Websites Traffic And Profit Then Sell

Building up Tons of Traffic and Boosting Profit Margins to Flip Websites When you start off flipping websites, one of the hardest skills to master is that part that comes in between all the buying and the selling.

As you should well know, flipping consists of buying a website for a certain price, and then selling it for a price that is higher. Needless to say, you’re going to have to provide some reason why your buyer would want to pay more than what you paid for the website, and that’s where the ‘in between’ part comes in.

Basically, what goes on between the buying and selling stage is the portion of website flipping where you increase the value of the website.

Although there are several ways in which this can be done, the two most appealing factors in the value of a website are simple: Traffic, and profit.

Mastering the art of building tons of traffic, and boosting your profit margins, is something that most every marketer strives to do. After all, it is what marketers use their websites for – to sell products, or promote offers, both of which require traffic, and conversion rates that are as high a possible.

Whether or not you are an expert in this, you’re going to find that the process is quite different when it comes to website flipping.

Over the course of this guide, you’re going to be given a walkthrough into how to build traffic streams and up the profits of a given website in a manner that is most convincingly going to help you to flip it for more than you paid initially.

Every section of this guide is tailored to concentrate on that final goal, so you should, by the end of this guide, know exactly what you need to do!

Instead of just a list of instructions, or some vague explanation as to what you should be doing, we’re going to guide you through a methodical process that begins with actually understanding what you are doing.

By firmly grasping the theory of flipping, you will find that everything else falls into place with ease.

And as a result, you should have little or no problems when it actually comes time for you to implement what you’ve learnt for yourself.

Does that sound appealing enough to you? Well, assuming it does, let’s go ahead and get started!

Profit and Traffic: The Two Keys of Website Value Understandably, when someone looks at a website with an eye out to purchase it, they’re really asking themselves one question, “What is it that I can gain by buying this website?”

When you consider the fact that most people who buy websites are marketers, and they’re looking to make a profit from the website itself, it stands to reason that the very first thing a prospective buyer would zoom in on is the profit figures of the website.

Of course, everyone also knows that traffic is the lifeblood of any website, and so it is equally unsurprising that closely after profit, the traffic statistics of a website are bound to be scrutinized.

Both of these factors, profit and traffic, are without a doubt the two most important things to buyers. And that, naturally, makes them both the two most important things that you need to focus on if you want to flip websites.

Despite this, you would do well to realize that both profit and traffic are valued differently.

How about we take a look at each individually, so that you can firmly establish for yourself what each of these key factors consists of. Then, you should be also able to see how they tie in to the value of a website.

Revenue and Profit Seeing as we’re going to be using both these terms, it is worthwhile defining them right now.

Revenue is, in a nutshell, simply the amount of money that your website is earning on a monthly basis. On the other hand, profit is that amount, minus any and all expenses that your website incurs.

Mostly, these expenses take the form of things such as hosting fees, domain fees, as well as advertising fees, in some cases.

Depending on the type of website that you run, and revenue model that is used, you will find that your expenses do tend to vary from website to website. Of course, the number that is most important at the end of the day is your profit, so be sure that it is accurately stated.

Essentially, revenue is earned through a number of ways online.

Among the many options that exist, some of the most popular ones include: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Advertising revenue Selling your own products Promoting affiliate products Promoting Cost Per Action (CPA) offers

Granted, there are other ways to earn money online, but these form the most used methods of turning traffic into customers.

Some websites even use multiple methods of earning revenue, while others tend to focus on one, or at most too. Really, this is something that is up to you to decide on, but the fact remains that when you add all your earnings together, and subtract your expenses, you arrive at your profit.

When any potential buyer is thinking about a purchase, and he or she looks at your profit figures, they’re bound to look at it in terms of what they could potentially be earning from your website.

Therefore, if your website is pulling in $1,000 per month in profit, and you’re looking to sell it for an exorbitant price of about $100,000, any buyer would plainly see that it will take them 100 months to make up what they’ve spent.

With online businesses, it is unlikely that a buyer would be willing to pay a price that amounts to 8 years worth of earnings from a website.

On the flipside, if the price was instead about $12,000, which is the equivalent of a years earnings from the website, it would definitely appeal more.

Quite simply, this is how profit ties in with the perceived value of a website.

Traffic Unlike revenue and profit, traffic is a slight bit more of a ‘wild card’. Since traffic consists of visitors to your website, and therefore, potential customers, it is definitely of value, but the exact value of traffic can be slightly unclear, and certainly very subjective.

Remember this one fact, always: Not all traffic is equal.

Unlike profit, where it doesn’t matter where it comes from, as long as it’s there, traffic is a completely different kettle of fish and there are numerous factors that could make one form of traffic totally better than another.

For the most part, this ties in with how targeted the traffic that your website is getting is.

Think of it this way: Assuming your website is about fly fishing, having traffic that consists of people who are conspiracy theory enthusiasts would probably not do you much good at all.

Certainly, some conspiracy theory enthusiasts may like fishing, but many won’t.

However, assuming once again that you have the same fly fishing website, and your traffic consists of people who are all highly interested in fly fishing, then you’ll find that you’re able to obtain much better results!

That’s what targeting is all about, ensuring that your traffic consists of people who are genuinely interested in the area that your website covers.

Of course, it is possible to go deeper still.

Imagine how amazingly well your website could do if every visitor to it was already interested in buying some of the fly fishing equipment that you were selling. Think of how that would affect your profit margins.

It sounds potentially great, doesn’t it?

Partly, this is the problem with traffic and its value. While the right type of traffic is certainly worth its weight in gold, as you now know, the wrong type of traffic is pretty much close to worthless.

Due to this, any buyers are going to end up wanting to inspect the traffic statistics as closely as possible, and try to judge for themselves whether or not the traffic is something that they can cash in on.

Now that we’ve covered both of these two areas that form the foundation of the pricing of websites, let’s just go over one final area that we should touch on, and that is how buyers evaluate prices.

Prices from a Buyer’s Perspective Knowing what buyers look for is something that is really advantageous, considering that once you understand it fully – you can then tailor your efforts to exactly what buyer’s desire!

That means that you’ll waste less effort on carrying out improvements that aren’t going to matter much to a potential buyer, and instead zoom in on the areas that are going to be of huge importance to buyers.

Already, you have some of the knowledge that you need in this regard, seeing as you know that traffic and profit margins are the two main factors buyers tend to look at first.

Also, you know how buyers look on both of these factors, and how they’re used as basis’ to determine what the buyer would feel the price point should be.

Essentially, all of this forms the crux of what the buyer’s perspective consists of. For a buyer, a suitable price is one that appeals enough due to the perceived value of the traffic and profit margins that the website has.

After what we discussed, you know that actual profit plays a much bigger role than simply traffic alone – unless that traffic really can be shown to be of tremendous value.

In large part, this is due to the fact that profits are proof of the quality of traffic. If you can demonstrate that your traffic converts well into sales, then that will satiate the demands of most buyers.

Of course, trying to do so without actually making sales is close to impossible.

What you should realize though is that this link, between traffic and sales, is the focal point of a buyer. By using sales as a proof of the value of traffic, you can really drive home the value of a website.

That is what we’re going to be looking at for most of the rest of this guide – how to improve on traffic, and also improve on sales and profits so that you have ‘proven’ traffic, and not just the dodgy variety.

Assuming you’re ready to move on, let’s start off by looking at how you can build up tons of traffic.

Acquiring Tons of Traffic for a Website Flip Don’t make the mistake of just skimming through this section on account that you think you know everything there is about acquiring traffic.

As you’re about to discover, acquiring traffic for a website flip is subtly different from the methods that you probably have been using up to now. And you’re going to need to understand and appreciate this difference if you want to go about it in the best way possible.

Of course, many of the standard methods may work, but you’ll find that you’re putting in a ton of effort in places where you don’t really have to.

Why is there a difference? Well, two main reasons, and these are:

1. Websites bought and then used for flipping aren’t new websites, and so they already should have some established streams of traffic.

2. Instead of just aiming to acquire highly targeted traffic, you have a different goal: Acquiring highly targeted traffic that can be shown to be sustainable!

Honestly, the first point is one that you probably already know, and we’ll be discussing it as we go along.

However it is the second point that proves to be a stumbling block for many people.

Think of it this way: Put yourself in the shoes of a buyer, and imagine that you’re checking out a website that is for sale, and has great profit margins. But then, when you look at the traffic statistics, you notice that the sources of traffic are constantly changing at an alarming rate.

What this means is that the sources being used are non-sustainable, i.e. they stop producing traffic after a short period of time.

Therefore, in order to continue to generate the type of traffic (and therefore, profit margins) that the website has been acquiring up to this point in time, you’ll need to continue to put in an effort to renew these traffic sources.

Soon you’ll find out what some non-sustainable traffic sources are, but for now, that should be enough to give you a rough idea of what we mean.

Anyway, now that you know the areas that we’re most interested in, let’s start off by discussing the biggest source of traffic out there…

Search Engines Everyone knows that search engines form an integral part of most every approach to acquiring traffic. Truthfully, it would be foolhardy to ignore such a large source, even if you are in a competitive niche.

Commonly, any effort to improve on the traffic that you acquire from search engines falls under the bracket of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short.

However, when it comes to website flipping, chances are that the website you bought already has undertaken some SEO, and so instead of approaching it from scratch, you could save a lot of time by first determining where exactly your website stands with search engines.

To accomplish this, you’ll need to look at how your website ranks on various search engines.

Normally, you’d already have gone over this data before you bought the website, and so you should be able to see what keywords your website ranks under, and how well it ranks.

From these keywords, you should be able to come up with the current keyword list that your website seems to focus on.

Other points of interest that you may also want to look up include such things as Google Page Rank.

Once you have the relevant data, you should ensure that your website’s SEO efforts cover all of the following: 1. Targeting the Right Keywords In all honesty, you could sum this up in two words: Keyword research.

By using a keyword research tool, such as Google’s Keyword Tool, you should be able to come up with a reliable list of the ‘right’ keywords to target for whatever niche your website is focusing on.

What makes the ‘right’ keyword ‘right’? Well quite simply it is all about balancing the popularity of a keyword against its competition.

When you use any keyword research tool, you’ll be able to get a rough idea of the popularity of a given keyword, and it is normally measured in searches per day, or searches per month. Google’s Keyword Tool uses searches per month, incidentally.

That means that there are those amounts of searches every month for that keyword.

Needless to say, the more searches the better, but you need to also take into account the fact that more popular keywords tend to have more competition as well.

Head over to Google itself and type in the keyword that you’re researching. When you get the results of your search, you should notice the total number of results is listed in the upper right hand corner.

All these results are your competition, and the more of them they are, the harder it is going to be for you to climb the search engine listings.

So finding the ‘right’ keywords is all about locating keywords that have at least decent popularity, but only average or less competition.

Also, carry out similar research for the keywords that your website currently focuses on, and figure out just how much popularity and competition they have. Who knows, you might find that you somehow ranked quite high on a keyword with lots of competition.

Once you’ve found a reasonable number of new keywords (about 20 or so to start with would be great), compare them against the existing keywords that your website focuses on.

From this comparison, you should be able to see whether or not you can improve on the keywords that your website is trying to exploit.

Simple enough, right?

After that, it’s all about creating new content that focuses on those keywords, by using them throughout the content. A keyword density of about 1% to 3% is generally advisable, and this means that you’ll want anything from 1 to 3 keywords per 100 words of content.

Admittedly, you might have to wait a while before your new content gets listed and ranked properly, but it is certainly a great way to improve on your traffic dramatically.

2. Getting More Backlinks Nowadays, backlinks form up as a hefty part of SEO value, and so you shouldn’t ignore them.

No matter how many backlinks your website already has, more is certainly advisable, and you should be building them constantly so that they complement your other SEO efforts.

Try to focus on ‘high authority’ pages if you can. Getting backlinks from pages that have great reputation, such as *.gov or *.edu websites will provide a lot of extra value.

Over the course of some of the rest of our discussion, we’ll be looking at a few ways by which you can get backlinks and boosting your traffic at the same time, so don’t worry too much if you’re not sure what you should be doing right now.

3. Checking Meta Tags One area of SEO that many people constantly overlook, forget about, or simply don’t notice nowadays is Meta tags.

Not so long ago, Meta tags were an indispensable part of SEO, and to not have them would be pretty much suicidal in terms of generating traffic. Although this is no longer the case, as more and more search engines have gravitated away from Meta tags, there are still some important tags that you should definitely have.

Among these important tags is the title tag, that should always be present and also have some of the main keywords that you’re focusing on it in.

Equally important is the description tag, which search engines such as Yahoo! do use.

Yes, you’re going to want to be using some keywords in this tag too, and you’re going to want to make sure that each page of your website has a different description.

Next up are Headline tags, or H1 tags as they’re alternatively known as. These should be used for any of your headlines, and they’re definitely worth some SEO brownie points for quite a few search engines.

Finally, there is the alt tag, which is used to give meaning to images. After all, search engine bots can’t ‘see’ images the way we humans do, so you should let them know what those images are by using this kind of tag.

While we’re on the topic though, there’s one type of tag worth briefly covering too, and that is keyword tags. Basically, keyword tags are mostly obsolete now, but there is some evidence that Yahoo! still employs them.

Therefore, it doesn’t hurt to use keyword tags if you want to, but it isn’t essential.

Covering each one of these 3 bases, you should be able to easily boost your website’s SEO value. As your website steadily climbs the search engine listings, you’ll end up getting more traffic.

And as you well know: More traffic means more sales!

But taking full advantage of search engines is by no means the only thing that you should be doing to boost your traffic. So how about we move on to the next area that you should look into…

Article Marketing Yet another name that is probably familiar to you, article marketing has grown in popularity on the heels of the amazing results that some people acquire through it.

Carrying out article marketing to boost the value of a website for flipping is really not that different from regular article marketing though, and so let’s go over the process that you should follow briefly…

1. Check existing articles If you have existing articles that are a source of traffic, check out what keywords they are for, and how they’re doing. If they’re doing great, then you won’t want to focus on

that keyword at all, but if they aren’t, you might very well want to replace them with your own.

2. Carry out keyword research Once again, you’re going to want to do your very own keyword research, and find a list of strong keywords from which your article can acquire traffic.

3. Write a compelling article Based on your keywords, you should write a really amazing and compelling article that uses them. Remember, the aim of your article should be to get your readers to click on the backlink, so everything about your article should be geared towards that goal.

Also, never conclude your article within the body itself, but instead let it flow smoothly into the resource box, with the conclusion being the backlink itself.

If you want to, look up and learn to use the AIDA method, as it will help you to write articles that really can gather a ton of traffic.

4. Submit the article to article directories, and build backlinks to it once published Sadly, this is the one step that many people miss out when article marketing. No, not the submission, but building backlinks that boost their articles SEO value.

Admittedly, you won’t want to spend a lot of time building these backlinks, but there are quick and easy ways to get a lot of backlinks, as you’re going to find out in the next section, so hang in there for now!

Following this method, you should be able to build up several different streams of traffic in the form of articles. Not only that, but you’ll also be acquiring more backlinks to your website as you do so, and thus boosting its SEO value too.

In short: Article marketing kills two birds with one stone.

For now, let’s move on, and start to look at another great way to build backlinks and acquire traffic (though admittedly, you’ll find it works better for the former than the latter).

Social Bookmarking In tandem with the rise of the ‘Web 2.0’, all things social have exploded onto the internet in spectacular fashion, from social networks, right on to social bookmarks.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with these bookmarks, they’re simple enough to understand: Basically, social bookmarking sites allow their users to share interesting content, and vote on what they feel others will find interesting too.

Thus, unlike search engines where the ranking of your content is based on algorithms, social bookmarks are actually based on real people voting.

Naturally, the system has its flaws too, but we’re not really interested in that. What we are interested in is the fact that social bookmarking represents a great avenue to gain yet more traffic.

And at the same time, because you’re getting linked, you’re going to be building backlinks too.

However do keep in mind that to acquire traffic from social bookmarks, you’re going to need content that people really are willing to vote for. If your content is just like every other piece of content out there in your niche, then chances are no one is going to find it worth voting for.

On the other hand, if you can offer something unique, new, or exciting, then you’re bound to rise quickly through the ranks!

Due to this, the best type of content for social bookmarks is anything and everything that has a certain edge, freshness, or element of excitement to it. Pick your headlines and topics with care, and be sure to make it interesting, above all else!

Of course, you can really bookmark practically anything at all, and so if you’re interested in backlinks more than actual traffic, then you can social bookmark pretty much every page in your website.

Remember how we told you that we’d be discussing a great way of quickly acquiring backlinks for articles? Well, this is it.

Admittedly, social bookmarking manually can get tedious pretty quickly. With hundreds and thousands of social bookmarking sites out there, if you’re spoilt for choice, and even just bookmarking to something like twenty or forty is going to be a chore if you have a large number of pages that you want to bookmark.

Due to this, there are various ways that you can accelerate the process, by automating it slightly.

For starters, check out Social Marker. This website offers a semi-automatic approach to social bookmarking that will simplify things greatly by partially automating most of what you need to input. However, you will still need to key in the captcha images manually.

If you’re interested in cutting down your workload even more though, then Bookmarking Demon may be more along the lines of what you’re looking for. By totally automating the process, it allows you to bookmark to multiple sites with just a single click of the button.

Time to get back to something a little more traffic oriented though…

Cost Per Click (CPC) Advertising Last, but most certainly not least, we come to CPC advertising. Honestly, you’ve probably heard of this before, either in terms of AdWords or AdSense, but like many people, the chances are that you haven’t conducted your own CPC campaign before.

Here’s the bottom line: CPC advertising is a great and tremendously powerful way of getting tons of extremely targeted traffic quickly. And it is, of course, sustainable.

When it comes to website flipping though, it is going to eat at your profit margins. But if you’re able to increase your revenue dramatically then the extra expenditure is certainly more than justified!

Look at it this way: If you’re spending $0.10 per click, and you have a 10% conversion rate, that means that for every 10 visitors, you’re making 1 sale. Thus, for every $1 that you spend, you’re converting a customer.

Therefore as long as your sale is earning you more than $1, you’re already in the black. Consider most affiliate products give out commissions in the order of $15 to $20 per sale, you should be able to see how powerful this could be.

Unfortunately, CPC advertising can take time to master. While it is based upon ‘bidding’ for keywords, and the same rules regarding popularity vs. competition do apply, the truth is that there are a lot of additional factors to consider.

If you can it would be advisable to try running a CPC campaign or two on something small, before you move on to actually using it for your blog flipping efforts.

Anyway, it’s time we ended this part of our guide, and before we do, let’s spare a word for some unsustainable traffic generation methods.

Other Traffic Generation Methods That Are Unsustainable Yes, there are numerous other traffic generation methods out there, but the problem is that they’re unsustainable unless you continue to put in constant work into them. Such things as forum posts and blog commenting are prime examples of such.

While they’re good for a quick boost of traffic, the statistics will clearly show that they don’t last in the long run, and so they’re not really going to add too much value to your website for when you flip it.

Still – this doesn’t mean to say that you can’t use them.

In some situations, they’re a great way of demonstrating the ability of your website to acquire and convert burst traffic from these sources. Advertised correctly, this could appeal to many buyers.

Long story short, it’s up to you, but you should definitely concentrate more on more sustainable traffic generation methods.

Now that we’ve covered pretty much everything you need to know about traffic in flipping, it’s high time we looked at how you can actually boost your profit margins!

Convincingly Boost Profit Margins for a Website Flip What is it that helps your profit? Well, conversions of course, but conversions just mean that your traffic is completing a certain goal. What that goal is, is the question.

When discussing the profits of a website, two things pop into mind readily: 1. The type of monetization used, and 2. The conversion rate Basically, both of these factors are going to be affecting your profit margins, and you should see why pretty much instantly. Some types of monetization tend to perform better on certain types of websites than others, and this does make sense.

Similarly, there are various ways in which you can improve your conversion rates, and even an increase of 1% in terms of that rate could provide a dramatic difference in your profits.

After all, if you’re getting 10,000 visitors per month, then 1% of that is 100 sales. Assuming you earn even $10 per sale, that’s already an extra $1,000 in your pocket!

Let’s look at both of these factors individually.

Improving and Diversifying the Types of Monetization Seeing as you’ve bought an existing website to flip, odds are there already exists some form of monetization or other. If this is the case, then you’re going to have to evaluate how that

monetization is doing, and see if there exists any other type of monetization that you could put in place.

Generally, there are three main types of monetization that are used on websites for flipping, and these are advertising revenue, affiliate products, and Cost Per Action (CPA) offers.

Admittedly, you could even create your own product and sell it, but this is going to involve quite a bit of additional work.

Still, with or without that last option included, you still have numerous avenues by which you can diversify your sources of revenue.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules about what works and what doesn’t. And really, the only way for you to figure out whether or not a certain type of monetization is going to do well is to go ahead and try it out!

That said, when it comes to selling products or promoting CPA offers, one great rule to follow is this: Find what people are already buying, and sell it!

What this means is that, out there, chances are there already are various marketers promoting various products related to your niche. So what you need to do is identify what is selling like hot cakes, and monetize your website with it.

By doing so, you’re going to be providing a product or offer that you already know appeals to numerous people. In short, it’s a proven ‘seller’, and you should find that your work is much easier in the long run.

More importantly though, even once you diversify, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re doing everything possible to help your conversion rates, and this is a slightly different kettle of fish…

Testing and Tweaking for Better Conversion Rates What makes people buy things? What makes them click advertisements? What helps conversion rates?

Marketers have been asking themselves that for ages, and the truth is, there is no one answer for every situation. But what is known is that there are trends as to what works well and what doesn’t, and once you find these, you can take advantage of them.

Frankly speaking, bettering your conversion rates consists of one thing: Testing.

Every aspect of your website could play a role in your conversion rates, from your layout, right on to your headlines. Of course, some elements play a more readily apparent role than others, such as your sales copy, which is undeniably one of the biggest factors in your conversion rates.

In order to test for what works and what doesn’t, you’ll need to make changes, and then see how your conversion rate responds in turn.

If you want, you could conduct split tests, or A/B tests, as they’re known, where you provide two or more alternate versions of a certain element, such as two or more alternative headlines, for example, and then send traffic to both and see which one performs better.

For more complex cases, you could even use multivariate tests to test many different elements, and combinations of elements, simultaneously, but this requires a large amount of traffic to be accurate.

End of the day, it is up to you how you go about testing, but some areas that could help boost your conversion rates include: 1. Improving your headlines so that they grab attention more convincingly, and prevent high bounce rates (people leaving right after reading the headline).

2. Tweaking your sales copy by inserting bullet points.

3. Adding subtitles at strategic points of your sales copy, to gain, and keep, the attention of skim readers.

4. Inserting audio and video as part and parcel of your sales copy.

5. Adjusting the layout of your website.

6. Making sure that the ‘target’, i.e. what you want your customers to click, is visible and easily accessible.

7. Ensuring that your sales copy focuses on the benefits rather than the features of whatever you’re promoting.

Bear in mind that what we’ve just gone over is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to improving your conversion rates. There are countless items that could be added to that list, enough to fill an entire library!

Basically, if you have an idea that you think might help your conversion rate, go ahead and test it, and if it works, implement it!

By slowly but surely increasing your conversion rate, you’ll find that your profit margins skyrocket as a result. And once you’ve accomplished that, you’re really going to be able to flip your website for a good profit in turn.

After everything we’ve discussed up to this point, we’re now finally at the close of this guide.

Let’s just say a few final words about boosting traffic and profit margins, before we let you go ahead and get right down to it!

Taking Full Advantage a Website’s Potential All of what you’ve learnt about during this guide amounts to one thing in particular: Taking advantage of a website’s potential.

Mastering this skill is going to help you in so many more ways than just website flipping, and you now know pretty much everything you need to really maximize the potential of each and every website that you control.

In essence, the keys are in your hands now!

Be sure to go over each aspect of both traffic and profit margins that we’ve discussed individually, and see where you can improve both for your websites. Identify these areas, and then carry out the improvements that you deem necessary.

Within a short time, you’ll find that you’re able to boost your website’s enough that you can double or even triple your profits!

Good luck with your flipping!