SmartDigitalAssets.com

As you know, this blog is is all about creating digital cash flow assets, and this is exactly what Justin does, except he also flips them. In this interview he shares some of his techniques and strategies with us. If you’re interested in flipping adsense sites, you’ll want to read this interview.

1. Justin, could you tell us a little bit about your background (work, studies, etc)?

We’re not your typical Internet Marketers. My business partner (Joe Magnotti) and I, run an outsourcing company from Davao City, Philippines. We ended up losing a fairly major client and were scrambling for a way to keep these well-trained agents on staff and we decided to create some niche websites with AdSense monetization to see if we could simply cover their salaries until we could get them re-hired through another outsourcing contract.

We spent hundreds of hours and made $33.00 our first month, but stuck with it and in less than ten months we were able to bring in over $20,000 in just one month. (December 2010 until September 2011)

2. Can you tell us what AdsenseFlippers.com is all about?

We began documenting our process of creating these niche sites to assist with training and helping new agents as we continued to grow and scale the process. Along the way, we decided to break from our more “traditional” model of keeping everything secret. We decided to put that same information out there for others to learn from and follow and intentionally decided to keep it all free.

Our thought was that making this information free and openly explaining our successes and failures would pay off in the long run by building trust and authority for those looking to purchase our sites and open us up to other opportunities along the way. It’s paid off in spades in that we now have around 15K visitors a month and have been able to build up an email readership of over 2,500 in only 12 months.

3. From what I understand your income is made up from your blog and of course from flipping adsense sites. Can you give us an example of the cash flow that you have been able to generate by flipping sites?

Joe and I had a bit of a disagreement about the direction of the project in March 2011. I thought we had a winner on our hands and wanted to scale the process heavily, even if it meant coming out of pocket as we continued to grow the project beyond its original intention. Joe was less enthusiastic about coming out of pocket and so we decided to see if we’d be able to sell some of our niches site so that we could realize potential earnings NOW and use that surge of income to expand our team. Our first few website sales were through Flippa and we noticed a huge market for our types of sites.

We decided to continue this as we added more people to the process and started to create even more of these niche sites, keeping us profitable each month and giving us the cash flow to continue to expand.

4. Do you specialize in just flipping adsense sites, or have you also flipped other sites? What are the advantages of flipping only adsense sites?

We’ve dabbled with some affiliate monetization via Amazon, Clickbank, etc. but we didn’t find quick success and stuck with AdSense. We’re well aware that AdSense is considered one of the “worst” forms of monetization which, I think, is why so many people like to buy our sites. If they’re more familiar with alternative monetization they can purchase our sites and quickly switch them around and it cuts down on the number of months they have to wait to “break even”.

A real benefit to selling AdSense sites is that it’s so well known and understood. There are so many people out there that have AdSense on their websites that we have a much larger pool of potential buyers than if we were going with some unknown affiliate company.

5. Can you give us an example site that you have flipped and how much you were able to flip it for?

We typically package our websites together in bunches. We’ve found that, for us, a good package of sites is earning $90.00 – $150.00 per month and will usually sell for between $2,000 and $3,500 on Flippa. You can take a look at our previous Flippa auctions here: https://flippa.com/buy/search?q=TryBPO&status=ended

6. How do you select a topic or your keywords for an adsense site?

We have agents that use keyword research tools like LongTailPro. They will enter a “seed keyword” which can literally be just about anything. (We’ve found success by focusing on seed keywords that are related to blue collar products or products targeted to women and generally avoid those that are tech focused as the readers tend to be more ad blind)

We have those agents find exact match domains that are available for keywords that meet specific parameters and have them enter those potential keywords into a spreadsheet. The one thing we haven’t outsourced is checking the first page competition on Google. Joe and I still do this as it’s a subjective process and important enough to not outsource or give to a VA (virtual assistant). We go through all of the potential keywords and sites and rank them from 1-5, 1 being the least likely for us to rank and 5 being the most likely. We then purchase keywords and URL’s that are either 4′s or 5′s based on our criteria.

7. Once you have a topic/keywords, how do you go about building the sites?

We purchase the URL’s and then enter them into our Google Doc spreadsheet and our team goes to work…that’s the extent of our personal involvement. Our team uses WordPress and some particular themes that we use on a regular basis. We include at least 5 pages of content, 1 “primary” or well-written article and 4 “secondary” or cheaper articles. Our primary article is focused on the primary keyword…the one we’ve targeted as an Exact Match Domain and the secondary articles are targeting related keywords or long tail keywords. We then go through a fairly limited linkbuilding process and the site is up and live. It usually takes 2 – 3 months to get the site ranked and earning well.

8. The big question is traffic. How do you go about generating traffic for your website and how much  traffic do you usually require before you generate cash flow from a site?

As it usually takes 2-3 months to get the site up, ranked, and earning we have to wait another 2-3 months to sell the site so that we have enough earnings history to prove stability. The traffic will vary wildly, but much of the traffic comes from the primary keyword we targeted with a bit more coming from long tail or image traffic. All of the images we use on the site are targeted and optimized for search traffic as well and we get a surprising amount of traffic from them…definitely worth including on the sites.

9. Do you run any kind of paid advertising to get the sites started or is it all from organic search engine traffic?

All of our traffic is natural/organic. As a general rule, you don’t want to buy AdSense sites that are using any kind of traffic share programs or get most of their traffic from social media. Time and time again we’ve seen that these types of traffic are unsustainable and (quite often) the people sending this traffic, are doing shady things to get it,  that can then put your AdSense account at risk. An exception would be traffic that comes through links from article marketing,  although that’s pretty limited for us.

10. What kind of track record, as far as cash flow, do you like sites to have,  before you list them for sale?

Our “average” site will make around $10 per month. The 80/20 rule definitely applies here as our top 20% of sites are bringing in 80% of the revenue. In general, we like to get 20x (20 times monthly revenue) for a site sale. Our sites typically cost around $50 each to build and will go for $200 on average. We won’t generally sell a site in a package if it’s making less than $5.00 per month as the multiple is too low. We’ll hang onto that site until it earns more.

11. When you build a site how do you decide if you’re  going to keep it all flip it? If you are going to flip it, how do you calculate how much you want for the adsense site?

Almost all of the sites we create will, ultimately, be available for sale. (Some notable exceptions would be those that we have some kind of personal attachment to, those we’re testing alternative monetizations with or expanding to authority sites, etc.) All of our Flippa auctions start at $1.00 with No Reserve, meaning they’ll go for whatever the bidding gets up to. This means that it’s important we get as many eyeballs viewing our listings as possible and so we will email our list, post the auction link on forums we’re active on, etc…all in an effort to get more views and bids.

Unlike our Flippa auctions, we sell sites on our website and do not release all the information associated. (Analytics, niche, AdSense screenshots, etc.) Some of our buyers have requested that we keep this information private and it’s just a different way to approach website sales. Many of our readers initially found us through our Flippa auctions and we now have a large enough readership to where we can sell the sites directly.

All of our sites for sale on AdSenseFlippers.com sell for 20x monthly revenue.

12. If I was to purchase one of your adsense sites, what would be my next steps to increase its cash flow?

If you purchase one of our Flippa auction “packages” of sites we usually include additional content to the sites to get them earning more in the future, depending on various price thresholds. If you purchase from us directly we recommend adding 5-10 pages of content over the next 3 months and slowly continuing to build out links.

All of our buyers get our best tips in an email on how to earn more with the sites and we freely give all of that information away on our blog.

13. Could you give us a quick breakdown on how you get the sites to rank high? Maybe some of your backlinking strategies or the main formula you use to rank high.

Most importantly, we target fairly low-end keywords that we know we can get to rank without too much difficulty. We put in more time on the front-end so that we’re not stuck building a ton of links or waiting a very long time to get the sites to rank. In general, we look for the Top 10 results that don’t have the exact keyword we’re targeting in the title, do not have many root domains on the first page, etc. We make sure that our sites are tightly focused around the primary and secondary keywords so that they have the best chance to rank.

We do a little article marketing, bookmarking, and use BuildMyRank to add a few links, but our best tip would be to carefully choose the keywords you’re going to target so that you’re not stuck spending a ton of time trying to get the sites enough backlinks to rank well.

14. Once a person has created a profitable adsense site where’s the best place to list it?

Without a doubt, Flippa is the best marketplace for websites that are earning as they simply have the most amount of buyers. If you’re selling websites that are earning with AdSense you’ll confidently get 12-15x if you’re a new seller and 15x or more if you’re an established seller. Make sure to build up a strong reputation on Flippa and you’ll continue to pull in more with your auctions.

Definitely start building an email list or reader base so that you can continue to sell to them with or without your Flippa auctions after a few months.

15. What would be the most important thing you could say to a new person getting started?

You’re definitely going to make mistakes in the beginning, but the worst thing you can do is not get started. So many people spend their time reading about how to do things like this and never actually get started building anything. If you do plan to outsource this process, make sure you’ve done it yourself FIRST…it makes training your VA’s infinitely easier as you know some of the pitfalls and challenges you’ll face. Hiring a team of VA’s on oDesk (oursourcing service), and just asking them to build you some sites without understanding the process or giving direction will doom the process to failure.

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Thanks Justin, for taking the time to answer our questions on how to flip AdSense sites.

For more details and techniques on flipping adsense sites check out Justin’s blog at AdsenseFlippers.com
You can also view his adsense sites for sale by going to: http://adsenseflippers.com/buy-our-sites