Bought My First Site... Any Tips For Improving To Flip?

[RMcdonald]

Hi Guys,

I know you can't give specific tips on what exactly I should be doing with the site in order to improve it exactly.

I guess I am looking for anyone who has been through the process and any advice that you can give as I will be looking to flip this site in around 4-6 months from now, as there are a huge number of "quick wins" I can do to get it earning almost 10x more than it currently does.

The site currently earns around $36/month and has over 2,800 visits.

Keywords it currently targets are a mixture between informational and review style.

Picked it up at a great price (not willing to disclose the amount)

any guidance or advice for a newbie flipper would be great!

Thanks guys!

 

[Ryuzaki]

How is it currently being monetized (ads, affiliate links, etc) and what are the main traffic sources (organic, social, traffic leaks)?

You mentioned keywords so I'm assuming a lot of it is organic traffic. What's the backlink profile like?

Usually there's 3 ways to get more money out of a site:

• Split test everything at the current traffic levels
• Get more traffic in general (depending on monetization)
• Get more of the right type of traffic that converts

We'll need more specific information before anything specific can be said, otherwise it's just general platitudes.

Looking forward to helping and seeing how this ends up in 4-6 months.

 

[RMcdonald]

@Ryuzaki So it is currently being monetized through Adsense and Amazon Affiliate, but the current optimization is horrendously poor!

Most of the traffic is coming from organic, with a still a good amount coming from Pinterest, as the post are laid out in a pinterest style.

The backlink profile is clean, but minimal so this will need some good outreach to get it up to where it needs to be.

Overall I am thinking that a good clean up of the content, images and adding in some solid CTA's will make this site go from the $34 to around $200-$300 before I even start looking at bringing in more traffic.

 

[Rob Lowem]

If you dont mind, throw it into google webmaster console for a month and get all the keywords you have good impressions for but are ranking page 2-10. Improve content, build links optimize or create more content etc to improve rankings.

This should get you up and running towards revenue increase.

Rob

 

[Future State]

One thing you can do is make the site appear to have more unexploited potential, things you can do and then mention in the prospectus.

These would include creating and seeding the main big social media channel profiles. Getting traffic from sites like Reddit and Voat to show how viable that is. Create some amazingly good piece of link bait and get a ton of links to it to show that that model can be pushed hard.

In the mean time those will help you recoup some of your costs too, if not all of it.

Usually your multiple is going to be based on a range of say 24x to 36x monthly profit. Where you fall in that range is how well you can convince the buyer that there's upwards mobility and it's not stagnant. This is all leverage for your future negotiation.

 

[RMcdonald]

So... I just wanted to give an update as to where I am with this.

Site was recently transferred to me and honestly I haven't done much too it yet,

I haven't had the time I thought I would, so I am working on getting some strong changes done to this site.

In the meantime, here is a screenshot of the current rankings after just a few tweaks:

Not bad going, with still a ton more changes needed, more On Page & extending the existing content.

With just these changes I should see some big jumps in a short period of time!