that was pretty brandable and easy to remember.

You Want to Avoid Words that Connect with Each Other with the Same Letter - For instance, “gamecodessite”. Notice how there are two S letters right next to each other. More often than not, when someone is typing that into their web browser, they’re going to forget about that second S. Which could possibly have you lose out on another visitor, subscriber, buyer, etc.

A majority of the time, I go to instantdomainsearch.com because it’ll tell you if it’s available or not instantly. Though, sometimes they aren’t 100 percent up-to-date but for the most part it’s pretty handy.

When it comes down to it, you don’t really have to have a great domain name to flip a site. Though, I almost always try to get a brandable domain name simply because it’s just another good selling point to convince your buyer on the worth of your site.

Anyways, how do you guys pick domain names and registrars? Let me know!

If you’re starting from scratch when it comes to flipping sites, you need to pick a niche to start on. Now there are people who randomly pick and get lucky while others don’t. I do that sometimes but then again, it’s not exactly random because I look at keywords that are getting high search engine traffic, usually. But there are plenty of steps you can take on how to pick a niche for site flipping.

Personally, I like to pick a niche that I’m actually interested in or something that will keep me entertained while I’m doing it. I don’t like picking niches that bore me because when I do that, I feel as though I’m just working online for money instead of enjoying it.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are just working for the money, no ones stopping you. I’m just not a big fan of working, working, working just for a check unless I really have to. And speaking of working for money, if you have any site that’s making money then you should be able to sell it with no problem.

But let’s get into picking a niche.

What’s Hot and What Do Buyers Want?

Like I said in the previous paragraph, buyers want money making sites. Or at least the potential the site has to make tons of money. That is pretty obvious because no one wants to invest in something without getting some return back plus more. They want to invest now and in the long run, they get their money back and with some additional work, they profit from it.

A good place to start is to head over to Sitepoint’s “Want to Buy” section. But I’m only looking for things that I’m capable of doing and interested in.

If you guys take a look within the past week or so, there are a lot of people that are looking for sites that I’m probably not going to attempt to do. For instance, directories, applications for social sites, forums, etc. I think those would be too much work so it’s pointless to try to learn something brand new.

What I’m looking for is something in a niche that I’m actually interested in, that I know I’m capable of doing and something that will put money in my pockets while I’m doing it.

Since I didn’t find anything that would help me pick a niche (most people wanted something that I wasn’t interested in, something that I couldn’t do or was just asking for sites that made money) let’s try the other Marketplace sections.

The thing you have to really look for are sites that people are actually bidding on. If they get no bids, it’s either because they are overpriced, not worth it or people don’t see potential (or possibly just missed the listing).

After looking through the different sections on what people are bidding on, the main ones that I would be interested in doing are: health-related, sports, games and cars/bikes.

Is the Niche Competitive? Are Their Keywords I Can Rank In?

Out of the four niches that I’d be interested in making a site for, there’s only one that is probably highly competitive no matter what you create the site for. The health site.

People are so crazed about getting healthy and losing weight that the niche has become similar to make money online niches: they are over saturated.

You can probably say the same for the other niches that I’ve picked but every single one of those have so many sub-niches that you can work with.

I’m a big sports fan but I also want to do minimal work and sports would require me to keep up with everything daily so I’m going to pass on that.

Now video games and cars/bikes are things that I’d be interested in and I wouldn’t have to update daily or anything like that. So, let’s pick some random things relating to video games and cars/bikes and see if there’s low/high competition and if there’s good keywords for us to rank in.

Instead of using both examples, I just do the cars. What I did was Googled “new cars 2009″ because people are always into the new things. Of course, cars have the same models each year, just different. I found an article based on my search and found “the best new cars of 2009.”

After looking through, I picked some random ones and I typed it into the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool.

After looking through, I decided to go with the Nissan Skyline GT as my pick. So I typed in “Nissan” into the suggestion tool and saw:

As you can see, “Nissan Skyline” and “Nissan GTR” are highly searched for. Don’t worry, we’re going to be focusing more on the long-tail keywords rather than those specific ones.

Time to see how competition it is. All I did was a simple Google search for “Nissan Skyline GT” and “Nissan Skyline GTR” and both came up with just a little over one million search results. I know that’s a lot but I’d say if you can get a highly searched for keyword with a million or less search results, then that’s actually pretty good.

Does the Niche Have Potential in the Eyes of the Buyer?

Now it’s hard to say since we didn’t even set anything up. But based on the above, it definitely should. It’s highly searched for, I don’t foresee the car models going out of style soon and more than likely it’ll make some good money.

Our goal is to basically get all our stats up so we can have proof to potential buyers.

Now that is how I would potentially select a niche for a potential site flipping project. Don’t get me wrong, I was just showing you guys an example, I may not necessarily use the car site as the example site for you guys to follow. But don’t worry, once I actually pick it, you guys will know and be able to follow along.

Stay tuned for more on the site flipping series!

I decided that I would start a full site flipping series, post by post and go into details with examples. I think this would be great for anyone that was ever interested in selling a site but never knew all the aspects of it so it turned them off a little bit.

In the site flipping series, I will include details on how to start a site, how to get it designed and setup, how to promote it and build links, how to do keyword research for it, how to sell it, etc. I’m sure a lot of you guys have seen similar posts on other blogs but I guess the difference is the fact that I’ll try to be in depth with everything.

Actually, I was thinking about starting a brand new site so you guys can just follow that site as an example. Though, I think it’ll be a pretty hard commitment to start a brand new site with all the other projects I have going on so I may also consider just using a relatively new site. But I guess I have a little time to think about it.

I guess this project will be similar to the Listlunatic.com site flipping team project except I’ll actually write in depth on exactly what I’m doing.

The Listlunatic project was more on the lines of “hey, this is the site, check it out, figure out how we sold it for $2,000 in a month!” In actuality, it might have been a little more than one month but since it was a team effort, we all only worked on it maybe a few hours each. We didn’t have many posts and after a strong start, we all slacked a little bit too.

I decided to do this because whenever I go, people will always tell you like “look at how I make money and this is kind of the guide to do it” but they never give examples. Which I can understand because they don’t want to have people taking over their niche and adding tons of competition to themselves.

So, I will try to do it. Hopefully it works out for everyone. Stay on the lookout for that!

Very simple and very easy question: Would you prefer password protected posts or eBooks?

Now I know which one I would prefer on different occasions and instances but I’m just wondering what you guys would prefer.

I prefer password protected posts because it is easier for me. All I have to do is essentially write a post like I normally do and put a password on it and send it out to my e-mail subscribers. In addition to that, having people come back to my site also helps with traffic and daily visitors. Basically, it still makes my site stats look good and if you ever want to read the post, you’ll have to come back.

See?

But one of the downfalls to this is the fact that a lot of people continue to subscribe via e-mail so they constantly ask for the password. I know I could make my life easier by setting up an automated responder but there’s a slight downfall to that too. Of course, a lot of people tend to unsubscribe soon after they have received the password and read the post.

I guess that’s a given, huh? Once people receive their prize, they have no incentive to come back.

As for the eBook, it’s a little more work. Now it’s basically converting everything over to .pdf format but then again, I still have to get this eBook out to my e-mail subscribers. And again, I don’t have an automated responder.

If I did, I could just put a download link somewhere on my site and that way I could continue to get the traffic needed. Matter of fact, I may potentially get more traffic if the eBook is just that good and rumors pass through forums and blogs.

Also, the main reason why I would prefer eBooks in general is when I’m selling them as a product. In this instance, I’m not selling anything so I’m not in need for a “product.”

Now I know readers, subscribers, etc would probably prefer eBooks because it becomes theirs once they get it. They aren’t forced to come back here whenever they want to read it because they’ll have it downloaded already.

The reason why I ask is simply the fact that I was going to have a password protected post on a slight case study on a small site I sold for a couple hundred dollars. In that, I would include step by step on what I did and the example site and URL.

When I’m exposing URLs, I would prefer my loyal subscribers to get a hold of that precious information rather than someone that just randomly stopped by, you know?

Anyways, on this particular example, would you guys prefer a password protected post or an eBook? Or maybe neither? Let me know!

If you’re looking to sell a site, well, I would consider holding off on it for a little while because the site flipping marketplace isn’t that great right now.

Reason for a Sucky Marketplace?

I know a lot of people are blaming the reason for the decline in sales simply due to the bad economy but I don’t really think that is the issue. Most people that purchase websites already have the money so it’s not like they need to save to pay for rent or whatever.

On the other hand, I do think that there is a slight lack of interest in purchasing websites as a whole and it goes far beyond sites that are able to make money and prove it.

A lot of people tend to base the value of a site on how much revenue they make on a monthly basis, particularly easy and somewhat automated earnings, but if that was really the case then how come such great sites are struggling to sell right now?

I’ve seen a handful of blogs that I would expect to sell for a lot barely getting any bids. Normally, I would think that is just a coincidence but when I see a bunch of great sites not getting any attention with bids then I see a problem with that. And usually I don’t think its the site itself.

Occasionally, I just look through forums and site flipping marketplaces just to see how well an auction is going. Sometimes I even just look through to see what is selling, what isn’t, see examples of sites that I could possibly build, find other ways of revenue sources, find other ways of traffic sources, etc. But I’ve noticed the big difference in prices (not necessarily the number of sales) of sales compared to those from six months ago.

Let me give a quick example: Jason a.k.a. TUK is selling his blog with a BIN of $4,500 but if he were to have sold his blog 4-5 months ago he would’ve gotten like $7,000 I believe. There isn’t a problem with selling it, the problem is how much it is selling for.

Hold Off on Selling Now?

A lot of people want to sell a site ASAP but I almost treat it like buying a car - you need patience! When you buy a car, you want to be patient and negotiate because you’ll probably be able to talk your way down a few thousand dollars. Just like selling a site, you never want to go with the first and only bid because that’s almost like settling for less.

I would hold off on selling your sites right now unless you’re able to find a buyer (without listing it a bunch of times in auction because it costs money). Try to take advantage of these situations. For instance, if you see a site that you know you could fix up and sell for even more (or make more money from it) and you find it for a killer price, why not invest in it and purchase it?

Who knows? You might be able to make back what you spent in less then a month.

It’s all about taking advantage of the situations that arise. If the gas prices are at its all-time high, go buy a SUV because you know damn right you’ll be able to get the vehicle for cheap since it’s not selling.

See? Opportunities always arise, its just on us to take advantage of them.