1. Change the Copyright Year on Your Site’s Footer

When I see a copyright date on a website that says something like “Copyright 2003. All Rights Reserved”, two thoughts go through my mind.

1. This is an abandoned website. The webmaster hasn’t touched this thing in 8 years.
2. Is this a site a diamond in the rough? Can I buy it cheap, improve it, and sell it quickly? If the site was ever monetized (unlikely), there are likely some opportunities with new website monetization strategies to get this thing profitable in a hurry.

Do you want to leave the impression that your site is neglected? It’s time to edit the code of your site and make sure the date is dynamically inserted, such as with the PHP Date function, rather than manually added in the footer of each page.

2. Review Your Top Landing Pages for Out of Date Information

Log into your Google Analytics or other web statistics program and find your “top content” or “top landing pages”. Read each one of these pages and make sure all the information will continue to be up to date next year. If not, it’s time to do some rewriting.

3.) Search Your Site for Mentions of the Current Year

A simple Google search can help you identify pages which might be out of date. Utilize a command such as “site:yourdomain.com 2011″ to quickly find pages which could be out of date due to mentioning the current or previous years.

4.) Change Your Passwords

When was the last time you changed your hosting control panel password? If you don’t already have a scheduled frequency that you change your password, at least make year-end your time to do this important task. It can help prevent security problems due to account hacking or simply sharing passwords with outsourced teams who no longer work with you. Here’s a basic list of passwords you should consider changing

1. Hosting Control Panel Password
2. FTP Passwords
3. Email Passwords
4. Domain Registration Passwords
5. MySQL Passwords
6. Revenue Account Passwords Such as Adsense
7. 3rd Party Tool Passwords Such as Email Marketing or SEO Tools
8. WordPress User Passwords

5.) Backup Everything

If you’ve been online for any period of time and you haven’t had a hard drive fail, an account get hacked, or a programmer seriously mess up your site, consider yourself lucky. However, it’s only a matter of time before something like this happens. Even the savviest people will run into a case where they need to get a backup of their data. If you don’t have at least two copies of your data in different locations, ask yourself if you would be okay with losing it forever. Here’s a quick list of items I recommend backing up.

1. Website Files
2. MySQL Data
3. Email Data
4. Customer Lists
5. Email Lists
6. Transaction Logs
7. Your Computer

Remember to never rely on your providers (hosting, email marketing, etc.) to back up your data for you. Get a copy of your data and have it backed up at a separate physical location from where it’s stored.

Here’s to a Smooth Next Year

I recommend taking care of these little but important tasks before the end of the year rather than after. This will allow you to focus your renewed energy in the new year on your biggest opportunities. A little preparation now can help you have peace of mind later and save you headaches next year.

Here’s to your most successful year yet!

1. Weekly Websites For Sale. The new sell your website section is live. When you have an established website to sell, we want to help. We’ve added a feature to the site that allows you to send us details on sites you’re selling. If we don’t buy them from you then and there, we’ll list it on the FlipWebsites.com blog in our new Weekly Websites For Sale post. This new weekly post will include sites submitted to us through the sell your site page as well as other deals we’ve looked at around the web on sites like Flippa.
2. Monthly “Website Flipping How To” Post. This monthly post will be geared around quality how to information on topics related specifically to profiting from building or buying and selling websites. We’ll focus on things like how to get more money when you sell, where to buy sites for a bargain, and other principles related to flipping websites.
3. Monthly “Ways to Make More Money On Your Website” Post. This monthly post will be focused on topics such as increasing traffic and conversions as well as improving monetization on your websites.
4. Monthly “Interviews and Product Reviews” Post. This monthly post will focus on interviews with people who are successful at flipping websites and reviews of tools and products that make our lives as site flippers easier. If you have a person you’d like to see interviewed or tools you find extremely useful, please contact us or comment below and let us know.
5. Monthly “Due Diligence and Scams” Post. We hope to educate you as much as we can on ways to prevent getting scammed, especially when it comes to buying sites. We look at a lot of sites and we do a lot of due diligence and we’re constantly seeing new ways sellers hide facts and twist the truth as well as blatantly try to scam you. We want to make the community of website buyers aware of this and that’s what this monthly post is all about.
6. Monthly “Market Update” Post. We’ll gather together interesting links from around the web and review interesting Flippa sellers, auctions, etc. We hope this post gives you a quick way each month to stay up to date on the latest news, trends, and what’s hot in website flipping.

There’s more in the works that I can’t quite reveal yet so please stay tuned and keep reading!

*Important note: If you’d like to get the latest blog posts in your email, you must opt-in to our new Feedburner system. Click Here to Subscribe to Flip Websites by Email

Let us know what you think of our road map by commenting below.

CTR Theme, which I’ve discussed here briefly, has been wildly successful.  In April, it pulled down $35,000 in gross sales with a solid profit margin.  May hasn’t seen much of a letdown either.  The reviews have been great, but so have the user suggestions for new features — and that means a good chunk of time devoted to beefing up the product, trying to create rabid fans.  I’ve regularly been adding new features, and I’m about to push out a new release today.

Since CTR Theme didn’t sell at auction, I’m sure that it will keep me busy, as I’m planning to start a big marketing push for the theme.  And that’s not all I’m up to…

I’ve also been working on a few other from-scratch projects that I hope to launch in the next couple of months, plus I’ve been continuing to build up my AdSense sites.  I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think one of the new projects could be even bigger than CTR Theme…

Knowing that all my effort has been devoted elsewhere has left me feeling a bit guilty about the flow of information here — I feel an obligation to provide value to the loyal readers of FlipWebsites.  That’s why I’m thrilled to introduce you to Chris Yates and David Gass.  Chris and David purchased FlipWebsites.com from me in a private transaction and will be running the show here going forward.  The best part about the transaction, from my point of view, is that they’ve left an open door for me to post here when I have something interesting to share, so I won’t be a total stranger.

About the New Owners

Chris and David are the real deal — expert website flippers and experienced online businessmen, and they run a number of well-regarded online properties related to website flipping, including Buying and Selling Websites, Flipping Network, Killer Flipping Secrets, and a Flipping Mastermind Coaching Group.  I’m sure you’ll be thrilled with the quality and quantity of content they and their team will be able to provide to you guys going forward.

Click here for more information about Chris and David…

While going through my recent search logs, I was pretty disturbed to see a fair amount of traffic coming to the site for phrases like “buy Flippa bids.”  You see, shill bidding is easy to spot when it’s a single user registering multiple accounts and bidding on his own auction.  You can track ip addresses, cookies, or more closely monitor recently created accounts.

This type of bad behavior is much more difficult to track when it’s not just one bad actor, but instead is the result of collusion.  Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that anyone is offering this type of service, but if the demand exists (people are searching for it), some shady character is likely to provide the supply.

Hopefully Flippa (and any of the other marketplaces) are staying on top of bidding patterns to prevent this from becoming a reality.

You may have already stumbled across it from a search engine, its new menu link, or the sidebar “from the forum” links.  I’m pretty excited about it, and it’s already picked up some high quality posts.

My hope is that the forum becomes a place where we can learn from each other’s experiences, becoming better buyers, sellers, and developers in the process.  I also will be looking to the forums to help guide the direction of this site — what to cover in greater depth, what not to bother with, etc.  Plus, I’ll do a live case study highlighting what I’m doing to try to achieve success with this endeavor.

Giving Stuff Away

To celebrate the new forum (and encourage its use), I’m going to be giving some goodies away.  We already have over 100 members registered, but not everyone is active posting — the first 100 people to post a message on the board will be eligible to win:

• 5 domains (all .com) that are perfect for the Local Flip Formula approach.
• 5 advance copies of the “Blog Flipping Masters” e-book Travis produced before selling the site (should be publicly available by mid-September)
• A year-long subscription to a top-secret flip alert system that I’m building (guess it’s not so top-secret anymore…)

I’m also going to give out an MVP (most valuable poster) award each month.  The gifts are still to be determined, but rest assured, they’ll help you make money online.

I really appreciate the warm welcome that’s been extended by this community since I took over the site — you guys have offered great insight in your comments on articles, and in the emails you send me directly.  I’m looking forward to communicating more in the forum.

The credit card industry has taken part in affiliate marketing since the early days. At first it was a lucrative form of monetization for any half-way decent financial website, but by the middle of last decade, the sector had become largely oversaturated. It seemed like everyone and their mom was hawking credit cards on their blog, and in turn, generating those commissions became a whole lot harder. Then there was another blow; the financial collapse. During this time most banks ceased their credit card marketing altogether. That brings us to today… in 2010 are credit card sites still a moneymaker?

As founder of CreditCardForum.com, one of the top sites for credit card reviews, I definitely know a thing or two about the industry. Not only have I ridden the ups and downs, but I’ve also consulted for a number of credit-related online ventures. Perhaps you already have a credit card venture or maybe you’re thinking about building one to flip? Either way, I’ll give you my take on the industry as it stands now. Here are some things you need to know:

Credit cards in the post-crash era

The industry today is completely different than it was just two or three years ago. For starters, banks no longer give credit to anyone with a pulse. In fact, I see even those with stellar credit scores getting denied left and right for cards like the Chase Sapphire. But it’s not just the Chase Sapphire and other upper-tier cards that have tightened up… even the mid-tier cards now have ultra strict requirements. Naturally, this has a major impact on credit card commissions – less approvals means less money.

Something else that has drastically changed the industry is the Credit Card Reform Act of 2009. Now that the vast majority of proposed changes are in effect, credit cards are a completely different business for the banks – they’re less lucrative. In turn, most credit card companies aren’t offering those uber-generous sign up bonuses, long balance transfer offers, and other promotions we became accustomed to last decade. Without these, of course, it’s not as easy to convince someone to apply for a credit card.

Lastly, it’s important to point out that the FTC has significantly stepped of regulation of financial products and services. What does this mean if you’re blogging credit card reviews? Well some issuers, like American Express, are requiring cumbersome company disclaimers to be included in your actual content, not below it (even if you already have your own disclaimer). A fellow industry veteran I know summarizes it as “The scales have tipped from too little regulation to too much. There is so much red tape these days.”

Where I think the industry is heading

I’ll be the first to admit that humans, in general, have a very short memory and rarely learn from their mistakes. However, if you think the banking industry is going to head back to the credit hay day we saw before the recession, think again. The financial crisis was such a major calamity, if the credit gravy train ever comes back, it won’t be for many years (decades). In other words, I think we have learned from the days of loosey goosey easy credit. Conclusion? Credit card marketing will not be nearly as lucrative as it was in the early days.

Have a credit site or thinking about starting one?

If you already have an existing credit card site and want to sell it, I would advise to do so sooner rather than later. Why do I say this? Because at this moment the banking industry is relatively stable. So if you sold your site, you would be selling a business in a viable market and therefore it would be more attractive to the buyer. But the credit tides could turn for the worse at any moment – all it would take is another recession, a major terrorist attack like 9/11, etc. to put the economy back into a free-fall. And if that were to happen, who’s to say the banks wouldn’t pull their credit cards out of affiliate marketing again, like they did from 2008 through early 2010?

If you’re thinking about starting a site for credit cards – either to keep or to flip – you may want to re-consider. It takes a massive amount of resources to compete these days in the credit card industry. Besides all the matured credit card specific sites, now you’re up against the big boys like Mint, BillShrink, etc. It’s just not the same lucrative opportunity it was ten years ago.

Alternative financial industries to consider

Lastly, the brings us to the question, if not credit cards, what other niches in the finance sector are still lucrative? Here are a couple ideas…

Identity Theft & Credit Monitoring – This is an industry that was practically non-existent a decade ago, but look at how popular it is these days? Even I used to think these monthly subscription services were unnecessary, but once you become a victim of identity theft, I’m sure you’ll think differently. These days it seems like there are more con artists than ever before and you frequently hear stories in the news about this kind of stuff… so I think this is an industry that will only get bigger. There are a number of companies that pay affiliates generous commissions for new customers.

Investments – The fact that the Dow is at the same place it was ten years ago doesn’t really matter… this is still an insanely profitable sector to be in. There are a number of different ways you can make money. You could do online broker reviews to generate affiliate referrals. Forex is a cash cow, but I think it’s too competitive… instead I would recommend something in commodities (which could be monetized using ClickBank eBooks). Whatever route you go, I would highly advise you to pick a “niche within a niche” because it gives you a fighting chance – i.e. natural gas trading in the commodities sector.

It’s fascinating to see the different approaches used to pitch domains and websites for sale (and to see which ones get copied).  Lately, I’ve noticed an influx of a specific style — more particularly a specific phrase — occurring in a lot of .net and .org domain listings.  The phrase is:

Godaddy says SomeRandomThing.com is worth $48,000 and now you can get SomeRandomThing.net for just $1,999!

You can see a few examples of these types of listings here: ebowling.org, insuranceglobe.org, holidayski.org.  Here’s what I think about this tactic:

This is a scam, and it’s BAD for business

The sales “technique” being employed comes from Ryan Deiss’ product Domain Scalping (I refuse to link to it, as I think it’s encouraging the wrong types of business behavior).  The scam, as far as I can tell, is pretty simple:

• Go to GoDaddy and find a .com domain that someone has listed in GoDaddy’s “premium” listings (ideally at an outrageously high price).
• Buy the .net or .org version of the same domain.
• Place it for sale in a marketplace with a lot of uneducated or undereducated buyers (like Flippa).
• Set the BIN price somewhere below 5% of the .com domain you originally spotted.
• Hope for a sale.

In fairness, when done properly, this wouldn’t be a terrible tactic.  If you could find TRUE premium .com domains and register their available .net counterparts, you could certainly make a multiple of your registration fee back.  Most of the names reference by these sellers, however, are far from premium.

The real problem, however, is with the representation of GoDaddy-appraised pricing.  None of these names are actually owned by GoDaddy and GoDaddy has no say in how these names are priced.  I know, because I’ve sold domains through GoDaddy’s premium marketplace. It allows the domain owner full discretion over pricing.  In short, GoDaddy doesn’t “say” the name is worth anything — they simply allow the owner to say that he’s willing to sell the name at a specific price.

The worst offenders include statements like, “GoDaddy will be pretty annoyed with me for this,” or “Looks like GoDaddy left its back door open.”  They are very actively promoting the incorrect assumption that GoDaddy is responsible for the .com domain listings and prices.  It’s fraudulent.

An honest listing would require them to look up the owner’s information (and get permission to use his name) and then state:

John Doe says ReallyCrappyDomain.com is worth $37,500…

Naturally, that’s not going to occur because there’s no appearance of authority when you just leverage the domain owner’s name — as opposed to the colossal marketplace.  Still, there needs to be some accountability for truth in advertising.

Why I’m So Upset About this ‘Domain Scalping’ Scam

Experienced domainers and developers aren’t going to fall for this trick.  They’ll look at the listing and instantly see the flaw.  It’s clear, however, that there are a lot of people who will fall prey to this type of scam — they’ll end up “investing” in an asset that has almost no chance at providing a real return… and that’s just not right.

It’s not right for the person getting stuck with the domain, but it’s also not right for the person doing the selling.  Frankly, the margins on these names aren’t high enough to justify selling your reputation.  And it’s a shame that a paid information product would try to convince people otherwise.

I knew there was no way I could maintain the quality of this blog with all the other things that I needed to attend to. My choice was either post once or twice every couple weeks or let it die on the vine. I didn’t like either option so I felt it was best to pass the torch and let someone else take over the blog and take it to the next level. Enter Eppie Vojt…

Eppie is the new owner of FlipWebsites.com. He was a real professional during the deal and he made the transition incredibly smooth and seamless. I’ll bet very few of you even knew that this blog was sold. My “secrecy” about the sale of this blog was by design. I wanted as little interruption for you as possible during the sale. I think Eppie and I achieved that!

I know there is always a concern about a blog when someone new takes over but I assure you this blog is in good hands. Eppie is an experienced website flipper who has a lot of plans for FlipWebsites. I’ll let him share those with you but suffice it to say, you’ll see just as much quality content as I was publishing – if not more!

What I was most thrilled about when I sold this blog to Eppie was that he really seemed to know his stuff about this business and he assured me he would “take good care of the blog.” That was important to me because I put a lot of work and effort into this baby and I know this blog has a loyal following among flippers. I didn’t want the new owner to let them down – and I’m confident Eppie won’t.

I want to personally thank you all for the support I got while this blog was under my ownership. It was a blast and I hope I was able to help you along the way with your website flipping endeavors. Take care and I wish you all the best!

Travis Van Slooten

** Editor’s Note: I want to thank Travis for the great job he did in building up this site as an industry authority and assure our readers that many of the features you’ve come to know and love will continue to exist on the site.  Market Snapshots aren’t going anywhere, and you’re still going to get tons of tips on how to get the most out of your flips.

I’ve got a few exciting things planned for the next 2 weeks, including a series called “Anatomy of a 5-figure flip,” which documents a recent $10,000 flip I made via Flippa.  The first post in this series goes live today.

- Eppie

Like July 2010, many of the most actives and top sellers were websites monetized by AdSense. I decided to jump on the AdSense bandwagon myself so I purchased my first AdSense site last week. We’ll see how it goes. My goal is to totally revamp the site and follow the steps exactly outlined in The AdSense Report. I’m going to see just how effective Cary’s report is. For those of you unfamiliar with Cary or his report, read the interview I did with him where we discussed the topic, “how to make money with Google AdSense.”

While that’s pretty impressive by itself, what I found interesting was this little nugget on the blog post:

“…the average price of property sold in the last seven days was $2,675, and a big slice of the action was in more modestly priced properties.”

If the average was really that low, then that means there were a lot of websites sold the past seven days! So much for a summer slow down.

What I want to know is if this $1 million figure includes auctions that don’t actually close. As you all know, I cover the most active and top selling auctions on my Market Snapshots and there are a fair number of websites that don’t actually close. There was one week where two of the top sellers were relisted the following week because apparently the buyers bailed when they “sold” the first time around.

I’m seeing more and more auctions relisted because buyers don’t follow through. It seems to be a problem at Flippa right now. If my gut feeling is correct – that they count all auctions that end as “sold” (regardless of whether they actually close or not), then this figure is exaggerated. Still though, they had a good week so I won’t take that away from them. Congrats Flippa!