Website Flipping...earn smart cash

We all know how people invest in properties and real estate. They buy properties, hold on to them for a while, renovate and spruce it up a little and put it up at the market. Ultimately they make a neat profit out of the whole deal. Website flipping applies a similar concept, albeit in the virtual world.

I was in a bit of a dilemma whether or not to include this concept of website flipping here since this is for people who are already aware of how the internet works, how webpages are built, domains bought and hosted with a service provider. And not just that, website flipping in itself is a very vast topic requiring hours of study and there’s so much of information available out there that one will get buried under all this data. But then I thought that Onlineaamdani isn't just about basics. Ideally I would like to believe that everyone, regardless of his/her proficiency with the internet and, more specifically, knowledge of money earning opportunities on the www, should be able to find something of use in the blog and take away something worthwhile. This prompted me to include the concept of Website Flipping in our discussions, though I will keep it to basics for now. So lets jump right in.

Website Flipping as a concept, refers to buying a website, updating and improving it, and then selling it. In other words, buy at a low price, enhance website and sell at a higher price.

Now, some of us will confuse Website Flipping with Website Selling. But there’s a slight difference. Website Flipping doesn’t include buying (a new domain name, hosting services from a service provider), creating (content) from scratch, and selling a website. So website flipping ideally means working on existing websites and not on Greenfield/turnkey projects.

Also, website flipping isn't the same as domain flipping which involves buying key domain names with potential and sell at a profit. There is no work done with the domain, not even proper hosting.

Website flipping involves the following steps:

1.    Buying: First of all you have to find a website to buy. This is the most difficult part though some might not realize it. Some might think, “I have the money to pay for it so let me purchase it”. But that's not how it should be done. This is business, and any investment needs to make business sense and scope to make money. To be ideal for flipping, the site you buy has to have some potential to generate some income for you. There are a lot of considerations to be made before buying and bidding for a website, like, how much is the current average traffic to the site, which niche of the market it is catering to, what is the cash inflow it is generating, what is the competition. Ideally it should cater to a niche which isn't yet fully tapped, which people are interested in but the competition is still low. Its difficult but we have to try and find the right balance of these factors and the price that is to be paid. To purchase websites, SitePoint, Warriorforum and Flippa are some websites which you can explore. I will share some free resources for you to learn more about buying websites.
2.    Optimization: Now that you have bought a website, you have to choices – do nothing or work on it to make it better. Sometimes doing nothing is okay, but there is always some scope to enhance the website, optimize it and make it better. Intention is to give it a boost of traffic and to increase the revenue it is generating. Higher the traffic your site is attracting, higher is its value. More the revenue your site is generating, more is the value of your site. So traffic and revenue are the two most important factors that will determine how much money you can make from a website. If you don’t attend to a website it will start losing traffic and the revenue will start decreasing. Trick is to make the sale profitably before this phase starts. Or otherwise work on improving your website with things like search engine optimization, PPC (pay per click) ads and article marketing where you post articles relating to your website’s niche in article directories like Hubpages, squidoo, ezinearticles.com, articledashboard.com, goarticles.com, etc. Do some social marketing using facebook, twitter, orkut, etc. and bookmarking in sites like dig, del.icio.us, etc. You can also create a blog to support the website. These are just some of the ways to increase a websites popularity and visibility. Read up on ‘Google page rank’, SEO, backlinking and ‘Article Marketing’. I will soon put up free resources and ebooks on these concepts here so you need not pay for such resources.
3.    Selling: The final step is to sell the website. How much time you hold onto the website depends upon your strategy. Whether its short term, medium term or long term investment you are targeting. Normally, if you don’t want to work too much on the website that you have bought, then use it as a short term investment and sell as soon as you get a good price. Otherwise if you can tinker with the website here and there and can increase the traffic and/or income it is generating then use medium term strategy. And if you think that you can really add value to the website and take it much beyond what it is today then it makes sense to hold on to the website for the long term. Once you decide that the time is right to sell it, go back again to Flippa, warriorforum, sitepoint etc. and put it up for sale. Keep your fingers crossed...God willing (and with some smart work) you will be able to make a neat profit out of your investment and effort. Of course, like any other art, ‘Practice makes man perfect’.

Advantages of website flipping are manifold:

One, financial entry threshold to this market is very low. With a relatively low investment you too can be part of the market (but first get your basics right).

Two, in most cases as soon as you make the investment you will be able to start making money. Once you buy a website which is already generating revenue, you have the luxury to earn money even while you are working on it to improve your asset, the website(s).

Three, you have the flexibility to choose your investment strategy, short, medium or long.

Four, even an average internet investor can be a part of the website flipping bazaar.

This concept has immense scope in the coming years. To the readers this is my suggestion, learn the ropes of website flipping slowly. Take 6 months, 1 year even, and get your basics in place. And by the time this concept gathers momentum you will be well equipped and well entrenched in the market. The marketplace is going to heat up. 

All the best! I will bring to you more free resources shortly and if you become interested in website flipping you will find them quite helpful.

Articles, Discussions and Freelancing

Did you know that you can earn money by writing articles on internet? Can you write in correct English with proper grammar, punctuations and spellings (though spell-checks can help you here)? Are you good at something? Do you have a special interest that others too would like to know more about? If you answered yes to all the questions (leave out 1st question), then you will find this post handy.

If you have knowledge about a particular subject, topic, field, etc. that others might be interested in, then you can write articles and submit to websites which are looking at freelance writers like you to provide them with content. Your interest/knowledge can be in Photography, Pottery, Paper cutting, Internet security, Networking, Search Engine Optimization, Yoga, Pilates, Management Topics, Personality Development, Time Management, etc. These are just a few things that came to my mind offhand.

How this works? Multiple ways. For one, websites need content...good and quality content. For them to hire content writers full-time can be costly. And one content writer can write on a limited number of topics. So to put up content on a variety of topics, these websites/portals will have to hire a huge content writing work-force. Why go there when there are millions of internet users out there with expertise on thousands of topics? If they tap into this huge work-force, they will never have to worry about content, leave alone cost-saving. There will be an endless supply of content at a fraction of a cost of hiring full time employees. They only have to select and edit relevant and good submissions. Thus, they pay these submitters whose submissions are selected.

And there are websites which offer freelancing jobs where you can offer your writing services. These sites, of course, have many other freelancing job opportunities.

Payment can be either fixed or variable. Fixed payment can vary from $.50 to $15 per article or sometimes more depending on the content. Variable payment works on a different model. This kind of model is dependent upon the popularity of the submitted article. The more popular it becomes, the more you will earn. Revenues come from the ads that are displayed on the page where your article is put up. So the more traffic your article generates more is your chance to earn money from the article. Website will pay you a part of the revenues generated from your article. Its as simple as that
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There’s a third way of earning money with articles. Its called Article marketing. Its an indirect way to earn money where the primary intention is to draw traffic to another web destination like a blog or a website. For example, if I write an article and submit it to such a website and include backlinks to this blog, it will not only help draw traffic to this blog, but also help in google rankings of the blog. Payment for the article itself is a bonus. We will discuss about Article Marketing again later.

Advantages? Many. For starters, you can work as per your convenience, when you want, from wherever you want. Secondly, you can write about what you know and passionate about. Thirdly, no previous experience is required. And then there’s the money.

Also, there’s another related way to make money online. Discussions. There are websites which pay you to participate in discussions, to respond to other’s discussions, to start a discussion topic, etc. There are hundreds of topics and interests that you can choose from and then start participation. Essentially, you get paid to have fun sharing your thoughts and opinions, putting up your questions, helping others with their queries, etc.

I will be reviewing a few of these websites and post some of the best ones to help you too earn money online at your own convenience. So keep reading to find more online money making opportunities.

Affiliate Marketing

So we have heard about Affiliate marketing a lot and how it helps internet users to make money, but what is affiliate marketing actually? How does it work?  Where does the money come from? How much can one earn? How tough is it? How is it done? Are there any criteria to become an affiliate marketer? And most importantly, can I make money too?

Patience people...I will try to address all these questions and more. Let’s start at the beginning...

Affiliate marketing, quite simply, is a way of making money online, where, as a publisher you are rewarded for helping a business promote its product(s) or service(s). These businesses want you as an affiliate marketer in closing a sale and they will reward you for each customer or visitor (differs from program to program) brought in by your own marketing effort. So the merchant will pay you for your referrals that generate a sale (Cost per Sale or CPS) or perform an action like sign-up, subscription, completion of a survey, etc (Cost per Action or CPA). It has different variations, but more or less its your marketing initiatives and your own network building (referrals) efforts that the concept is reliant upon.

Another spin to the concept of affiliate marketing is that the ‘merchant’ pays commission to its affiliates for sales and/or visitors (So that is where the money comes from). Commissions can either be direct commission as part of each sale or even multi-tier commissions for your referral network (similar to Multi Level Marketing or MLM of the real world). No...this is not selling, in the sense that you don’t have to ‘sell’ a product in the traditional sense of the term. Here you don’t knock on doors, but you knock on computers. Pre-selling is more like it. Publishers like you promote the merchants’ product/service by posting links to the Advertiser’s site on your own websites or blogs or through banner ads, text ads, e-mail campaigns, or any other media. You can also spread the word within your friends, family, colleagues, etc. and increase referrals. J

How much can one earn? There are loads of money to be made waiting for you to tap the right opportunity and with the right approach. There is no limit to how much you can earn....from Zero to Thousands! Technically, all sales / activities are tracked through unique links that affiliates are provided with and which they have to use to promote the affiliate program. So don’t you worry. No one else will enjoy the fruits for your efforts.

Is it tough? Well...depends on a lot of factors like the working model of the affiliate program, on the product/service, on your efforts. In general, multi-level marketing based affiliate programs are easier for beginners to start earning money (because they typically different methods and modes of earning money where you can earn either/both through your own actions and/or through referrals) than trying to earn direct sales commissions. Its not very tough if you get the hang of it and put in some effort.

Promotion can be organic (with the people you know or your existing network) or inorganic (with an audience that you don’t know personally or outside your existing network). There are various ways of promoting through each of these two methods. For organic promotion you can use word of mouth, involve some friends who in turn refer their own friends and so on, use your facebook/twitter/orkut/... friend lists, your mail contact list, etc. For inorganic it can be by planting the link in different places on the web like discussion boards and forums, writing articles, advertising, etc.

As to who can be an ‘Affiliate Marketer’...answer is ANYONE...and yes! That includes YOU too. You just need to be comfortable with internet basics. Spend some time on the internet regularly. Build a good friends/followers network on social networking sites. Discuss with friends and like minded people you come in contact with. With persistence you can make it work and earn money with affiliate marketing.

For demonstration purpose I have created two affiliate marketing instances with one of the more popular Affiliate marketing programs, Clickbank (we will discuss more about Clickbank later). You can click on the links and see what an actual affiliate program works. The products are packages/material on affiliate marketing.

The complete affiliate marketing handbook

Superman Affiliate

** Note: These are actual affiliate links. Going ahead with the purchase of the items is solely the viewers' wish and is not mandatory in context of this blog post. Intention of this blog post is not to promote the individual products but to demonstrate the concept of the topic.

We will be discussing more on affiliate marketing in subsequent posts when we discuss on related concepts, tips, do’s and don’ts of affiliate marketing, etc. and as when start working on actual individual affiliate programs. I will review quite a few of them...some pure affiliate programs and some hybrid. If you have any questions please feel free to comment and discuss. Also feel free to discuss on others’ questions also and share your thoughts. I will also try my best to address your queries.

( I believe that you now have a good idea about Affiliate marketing after reading through this post. But if you still want info on Affiliate marketing and the different types of affiliate websites check out the article on Wikipedia by clicking here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing)

Paid to Read, Paid to Surf

Paid to Read / Receive programs are similar to Paid to Click programs. Paid to receive mails and paid to receive sms’s are again ultimately advertisements delivered through different media to the end customer. PTR websites act as the go-between to make this happen.

In this kind of programs you will have to register your email ID and/or cellphone number with the website and they will then start sending you the mails and sms’s. In case of paid to receive / read mails programs, you have to click on the links provided in the mails that you receive from these PTR websites. Some programs deliver the links / ads to your mail inbox, some require you to log in to your account on their website where they provide an inbox, and you have to do the needful from this inbox within the PTR website login. Some of these programs even ask whether they can send you surveys by mail (for which you get paid more to respond), what are your interest areas, etc. to customize their response as per your preferences. Similarly Paid to read / Receive sms’s programs are also customized as per your preferences by incorporating your responses during sign up like – whether you are willing to receive voice calls for surveys / promotional offers, what time period of the day you want to receive sms’s, what are your interest areas, etc.

PTR programs pay anywhere between 25 paise to Re. 1 per mail / sms (basic). Apart from that there are some Paid to Subscribe offers that come along where you have to subscribe to the advertisers’ offerings and you will be paid more than a basic mail / sms. That will depend whether you want to go ahead and subscribe or not. As a thumb rule, the basic amount is anyways credited, to your account when you click on the link. Also allow you to take up affiliate memberships and bring in referrals. They will pay you for the activities of your referral members.

We will look into some of the websites that have sound PTR programs. So keep visiting.

Paid to surf: Since we are into discussing a similar topic, let’s look into Paid to Surf programs also.

Pay to Surf websites pay you for spending time on the internet and run a computer program as you do so. This computer program can be in the form of a plug-in to your web browser, a toolbar, or a software that runs in the background. Advertisers' banner ads are then displayed while the member was browsing the web. Since the computer program tracks websites that the user visits, the pay to surf company is able to deliver targeted ads for their advertisers. Advertisers pay the pay to surf company a small amount (typically US$0.50) for every hour of a member's surfing.

Members are usually given a minimum requirement on the amount of time per day / week / month for which they would be paid to surf. Typically it would vary from 20 hours to 75 hours per month. Also, again pay-to-surf companies pay their members for each new user referred to the company (typically US$0.05 - US$0.10 per recruit). Thus, it is profitable for a member to garner as many referrals as possible.

I have spent some time doing some knowledge gathering about PTS programs. I have some reservations with these models of online money earning methods though and I have not yet tried out PTS programs. But I intend to do some more research on this and check out some renowned ones in some time. I will keep you posted.

Paid To Click (PTC)

Paid to Click is an online business model that works by getting online traffic from people who want to work from home and earn money on the internet. Paid to Click programs are ones in which you have to click on links or banners on the site (these links are mostly ads), then view the sites that pop up with each banner clicked. Everytime you click on these links or banners, you get paid a certain amount of money depending on the website you are on. There might be a countdown timer which you will have to wait out before closing the window.In addition, most PTC websites offer a commission to its members for signing up new members (similar to many affiliate programs online, which we will be discussing in future posts). This is called a 'referral'. Referrals help you multiply your earnings from PTC programs. Its an easy way to earn money on the internet if you spend spend some time on the internet regularly anyways.

Paid to Click websites thus, basically deliver advertisements to consumers, the advertiser pays for displaying ads on the PTC website, and a part of this payment goes to the viewer when he views the advertisement.

Some websites pay you less than a cent, some pay you more. Some have lots of ads and links that you can click, some have fewer. Some of these websites offer more ads and links to paid members than to free members. To become a paid member you have to pay some money and 'upgrade'.

But there have been online scams too in the guise of PTC programs. Some websites vanish after making money from ads, upgrades and direct referral sales. Some websites simply go down owing to unsustainable business models. We need to be careful and steer clear of these PTC websites.As a thumb rule therefore, I prefer free PTC websites. As you use the program for some time you will get more idea about the website and then can decide whether to upgrade or not. We will shortly be reviewing a few of the Paid to Click websites.