You Have Heard People Say That Content Is King, Right? Let Me Prove That Theory...

Let me put it bluntly. Your content is a reflection of you, what it is that you do, and how you do it. So, the question goes, does the content that you create on those websites that you are creating really matter all that much? Cant we just auto generate some content and hope for the best? Well, you can if you want, but I don’t see this getting you very far considering that content is what sells. Think about it for a moment, without content, what do you really have?

1 Post 1 Purpose

This is a rule that I live on. Regardless of the content that I am creating, each little piece of content is created for one specific purpose, and usually falls into one of the below categories:

• To educate my visitors on a topic
• To tempt them to join the mailing list
• To purchase that affiliate product
• To send traffic to another of my sites

Naturally, in order for you to get any kind of benefit from that website that you have sitting idle, this is the same methodology that you are going to have to think about, right? It is this simple, a website without purpose just sits idle, and doesn’t really gain any momentum.

Consider Your Visitors Needs And Desires

If you have done any back end research before launching your website, you will have taken down a few basics about your intended visitor. When you have drawn up a few basics, consider this visitors desires, their needs, their problems, and how exactly you can fulfil those needs. This little spot is exactly where you can monetize a website, and is also exactly where good quality content comes into play.

If I can take something from the ProBlogger workshop that I attended last week and deliver it to you, it is this. The very crossover of your knowledge, and the knowledge of your visitors, that is exactly what you want to write about. That is where you will meet their needs, and be able to provide them with a solution.

Consider The Role Of The Search Engines

Why do you search for things in the search engines? Apart from wanting to know the answer to your questions, most of the time it is because you want to know what to do next.

Consider someone who is dreaming of a holiday in France, they are searching for France in Google. Even though they are not specifically searching for a buying phrase in Google, they are in need of being told what to do next.

Lets now assume that the searcher has just entered the keyword “Accommodation In France”, and consider how impressionable the searcher is. One could assume that they are just window shopping, and wanting to see what kind of accommodation is available, however, through well written content, it is now your role to push that user to take the action that they want to take, and book that accommodation.

Search engines exist to direct a user depending on their needs, and you exist to guide the user to taking that specific action which serves both to please the visitor and monetize your web assets. This is where the quality of your content, regardless of the site that you create, needs to be as high as possible.

How Do You Create High Quality Content?

I am going to teach you the basic guideline that I follow when creating content. It is pretty basic, and makes a lot of sense.

1. Pin point a problem or desire that your visitor has
2. Create a piece of content that answers their dilemma
3. Suggest a course of action that will fix their problem
4. Suggest a premium course of action that will fix their problem even more (monetization)
5. Use a call to action (get them to take the step)
6. Optimize the post so that searchers can find your content in Google

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Truth be told, I am about to release a small free course over at www.ryantmalone.com that covers content creation, monetization, and much more. It should be live within a matter of weeks, so your best bet is to go and sign up at the mailing list to be notified when you can sign up.

So, get to it! Start creating that killer content!

In this episode, Ryan smiles at the camera, Danny spills the beans on Ed Dale and his guitar skills, and Dave shows us his Jazz Hands!

Great news! The first podcast that me, David Jenyns and Danny Batelic created was such a hit that we decided to create a second episode! In fact, it has been such a success that we have managed to capture the eyes of Flippa themselves, and they have offered to send a few goodies our way to offer to those who watch the podcast, who want to participate.

So, apart from the usual banter this time around, me (Ryan T Malone), Danny and Dave managed to talk about a few things along the lines of:

• How The Challenge is going to affect the site flipping market
• Whether or not Flippa’s pricing is fair
• Ed Dale’s creepy “home alone antics” (no, seriously!)
• The 3D domain name craze

… and a bucket load more that I could mention here, but what would be the fun in me giving away all the good stuff?

Check out the video above, and you can also keep an eye on this very space, as Danny is actually creating a real audio podcast out of this too, so you can watch it on.. well, almost anything that supports Podcasts!

Lets not forget that you can comment below, we really want to know what it is that you want to hear about, and another note to add, the podcast still doesn’t have a name! Make a suggestion, and you might win something nice! Enjoy!

David Jenyns has managed to chase down Simon Johnson from Domainer Income for an exclusive one on one

Looking back a year ago, the idea of buying and selling domains was something that I had always promised myself I would become more involved with, and it was not until me and Ryan started working on clearing our my website portfolio that I discovered that this was going to very quickly become a part of the direction that I wanted to take my business. Since then, a lot has happened. We purchased Flipping Awesome, we infiltrated Flippa, and there is plenty more coming down the pipe as well.

Anyway, back to the story… At the time, we were selling websites, however my attention has been pulled more into the area of domaining, which for those who are not all that familiar with the term, this is no different to buying and selling sites, but with the focus more on domains rather than selling a website or online business.

Truth be told, when it comes to buying and selling domains, I am far from an expert, so in true form, I have dived headfirst into the market, and gone straight to the source to learn more about this market. By change, whilst I attended Ed Dale’s Coming Home seminar in Melbourne, I ran into Simon and Anna Johnson (from www.domainerincome.com), a married couple who have been making a full time income selling domains for quite some time now. After talking to them for a bit, it was very clear to me that I had to get at least one of them into my office, and in front of a camera.

The result of all of this is the short interview that I have posted on this page with Simon. To recap a few of the things we covered in the interview:

• The difference between buying and selling domains and websites
• The benefits of parking vs developing
• What the easiest way to discover expired domains is
• The big news with ICANN

Anyway, there is plenty more in the video, you can watch it below.

If you have anything else that you would like to add, I would love to hear what you have to say. You can either @reply us on Twitter, you can contact us, or simply comment below.

We Hit The Forums To See What Questions You Have... and We Found A Good One!

In what will hopefully be the start of something new at Flipping Awesome in my ever long quest to teach you and everyone else how to start selling websites, I have trawled the numerous webmaster forums online searching for questions to answer, and have found a great question to answer for a lucky newcomer to the website flipping world.

On Digital Point forums, Kisforkarla asked the following:

Kisforkarla Asks How To Start Selling Websites

“I’m interested in website flipping. After spending hours searching the net for information, thought I would ask my fellow DP members for some advice.

Here’s what I am wondering:

Can a profit realistically be made with minimal startup and without tons of website knowledge?

I currently write content for sites. So, I understand keywords, ranking, etc.

Secondly, are there any good sites that you have found helpful?
All I run across are ebook peddlers, I’m hoping there is something more out there!”

So, the real question here is this. Can profit actually be made with minimal startup and without knowing the ins and outs of website coding, and so on and so forth, keeping in mind that Kisforkarla has experience writing content, and understands the basics of SEO. Lets start.

Is Website Flipping Affordable For Startups?

I am going to come straight out and say it. The site flipping marketplace would have to be one of the most cheap markets to get into at the moment when you look at the costs associated. Of course, there will always be the cost of hosting, plus the initial purchase price of a domain, however, if you are targeting niches that are relatively low in competition, you may find that it will take very little off page SEO to rank for keywords, so the only cost is really time value when it comes to writing articles and submitting them. If it is a more competitive niche though, then you can easily find yourself looking at more advanced methods of ranking, which could end up becoming fairly costly, so with a small startup, I would start small and work my way up.

The other costs that you may have to work with may be the cost of a custom theme for WordPress, which I recommend checking out the custom themes at Theme Forest, which has done me quite well for some time now.

Is Website Flipping On A Budget Profitable?

I do need to mention though that profit is only ever going to be earned if you create something of value that the marketplace will show an interest in. This is more than likely going to be the hardest battle for anyone who is learning how to start selling websites, there is really no tried and proven method for measuring what is hot and what is not on Flippa, however the listing tags page should give some indication about what sites are selling, and what is not. Of course, it goes without mentioning that if the site that you create is commercially viable, and has proven income, and is an evergreen opportunity for a new owner to take over, it will have a higher chance of selling for more on Flippa.

Do I Need To Be An Expert Coder?

The other thing which I will touch on is how difficult it can be to get into website flipping without tons of website coding knowledge and the such. To be honest, it is handy to know basic HTML and PHP, but it is not the end of everything. Installing WordPress on most hosts is as simple as using Fantastico to automate the installation process. The only brick wall that I can see anyone walking into is the transfer process. As much as this can be tedious, I have created a tutorial on my blog on how to clone a WordPress blog, which can easily be used to transfer a website to a new host. This does take a bit of practice, if you are uncertain about this, then I suggest that you practice a little on a test domain, as this is a service that you really should provide, even if not for free, it is always appreciated, and allows you to work more directly with your buyers.

The way that I learned to code is simple. I installed WordPress on a test domain, I killed it about 30 times by trying new code in the sidebar, on the posts pages, and so on and so forth, and although I am far from being the worlds best coder, I have a good idea now how to do basic code on WordPress. You certainly wont need to be a coding genius though, but it does come in handy. The most handy things to know are how to set up a table, div tags, the heading tags and some basic CSS. In most cases, that is all that you will ever need to know, and it will certainly save you the cost of out tasking simple tasks.

What Other Websites Can You Suggest To Me?

Last, and certainly not least, are there any sites that are helpful? Whilst I can say that you may find this site useful, and my own blog over at www.ryantmalone.com where I discuss my own adventures in the site flipping market, you may also find the following people quite useful when it comes to learning how to flip websites, domains, and so on and so forth:
Danny Batelic – Trading Websites Blog
Kenny Goodman – Kennys Blog
Yaro Starak – Entrepreneurs Journey
Travis Van Slooten – Flip Websites

So, I will cap this post off and ask the rest of the visitors who are reading this post, is there something that you need answered? As much as I regularly scout the various webmaster forums online to see what people are having trouble with, I love to receive questions in the Flipping Awesome inbox. Feel free to contact us, and if you are lucky, you may very well see your question answered, just like this one on Flipping Awesome!