Ep. 118 – How to Build a Side Hustle by Buying a Mini-business or a Pre-made Website

My Lessons Learned from Using Flippa to Buy Websites

You’re looking for a side hustle. What if you could buy a mini business that already has a website created for you? It’s either a startup site or an established site that has traffic and maybe even a little bit of income already.

Background on using Flippa.com

Flippa.com is an auction site to buy websites. It is similar to eBay – everything is an auction. It has Buy It Now, it has a reserve price, it has bids. If you win, then you work it out with the seller to transfer the website to you. I’ll go into more detail about how that works in a little bit.

There are two types of sites on Flippa:

Startup site: This site does not have any traffic, or very little. It does not have any significant income.
Established site: This has been running for some period of time. It usually has some traffic to the site and it may or may not have monthly revenue or income.

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It’s All About Your Mindset

What are your Goals?

Do you want to own the business?
Do you want to flip the business? Like build it up a little bit, improve it a little bit, and then flip it?
Or do you want to use a domain name for something else?

What are my personal goals?

When I started this, it was to look for a site that I could build on something that perhaps has content that I can reuse. I’ll go into each example, real world examples of what I’ve bought and what I’ve tried.
I prefer that the site is built on WordPress because I’m a WordPress “wiz” or whatever.
I want something that’s easy to maintain that I can understand. Now, there’ll be pitfalls for each one of these goals, and I’ll go through them as I go through my real-world examples.

Monetization

Usually through AdSense ads or affiliate sales – Amazon, or your favorite affiliate or partner. May also sell e-books, courses, training, or services.

Considerations:

Will those accounts come over with the sale? Do you need to rebuild the relationships from scratch (for example: reapply)?
Affiliate marketing is most successful when you build relationships.
Courses and training are higher dollar and percentage than Amazon affiliates. Often 25-50% of the cut.
Amazon Affiliate rates (Feb-2024):
- Physical books: 4.5%
- Lawn and Garden: 3%
Sell your own content (e-book, course, training), workshop, membership, or service!

Will You Use AI?

Would you, in good conscience, spin up a side hustle website with AI content just so you can make bank with affiliate marketing? Why or why not?
– Scott

The pros and cons of using AI.

Most sites have some AI content.
In my experience, AI content either talks around the topic or it is overly effusive with flowery language.
You can outshine AI by telling your story in an engaging way.
“Google favors content written in a way that illustrates first-hand knowledge of a topic” – John McCoy.

Flippa Side Hustles – Real world examples

AllGardenAdvice.com

Startup site (no traffic or revenue) – Garden blog site with great graphics.

Pros:

Created in WordPress. I can reuse the template for other projects.
66 articles with better than average writing, although may be AI.
Site is ready to go. Make money by selling books and tools using Amazon Associates affiliates.

Cons:

Not a unique site. The seller resells with a new domain name and logo but the exact same content.

And another startup Garden site with a nice layout that just sells e-books.

Pros:

Good graphics and assets.
E-book templates that I can use to sell my own e-books.
Cheap price.

Cons:

AI generated or Private Label Content (PLR) that I don’t own – meaning that anyone (and everyone) can sell it? (and technically, I only have a license for it)
Fine print said that the assets and the eBooks cannot be sold elsewhere except in the Shopify store.
Shopify is not my core tech (WordPress is).
Shopify costs $39/month.
Cannot transfer domain name for 60 days after it was transferred to me.

Some of the problems that I ran into:

Read the fine print!
Do you really own the content and the website assets? Do you get those assets with the purchase? Do you “own” them or is it just a license? Can you use those assets somewhere else?
Will the seller clone the website with a different domain name and resell the same content (competing with you)? And how many other sites have this same layout and content? – this is a common occurrence.

Existing site with traffic and revenue

Do your due diligence!

Ask to be added read only to their Google Analytics.
Ask to see revenue and cost statements.
Read the fine print
“Buyer Beware”!

Use an Existing Site to Choose Your Niche

Instead of buying the site, use this site as an example to choose your niche.

This already has traffic.

Ask yourself:

Can I do better than this?

Can I write better content than this?
Can I write withe the same “tone” as the existing articles – what the current audience expects?
Can I create a better looking site? (or spin up a similar site in this niche)?

Tips:

Use SEO to improve the site.
Then write, write, write!
Google favors human content over AI content.

Google favors content written in a way that illustrates first-hand knowledge of a topic, so creating and sourcing your own images (i.e., taking the pictures yourself) is becoming pretty damned important.
John McCoy

Success Story Turning Around an Abandoned Website

Be like this guy:

This guy’s side hustle strategy on Flippa was A+: “The original owner abandoned the site and allowed the domain to expire. I purchased the domain and a bare-bones WordPress install.”

He updated the design of the website and added articles. Sold for $33K.

Reality check

I have shared my lessons learned from buying small side hustle opportunity websites on Flippa.

It is unlikely that you will turn it around really fast. You often have to play the long game, fix SEO, and build traffic and an audience.

Remember:

You need sticking power to have users stay on your website.
Even with funnels, it often takes hundreds of users visiting and clicks before someone buys your product.
Write engaging content that is personal and tells a story. Then you will survive and thrive in the world of vanilla AI content.

Good luck!

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