I want to make $100,000 USD by 2022

To make a long story short ...

Here are what I want to do to earn this much ...

1. Build a website like Flippa and sell it in 1 year for $50,000 - $100,000 Dollars.
2. Build templates and sell them directly from my site.

I want to make the right choice ...

What should I do? Should I focus on building a site like Flippa or sell website templates?

Thanks
Farris

 

1. Will depend on how good the domain name is and the traffic the site gets at the end of 1 year period. It's a shaky business model, in my opinion.

2. A more practical approach, since it will depend on your skill level (sounds like you already have it) and ability to market the templates.

The question is which one do you gravitate towards?

 

Hi. thanks for your reply

I really believe in the Flippa business. There is little to no competition but I think building trust will be hard.
So ... To answer your question I am leaning more towards the Flippa idea.

 

It would cost you way more than that for it to be worth anywhere near that valuation, how much startup funding have you got?
Sorry to piss on your fire mate but you're in cloud cuckoo land, that niche has been done to death over the last 10 years, 99.9% of them fail.
I seriously hope you prove me wrong, but I very much doubt it.

That's because Flippa and the other big boys have it all sewn up and the rest fail.

 

I occasionally look for website templates and I start with the free ones offered by hostgator to its customers. Then, I go to the cheap template sites like TemplateMonster. I rarely find exactly what I am looking for, but usually find something close enough. Note that I am often just looking for hobby type websites for me or friends and nothing commercial and that is probably why I have trouble. The big sites would tend to focus on what the market is asking for, not what I am looking for. So, you will have to find a profitable niche (and that may not exist these days) that is not already covered by the big sites.

In terms of building a site and flipping it for tens of thousands of dollars: it will have to be earning those types of revenues that you wish the sales price to be. I have not looked at website sales recently, but for most businesses, you are getting 1x revenues these days as a sales price (you can get 8x EBITDA sometimes.) If you are able to build a website that is generating $50K - $100K per year, then you may want to keep it and not sell it.

 

Well, neither is a very good idea.
Template market is too saturated, and there must be like a million other webmasters doing the same.
Its extremely difficult to get search rankings in this niche, and without that you will need more investment than you can imagine.

Flippa idea might work, but problem there is to get it a jump start.
Its a 2 way marketing project.
You do not have inventory of your own to show to buyers.
You will need to advertise to attract buyers and also to attract inventory owners to sell.
That is going to need large investment.
Putting up a script to sell websites is not difficult. Its a piece of cake, small part.
Marketing that is very difficult.
Very targetted, and if I may say "sneaky" tactics are needed to get a jump start in this niche.

 

What types of "sneaky" tactics are you thinking of?

 

@jrbiz
mainly in SEO terms for keyword targeting.

 

I will feel SHOCK , SURPRISE if one day a big corporation wanna buy my domain

 

Ideas are everywhere...everyone has ideas. It's the MARKETING that is difficult.

Flippa does well because the competition sucks. There are sites that do the same, but most are poorly run & executed. How do you plan to be different? It will cost a LOT of startup capital and lots of time to even come close. Flippa isn't run by one person. You need to hire a team of people and that will get expensive quickly before you've even made a dime.

And templates are just a bad idea from the start. Way too much competition and too many freebies. Your templates would have to be hella special to get anyone to pony up the bucks for them.

Like others have said, we're not trying to piss on your parade, but I hate seeing people going down the wrong path from the start. However, if you DO have the startup capital (likely 10k minimum), then come back in a year and prove us all wrong. That would be satisfying, wouldn't it? I'll even list one of my sites with you!

 

I would like to see a better alternative to Flippa, please make it happen.

 

It was meant to be motivational, as this is what the OP clearly is considering and knowing people want something different is motivation. It's on the OP to laser focus on one of these things, so whichever one he is more motivated to work on will ultimately be better. Both are going to be hard, but both are possible.

As far as Flippa goes, its really the only place to sell a website other than forums and smaller marketplaces. There is plenty of room for competition if someone could market an alternative site properly.

What could Flippa do better? I don't know, I assume they have it perfected by now, but OP can start by copying their business model and then tweaking it to see what works for him. It would be a learning process. I never launched a marketplace like this and don't know what could be done better. I just know its possible for someone to make an alternative that becomes a close competitor, maybe even topping flippa one day. MySpace was king at one time, but Facebook came through and changed everything. Marketing is what will make this a successful venture.

Regarding the limited traffic issue... OP can give his users the power to mark their site as sold, and allow them to post it elsewhere online for sale too, so the users aren't limited to his site(simply disabling customers from automatically purchasing the site if user has opted to sell site in other marketplaces). He could also buy a ton of domains and outsource 'starter websites' to be built and post them for sale. It will take a lot of money, time and effort regardless. Like I said, it won't be easy but it is possible. Someone dedicated enough will make it happen, I do have faith in that.

I just scrolled up and re-read your response, which I agree with. Buying a ton of domains and posting them first will enable him to populate the site and give users incentive to pay to get featured ahead of all his listings...

This is about 5 minutes of me thinking about the idea.. and I believe I can go on and on with ideas and ways to break through the initial barrier of low traffic and users for hours! It's definitely possible.

@FarrisFahad You can do this!!

 

It will be a bumpy ride, but it is not impossible. The chances to sell it for that much depends on how much income website generate per month. To be a competitor of Flippa isn't an easy tasks. You will dive into very competitive niche.

 

Thank you guys for your support (@cronik) and for your honesty and input. I really appreciate it.

I know that Flippa is doing a good job, but I personally think there should be more places to sell a website. I know that 1 year is a short period of time, but I am hoping for it to be 1 year, as it could take longer and I understand that.

You are all right about the template industry. It's saturated. And requires a lot of work for little profit. With the website selling business at least I have a chance.

I am going with the Flippa project.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Farris

 

Hi Fahad,
That's a bit plan, you will do it by yourself solo?

 

Yes. I am planning to program, promote and manage the site by myself. I know it may sound crazy, but I have a plan