Website Flipping Advice

For those of you who make part of your online income from buying/selling websites, or even creating/selling websites, there's one thing you should always remember.

Always put Adsense (or whatever other networks you use) code in the site before you sell it.

I have sold several sites, and there are a few that still bring in a little bit of Adsense income because the new owner hasn't changed it yet. This works even better if the site you sell isn't an MFA site.

Just something to keep in mind.

 

Actually this is a good tip.

I have noticed the same, even on sites I sold months ago.

 

But this method sometime let your Adsense to risk!
With a site which I sold before 1 month, the new owner changed the all Adsense ID except one!
So, 2 pub Ids in a single page! A high risk to my Adsense!
Now I used to change the pub id to "Your Adsense pub ID" before selling any sites!

 

In my opinion it is hardly worth it as you won't be promoting the site much but only working for sales of the products you are endorsing.

 

Google doesnt care if theres two IDs on one page. How do you think revenue sharing (like we have at DP) is still around if it would get people banned?

 

Thanks a lot for the tip, Bishop. I'm just getting into the whole concept of flipping websites and if you'll pardon my ignorance, may I ask what an MFA site is? I've been hearing the acronym a lot but never found out what it meant.

Also, can you tell me which is more profitable: a wordpress blog or a resource directory? I'm already working on the latter but people tell me it's better to make a blog. I'm planning to put like 60 articles on my website so any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

MFA : Made for Adsense
Basically, a website, that has only scraped/duplicate/nonsensical/keyword spammed content - just for the sake of getting High Clicks on Advertisements.

 

Yes, MFA = Made For Adsense. Somebody who purchases this type of site is going to make sure that they switch everything over to their own id because that's usually the only form of monetization on the site.

As far as which is more profitable, it's hard to say. I have noticed that when I change a normal site over to using wordpress that it really helps out in the search engines. The reason for that (I'm figuring) is that I don't know how to properly optimize a regular site, but wordpress is built for optimization, so it works out really well for me. It also takes a lot less time to throw up a wordpress blog and customize it to meet my needs (even writing plugins if needed) then to build a whole site from scratch. An example would be my text messaging site ITxTU.info. I originally built it from scratch, redesigned it with a normal css/xhtml template, then moved it over to wordpress. It's not an active blog or anything, but with wordpress I was able to write the plugins I needed for the sidebar and can easily use the wordpress features. It's also going to come in handy once I start working on SEO for the site even more.

Now, I'm not an expert on all this, but that's my real life example and thoughts on the subject. Take it for what it's worth, and hopefully somebody can give a good argument against it too, so you can get some good knowledge on the subject.

 

Thanks for the reply Bishop. My major worry is that people won't respect a wordpress blog as they would a professional-looking directory. This might sort of devalue the content, don't you think?

And I'm no expert in these matters either so, it'll be interesting to hear what the others have to say.

Cheers

 

If you know PHP, then you can make a wordpress blog not even look like a wordpress blog. It all depends on your theme. Everything can be edited.

I have heard of people using PHPLD for different types of resource directories too. I have a web directory built using PHPLD, and got a ton of hits from the search engines for a certain keyword that somebody used. With a little modification, I'm sure you can make it do almost anything you need it to as well.

 

Very interesting...

 

Nice advice but kind of sounds too risky.

 

I'm very new to the coding behind the website design, but I do know that the wordpress blogs I've worked with and for always end up toward the top of the search list. directories do at times, particularly if its written with very specific words, but I've not seen it occur consistently.

 

that's kind of shady isn't it. I mean the person who purchased your site is planning on making that money.

That could really piss a buyer off if they realize it and that you were basically stealing their income.

 

JohnG, how could they realize it and think you were doing something wrong? Its basically there own fault for not changing all the adsense PUB ID's to their own...

 

Completely unethical. I've sold a site before and noticed that the new owners hadn't removed adsense - I contacted them to let them know right away. It's basic decency.

 

I do not think it is the smartest thing to do. You can make some income off the sites but you also allow your account to be at risk. The new owner could add or do things which are against the TOS of Google and you could end up with a banned account. Seems hardly worth the risk.

Not true, you need to get it approved before having more than one ID an a page at the same time. Revenue sharing does not show more than one ID on any page at the same time. Google must approve more than one ID shown at the same time.

It is a matter of honesty and trust. You may sell to someone new to websites and who trust you to sell them a site and be honest up front. That includes letting them know your ID is still in the site. I guess though it depends how someone wants to do business rather honest or just trying to make a quick buck.

I agree with you. Just because you sell to someone who may not know better, it is still wrong.