Well I did it! I Flipped my first website! I made more money flipping the website than I did in all the time it was up. Which isn’t much but hey, I got some money for it.

So my first flip was a site I originally put on the auction block at flippa.com, and it received 2 bids total, but didn’t meet the reserve so it didn’t sell. I decided to put a little more content on there, and then I re-listed it for half price listing, since it didn’t sell the first time, and then I also redid the sales page on the auction.

I included the income it was receiving, the traffic stats, and some other ways it could be monetized and then crossed my fingers. It received 1 bid, which was exactly the reserve amount of $60, and it sold with that one bid. The guy then sent me all his login info for his control panel and expected me to put it up for him. However I stated in my auction that I will install the site and set it up for a small fee, to which he promptly paid me a whopping $50 to do.

So I received a total of $110 for that website, and a tiny amount of work, which for the time I spend putting into that site, wasn’t worth it, to some. To me it was worth the experience I received selling my first website. That experience gave me the courage to do it again, or at least I’m not so scared to sell another one.

The initial time I think any of us does something new, is scary. We know not the outcome, if we’ll get burned, or if we’re even doing it(whatever it might be) right. So my first one behind me, and dealing with a customer who needed help setting it up, piece of cake. I’m sure this won’t be a piece of cake for other sites I intend to sell. I’ve already moved plenty of sites from one server to another and no issues whatsoever.

The site I sold in question was www.rosebushcaretips.com, and I’ll tell you why. I started that site when I was in Niche Profit Classroom, while learning their technique for building automated income sources. They give you a “Niche Pack” which is a website, basically, content and some direction on how to put it all together, along with some article marketing, and there you have a self sustaining, automated cash flow machine, right? Well, not quite.

The Niche Packs they were giving out were more like luxury items for sale, and in this recession no one is buying luxury items. When I say luxury I mean things that you might WANT, but not NEED. they are not necessity. So no one will by in a bad economy things that are considered a luxury or a a non-necessity.

The sites looked like this: http://learnroses.com or this: http://www.secretbookofroses.com

In my opinion they look spammy and just one long sales page. You sign up for the newsletter or e-course as they usually call it, and then they send you their sales pitch after a few e-course emails. Well it just wasn’t working for me at all and I didn’t feel like that sort of sales page would sell anything, especially in this economy. So I completely changed it.

The way the site looks now, if the new owner hasn’t changed it, is what I made of it when I ditched the Niche Profit Classroom mode of thinking. I gave the e-book away, I put videos and tons of useful content on there, pictures, Amazon Associate Links and Google Adsense on there. Summer was coming and the traffic was going up, as it’s more of a seasonal thing, but it was ranking high in the search engines, so it will keep going up as long as the content is coming in steadily.

The first month I put Adsense on there it made a total of about $2, the second month it made $4 and the 3rd month before I sold it it was bringing in $7, effectively doubling each  month from the time I started doing it “My Way”. The Amazon Sales were minimal but started to go up as well.

The reason I sold it is this, I wasn’t really into it, I didn’t feel like working on a website that would cost me more time to build it up. Plain and Simple, I just wasn’t into it. I love roses, I’m just not that into it.

I also want to say that while I may seem to have spoken down about the Niche Profit Classroom, I learned a great deal from them, about What’s a good Niche, and Niche Marketing. I just took away what I felt was useful.

So website flipping is somewhat addicting too, as I can’t wait to sell my next one for hopefully much much more.

In case you want to see the auction page it is here: http://flippa.com/auctions/96464

PS wait till you see my Income report for June!!!