Flipping Websites - The Online Entrepreneur’s Answer to Flipping Properties
One of the hottest internet topics today is “flipping websites.” You hear about people buying domain names, and then turning around and selling them for a profit. At first look, it appears to be an extremely complicated process and something you’d need real connections within the marketing world to get into, but it’s really not. Just look at a website (or a domain name) as being a property in the real estate market. Some of them are jewels that are just waiting to be renovated, and then sold for a large profit.
There are 2 ways to do a “flip”. You can do a “short-term flip”, or you can do a “long-term flip”. Short-term flips are generally tougher to turn large profits on, but every once in a while one can make a hefty margin when advertising the domain name to the right potential buyers. All my experiences in “flipping sites” have come by doing long-term flips. Moreover, I like to find “jewels” out there in the marketplace, and then build out high quality content on them. Then after sitting on them for a while, I sell them for a hefty profit.
My biggest success in doing so resulted in a profit of $171,200. I purchased a website for $1,800, and later sold that same website for $173,000. That wasn’t a fluke either, within that same year I purchased a domain name for $200, and flipped it within 6 months for $60,000. The trick is to find a domain that’s a true gem and that’s primed to rank well in the major search engines. Then building out the website to the point that it’s becoming a nice revenue stream, and selling it off at SitePoint or another website marketplace.
Of the entire process, the only somewhat challenging part is building out a website that quickly becomes a decent revenue stream. However, if you have the right tools, and know how to use them it is really quite simple. The average person is 100% capable of doing it, whether you believe it or not. If your dream is to work for yourself, flipping websites might just be in your future.
About the author:
Dave Hermansen was recently interviewed by The New York Times regarding their success flipping websites. Dave is making a video series called “Make A Living Flipping Websites”. This video series is intended to teach anyone how to make a living flipping websites for themselves. You can read more about this upcoming video series at http://www.hermansenbrothers.com
Make Money Online by Combining Craigslist and eBay
Today I want to tell you about a very simple and relatively quick way to make money online by combining eBay and Craigslist. You won’t get rich from it but you can certainly make some extra money to pay bills or take a vacation!
As you probably already know, Craigslist is one of the most popular websites in the world. It receives millions of visitors per day so it’s no wonder why internet marketers have swarmed to it in order to get a piece of that traffic.
Then we have eBay, which is also one of the largest and most successful websites in the world. And with the incredible amount of traffic to this site, the same can be said about internet marketers trying every which way to make money from it.
But check this out…
The simple money making method that I am about to explain could be done by anyone with internet access and a little bit of ambition, even someone who doesn’t have a clue what internet marketing is, because it really doesn’t have anything to do with what we typically call “internet marketing.” If you have ever bought something and later sold it for a higher price (or thought you could have), then you’ll definitely see where I’m going with this in a minute!
You see, Craigslist has a presence in every major city and most surrounding areas, and people often sell stuff on Craigslist to get rid of it fast, and a lot of the time they sell it for less than it’s worth. Everything from desks to computers and just about anything else, Craigslist seems to be the first place the average person goes to unload their goods. One of the main reasons is the fact that it’s free. Not only is it free, but it’s very easy to list things in a quick and efficient manner. Bottom line: there are many, many deals to be found on Craigslist!
Now, back to eBay – what’s the one place you check when you’re looking for that hard to find electronic gadget, rare piece of jewelry or something else you can’t seem find anywhere else? Ebay, of course!
See where this is going?
Here’s how it works… All you have to do is scour through Craigslist (the best deals are usually found in the electronics section), and look for things like IPods, IPhones, laptops, video game systems, and other similar items. Typically, if you come across one of these items, the person selling it is just trying to get rid of it fast and make some money back on it. They will almost always take a lower price than what they’re advertising, which is usually pretty low already. As soon as you see a good price on something listed on Craigslist, it’s time to head over to eBay.
Once you’re on eBay, click on “advanced search”, and once you’re in the advanced search section, check the box that says “completed auctions”. Then type in the product that you found on Craigslist for a good price, and see if they’ve been selling on eBay, and for how much on average. If the price is consistently higher on eBay for that item, and it looks like plenty of them have been sold, then you have a potential money maker!
For instance, let’s say you found a new laptop on Craigslist, and you’ve negotiated the price down to $300 cash. You then head over to eBay and find the same type of laptop is selling like crazy for $425 each on average. Right there you have a chance to make about $125 profit. This can be done over and over again on many different items!
What have we learned here?
Find items to buy low on Craigslist, then turn around and flip them on eBay for a nice profit. There aren’t a whole lot of people doing this yet, and if you live in a small to mid size city, you might be sitting on a goldmine. This can be a very quick and easy way to make money online!
Blogging Your Way to an Online Income
As I am sure you already know blogging is HUGE right now. If you don’t know what blogging is then you have obviously not spent a lot of time online in the past few years. Blogging is one of the most popular ways of sharing information online and building websites for just about any topic. Where people used to build simple websites, they are now starting blogs. They are also a great way to start an online home business. People have blogs for pretty much every subject under the sun. There are blogs about entertainment, science, politics, parenting, sports, animals, and lots of blogs about how to make money online!
One of the big reasons for starting blogs is their ease of use and the fact that they can be a great way to make money online if you are willing to devote the time and energy required to keep the blog going. There is more to blogging than simply putting up some basic information or a picture and then throwing up some Adsense code around it.
There are plenty of ways you can use blogging to make money online and here are some of the most popular:
Paid Advertising
There are plenty of advertising programs on the internet that are blog-friendly and depending on the popularity of your blog, you can generate anywhere from a few dollars every month to a few thousand dollars a day! Adsense is a very popular way to make money from putting advertising on a blog.
However, if Adsense isn’t your thing there are plenty of alternatives. There are quite a few good revenue share advertising programs that will sell ads for you and give a percentage of the profits. You could also look into selling advertising independently. If you have some marketing and networking experience and know how to edit your templates then selling advertising yourself is a great way to make money online and you get to keep 100% of the profits!
Affiliate Marketing
A blog is a great way to showcase affiliate links, particularly if your blog is about a specific niche. In fact, if you are a “niche blogger” affiliate links can generate more income for you than you can make with advertising. There are tons of affiliate programs out there. Just be careful not to overload your blog with affiliate links. A blog with more affiliate links than useful and original content is a total turn off and will not make you nearly as much money!
Media
For most bloggers this will never happened but there are some bloggers who make such a big name for themselves that they become a famous in the media. It takes a long time to get to this point (if you can ever do it at all), but it’s possible. For example; look at someone like Perez Hilton. He has managed to make a name for himself outside of the blogosphere and is now rich and famous due to his blogging efforts. In order to achieve this though you have to be very patient, very dedicated to your blog and stand out from every other blogger competing with you.
As you can see, there are plenty of ways that you can use blogging to build an online income or even propel yourself to celebrity status. Above I have listed just a few ways that you could use blogging make money online. There are more so get out there and start blogging your heart out!
5 Ways to Cash in On Facebook
Facebook has revolutionized the social networking scene many times over in the past couple years. Internet marketers and developers worldwide are making money on Facebook every single day, and we’re not talking about chump change either! Several hundred million dollars has been made through Facebook alone, and that figure is sure to rise with the popularity of Facebook increasing every day.
The main difference between Facebook marketing, and MySpace marketing, is the fact that with MySpace, you aren’t allowed to blatantly sell or promote anything without staying under the radar a bit. With Facebook, there are several ways you can make money ethically and easily right on their site. This, and due to the fact that MySpace hasn’t kept up with the times as well, is one of the reasons that Facebook has recently surpassed MySpace in traffic.
That’s quite the milestone to reach, and we’re talking about millions upon millions of potential customers.
If you’re kicking around the idea of launching some kind of marketing campaign on Facebook, but aren’t sure where to start, here are five different ways to make money on Facebook:
1. Create a Facebook Blog – There are hundreds of thousands of these already so to truly take advantage of this, you need to be unique and creative (which goes the same for any method mentioned here). Once you have a large audience, you can then turn around and sell ads and sponsorships to marketers who want to promote their products.
2. Facebook Consulting – There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of companies out there that would kill for a good Facebook Application developer. Since Facebook is fairly new, the supply of great developers is still low. If you have this skill, you would be stupid not to explore this business opportunity. Rumors have it that this skill is a $200-$500 an hour gig. See the potential?
3. Develop Your Own Facebook Apps – Some might say, “Why develop an App for someone else, when you could do it for yourself?” – Good argument but with Facebook you already have the leverage of all their traffic. It’s almost a license to print money, and you’ll be happy you took the time to do it. Imagine if it made it to the top ten Facebook Applications page – you would be making money off it for quite some time!
4. Facebook PPC – If you’re skilled in the PPC arena and familiar with Adwords and YSM, then it’s safe to say that you could take that valuable skill and tap into Facebook’s own PPC program. Many people have made small fortunes doing this already – the trick is knowing what to promote. But what makes it so attractive is the fact that you can actually dial in your demographics down to sub-level – “Canadian Women, Ages 18-35, Single, Who Like Classic Rock”. That’s pretty cool, and if you know how to work it, then you could be building your bank account right now.
5. Write A Book About Facebook – Yeah, it really is a good idea, especially if you know the Development side of things. A well written Facebook Application Development book could possibly make the author millions of dollars, and would earn him/her instant credibility over night. There aren’t many (if any) on the market yet, so there is still room for people who want to take it on. Publishing companies who know what’s hot and what’s not would jump all over you if you had one in development.
There are several ways to make money on Facebook and the five listed above are certainly not all of them. However, they are 5 great ways that you could cash in on Facebook. So go get started on your fortune right now!
Creating A Passive Income Online Is Easier Than You Thought
The world today is highly materialistic and as a result you often find yourself caught in a frenzy to work in order to amass wealth proportionate to your needs. The more you work, the more you earn, this is direct income. The opposite spectrum to this is passive income.
What Is Passive Income?
As the name suggests, this is an income that is generated with the least of effort. The greatest benefit of this type of income is that you do not require to work daily at it. In order to establish a foolproof passive income system you must initially work hard for a while. As soon as it bears fruits, you could take a back seat and attend to it only once in a while. There are many advantages for setting up such a system. The most obvious of all being that you get enough free time to either work elsewhere and earn more or spend quality time with your family.
Four Easy Ideas For Developing Passive Income Online
Affiliate programs are the most popular system of all passive incomes. In order to be successful here you need to become the affiliate of a highly successful and popular company which would help you get off ground effortlessly (often at zero cost to you). A reputed affiliate would offer to help you launch your own website, SEO and marketing campaign so you could promote their products to the greatest extent even if you were a novice. If you choose right this could be the source of a life-time passive income online for you.
Selling information is another lucrative option. There are so many things people want to know about and they surf the Net in order to find this information. In case you are an expert at anything at all, you could always write an e-book or a series of e-books and sell them online. Here too, your effort would be one time; the time and effort you spend in writing the book and packaging it so it cannot be downloaded without your knowledge (and due payment). Once this is done, you could sell your e-book to as many people as you have order it, thus creating a perfect source of passive income online.
Selling advertising space on your website or blog can make you money. Imagine that you have a very successful website or blog where thousands of people visit every day. Now, if you sold some space on that website to someone who was interested to place an ad on your website, you would earn an excellent residual income for no direct effort. Your effort has been and would continue to be in promoting the popularity of your website; the advertising site would pay to profit from that visibility. Some examples are Google AdSense, related products or services, etc. This is an excellent way to earn a passive income online.
Information sharing is another great choice to try. You could compile some excellent data for which people would be willing to pay to become a member of your website or system. This could be a job site, a platform for freelancers, an article compiler, technical information, tips for hobbies, etc. You work hard in setting up the system, and then the more members you get, the more money you make.
As you can see it is not difficult at all to set up a system of passive income online which you could milk your whole life. What is needed here is a little business acumen, a belief that you can and some hard work (initially). Imagine having multiple stream of passive income while you vacation all over the world. Is this not something worth pursuing?
About the author:
Suzanne Thomson works full time from home online. Visit her website to read Home Business Opportunity Reviews and find out more ideas for generating a passive income online.