One
of the biggest misconceptions I have come across is that to make it big in
blogging you have to start from scratch.
And
if you are not able to maintain your blog, it is just a matter of time before
your website dies down and you lose your investment.
Amazingly,
both of these issues can be tackled with one simple thing: domain flipping.
Domain
flipping is not limited to domains; it is applied to websites as well as for
applications and online businesses. With the internet, you can sell almost
everything online. You need to find the right audience to pitch to.
How does domain flipping tackle the above two issues?
- If you don’t want to start from scratch, how about buying a working website which is generating either some traffic or revenue. It can be said as a micro-acquisition. Although for this you will require some money beforehand.
- If you are not able to maintain your website, how about selling it for a good amount? People love websites that can be scaled. To make websites from scratch is a drag and if you have a good traffic-generating website, you can earn a good amount.
Why Sell and Buy Websites?
As a buyer:
If
you are entering the blogosphere, you might want to start from scratch.
But
the problem from starting from scratch is that you will have to spend a lot of
time thinking about the theme for your website, domain name, what the logo
should be. There are a lot of necessities that need to strike off your
checklist before you even get to produce actual content.
Buying
a website will cut this part out. You will have a registered website with
themes, logos, and banners. They might also have other social media accounts to
promote their website. You need to come with new strategies to increase the
website’s exposure.
You
can also buy domain names, have it with you and sell later at higher prices.
People have made a good amount of money off this. Some people create fully
functional websites and then flip them over for a good sum of money.
As a seller:
This
often happens when your interest vanishes from your website. Or, maybe it is
because you have committed your time to other activities. The bottom line is:
it’s getting tougher and tougher for you to maintain the website.
Rather
than waiting for the website to slowly die, with a minor investment, you can
get a 4-5 figure price for your website (for starters; if you have sufficient
stats to appeal).
You are not limited to websites, though; you can also sell your applications, online businesses, and domain name to cash in for bucks.
Here are some of the best places to sell online where. you can buy sell and trade websites
#1. Flippa
Flippa
is undoubtedly the #1 website to buy and sell websites. You ask why? Because it
was one of the first websites to pioneer this entire dealing of buying and
selling websites.
It pioneered the entire industry and has made a whopping 375 Million dollars to date. 30% of all their income came through flipping domains, and most of the remaining part came from flipping websites (working websites).
Although they started with domains, they have increased their offerings to buy and sell.
Now
they also deal with apps, ads, SaaS, and eCommerce, all the while their major
income coming from flipping websites and domains.
Flippa
has made the entire process quite easy. It works on an auction basis, kind of
like how eBay works. You might wonder how the users set the price of their
websites; Flippa has provided users with an evaluation tool.
It
takes in several factors: the major source of revenue, average views you are
getting, how old the domain is, and so on to calculate the best value you can
get by selling your website.
After you have the value, you can do the posting on your own, which would cost you about $15. Flippa has made it so, to make the marketplace genuine.
If you don’t want to get into the hassle of putting up an ad and everything you can also contact the company’s approved brokers who will sell it on your behalf.
Perhaps
one of the drawbacks is that you get charged a 10% fee if your website is sold,
and it is sold between $1-$499K (which is usually what small to medium-sized
domains get sold for).
But
to counter this, they have their price guarantee program according to which if
any other website is asking for a lesser success fee, Flippa will beat their
offer by 1%. Also, you have other features to boost your listings and increase
the chances of it getting sold.
Fun
fact: Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous website Facemash got sold here.
#2. Empire Flippers
Empire
Flippers comes second when it comes to the total worth of transactions done at
$100 Million. It is a growing company and slowly catching up with Flippa.
Like
Flippa, they have forayed into all the areas:SaaS, online businesses,
websites, domains, AdSense ads. They don’t deal with apps, as Flippa does.
There
have been cases of fraudulent transactions in Flippa, where the data that was
provided in the listing didn’t correspond to the actual data after the final
user purchased the goods. To tackle this, Empire Flippers have tried their best
to make it complete fraud-proof.
They
charge you a 5% refundable deposit. With this deposit, you get 12 month’s data
so that you can make a sound decision with all the right facts across the
table. Plus, the team also vets each data record carefully and diligently gives
you an expected profit margin.
To
make it more secure, they also set up call conversations between sellers and
buyers.
They
have tried to differentiate themselves from Flippa in terms of security by
taking the job of the broker in their own hands. As such, they don’t contact
3rd party brokers as Flippa does. Another unique offering is their regular
podcast, which is a great show to tune into.
The major drawback with this is that to maintain this level of vetting, they charge $297 for first-time listing, which is way too much. For a repeated listing, it drops to $97, which is still higher to Flippa’s paltry $15.
But they try to counter this that this fee is refunded if they, for some reason, can’t list your business.
#3. WebsiteBroker
WebsiteBroker
was founded in 1996. Predating almost all the websites present on this list by
a decade or so.
While
you might expect it must be doing something right to sustain itself over the
years, that’s the most mysterious part.
They
haven’t adapted their styling to a more user-friendly pattern, like how the
earlier two did. They have provided you with an inbuilt valuation service so
that you can get a rough estimate of how much you should be expecting.
Pricing
starts at $9.95 for standard listings and $29.95 for (premiere)domain and
$14.95 for (premiere)domain name listing. Both of these will last for 90 days,
with the premiere one supposedly gives you more exposure than the normal ones.
One plus point with this is that it doesn’t charge a success fee.
So
your entire cost remains economically viable, and you don’t have to shell much
compared to Empire Flippers and Flippa.
Although
on the flip side, people have complained a lot about its poor customer service.
Where the earlier two provide some protection to buyers, here’s what
WebsiteBroker’s official FAQ says:
We
encourage all buyers to do their diligence when purchasing a website.
WebsiteBroker is a marketplace, but we do not, and cannot, thoroughly
investigate every website that is listed. As with any marketplace, it is your
responsibility to protect yourself throughout your transaction.
Surely
not a good way to gain your user’s trust. Plus, people have complained about
poor to no response from support staff. A good number of people have been
scammed and there has been no protection against it.
In
fact, this one time, the same website’s listing was posted twice by the seller
even after it was sold.
#4. DigitalPoint Forum
Unlike
the other few websites mentioned here, how about doing the deal in one of the
most popular forums on the Internet?
In
DigitalPoint Forum, you can find people selling websites, services, domains and
lots more. It has a huge user base, and thanks to it, you can easily find
customers at bay looking to buy websites.
DigitalPoint
caters to various sections with discussions ranging from Design, Development,
Search Engines, and so on. Under the forum, there is a subsection of Domains
and Websites in buy, sell and trade.
Once
you’re there, you can find various forum postings and look at each one
individually.
One
of the added benefits of using a forum is that if you reply to any forum post,
it will be made public. You can see if people have asked queries related to the
websites which can help you make a decision.
They have also diversified by making their marketplace website as a precursor to websites like Flippa. It may not be visually appealing, but they have tried to make the design pretty basic and simple.
The marketplace ads are directly connected to the forum posts, and you can choose to reply to the forum post or text in private.
This
forum gives you various filters to help you get your preferred domain or
website: from domain authority to page views to revenue; you can filter it out
with multiple settings available for you.
It doesn’t provide you with protection against scammers like Flippa and EmpireFlippers do, you are at the mercy of luck and hope. But at the same time, it doesn’t charge you for any posting on the forum.
Although a few restrictions have to be met, and you can’t create a new account and start posting for advertisement.
This
can be a thing to worry to a certain set of people as they would just want to
sell their websites easily and don’t want to take the hassle to wait for some
time and have a minimum number of posting(one of the conditions of forum)
before allowed to do a listing on the website.
#5. New Egg Marketplace
One of the most popular marketplaces catering to selling and buying electronic goods online, they have now expanded their base to sell almost everything on the Internet.
You
have to get your business, i.e., your website verified by the New Egg team and
apply to be a NewEgg seller. They have a strong marketplace with over ten and a
half million products and presence in countries like the US and America.
Once
they approve your business, you can put a listing for your website/domain on a
new egg. They take a commission between 13-15% for every website you sell, so
that is one of the breakaway points. But it gives you a wider reach to both B2B
and B2C customers.
Also,
since they don’t give you explicit support in helping you get the domains, it
is like a regular marketplace, and you have to deal with the seller directly.
Although the legitimacy of ads can’t be doubted as NewEggs look at the
legitimacy of the business and its offering before allowing a posting on their
service.
#6. Sedo
One
of the oldest running websites in this business, Sedo, only deals with
websites. You can deal with websites, domains and even parking of websites,
which is something not offered by most of the other websites.
Sedo was founded in 2000 and has had over 19 million listed domains. If you are on the buying end, you don’t have to give them any commission over it.
There are multiple options of buying: some websites have the option of direct buy, some have the option to negotiate, and finally, some websites are up for grabs in the form of auction.
You
can also take the help of their expert domain brokers, although you have to pay
a hefty one-time fee of $69 and a further 15% commission for successful sales.
You can also get brokers for selling your domains and websites, in which case
you only have to pay a 15% cut for every successful sale.
To make the entire buying and selling experience a pleasant one, they offer users with domain transfer service, which helps you protect against any malpractice and scamming.
You also get a valuation service from Sedo, and they give you a report on how much your domain/website worth is. Both of these services are free for Sedo users.
Another amazing feature I liked was their parked domain. Usually, if you have a domain with yourself that is unused, you can effectively monetize it to generate extra money for yourself.
Sedo does that free for you, i.e., looks for advertisers, posts advertisements relevant to the domain name, and even paying you.
So
if you have an unused domain, instead of showing a page under construction or
empty page, how about making some money out of it.
#7. BuySellEmpire
If
you surely want to sell your website, BuySellEmpire can give you a helping
hand. With their onboard brokers, they have an amazing 95% success rate beating
almost all the competition to one side. The brokers meticulously go through
your website or domain and plan accordingly to get your website sold.
Go
to this website as they provide you with one of the best website broking
services.
Like
all the other services, it provides you with basic tools like a free website
evaluation tool so that you can get a fair idea about the money you can earn.
The
company’s main focus is to provide peace of mind to users: as such, they
provide you with full assistance while dealing with buyers and in-migration of
websites.
They
also focus emphatically on the protection against any fraud. For this, they
sign a Letter of Intents from both parties to have official documentation, and
all the payment goes through Escrow for easy transfer and better security
against any malpractice.
Although
one of the nudging issues that they don’t mention their broker fees on their
website. They have mentioned that they charge inexpensive brokerage rates
compared to competitors; they haven’t mentioned the exact price or any range.
#8. Freemarket
Freemarket
is a website coming from the popular job-outsourcing website Freelancer. They
launched this website in direct competition to websites like Flippa aimed at
entrepreneurs, SMEs, and website property owners. They follow the standard
auction and buy-it-now buying options.
To lure in the competition, they are targeting two things: offering the lowest commission rates at 5% and along with it, making it secure to transfer money.
They keep the money to themselves until the total migration of ownership has taken place, after which they release the money. Their payment structure is powered by Freelancer.com to make it more reliable and secure.
The
website looks good and easy-to-use, and you don’t have to pay a single penny to
get your posting on the website. The only time you will be ever charged is in
the case of a successful sale.
They
also have a good customer service team, in case if you need any help.
There’s
a lack of brokerage service on the platform. But there are ways to promote your
listing if you can shell out some extra bucks.
Overall,
this is one of the new services on the market and if you don’t want to spend
much and worry about your sale money getting slashed and cuts you can go with
this.
#9. Side Projectors
Side
Projectors is quite unique in its approach.
You
don’t get to buy domains here; you get to buy-side projects usually in the form
of websites. People who start with an idea but can’t dedicate their time
anymore sell it on this website. Almost on the same lines of selling a website.
They
also sell mobile apps and desktop applications. The website is not just about
selling; you can also look for a co-founder for your website. As well as
showcasing your project online to viewers for quick feedback.
It
is a very straightforward service, with no flashy visuals as at all.
The important part to note here is that Sideprojecters do not take any participation in taking care of protection against scammers or taking care of how the transfer of money is taking place between two parties.
In fact, in the FAQs, they have said that it is the users themselves who should take the utmost care while dealing with sellers.
They
don’t charge you for listing. You can submit your project online. Plus, there
is no option for getting you to the featured section. They take it on merit
basis, which website is good enough to be promoted on their featured section.
If
you are looking for fully functional websites, side projects can be a great
help to you. Although what restricts its appeal is its lack of offering of
selling and buying of domains; and the lack of support over protection against
any scamming.
Conclusion
People
usually look for websites with scope for progress and development. If your
website or blog under their criteria of selection, you can finesse some money
out of your website.
So
here are the top 10 websites to sell and buy websites. There’s a lot of money
to be made online just by selling and buying websites if you know some basic
rules. Not only that, if you are not able to make time for your blog/website
and you can sell it online for a good amount.
Not
only that, but you can also flip domains which can give you a good earning.
You
should take into consideration how much money you are going to invest in
selling the website as most of the premium services charge you a fee for the
listing and a fee for successful deals. Knowing how much you are going to spend
can help you sort which service will be better for you, easily.