As promised, I want to show you the way to get some real high quality backlinks for your main blog, or for you blogs that you plan to flip. When flipping blogs, one of the factors of valuation for the buyer is how many backlinks your blog has, and it’s pagerank. The good news is that you can kill two birds with one stone by building links, since number, and quality of backlinks is what determines your pagerank.

There are two ways to generate a high pagerank, and organic traffic. You can go the quality, or quantity route. If you go for quantity you’ll generally need a lot more links to see any pagerank or organic traffic increases. However, I’ve bought sites with a pagerank 4, that had just 8 or 10 incoming links… because they were quality links! The best method is to just get out there and build links… high pagerank, low pagerank, no pagerank… you want them all. But here is a bit of a secret for you - some links are even more trusted than a site with a high pagerank.

The links I’m talking about come from sites ending in .edu - these sites are generally reserved for educational institutions, but it’s not impossible to get them to link to you. You’ll get a lot more “no’s” than “yes’s”, but it’s worth a try.

Here’s what you do. You want to go to Google, and type in this search string. It’d probably be better if you just copy/pasted it actually. The minus signs signify that Google shouldn’t show sites that have these variables, in this case we don’t want blogs with closed comment fields, or blogs that say you must be logged in. Other than that… we want them all.

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “your topic”

site:.edu [finds edu domains]
inurl:blog [ find blogs]
“post a comment” [makes sure we can post to this blogs]
-”comments closed” [does not show these closed blogs]
-”you must be logged in” [does not show blogs where u need to log in]

Another method is to BUY .edu backlinks. I see them for sale on digitalpoint from time to time, and they are generally pretty expensive. But, it’s worth it for high ranking sites!

Got a friend in college? You in college? Well, sometimes the school allows you a free webpage on their server, or some even have social applications within their school (think a local facebook)… use them!

As I said before, organic traffic sells websites. But the real question is, how do you get more organic traffic? Well, that’s the part where it gets harder. Not hard per se, but BORING! Building organic traffic is all about generating backlinks. And let’s go one step further… high quality backlinks, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The question is - How do I generate more organic traffic?

The answer? Get links!!!

It sounds easy, and most of you are probably doing this in some form already… but probably doing it the wrong way. I read a statistic that scared the living bejesus out of me… 90% of bloggers don’t know what “anchor text” means. How the hell are you going to build a blog that is ever going to generate any traffic… if you don’t know the cardinal rule of generating organic traffic?

Ok, before I go off on a rant, let’s take a step back and I’ll explain this to the 90% of you that supposedly exist, and don’t know what anchor text means. Anchor text is simply the text that a link displays. For example, if someone were linking to Site Flip U… they could use -

https://siteflipu.com - siteflipu.com - siteflipu.com - https://siteflipu.com

All of these suck! If you are going to link to me… please don’t use the domain name. These links work much better when it comes to generating more organic traffic.

Blog Flipping - Website Flipping - Site Flipping

If I’ve lost any of you… smack yourself on the forehead, and follow the principal back to the blogging 101 class. So the idea is, if you are using the easy link option of Wordpress, you’d click on the little chain link icon… type out the URL, and then in the “Title” section, that would be your anchor text. Got it? Good… moving on!

Generally the anchor text issue can’t be avoided. You can try contacting every blog that links to you, and asking them to change the anchor text… but then you just look ungrateful. A link is a link… take it where you can get it. So how do you help to control your organic traffic destiny? Comment on forums, blogs, and in social sites using your anchor text as the name. However, you want to seek out “do-follow” blogs, due to their ability to pass juice.

Now this is where it gets tricky. A lot of blog owners hate when you comment on their blog with your anchor text as your name. It’s a bit spammy, I agree… but if you ever comment here using your anchor text, I won’t remove it unless it’s questionable content (porn, gambling, etc.), or if your comment sucks royally, and you just spammed my site for a free link… which you won’t get, because I’m not do-follow, and this is the reason why… SPAMMERS SUCK! I realize that I don’t own the world… yet! So I would think that if your comment added nicely to the conversation, and you didn’t just dump a link and run… other bloggers might not mind as much. Some don’t care either way, they just like a full comment field, even if it’s pushing Viagra and Thai knockoff cell phones. Keep commenting… if they get deleted… so be it!

If building highly targeted back links using my anchor text is the fastest way to get more organic traffic, can anyone guess what comes next? Anyone?

Actually there are quite a few, but the one that stands out, is your title tags. These are the tags that appear on top of your browser window, and mine say -

Blog Flipping | Website Flipping | Make Money On The Internet

Why did I choose these? Well, they are relevant to my site! The blog is brand new, hasn’t even officially launched yet, and I’m already ranked on page one or two for a lot of terms that have to do with blog flipping, website flipping, and making money on the internet. I’ll take it… a little more work, and I’m destined for page one, barring any Bi-Polar type behavior from Google.

So how do you change the title tags? Well, if you are using a Wordpress blog, just download the All-In-One-Seo Pack, and change them under the “settings” window. The one you MUST change is in the “tagline” section. These are your title tags.

Let’s not forget about post tags either. All-In-One-Seo also allows you to add tags to your posts. Use them! These tags are search engine friendly, and they are usually the source of high quality backlinks from Technorati as well. Anything else to generate links? Yeah… tons… social bookmarking - uh huh, article submission - yep, directory submission - sure, bookmarking demon - Abso-freakin-lutely!

Guys, if you are serious about flipping websites, open up the wallet and spend the $97 on this piece of software. It’s the one tool that you simply MUST HAVE. Generating links sucks. It’s boring, time consuming, and it doesn’t make you any cooler. So if you can find software to automate it, it’s a definite buy. The more time you can save building links, the more money you’ll make by devoting your time to something a little more profitable.

I’m gonna cut this one off right here before I lose my audience that suffers from ADD. But, when I pick up, I’ll show you a couple of tricks to get HIGH quality links. Links are nice, good links are even nicer.

I came across a trackback today to Justin Brooke’s site, Site Flip King. First off, it’s not Justin who is off his rocker. Justin made me a member at his paid membership site, Site Flip Academy, and he’s got a lot of stuff that’s pretty valuable within it’s members area. However, the last link on the page, which belongs to this guy, who has another membership site, got my attention. So I checked it out, and if his site is anything like his opening video, this guy is going to cost you more money than he makes you.

First of all, he opens the video with the bold statement “You Need To Sell Your Website”. I sell a TON of websites, but I’ll never tell you that you need to sell your site. He goes on to say that he doesn’t care if the site makes a couple of hundred dollars a month, or a couple of thousand, you need to sell.

“A site that makes a couple of thousand dollars a month can bring in 40k when you sell it.”

Guys, 40k is nice, but it’s not a lot of money. It’s easy to use the methods I teach to create an income that is worth double or triple that each year. Flipping blogs and websites isn’t hard… but it’s not passive either. It takes work on your part, finding deals, fixing up the site, building links, traffic, etc. - and your number one goal as an entrepreneur (which takes precedent over your site flipping) is to create passive income. Nobody wants to work forever, and as much as I enjoy flipping websites… it’s too much work to do until I’m 90. Would you rather be grinding it out for your next $10k sale, or sitting back on a beach in Mexico (which is beautiful by the way) while your network of sites is making you money? I know what I’d prefer. Flipping websites is a means to an end… it’s not the end by itself.

“I’ve personally bought and sold 55 websites within the past 5 years.”

And? Are you awaiting applause? I’ve done that in a good month!

Here’s the deal guys. This guy’s methods will probably make you money. But at what cost? I’m afraid that this guy’s statements, and his “take the money now, forget about the future” approach is a little too narrow-minded. His take the money now approach can be seen in the video, where he offers up the tidbit - “there is no guarantee that your blog will make the same amount in the future”. No? There’s also no guarantee that it’ll sell for the $40k, or even anywhere near it.

Just like blogging, site flipping is a volatile market. It has it’s ups and downs, and the in-betweens. It’s no safer, or more dangerous than long-term blogging as an income model.

My recommendation? Diversify. Any good entrepreneur, which if you are listening is what takes precedent over being a site flipper… doesn’t keep all of his eggs in one basket. Why would you want to count on one income stream, only to take the chance that in a volatile, and ever-changing new world (the internet), something could change and it might not be there? It’s happened before… don’t forget the dot-com bubble! I for one, could care less if one income method stopped working. I have others, and I’d quickly go out and find a way to replace it. Don’t sell yourself short… sell blogs for capital, for vacations, for living expenses… but your long term goals should be to build a network of blogs that are producing passive income. These blogs should take no work on your part… outsource everything! And site flipping gives you the means (money) to do that. Site flipping can give you a good income, but just like anything else, it’s not the way to get rich. $100,000 a year is extremely possible, even laughably easy… but $100k doesn’t last long in todays world. Get rich! Sell sites, slowly build your network… and you’ll have the last laugh.

The method I use is this… For every $10,000 I make, I start one new blog with the intention to keep. This blog is headed down passive income avenue. I’ll build it for a month or two, make sure it’s making enough to pay a writer, and when it reaches the break even point… I’ll let the writer take over, and just supervise from there. I’m now breaking even, yet building an asset that will make me money in the future… and I’ve got my site flipping income to rely on if it ever has a bad month or two. Eventually, this blog will drive past the break even point, they all do… and then I have passive income. Monthly income that I do absolutely nothing to earn. I make over $8k a month in PASSIVE income, and then you add in my site flipping revenue… I’ll retire comfortably by the time I’m 35, if I choose to do so. I’m almost 26 (in June), now.

What about the downfalls of building long-term? NONE! If a blog that I set up for passive income isn’t performing to my expectations… I SELL it! It’s what I do. Then, I’m off to create another to fill it’s place in the network.

“YOU NEED TO SELL YOUR SITE!”

… I don’t think so.

When buying websites or blogs, there are a million bogus deals out there just waiting for a sucker to come along and eat the bait. There are wonderful deals to be had online, but you just have to be careful and do your due diligence before biting on what appears to be a wonderful deal. I want to show you a few of the ways experienced blog and website investors do their homework before big purchases.

Backlink Search

There are a million tools out there to do a backlink search for a site. My favorite is DnScoop, because of it’s ease of use, and access to a lot of research tools right there on the page. I can also recommend iWebTool, due to the number of tools they have accessible to you as well.

A backlink search is very important when buying a blog. It’s not uncommon to find a newer blog that is a PageRank 0, but has 2,000+ backlinks. When this happens, the blog isn’t worth much… but to the investor it’s GOLD! We know, that barring something unexplainable, that with that number of backlinks, it’s well on it’s way to a Google PageRank update. This recently happened to me on a site that I will be selling shortly. It was a PageRank 0, but it had over 1,600 backlinks, so I knew that it was well on it’s way to an upgrade. Well, to my surprise, 3 days after I purchased it… it was a PageRank 4. It’s value just went through the roof in comparison to what I had paid for it. I’ll sell that site shortly for 1,000+% profit.

You can also do a backlink search by going to Yahoo or Google and typing in links: http://yourdomain.com - just to make sure that we don’t have any “slow” people here… make sure to enter your correct domain name, instead of http://yourdomain.com!

Archived Pages

Using the Wayback machine at Archive.org - you can check for archived versions of the website you wish to purchase. Don’t use this as an iron-clad guarantee, because it doesn’t necessarily update as often as it should, and updates are often incorrect, but it can be a good factor to evaluate a site that is a bit older. For newer sites (less than a year), it’s not generally worth checking, but for older sites, you can check to make sure that it always was, what it is being marketed as. For example, I don’t want to buy a Make Money Online site that used to be a porn domain.

PageRank Checker

Using iWebTool, or DnScoop, or even PR Checker, you can check to make sure that the visual PageRank on a page, is the ACTUAL pagerank.

For whatever reason, some pages get a visual pagerank (the PR that appears in the toolbar) that is inaccurate. Well, sometimes the buyers don’t know this, or other times they do know, and are trying to scam you out of some real money. The easiest way to protect yourself it to type in the URL to a PageRank checker, and to see what they have to say about it.

Indexed Pages

Not only do you want to check to see how many pages are indexed in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN… you also want to make sure that they are even indexed! Some sites are banned from these search engines due to duplicate content, spam, pornography, or any number of other factors, such as black hat seo methods. So it’s always important to do a quick search of the site in the search engines. Type in the url, and make sure the site comes up! DnScoop will also show you how many pages are indexed in popular seach engines. If nothing comes up, don’t necessarily buy the “my site is new” excuse. These are often domains that have been banned!

To be successful in this game, you must have a good selection of tools to help you do your job. Most of them are free, and any of the paid can be substituted for free ones, but the name of the game is making your life easier. And to do this, you sometimes need to spend a bit of money. So, let’s check our options when it comes to blog flipping tools.

Marketplaces

Sitepoint - Where I do 75% of all my website flipping. Sitepoint is a marketplace that gets plenty of traffic, and the bids tend to be the highest when I list here.

Digitalpoint - A complete crapshoot. Generally I recommend buying from digitalpoint, but hardly ever selling there. The only thing I sell at Digitalpoint are turnkey sites, and ready-made (quick flip) blogs. Don’t ever sell high-dollar items here.

eBay - Buy only! Some good deals to be had, but you’ll hardly ever get what your website is worth if you sell here. Most of the turnkey websites found on eBay are junk, so be careful… but they are cheap!

Sedo - This is pretty much just for domains… but some good deals to be had. One of the biggest considerations when selling a website is how good the domain is… so when buying a domain to start a new blog or website to flip, this is a good place to start.

…the best of the rest… These aren’t quite as big, and some of them aren’t that great at all, but it’s definitely worthwhile to bookmark them. I recommend listing on as many services as you can find, and if nothing else… the smaller ones sometimes provide great deals when you are BUYING WEBSITES.

Website-Buy-Sell

Hot Websites For Sale

Website Broker

Website Auction Hub

Search Engine Forums

Website Marketplace

Web Unload

DN Drive - Mostly Domains…

DNRS - Mostly Domains…

Link Building / Traffic Building

Unfortunately, you’ll find that just about anything that helps you build links costs money. I don’t think it’s coincidence either… link building sucks, so people cash in on helping you to do something that everyone hates doing. Let’s start with the free tool… however, as you get some cash, I strongly recommend ALL of the paid ones that I list here. I use each of them almost daily.

Onlywire - Allows you to submit to multiple social bookmarking sites for free. Great tool, but extremely limited effectiveness. FREE!

Bookmarking Demon - This is a must-have folks. It allows you to create multiple user accounts at social bookmarking sites, as well as smaller, yet still effective scuttle sites. It completely automates the link building process. Takes a while to complete, so I usually let it run when I go to bed… but each time I use it, it brings in 50-150 backlinks. Not bad for a $97 piece of software. Incoming links are a huge factor when selling established sites.

Article Submitter - You’ve heard from every A-List blog on the block that article submission is a great way to drive traffic, and produce high quality backlinks… now you can automate the tedious process. Great software! This submits to 668 article submission sites every time you run it! That’s just plain awesome…

Directory Submitter - Another way to generate HIGH pagerank backlinks. This submits to multiple directories, and is another must-have.

Just a little disclaimer here. I used to use Onlywire because it was free, but the three that are mentioned after it make Onlywire an afterthought. I use all three of these, and I recommend you get all of them. You don’t have to buy them all at once, and in fact, you can do all of this for free. However, the more of these sites you can build, the more money you make, so it only makes sense to automate some of the process.

Tools To Determine Website Value

DnScoop - Not the most accurate tool in the world, but it gives you a pretty good estimate based on backlinks, pagerank, etc.

iWebTool - Offers multiple tools such as backlink checkers, the most accurate pagerank predictor, multi-rank checkers, etc.

Xinu - This tool is awesome. Calculates all kinds of different things.

Alexa - Yeah, it still counts… kinda.

Blog Juice Calculator - You have to sign up for a free account, but it’s a pretty cool tool that gauges values of blogs based on how they rank to similar sites.

Page Strength - Tells you the relative importance, strength, and visibility of a domain and/or website.

Popuri - Another multi-checker

Website Grader - I saved the best of last. This is my absolute favorite tool that I’ve found so far. It checks everything from backlinks, to pagerank, alexa, and everything in between. But the best part is, that it even runs reports that find out how many times your URL’s have hit social bookmarking sites, does an SEO report, and much more. Check it out!

There has been a lot of controversy lately about whether recent blog sales (mine included) were overvalued. I couldn’t disagree more with this assessment, so I’ll show you a few points to back up my opinion today. It’s no secret that make money online blogs have sold for quite a bit on the open marketplace lately. However, I tend to think just the opposite… for long term investors, make money online blogs may actually be UNDERVALUED. Here’s a few reasons to scoop one up RIGHT NOW!

1. Traffic

It’s no secret that traffic is one of the many factors of valuation when it comes to buying blogs. For my examples here, I’m going to use the sale of Blogging Fingers as an example. Blogging Fingers had 10,689 visitors the month before the sale (September 2007). Let’s do some simple math to see how much 10,689 visitors is worth. Here, you have to take into consideration that Blogging Fingers was in the ever-popular “make money online” niche. So let’s take a couple of popular keywords and average them out to get a per-visitor cost. These are the four keywords that most major make money online blogs use consistently in their writing, even if by accident, and their estimated CPC using Google’s keyword tool

• make money online - $3.05
• seo - $4.08
• internet marketing - $6.09
• blogging - $2.63

The average of the four keywords above is $3.96. We’re going to use these 4 keywords as an example of how expensive it is to build traffic, and how a blog with 10,689 visitors is worth it’s weight in gold. So now, let’s look at the traffic numbers again.

10,689 Visitors @ $3.96 Per Visitor (per month) = $42,328.44

So, that means that EVERY month you’d have to have a $42k budget just to generate that kind of traffic in this extremely popular niche. You also have to take into consideration that as long as the new owner keeps putting out good content, that traffic number is going to grow on it’s own over a long enough time frame. Organic traffic is the key, and I’m sure that a very small percentage of that was organic. However, all traffic counts, but it’s not worth as much as organic. Impressive? Wait… that’s just the beginning.

2. Subscribers

To many investors, subscribers are worth even more than traffic. RSS subscribers are nice, but for even more valuable subscribers, you need an email list. List subscribers are said to be worth about $34 EACH over the course of their life on your list, of course this depends on how well you monetize them, and what offers you are pitching to them. That’s a pretty impressive number, and it’s no wonder many companies pay $10+ just for an email address. Don’t believe me? Check out any of the major CPA (cost per action) networks and look up “lead campaigns”. Companies are paying anywhere from 50 cents to $10+ JUST for an email address. You aren’t selling anything… they just know how valuable that email address is.

So, let’s take a quick look at RSS subscribers before we dive into the even more valuable newsletter readers. Using Mark from 45n5’s wonderful post as an example, let’s dive in and check out the overall value of RSS subscribers. Mark figures that the average RSS subscriber is worth around $18, so let’s take a look at Blogging Fingers and their RSS subscriber numbers.

200 Rss Subscribers x $18 = $3,600

Impressive huh?

Now, let’s take a look at that same number, and assume that they are newsletter subscribers instead. And by the way, if you aren’t building an email list… you are just letting money slip through your fingertips. Go get an Aweber account, and start building a list for gods sake.

200 NEWSLETTER Subscribers x $34 = $6,800

Now that’s just insane. 200 names with an email address is worth $6,800 to some companies? Well, with the higher conversion rates, and the ability to pitch the same product multiple times, it’s no wonder. Email subscribers are a more captive audience because unlike blog readers, it’s hard to forget about you when they get a newsletter from you once a week. It’s no secret that people in this niche spend money, but unlike a blog post, a newsletter will eventually get to them when they are in a “buying” mood.

3. Revenue

Revenue should be an afterthought when going to buy a blog. And the reason I say this, is because that none of us are alike. If you make $500 a month with your blog, and I bought it… there’s no guarantee that I could make $500 a month with it. You also have to take into consideration the “adjustment period”. This is often a building time for the new blog owner because they will lose a few readers, and have to regain them somehow, all while making sure to build quality content, get affiliate links switched over, and make sure to update the about, contact, paypal info… and talk to the advertisers so that they renew… whew. Owning a pre-owned blog can be hard work at first.

All of these problems are temporary though, so for a long-term investor, they won’t blink an eye after having a few months of declining traffic and revenue. The experienced investor knows that this comes with the territory. For the first 2-6 months… you are essentially in “rebuilding” mode. After that you can focus on long-term growth.

So, long story short… don’t place too much emphasis on revenue. It’s not a reliable number.

So if we look at Blogging Fingers, which sold for $6,000, and use these variables. We’ll see that maybe make money online blogs aren’t as over-priced as some think. If we add the traffic, and the subscribers… we get a number of $45,928.44. Now, am I saying that I’d spend 45k on Blogging Fingers? Not a chance. But, it goes to show you that there is a lot more value in these blogs than you think.

Let’s take a quick look at the average life of an internet marketer.

The first step is finding or developing a product to sell. So let’s say Joe Cool the internet marketer, decides to sell a product that he made about blogging. It’s an uber-cool course that he’s going to sell for $97 and he needs to build a landing page, and start a PPC campaign. Instead of doing this, he runs across Blogging Fingers for the bargain price of $6,000. Let’s take a look at what would be more cost-effective for him to sell his product.

If he uses PPC like Google Adwords, he’ll be spending approximately (based on the projections above) $42,328.44 for 10,689 targeted pageviews.

Time to break that down even further for the internet marketers in the group. The average conversion rate of a landing page is anywhere from 1-3%. So if we take the average (2) conversion rate, and apply it to our 10,689 pageviews, we get about 214 that WILL buy, based on historical data. So we’re selling our product at $97 and we have approximately 214 buyers, which translates into $20,758.

You can see the value by now I’m sure. Instead of paying over 40k to attract 20k we now spent 6k to attract 20k. What can I say… the make money online niche is expensive!

The last post Organic Traffic Sells Websites, touched a bit on the importance of organic traffic when it comes to marketing your blog. Today, I’d like to spend some time talking a bit about SEO, and how to start getting streams of organic traffic coming to your blog day after day. The best part about organic traffic is the fact that it’s semi-passive. It’s one of the few methods that allows you to reap benefits months, or even years later. I have another blog that is getting about 90% organic traffic. This is a blog that covers a very niche topic, and it’s not my best work by far. In fact, the content is all re-written PLR (private label rights), and I utilized an article re-writer in order to avoid duplicate content. It’s truly set, and forget… I haven’t touched this thing in months, yet like clockwork, I see about $3-$5 a day from it.

That’s the beauty of organic traffic. But how do we capture this ever-elusive organic traffic? Well, that could be a book in and of itself… and there are actually several books on the subject. I could go on for days about how to do it, but let’s start with something everyone knows… SEO IS ALL ABOUT BUILDING LINKS.

Sadly, building links is one of the most tedious and boring jobs that a web publisher or a blog flipper will ever have to accomplish. But it’s a necessary evil, and it’ll pay off in the long run. It doesn’t matter whether your blog or website is a quick flip, or something you plan on keeping a little longer term… it needs links. People won’t buy the site without SOME organic traffic, and in order to do that, you’ll need a few links here and there. Don’t get me wrong… I’ve had sites that started generating organic traffic and didn’t have ANY links… but that’s purely by accident. If you want to build organic traffic, you’ll need to get those links. On the subject of blog flipping, look at it this way… one of the factors of valuation when buying a blog is incoming links. So the more you can generate incoming links, the better you can cash out for!

Google & Link Weight

One simple fact can’t be disputed. The biggest part of the complicated Google Search Engine Algorithm is linkage data. Google views the site with the most trusted links as the most important. That’s not a secret. There are many other considerations, but generally if you build enough links, you’ll rank higher than the guy in front of you.

But wait… did you know that the number of links a site has, has very little to do with search engine results? That’s because one of the things that most people forget about when building a link is that every link is not created equal. Google likes sites with “trusted” links, and these types of links carry more importance than a blogroll link from Aunt Maple’s Knitting Blog.

So what else does Google look for when deciding how high to place your site in their search engine results?

• Trust Factor of Incoming Links - Like I said above, one link from a “trusted” site can be worth more than dozens of links from smaller sites. For example, one link on Problogger.Net, can be worth 10x as much as a link on JohnChow.Com, even though they see similar traffic numbers. Problogger has a Google PageRank of 6, and John Chow is lucky that Google still allows him to run a blog. He’s been kicked around by Google so many times it’s not even funny. But long story short, the higher the PageRank of a site that’s linking to you, the more “trusted” the link is from Google. Get those high PageRank links!
• Number of Outbound Links - Even if a site has a high PageRank, if the site is linking to EVERYBODY, it’s not as important as a site that selectively uses outbound linking. For example, a link in a directory (except for trusted directories like DMOZ), is worth very little, no matter what the PageRank of the site is. Directories are great for building massive quantities of links, but they don’t carry much weight individually.
• Anchor Text - This might just be the most important thing when it comes to ranking highly on a keyword. However, generally you don’t have any control over this. Make it quite clear what words you are trying to rank for, and most people will link to you with that anchor text. For example, if I wanted to rank for the terms, Blog Flipping, and Website Flipping, I’d need to build links using those two phrases as anchor text. So if you wanna link to me… *nudge*. When manually building links (commenting on Do-Follow blogs, etc.), you can use whatever anchor text you want, so make sure to take advantage of this.

When building links, I don’t recommend that you worry about anything but getting links, and using the correct anchor text. The above examples were just shown so that you know some of the factors that Google uses to decide what site goes where. And just for clarification, these aren’t SEO tips per se, but just an overall guideline of how Google decides which links are important. When it comes to SEO, I’ve got a ton of tips, but I just wanted to share with you how Google decides which links are important, and which ones are junk. Stick around and we’ll discuss some on-page, and off-page SEO tips in future articles. But for now, get out there and start building links. Whether you know what you are doing or not… links can only HELP your blog.

We’ll have more great SEO tips for you coming soon. Make sure to check back often!

When it comes to traffic there are three main ways to send traffic to your turnkey sites. Of course, these three methods could be split up into dozens more, but from an overview perspective, I’ll give you what works.

1. Paid Traffic
2. Organic/Seo Traffic
3. Referral Traffic

These three methods all have their pro’s and con’s… so the best way to build traffic would be to utilize all three. However, I realize that this may not be practical in all situations. So, we’ll discuss the three in further detail.

Paid Traffic

Paid traffic can be anything from PPC (pay-per-click), to banner advertisements. This is just what it sounds like… traffic that you are paying for. The most effective way to generate low-cost traffic BY FAR is Google Adwords. I can get clicks for non-competitive keywords at around $.05 each. Since these are non-competitive keywords, it takes hundreds of them to do any damage usually, but at 5 cents a click, it’s an affordable method.

I like to call paid traffic, “band-aid traffic”. I think that any good web publisher should be using this to build a small following, while using the other two methods for free. Of course, building Organic or Referral traffic takes much more time, so it’s great as a temporary solution. The reason I call it band-aid traffic is because it’s not something that you should have to do forever. If you are working on the SEO aspects of your turnkey site, or blog, you shouldn’t have to do this for long. SEO is such an easy concept that you’ll start to see results by accident sooner, rather than later. However, you should be working on the non-accidental keywords that you’d like to rank for as well. We’ll jump into SEO in a bit more detail at a later date… but as I said in the opening… organic traffic sells sites! So, get out there and work on it.

Organic/Seo Traffic

95% of SEO revolves around your ability to build links. You can make this as hard as you want, or try to repeat every SEO tip you’ve ever received from so-called “experts” in the field, but it all comes down to links. This is one of the few things that Google is fairly straightforward about, and unless your a moron, you can’t really dispute it. Linkage data is what it’s all about.

Organic traffic is the best way to generate large amounts of income on a semi-passive method. This traffic obviously is looking for what you are talking about. If not, they wouldn’t have found your site in the search engines, and they wouldn’t have clicked your link after seeing the brief description. Leverage this traffic at all costs, and make sure to do all you can to generate more organic hits.

Referral Traffic

I’m a firm believer in social bookmarking. Before you start booing me off of my self-generated stage, let me explain. The non-believers criticize this as a traffic method because generally the traffic converts very poorly. I can’t dispute that fact, it’s 100% correct. Social bookmarking traffic is NOT converting traffic. They generally don’t buy, and rarely do they do more than give your site a quick peek before taking off for the next shiny object in their browser window. However, it’s not WORTHLESS traffic. It does have some benefits.

One of the benefits of social bookmarking traffic is the fact that it’s virtually idiot-proof and anyone should be able to bring this form of traffic to their site. To start generating traffic to a new site, it’s as easy as clicking the “I like it” button on StumbleUpon. I recommend working Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit as well, but StumbleUpon is an easy start. The reason I like StumbleUpon as a starting point is because all it takes is a few clicks to send hundreds, if not thousands of new viewers to your site. Granted, most of them won’t stay long, and won’t buy anything… but if you can get them there, you are still taking steps in the right direction. This is especially true when selling websites. It’s much easier to sell a website with 500 hits a day, even if it’s 90% social bookmarking traffic, than it is to sell that same site with 50 hits a day, of organic traffic. Why? Not sure… but people seem to like sites with more traffic… no matter where it comes from.

Remember, the reason you are in the web publishing (site flipping, blogging, etc) industry is to make money. And one of the only tips that make money online experts aren’t arguing over, is the need to increase your RSS subscribers. Now, we know that social bookmarking traffic is poor converting traffic, but what if you could get 2% of new visitors that you see from social sites, to subscribe to your RSS feed? They haven’t bought anything, but they just became a subscriber… which could mean more when you go to sell the site.

One more BIG reason I’m a firm believer in social bookmarking traffic is simple. Submitting stories to these sites means more backlinks for your site. And the best part? These are generally very trusted sites, so the link obviously becomes worth more than a blogroll link on your cousin Joe’s blog about BBQ.

I could go on for days about these three traffic methods, but I’ll finish up by saying this… if you aren’t working these three traffic methods, you are definitely behind the curve. Whether you want to make money with your websites, or just sell them off… you can’t get the full value out of them without building traffic, backlinks, and rss subscribers.

Editing turnkey website really couldn’t be much simpler. I hope this video shows you that a bit of coding is nothing to be afraid of, and after watching it you could easily edit and install a ton of turnkey websites. When editing turnkey websites make sure to save all of your edits, and to change ALL of the fields listed, otherwise you may just be paying the person that sold them to you again and again… enjoy!

Just so you know what you are getting in this video… we’ll be editing turnkey websites, and showing you how to install these sites on your own server. If you don’t have a hosting account yet, I recommend Host Gator, because you can install multiple websites on the same account for a flat fee of $10 a month. Check it out!

Enough with the build-up, let’s start making you guys some money! Today, we’re going to learn how to find good deals, and purchase turnkey websites. There is a lot to learn, so let’s get started.

Where to Find Turnkey Websites

Digitalpoint

Digitalpoint is like the bottom of the barrel when it comes to finding GOOD turnkey websites. The only reason I mention it is because it’s like a thrift store. If you weed through enough garbage, there is often a gem hiding. And this gem is often WAY underpriced if you compare it to comparables on the Sitepoint Marketplace.

Sitepoint

Sitepoint often has the best quality sites for sale. However, the price reflects it. You can generally find some pretty good turnkey sites here for $100 or so. It’s also a safer marketplace than Digitalpoint, and you don’t have to weed through as much junk since people have to pay to list their sites there. Digitalpoint is a free service, so you get lots more junk!

eBay

Usually crappy, however it kind of goes back to the idea about Digitalpoint. If you weed through enough crap, you can often find some OUTSTANDING deals on halfway-decent sites. I like eBay because it gives me the ability to buy these sites in bulk most of the time, and save quite a bit of cash. I had one deal where I found 300 turnkey websites (about 100 of them sucked), for $49.95. Not a bad deal, even though 100 were worthless.

Design Shrine

Aaaah, I saved my favorite for last. Design Shrine is absolutely the best of this bunch. The reason? You are getting high quality sites for a REALLY low fee. It is a membership site that costs $25 a month, and allows you to use every turnkey site that they offer for that price. There is no maximum!!! The best part? They update often, so you don’t have to deal with the same websites forever!

What To Look For

Since I’ve already gone over this once, I’ll keep this brief. What you are looking for generally depends on what you are going to do with it. If you are going to resell it, you want to find the best looking turnkey sites you can find. However, if you plan to make money with it yourself (sending traffic to it), looks don’t matter as much. I don’t know why it is, but as I said in a previous post, turnkey websites that are great looking generally don’t perform as well as their uglier counterparts. I think it’s because of the simplicity of these uglier cousins of well-designed websites. There is a difference between ugly, and non-functional though… so make sure everything works!

Just to touch on the ugly concept - it’s not because the site is ugly that has anything to do with it making more money. This is usually coincidental. The reason these sites generally make more money is because they are simpler, and have a more defined call to action (think BUY NOW!). The better designers tend to make their turnkey sites a bit more complex, and often your desired action, such as them buying your $19.95 ebook, is lost in the shuffle. Ok, back to the topic now!

Secondly, make sure that it has built-in monetization methods before you buy. Unless you are familiar with editing these sites, it’s always easier to have this done for you!

So there you have it. Those two things are really all you need to remember when buying a turnkey website. Also, some of these sites come with a domain. Don’t worry about the domain name. If you don’t like it, you can always buy a new one for a few bucks!

See you at the next post!