This week’s guest is Chelsea Clark!
Chelsea Content Monetization Strategist and website investor. She’s the founder of blogsforsale.co and HerPaperRoute.com, where she helps creative business owners increase the value of their niche site, so that they can sell it for profit.
Learn more about Chelsea’s business at blogsforsale.co
To learn about her coaching groups, visit herpaperroute.com
To learn more about Domain Magnate and find additional resources to buy or sell an online business, visit https://domainmagnatecapital.com/
READ THE EPISODE:
Michael 0:11
Hello, this podcast is brought to you by demand magnate maker private equity firm where we acquire and grow online businesses, you’re welcome to go to domain magnate.com And subscribe to our newsletter to find out about the latest deals and offerings. Today’s guest is Chelsea Clark, founder of blocks for sale.co. And I’m really excited to talk to Chelsea because I’ve been a customer. And I’ve looked at quite a few deals, and there were several that we were actually considering to acquire. So hi, Chelsea.
Chelsea 0:48
Hi, thank you so much for having me on, Michael.
Unknown Speaker 0:50
Thanks for joining. So I’d love to learn more about your experience and how you got into flipping websites. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you really what was the first website you built on managed or sold?
Unknown Speaker 1:05
Sure. So I love talking about blog flipping, I started my first blog just as a hobby when I was in college many, many, many years ago. And I ran it just as a hobby for a long time not even realizing that you could monetize a site. And I started to build sites from scratch. This was back using Dreamweaver and building HTML pages and coding. And then when WordPress became a thing that just made it so much more accessible and so much easier. So I started actually taking blogging and niche site developing more seriously about seven years ago. And that’s when I monetize. It was a small beauty blog that I had. And I sold that on its one year old birthday for for just over $40,000. And then I was just hooked after that. It was like, Oh, this is so much fun. It’s creative, it’s technical. It’s all the things that I enjoy doing. Sort of in one in one thing. So since then I have been building and selling my own sites. And about three years ago, I went through the IPVA International Business Brokers Association, and I was working in a business brokerage, and all the brokers were really focused on selling brick and mortar companies. But I knew the potential in the online space and selling online businesses with digital products, affiliate marketing, and ad revenue and all of these things that I really knew there was a market for so I launched my brokerage blogs for sales.co. And I’ve been doing that ever since.
Unknown Speaker 2:43
Nice. So you’ve been full time at this for about four years now.
Unknown Speaker 2:48
It’s been six years now. Yeah. So I went full time, about six years ago, and just sharing my journey sharing my blog flipping tips and marketing tips. I went to school for marketing. So digital media and marketing. So it was really like a natural progression just to work for myself and do online business marketing.
Unknown Speaker 3:08
Okay, very cool. And so you’ve had that first flip for $40,000. And that got you hooked in and I certainly know the the feeling. The excited excitement I’ve been I’ve got, I’ve done probably more than 100 flips now this past 16 years. And it’s always exciting first, then when you find a deal, and you negotiate, you buy it, you see what other things to improve and how you grow it add more value, and then reselling, and trying to time it find the right time to sell. So yeah, mitigate the risks.
Unknown Speaker 3:45
Definitely. And I love the strategy behind it when you’re thinking about how you can take a site and put your own spin on something, and how you can take what the seller started and make it better. And just grow it from there. I felt I find that that’s the funnest part for me selling it. That’s always a fun, exciting too. But yeah, like you say, trying to find the balance of trying to find the right time to sell. That can be a little bit tricky. But you know, when you’re actually in it, and you’re working on it, and you’re creating great content and creating products that sell and that the audience loves. I feel like that’s the funnest part.
Unknown Speaker 4:16
Yeah, absolutely. So how many other flips or websites? Have you have you done after that one?
Unknown Speaker 4:23
So to date, I flipped about 30 websites from my of my own and then we’ve sold hundreds and hundreds of sites on the blogs or sell platform. But yeah, but but just under 20 of my own, and they’re ranging from smaller niche sites to a little bit bigger. I really like to sort of when I get a site that’s earning about $1,000 a month, that’s usually when I start thinking about putting the wheels in motion to sell it.
Unknown Speaker 4:52
Okay, there are nice 30 slides. So that’s quite a lot of experience. And what was the What was the aspect of this whole process where you felt like you you’re bringing the most value? parent comes to, you know, finding deals, buying, growing and selling? Where do you find that, that you’re able to increase value the most?
Unknown Speaker 5:16
Yes, and I actually love to look for distressed websites. So not distressed in that there’s any actual like bad problems. So not nothing with toxic backlinks or bad quality or anything like that. But just distressed in a way that there’s opportunities there, there, the current seller maybe missed out on some opportunities to monetize or they just, they didn’t, they’re great. They’re experienced in their niche, but maybe they’re not the best at monetization. So that sort of monetization gap that I can see that I could add value to knowing monetization and marketing having experienced there. So I just really look for really great content sites where the content is the number one thing that is high quality, and it’s informative, and it’s very niche specific. And then, of course, I’m looking for sites that have great traffic that’s diversified. So I like to see it from Google traffic, as well as Pinterest, organic traffic, other social media is great to like Facebook groups that can be really good if I can find a content site that has a Facebook community, that sending traffic to the business. That’s like a diamond in the rough I find it which can be really good for increasing the value over time. And really, that’s those are the main things I look for is the great content and a good diversified traffic sources. And then everything else I feel like can just be developed a little bit easier. It’s just those foundation things of getting the traffic going. That really takes the longest.
Unknown Speaker 6:44
Yeah, they’re nice i I’d say my approach is pretty similar. Looking at sites that have solid content, solid backlink profile, avoiding anything that just really terrible content, or really high risk backlinks. And the sites without the monetized and my favorites, just recently require this website was monetized by Google AdSense. And we switched it to azoic. And the revenue just doubled right away. So those those are the best, it’s kind of rare these days, because most webmasters, most business owners really know that there are different opportunities for monetization out there. But occasionally you find these deals. So it’s very exciting. It’s a quick win.
Unknown Speaker 7:28
Definitely. Yeah, it is. It’s definitely an exciting moment when you could find something like that, that just kind of works for everybody. And it can make a quick deal.
Unknown Speaker 7:35
Yeah, absolutely. And what what are some other ways that you are able, what are some other quick wins you you’re consistently being able to define if your site’s or what are some of your favorite methods to really increase revenue and traffic? Yeah, so
Unknown Speaker 7:51
some of my favorite ways to increase revenue on a site is to create its own digital product. A lot of content sites, the sellers are really just thinking about turning out tons of content. And they may not have been thinking about sort of a long term passive revenue stream that could have been built into that content. So having a digital product like an ebook, an online course, those are really valuable assets. And if I can find a site that already has one like that, that’s great, as well as templates like Canva templates, I love to look for sites like that, because I can take what the seller has started with those templates or the core ecourse with the e book, and just build on it and rebrand it either as my own self, or I can create an alias of someone if I’m intending to sell this site down the road, so I can rebrand the course. And a really easy trick that I do for that is, instead of taking a whole course and having to re shoot all of the videos, or anything like that, what I do is I just record myself for one intro video, and I introduced the course and then I say and the following lessons will be narrated by Jess or Tom or whoever it was. So that way you can put your face on this program that you’ve taken over, but you don’t have to recreate all of the lessons or any of the lessons. So that’s something I do to add value and to increase the revenue is creating those digital products. As well as I love to also increase the ad revenue just by doing little things with the actual content like making the actual line height between sentences a little bit higher making the font a little bit bigger. These things can really just help increase your RPM and just increased your your give you a little boost to your ad revenue I found. Another thing that I love to do too is I like to get out there on to Pinterest, and use Pinterest as an organic marketing tool to drive traffic to those sites that I acquire. Because Pinterest is really great because if you can get a pin ranking in searches on Pinterest, it’ll be sending traffic to you for years to come. It’s not like social media. where you can post something on Twitter, a couple minutes later that tweet is gone and no one will see it, or in Facebook, it’s going to go down someone’s feed, and they won’t see it a couple days later. But on Pinterest, when you can rank in the searches there, you can be really getting that traffic for years and years to come. And Pinterest has a way of snowballing. I’m sure you’ve heard of viral pins. And that just means a pin that is taken off, and a lot of people are resharing. It, it’s just really getting a lot of link juice towards your site. So that’s a really great free way to drive traffic to any type of content site. And I know when you hear Pinterest, a lot of people still think it’s just for craft bloggers, or food bloggers or something like that. But really, any niche can be successful on Pinterest, and I’m in more of a tech business niche. And it’s it’s been a great way to to generate traffic, in my experience. That’s how you spend money.
Unknown Speaker 10:56
So it’s quite quite a lot of stuff to get into here. But first of all, I’m curious about digital products. So we had some mixed experiences with that. Some on some sites that worked really well. And we would just keep tweaking the conversions and then kept increasing. But another size that just didn’t work. For example, this one business that we have about scholarships, and we created this ebook that describes for students how to get all the scholarships, and it lists everything and explains everything. And there were just no sales like we sold maybe 10 ebooks or the past six months or so. So I’m curious, how do you how do you recognize where it’s where it’s a good idea where it’s not to create a digital product.
Unknown Speaker 11:41
I feel like really asking serving the audience that the site is coming with first and asking them really what it is that they need, looking into your Google Analytics and seeing what people are coming to your site where they’re clicking, where they’re going, looking into your Amazon Associates dashboard and seeing what people are clicking on what people are buying. And using that sort of data to go and then create those products after. And I would also say just like really reaching out, if it comes with an email list, sending out an email and saying, Hey, like I would love to hear your feedback. It could even be just hit reply. And I would love to chat with you or get face to face on Zoom, or something less personal, just send them to a link where you can send them to a Google forums where you could ask them a few questions just to get that feedback and understand where the audience is at related to the niche and what you could do to create products that could really serve them and help them.
Unknown Speaker 12:40
So it’s a good idea. So just asking the audience, for email or elsewhere, simply ask them if they would be interested in a digital product. And that’s that’s a good start. I guess it makes sense. Okay, and the interests so I don’t have as much experience with Pinterest, quite frankly, we did have some sites with good Pinterest traffic. But it seems it seems different. It’s different from SEO? Yeah, understanding is you have to keep producing viral pins to be like you have to keep hitting wild pins to get consistent traffic. And it’s sort of like you would you would get one viral and then it just goes down all the time. All right.
Unknown Speaker 13:20
Well, that’s a bit of a myth, actually. So in my experience, when you have a viral pin, yes, you are right, it will go it’ll be high for some time, and then it’ll go down. But those pins are showing up in search results. So they’re ranking on Pinterest searches. So when you’re on your Pinterest dashboard, you can type in a keyword. And Pinterest will show a whole bunch of pins that are related to that keyword. So you have to think when you’re pinning something, that image that you’re going to pin, you’re going to fill the description with the keywords that are relevant to the post, like the thing you’re linking to through that image, you’re going to put those keywords in the description in the title, and then you’re going to pin it to a very relevant keyword board. So on Pinterest, we have boards where you can pin different topics or different niche specific things. So if your niches let’s say, pets, you might have a couple different boards, like you’ll have one for dog food, one for dog toys, cat toys, whatever it is that you talk about on your blog, you’ll have a different board for each category. And then when you’re pinning your content, you pin it to those specific boards. And this just tells Pinterest what your content is about. So it knows how to show it to other people that they think would be interested in and takes a bit of time just like on Google when you’re waiting for your blog posts to get ranked and picked up on Google searches. It’s the same with Pinterest in that but I found that Pinterest is a little bit faster. So while you’re working on your Google, SEO and you’re you’re really focusing on growing in the search engines. You can also be working on Pinterest and get a little bit Have a jump ahead while you’re waiting to start ranking in traditional Google searches. And one other thing I would want to mention about Pinterest too is, don’t be scared if a site is getting a bunch of traffic from Pinterest from pins that may not be related to that specific blog post. Because the fact that lots of people are clicking, it just means that it’s showing up in search results, it’s showing up underneath related pins for other people. So when other people are pinning things about that content and your PIN shows up, that’s a good look for you because it can send people to your site. And I love it too, because you don’t have to pay for it. Pinterest does have promoted pins, you can by all means, but it’s just like a really nice, organic, free way to generate traffic. And it’s not something that it’ll just you have, you don’t have to do anything once you’ve pinned it once. There’s no upkeep, Pinterest will just start ranking it. And one last tip I want to say about that. And it’s sort of like a little hack on Pinterest that I’ve found to really work well is Pinterest likes to do its rankings in sessions. And what I mean by that is if you sit down, you say, Okay, I want to pin five images for my blog, I’m trying to generate some traffic to my blog where I’m selling whatever the product is. So when you sit down and you spend 20 minutes pinning, that’s considered a session. So anything that you pin during that 20 minutes should all be related to that one main thing that you want to send people to. So you can pin a few of your own pins, and then go and repin other people’s content that is related to your content. Because in that session, it’s telling Pinterest, that all of these pins are related. So if you’re repinning, high ranking images that are getting a lot of search traffic, and in that same session, you are pinning your content that’s related. Pinterest is going to start clumping those together. And you can sort of ride on the coattails of that more successful pin by another person.
Unknown Speaker 17:02
Okay, very interesting. Pinterest is easy and keep pinning, and also make sure that you do one type of content per session, right? And what’s recommended. So for someone who doesn’t know a lot about Pinterest and wants to do that, or wants to maybe outsource that festival, I guess it only works with certain types of niches or some niches might just not be that might not be traffic for Pinterest. Right. So how do you understand how do you figure that out? First of all, and then what’s the best way to structure your pinning strategy?
Unknown Speaker 17:37
Well, I think that’s a great question and a great thing to bring up because there are so many niches out there. So I think anyone who’s listening, no matter how bizarre your niche may be, just go onto Pinterest and spend some time typing in your keywords and seeing what comes up seeing what other creators are putting out there that may relate to your content. And you’ll also see a lot of promoted pins, they’ll come up. And if you’re seeing promoted pins that don’t really make sense, then maybe there’s just not that much content yet on Pinterest for your niche. And I would say just start putting some content out and see what happens because there are millions of people that use Pinterest monthly. And they are they’re known as shoppers that if you go through and you read Pinterest blog, they share all their stats, people are just on Pinterest ready to shop. So they’re clicking, they’re buying things. There’s lots of ways to even earn with affiliate links on Pinterest. It’s all legal. And you know, it’s all good to use affiliate links on Pinterest, which is another great way to increase your conversions and increase your revenue over time as well. So I would say just get out there. Of course, everyone has a different niche. So I can’t give a blanket answer to that. But I would say just go and see what other people are pinning and talking about and doing on the app related to the keywords that you want to rank for.
Unknown Speaker 19:01
And what’s the best way to do utilize your Pinterest strategy? If most effect would you be pinning maybe once a week, few times a week and like 510 pages, images per session?
Unknown Speaker 19:15
Yeah, I would recommend even if you could just set aside five minutes a day to just go and pin some of your content and spend even just 10 minutes a day just doing that. I feel like that would really help to give you a boost. And just knowing that it will take some time for Pinterest to understand what your content is about and start ranking those pins. But every little bit of effort that you do is not in vain. And it’s definitely worth it. And yeah, I’d say just go for it, that that’s a good strategy. And don’t give up don’t expect instant 1000s and 1000s of page view results right away. But I think if you just stick with it, and even just give yourself that little bit 10 minutes a day, it’ll be well worth well worth your time.
Unknown Speaker 19:57
And you mentioned boards. So should you Create boards before you start pinning, and then pin to those boards and use all the tags as well.
Unknown Speaker 20:05
Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right. So you should create your own boards and set up your account with all of the keywords that you want Pinterest to to recognize your account for. upload a photo or your logo, however you want to present your business on Pinterest and get your handle and you know, just start, just start using it and putting your keywords in your description. In your actual names, you can have your business name, and then there’s a little bit of space where you can have some more characters. That’s another great place to put keywords. So just whenever people are searching for your product, or the type of content that you create, they’ll be putting those keywords in the search and your account will come up.
Unknown Speaker 20:43
Okay, that’s good. What are some other monetization tips and tricks that you’ve used successfully? Have you worked a lot with affiliate sites and found some networks that maybe pay higher or convert better in general?
Unknown Speaker 21:00
Yeah, so I have worked with all different types of niche sites more so in tech niches. So I’ve created sites and sort of highly competitive niches to like web hosting, and affiliate marketing. And, you know, creating online businesses, these three very more popular harder to rank for in search results, it tends to be like for Google search results in the SERPs. But I have found that reaching out to affiliate partners directly, and really just working out a higher commission, just between myself and the brands of something that’s a little bit higher than what’s advertised, that’s just always been a really great strategy for me to increase the conversions or sorry, increase the Commission’s over time. You can also go, if you can sort of build up that relationship with your affiliate partners, affiliate managers, they really, they they’re hungry for publishers and content creators who really want to actually work for them. Because there are so many bloggers out there who will just join an affiliate program. And then they won’t really do too much, maybe they’ll promote during a special promotion or something. But generally month over month, there aren’t many publishers who are really focused on one or two affiliate partners to really work for them and really get those conversions up. So I feel like if you can find a brand that you really love, you use it yourself, you really do highly recommend it. And you can reach out to your affiliate manager and propose a closer relationship where you could maybe do a co webinar, I’ve done that with with ConvertKit and teachable before will host a webinar together with someone on their team. And it will be for my audience, and they’ll run ads for it. And you know, it’s just like, it’s a nice partnership that goes beyond just the basic you log in, you get your link and you share it and you know, you do whatever. But if you can actually create a really great relationship with the people on the team of that brand, it can really go a long way. And it really just works for both sides. So that’s something that I’ve been successful with over the years. And I’ve really been successful with that when creating niche sites that I intend to flip, because you’re increasing of so you’re getting a higher commission for the affiliate links on that site. And then when you sell it to the new owner, they get to take over that affiliate count account, and you’re just giving them a little bit extra, like you’re just giving them something a lot better with your site than they would be if they were to just start from scratch or buy it from someone else.
Unknown Speaker 23:36
Yeah, there’s certainly a lot of value in in working with your affiliate manager. And we’ve found the same that. In some places, we’ve been able to increase the commission by two 3x. And just just working for affiliate managers, we usually know everything about the niche space, and they are very willing to help you can ask him, What are the top keywords to go for? How do we increase conversion? We’ve had, we’ve had our managers or different sites tell us, like show us literally some of their highest converting websites using the same offer. And just give us the exact framework of how to get the optimal conversions. So they definitely have a lot of McCann bring a lot of value. And yeah, it is it is unfortunate that most people just don’t communicate with affiliate managers with that much. They they sort of get a bad rap. I’m seeing a lot of sites now use Amazon affiliate Amazon Associates where you you can’t really do you don’t have affiliate managers and Amazon at Amazon Associates and you can’t really increase commissions you have to be making probably like a billion dollars in sales to to be able to talk to anyone with scale. And challenge is that many niches there is just no alternatives. I’m curious if you faced that as well. There was quite a few niches where you just can’t find any Another alternative except for Amazon affiliate.
Unknown Speaker 25:03
Yeah, I mean, there are because Amazon has everything right. But the Commission’s of course are just a little bit low. It’s no secret, like Amazon Commission’s are low. But that’s when I would look into creating your own digital product. So if you’re in a niche, and you can’t seem to find any affiliate partners or any products that makes sense for your niche, first, though, I would be concerned if you’re working in a niche where there’s no products to sell, that could be cause for concern. I mean, you want to be creating a niche site where there’s products to sell, there’s a market who buys the products, you know, you want to be in some sort of niche with, it’s profitable to the point that you can make it profitable for yourself, because you can see products that you could sell to people. If you’re not selling things, then you’re just you’re running a hobby blog, you’re not in business, businesses sell things. So think about that, when you’re creating your niche site, or you’re buying a niche site, you have to think with the end game and or the end goal in mind, how am I going to sell things with this content, and maybe it is just you, you’re just going to count on ad revenue, you know, you’re going to get lots of traffic. So you can just earn passive ad revenue. And there’s nothing bad about that either. But it’s so nice if you can actually control your income a little bit more by earning from affiliate links, or digital products where you get 100% of the sale. So that’s when I would say if you really can’t find anything in your niche, you cannot think of any product aside from something that would be on Amazon, then maybe it’s time to either build out your niche, find, find something there that you can actually sell a little bit deeper, or create an actual digital product of your own. If you have an audience, if you’re working on you’re building your email list, which everyone should be making email marketing, absolute focus, I do believe that, then think about something that you can help your listeners, your readers, your subscribers with whatever their problem is, can you create some sort of digital product to help them get from point A to point B? That’s really where I would be looking at it?
Unknown Speaker 27:06
Yeah, there is certainly a lot of value in an email list. I agree with that as well. And so how long do you usually hold sites before you sell them,
Unknown Speaker 27:17
I usually sell them about a year, I will run a couple sites at a time. And I always liked I love flipping. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with building up your portfolio and holding on to sites and just you know, earning from that passive revenue. That’s great. But for me, the thrill is really in the the development and the flip and moving on to my next project. That’s really where I thrive. And so I like to sell even between six months to a year and I but I also recommend to people if you can hold it a little bit longer. And you know that you’re able to put the time in to be generating more traffic and more revenue during that time, you’re going to be able to sell it for more. So it’s not like a race to the finish line. But I do like to sell at about the one year mark. Because for me, I love to just focus on different things at different times, I don’t want to write about the same content for years and years to come. I like to be able to just focus on it for a batch time, you know, a couple months, and then move on to something completely different where I can explore a completely different niche, or a completely different monetization stream, and just go all in and then go all out.
Unknown Speaker 28:28
Yeah, yeah, I find it’s best to just you buy a site. And my strategy is usually like you buy a site. And before I buy, I would look what is the strategy? What are some quick wins, what are some more things we can do. And then once we do all those things, let’s say we plan to do some monetization improvement. We plan to add some more content, we building some more links. And once we’ve completed that we’ve rolled out all the content basically for the entire niche that that is relevant here, more or less where we can rank rather than enough backlinks. We’ve optimized the monetization. It’s yeah, there’s just no and then maybe you wait a few months, so you get good data for past three months. But beyond that, there is just no reason to hold on to the site long on right. Because you Your work here is done. Yeah. And that’s and that’s what I’m saying. Yeah, we are in the business of flipping we are not on the business of holding on to things and like keeping them forever. And there are quite a few people who do that and do that successful I might I must say but Yeah, certainly it’s important to stick with your if your strategy so if your strategy is flipping them, do what you can to improve and flip. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, one year mark is pretty good. And in terms of multiples what what are usually paying for sites are you looking for really good deals to pay like low or cheap or do you just focus on what what sites you can improve and grow and New York ages over? Paying sometimes two.
Unknown Speaker 30:01
So sometimes I will pay or I will overpay if the content is really good. And it’s missing a lot of monetization. So if a site is not earning very much, I’m going to pay more than it’s worth if the content is really good. Whereas if it’s earning, you know, let’s say 100 to $1,000 a month, I’m going to pay between 24x and 36x. It’s the standard, it seems to be the standard sort of multiple that is pretty common in selling sites, as you know. And that’s really where I’m looking at spending if the site is earning, but if the site is not earning, and I see value in it in other ways, because the content is great, or it’s getting great traffic, or maybe it has an email list of my targeted niche people, the people that I know, I have something that I could offer, then that to me is much more valuable. So I will offer well above 36x. And if the site’s not earning anything, then you know, I can just I can make a great offer to someone, if they’re not earning, they’re happy with, you know, the money that I would be offering would be really good. So it really just depends on the site. It’s, it’s not one size fits all. For me, I’ve definitely overspend on sites, when I just know that I can get that ROI a lot quicker. And it really comes down to the content for me.
Unknown Speaker 31:24
And so how many websites do usually work on at the same time? And do you have do you have a team they have some freelancers you work with.
Unknown Speaker 31:32
So right now I just work just it’s me. So I usually work on about two or three sites, myself at a time. And then I have a team that helps with my business, at blogs for sales. So we have a team there that helps with customer service, and you know, just being being there to help and guide people. But the actual sit down creating content, working on blogging, that’s all me right now, because I really just enjoy it so much. And I feel if I was to add a fourth site at a time, then for me, that would be the right time to hire out and get writers and virtual assistant and things like that. But three, I feel is a good number to do it just under my own umbrella.
Unknown Speaker 32:15
Perfect. And where do you find good deals these days.
Unknown Speaker 32:18
So I’m always looking at all the marketplaces, really, I’m out there every day, every morning, I’m going and I’m looking at all the main marketplaces. But really the best place that I’ve found my best deals is I will actually just go into Facebook groups for bloggers, and I’ll see bloggers promoting their content, I’ll go to their site, it’s not for sale. But if I like it, I’ll just flat out make them an offer. And that’s the way that I’ve really landed my best deals is to people who weren’t even thinking about selling. But I saw something in the site. And we just negotiated and made it happen. And, and that always feels good too. Because people who, you know, they’re they haven’t been up for sale for a while there are they haven’t been up for sale at all, they haven’t even been thinking about it. It’s it’s kind of fun, because you know that it’s fresh. A lot of times, too, I’ve noticed with blogs that maybe have been updated in a while you can go and you can find these content sites that have great content. But where’s the blog or there hasn’t been anything published in months? That’s usually indication that someone’s not at the wheel, they’re not as interested or they’re being called to other projects. So that’s when I would reach out and just get open a conversation and say, Hey, like I buy blogs, I buy sites, what’s the deal with your site? Would you ever consider selling it? And getting that face to face over zoom? That’s usually the best way? In my experience.
Unknown Speaker 33:39
Yeah, that are good. Yeah, it’s very nice. And do you? Do you ever buy bigger sites, or mostly like in that range of under $1,000, maybe a little bit more.
Unknown Speaker 33:49
So I usually buy sites in the 30,000 to $40,000 range. I also like to look for more starter sites, too. So I’m really, I’m all over the spectrum, really, I’ll buy sites for under $5,000. I’ll buy a site for $40,000 Just depends on if it’s getting much more traffic, it’s earning a lot more income, it has more established products and funnels, these things that come into play, but I’m definitely open to anything, really under $100,000. If it’s the right site, it just depends where I’m at in the moment, really, and what I can see myself being able to do moving forward, can I flip this site? Can I add a spin on it that could really increase the revenue? Each site is really different I found and I’ve bought sites that are really in really different niches to I last year, I bought a site that sold Genesis themes for WordPress, and the site had she started up really well. She built all of these child themes for Genesis Framework, and they’re good but she hadn’t been updating it in a long time. And of course WordPress is always having updates and themes are changing, and just the online space is changing. So if you have a template, a theme site, there would need to be someone there who’s updating the code and just making sure everything is up to date. And it hadn’t been updated in quite some time. So when I purchased it, I really just spent time updating the codes of all of the sites, I created one new theme, I sunset, a few of the themes that were kind of ugly, I just didn’t like them. So I just put them to rest. And I just focused on the highest selling themes. And then it was about six months later, I resold the site, and the buyer who bought that she has just done amazing. She’s just grown it from there. So it was sort of like I was just a middle person to clean it up and get it ready so that someone else could take it and run with it.
Unknown Speaker 35:44
Yeah, they’re nice. I like how you how you approach the business to make sure everyone, everyone is happy. Everyone profits, the buyers? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. The visitors very cool. What what are some of your best flips, most profitable or most exciting? Can you mention a couple interesting ones? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 36:02
sure. So recently, I bought a, a website that was in the personal finance niche. And it was written by someone who was in college, she was in her 20s. And she hadn’t mentioned anything about her her age group in it, but you could just kind of tell that it was from a college person’s perspective. So I bought the site. And it was one of those ones about $1,000. It was at full of monetization gaps. She was getting tons of traffic, but she hadn’t thought about monetization. She hadn’t created a product. She wasn’t even really using Amazon links or any affiliate links to that full potential. She just had a couple ads in her sidebar. And that was it. So definitely lots of opportunity there to grow that. And what I did was, I had to think about, okay, how can I make this more of a niche site, it was really just a blanket personal finance, where there was some money tips and saving some budgeting. But that’s kind of boring, we see those a dime a dozen, they, everybody has a budgeting site, but what can I do to make this one special. So I really just thought about, okay, she wrote it from a college perspective, I think, because that she was in college when she created it. So if I could make this a college niche site for new students who are trying to save and earn money while they’re supporting themselves through school, and really just sort of go through all of the content. And I created an avatar in my head of who this new person was that was running the blog, and just writing it from a student to a student, sharing that type of advice. So I had to think back years back when I was in school, and I was supporting myself, I was paying for my tuition and rent and all these things I was thinking, all of the things I was worried about then, and I put that into this blog, and I just brought it up to today’s you know, flooded and making myself sound really old. I’m really not, you know, it just made it so that it was from the perspective of someone who was a, you know, below millennial Gen Z, just niche site. And when I marketed that site, I put it up for sale, it sold the next day, which was really exciting. I love when that happens. And I think if I had tried to market it and sell it just as a personal finance blog, it may have sat on the marketplace for a while because we see these all the time. But just by making it a little bit more special. I think that really helped to make it more special because it was and the person who got it now they can just take it and run with it. And it just it speaks for itself a little bit more. Another one that I really enjoyed. Flipping was a mental health site. The Creator, she wrote it, she wrote hundreds and hundreds of blog posts again, though, just missed opportunities for monetization. So as soon as I took it over, I partnered with BetterHelp, which is a company that that is a online counseling. So if you’re ever having problems, just need someone to talk to you’re going through a crisis, you can get on the phone or email with someone a counselor at BetterHelp. So I just partnered with them. I started including some of their products throughout the blog posts. And it just really made sense for the audience. People coming to the site. They were dealing with depression, you know, serious problems, but it was just something that’s like, No, you’re not alone here you can talk to this person and at the same time, it was an affiliate link. So I was able to create a history for a few months just showing those earnings. And then when it was ready, I was ready to sell it. I had that history showing Okay, look, this is when I purchased it, this is how much it’s earned and it’s growing month over month the traffic is increasing. And that was just really easy for the buyer to be a heck yes and take it on and grow it from there as well. So those are my favorite kind of flips.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
what So what So far was two deals? What was the revenue when you bought it? And what was revenue after you sold it? Like how much were you able to increase it.