Press enter to see results or esc to cancel.

I Just Bought a Website for $6k, Here’s Why!

I think that investing in websites is going to be huge within 10 years and that it will be recognized as an actual investment strategy just as stocks, bonds and real estate are today.

We are in the very early stages of websites and if you know what you are doing you can make a killing buying/selling websites.

I want to take advantage of my skills and expertise in websites while it is still VERY easy to make a lot of money flipping websites. That is why I went out and bought a website, I will talk more about this in a minute. 

I have known about the great return that websites get for a while now but I have never taken advantage of it. Mainly because I never had the capital to purchase a decent website until recently.

The funny thing is even though I have the capital to buy websites now, I actually didn’t use my own money to buy this new website. I will explain how I did this later in the post. For now, let’s see why I think investing in websites is the best thing since sliced bread.

Website Investing ROI

The return on investment that you get with websites is better than just about anything else, matter in fact I don’t know of anything that will give you as good of an ROI. 

Not only is the ROI good, but the investment is also relatively safe if you know what you are doing. To further explain the insane ROI of a website, you can check out the example below:

​Website ROI Example

A website making $1,000 a month can be purchased for $20k based on the 20x the 3 month average profit. So let’s say we buy that website for $20k and we get $1k each month in profit.

That ends up being 5% return on your money MONTHLY, or 60% YEARLY. Those are insane RIO and the crazy thing is this is very normal for websites.

Two Ways to Attack Website Investing

There are two main ways that you can invest in websites; the flipping model or the buy and hold model. Both have their pros and cons, but either way works well. 

The Flipping Model

Buying a website and flipping it a couple of months later is good for the types of people that can make a quick change to a website and increase the earnings almost overnight.

For example, let’s say a website is making $200 a month with adsense and is being sold for $4,000 (20 x $200 = $4,000). A buyer may come along and notice that they could add some Amazon Affiliate links to some of the most popular posts and earn an extra $100 a month on top of the original $200 it was already making.

This is a quick thing to change and will result in the site earning 33% more each month. The coolest part about increasing the monthly earnings is when you go to sell it.

Let’s say the buyer holds the website for 3 months and it makes $300 each month. The buyer could then go and sell this website for $6,000 (20 x $300 = $6,000). 

In those 3 short months, the buyer made over $2,000 in profit on their initial investment of $4,000 if they sell the site. That comes out to be a 50% return on their investment in only 3 months!

The flipping model works best for people that have an expertise in one area and buy a website where they can use this expertise to increase the earnings.

The Buy and Hold Model

The buy and hold model is where you buy a website and hold onto for a longer period of time all while it earns you money each month. 

Example, you buy a website for $10,000 that is making $500 each month. You can hold onto this site for 2 years while it earns $500 a month and you will make your initial investment of $10,000 back.

Obviously, if you can improve the earnings on the site you will make your money back even faster. You can then sell it for $10,000 whenever you want to.

Both of these models are great and the one you choose will depend on the type of website you buy, the skills that you have and the type of person you are. 

How I Bought a $6,000 Website Without Using my Own Money

I have explained website investing to my parents for the past year or so and they always found it intriguing. However, just recently they have gotten serious about it. We had a long sit down talk about the potential of investing in websites and they wanted to give it a go themselves.

We decided that my parents would purchase the website with their own money and I would run the website. We agreed on splitting the monthly earnings 50/50 and then when we sell the website they get their initial investment back and then we split the leftover profits in half.

For example, we buy a website for $10k then sell it for $16k. My parents would get their initial $10k back and then we would split the remaining $6k between us 50/50.

They gave me an initial budget of $10k-$15k to look for a website that they could invest in. A couple days later after we talked about this, my parents told some friends of theirs and they are also willing to invest another $10k in websites as well.

All in all, I have around a $20k-$25k budget to look for a website or websites to invest in with this money.

This was about two weeks ago, I have made a website purchase since then. Read below.

Information About the Website I Bought

I ended up buying a website that was making $500 a month from adsense. I bought the website for only $6k, which is deeply undervalued.

I got the website at a monthly multiple of 12 ($500 x 12 = $6,000) and it can EASILY be sold for a 20x monthly multiple over at Empire Flippers.

A site making $500 a month should at least sell for $10k, so I got a steal of a deal!

If I wanted to, I could hold onto the site for 3 months, make $500 a month and then sell it for $10k. I would make $4k profit + $1500 earnings = $5.5k profit in 3 months.

However this is not my plan, my plan is to increase the monthly earnings and hold onto it for a while. Then sell it once I feel like I have maxed out the earning potential of the site. I will talk more about my future plans for this in a minute, but first I want to talk about why I liked this site so much(aside from the cheap price).

The Reasons Why I Bought This Website

Aside from the great price I got on the site, there were some stats and metrics that really sold me on this site. They are listed below:

Diversified Traffic Sources

This is huge. We are all aware of how easily Google can wipe a site completely off the grid in no time. That is why it is NOT smart to rely on only organic google traffic for your site, or only one traffic source for that matter.

The site I bought has diversified traffic sources, the breakdown is below (thru 5 and a half days):

If one of those traffic sources gets wiped out for whatever reason, the site would still be fine and earn money. It might not earn as much money as before, but it would still make money and be able to be sold.

The most important thing is that you can’t go from having a website that earns $500 a month to $0 overnight. Multiple traffic streams prevent this happening.

High Volume of Traffic

The site get’s on average 1k-2k visitors each day fairly consistently, sometimes even more! This much traffic which makes testing out different monetization methods a lot easier and more efficient.

NOTE: The dip at the end is because I took this screenshot halfway through the day

Growing Organic Traffic

I was given access to the previous owner’s Google Analytics account before I purchased the site and one of the best things I saw was that the organic traffic has increased each month for the past year.

I don’t have access to their account anymore so I can’t show you firsthand. However, you can see the growth from Semrush in the image below:

Semrush does a good job showing the google organic traffic growth by tracking the number of keywords that are in the top 20 of Google. 

You can see that the amount of keywords that this site ranks for in the top 20 continue to grow month after month. This is a great sight to see.

The reason for this continued to growth is because the previous owner writes 3 new articles a week and the site ranks for a TON of long tail keywords. 

Under Optimized Monetization Methods

Google adsense is one of the easiest ways to monetize any website, but there are usually better ways to do it. Adsense also makes it very easy to use other monetization methods ALONG with adsense.

For example, it is very easy to use Amazon and Adsense to monetize a site without affecting the original adsense earnings too drastically. 

The only source of income for this site is from adsense and I think there are better ways to make money from this website. I am thinking about trying Amazon Affiliate, other affiliate’s within the niche, selling ad space and selling my own physical product.

I also think I can improve the adsense earnings because the previous owner had poor ad placement on the site. They didn’t have any ads within the content, which from my experience is one of the best earning ad placements you can choose. That alone should increase the earnings.

One of the biggest areas where I think I can improve the sites earnings is from optimizing for mobile users.

I noticed that the site only showed one ad when viewing the mobile version of the site, instead of the normal 3 ads when viewing on a desktop.

This means that A LOT of money is being taken off the table by not optimizing for mobile users. This is especially true considering over 50% of the sites users are mobile.

I think by changing this I can improve the earnings greatly.

Proven Track Record

This site was created over a year ago and has increased traffic/earnings steadily since then. There has also only been one owner which is a good thing to see.

Relatively Safe Investment

Since I am using other people’s money to buy this site, I want to make sure the website I am buying is as safe as possible. This means that there are no major risks or red flags surrounding the site which could possibly wipe out the earnings and traffic.

Diversified traffic sources, proven track record, clean backlink profile and it’s monetized by adsense all make this website investment very safe compared to normal websites that are purchased.

The Gameplan

I talked earlier about the two types of investment strategies with websites; the flipping model and the buy and hold model.

I will be going for the buy and hold model with this site for a couple of reasons:

  1. The site itself is very safe and I see it being able to earn very consistently each month.
  2. I do not know the full potential of the site yet so I will hold it as long as I can keep increasing the earnings. I do not see a limit to the earnings on this site.

For those reasons I will be holding the site for a while as I try and maximize the earnings of this site. Once I feel like I have reached the peak in terms of earnings potential I will then think about selling the site. 

I think that this site could EASILY earn $1k+ a month once I test out a few different monetization strategies and find what works best. 

If I can get the site to earn $1k a month then I would be able to sell it for $20k, which is a lot more than what I bought it for!

Future Plans

The future plans for this site are to test out a couple different monetization strategies to see what types bring in the most money. I will also be testing out different adsense ad types and placements to try and max the adsense earnings out.

I will also be trying to add at least 3 new pieces of content each week to continue grow the organic traffic. 

I will have a more solid game plan for the site once I have it under my control for a couple of weeks and I can begin to see how the site works. 

Conclusion

I know a lot of the content I have produced recently has been about selling on Amazon so I thought it might be refreshing to see a post about a new topic. 

I also wanted to let you all know that I bought a new site and that I will be looking to buy more sites as investment strategies in the upcoming months.

I still have around $20k to invest in new websites from my parents and their friends, so I will continue to look to add new sites to my portfolio. If you have a site that you would like to sell, you can email me at [email protected].

Thank for reading and I will keep you all up to date on the progress of this site and if I buy any other sites. I will write a new update on this site in a month or so.

Thanks again for reading!

Read the 3 month update here

Comments

59 Comments

Kyle

Hey Josh!

Good read man, very interesting to see this side of investment. If I knew half a crap about website optimization and what to look for, I’d be looking to do this too!

Keep it up!

Josh
Josh

Thanks Kyle!

Glad you liked it and it’s never too late to learn 🙂

Talk soon,

Josh

Charlie

Where did you find the site? I’m going to guess Flippa?

Josh
Josh

Hi Charlie,

Yes, you are correct my friend!

Josh

Mani

Just a question, where do you purchase site like this? Where there big competition when you bidding?

Josh
Josh

Hi Mani,

Thanks for commenting!

I bought the site from Flippa as a “Buy it Now” so there was no bidding. If there was bidding the price would have been much higher than $6k. I got lucky because the person selling the site didn’t know the correct way to value their site and their buy it now price was deeply undervalued.

Josh

wilfred

Is this “Buy It Now” option available only for Paypal? This way you have to trust seller that he will deliver…

Or am I mistaking?

Josh
Josh

I used the “Buy it Now” option and paid with money from my bank. You could also use a debit card as well. Some Buy it Now listings are for only Paypal but a lot of them are for any payment type.

Josh

Moe

Me too! Did you buy this on Flippa?

Josh
Josh

Yep, sure did!

You just bought a website for $6k too? How funny! Good luck with your site Moe

Josh

Jamie

Hi josh,

Awesome read mate. I’m really interested in buying sites as well and aiming to buy a site at the end of this year that makes at least $500. I cashed out my shares and have around $10,000.

I purchased a small site through flippa that wasn’t making any money but had a 6 year old domain, links and some traffic for $200.

I’m using this site as a low cost way to learn by doing. Hopefully I’ll turn it into a profitable Amazon affiliate site within a couple of months.

looking forward to your updates on this topic and to get a bit more of an education from you before investing more money.

Josh
Josh

Hey Jamie,

Good luck with your new site and if you ever have any questions feel free to email me! I will gladly help you out. Thanks for reading and taking time to leave a comment, means a lot! Have a nice day

Josh

era

This, plus your amazon business, and you’ll be able to buy your school soon 🙂

Josh
Josh

Haha that sure would be nice 🙂 thanks for the comment!

Josh

Richard

Looks like you got a great deal here. I was talking to someone just yesterday about investing in websites and the importance of diversified traffic sources. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one that thinks this lowers the risk and so stands a better chance of being a safer long-term investment.

Josh
Josh

Yep, I think diversified traffic sources is one of the most important factors to making a site as safe of an investment as possible. A site’s traffic is the lifeline of any site and without any traffic websites will not make money, it is as simple as that! That is why getting traffic from one source is so dangerous.

If you ever want to talk more about investing in websites feel free to shoot me an email [email protected]

Josh

Robert

Hey Josh, this is Rob from Germany (yes, your blog is read in Germany 🙂 ).
Awesome news, keep it up – maybe you can share the url of the site you just purchased?
Best wishes man, good luck and have fun!

Josh
Josh

Hey Robert,

Sweet! I am glad I have some readers from Germany 🙂

Glad you liked the post but I doubt I will be sharing the URL for safety reasons. People can do some nasty things to a site if they know the URL and since it is my parent’s money invested into the site I do no want to risk anything. Hope you understand

Josh

Danny

Hi Josh,
Great read.

How confident you are in the earnings claims on flippa? How to avoid scams? Are they ways the sellers can cheat on the earnings claims? This uncertainty stops me from buying websites.
Thanks

Josh
Josh

Hi Danny,

Flippa verifies the earnings claims from adsense, and the buyer had screenshot proof of the earnings. You are right when you said that people can cheat and scam the earnings but you just have to make sure you to your due diligence on a site.

Josh

John T

Dude, the earnings I hope you make from flipping and or holding and selling those sites, is still just a pittance when compared to 800 lb Gorilla Amazon.

I know…………..that you know.
And I would agree, diversification is a good move.

Therefore, the Chairman of your Board of Directors mentioned
that you have his; as well as the entire boards complete and
compromised backing and support. We all wish you the Best.

JT

one last comment.. I like to use the dual universe scenario, i.e.

U1 : Josh invests $6000 in a particular website, has another 20K etc., etc..

U2 : John ( don’t know if you will get that reference ) Josh, much in the very same way that he has to this point, uses the $10 – $15K from a benevolent unnamed source and as stated.. wisely invests in his Amazon proposition.. ohhh, over the following 6 – 10 months.

….

….

time passes.. I will be back to reveal the outcome in a relatively ( ,5 to 3 days ) moderate amount of time.. right about when in U2: ( Universe 2 )
I’ll finish the post when 5 yrs have passed there.. ( <= 2 days )

I find you to be uniquely and incredibly inspirational Josh, and we most certainly appreciate it and you so very much!

John T.
IMRG
e-Sales Inc.
FBA Research
______________________________________

Bas

I am curious how you come up with the 20x ‘rule’.

I often see it being sold for a lot less.

Some time ago I tried to sell one of my sites who was doing only $50/month. But the highest bid I got was $325 🙂 it’s a Dutch site and was selling it in a Dutch website.

But wondering how often people buy sites for 20x monthly profit

Josh
Josh

The 20x multiple is pretty standard for selling sites and I have heard that from multiple sources and I sold my own site for 20x rule on Empire Flippers.

I would say that it is fairly common to be able to sell a site for 20x monthly profit

Josh

Theodore Nwangene

This is a very good investment Josh,
You got a great deal there and I’m sure you can make something huge out of it. Your parents are really awesome indeed, most parents will never agree to that because most of them still sees this internet marketing business as a pure scam.

I agree with you that soon, website flipping will become a very big deal and its good you’ve started acquiring some experience on that already.

I will you success with your new website Josh.

Thanks for sharing.

Josh
Josh

Hi Theodore,

You are right, I got a great deal on this site and I have to agree that my parents are pretty awesome for believing in me enough to invest that much money. I hope that website flipping will become huge and that a lot of people can find success with this business model. Thanks for commenting Theodore!

Josh

Wolfgang

Hi Josh, you mentioned that the reason for the organic growth is probably because the previous owner wrote 3 new articles each week. I’m sure that’s right. People usually stop going to a site if there’s no new content. Are you planning to write 3 new articles each week as well? Or are you planning to outsource this? Either way, sounds like it’s not a passive investment…

Josh
Josh

Hi,

Yes, those new articles are the reason for the organic growth but as I pointed out in the article organic traffic only makes up around 18% of the traffic. This site actually gets most of its traffic from its older posts so posting new content is not that big of a driver for traffic. I Do think that over time adding new content will start to improve the amount of traffic to the site and that is my plan.

As for passive investments, if I outsource the content(which I plan to do) I don’t see how it wouldn’t be passive? I would not have to do anything to the site and it would continue to grow and earn.

Thanks for commenting

Josh

Paul

I was also wondering how passive the website would be if you would be forced to write three articles per week. Glad to see you will be outsourcing that, but out of curiosity, what service will you be using to have the content created?

Josh
Josh

Hi Paul,

I have found an excellent service called content captains that writes all of the articles for me and they are great! It is really a hands off process for me to get the content written.

Josh

Bernardo

Congratulations for such a good purchase! Looking forward to read more content about buying websites on your blog. Regards

Josh
Josh

Hi Bernardo,

Thank you and I appreciate it!

Josh

Simon

As an action taker Josh I suggest you start making step by step videos as you go through these processes and create informational products. Limitless wealth is certainly in your future…

Josh
Josh

Hi Simon,

I appreciate the suggestion and we’ll see what happens! Thanks for the kind words my friend

Josh

Tim Marsh

Thanks for some great info. I have been using Flippa for the last few years. I even went to their first function for buyers and sellers and the employees are a great bunch. I noticed you have a link to Empire Flippers and was wondering why you purchased from Flippa and you seam to be promoting Empire Flippers? I was just curious really, my main question I really care about is regarding Adsense and what it can really do? Any and all info regarding Adsense I would love to here. I build websites and I have about 25 personal websites I have put together and played around with just to practice. But I now need to get serious about monetizing those sites and will be very interested in any case studies you have going on with this process. Thanks, Tim M.

Josh
Josh

Hi Tim,

Glad you liked it!

I look to buy from wherever there is a good deal, whether that be flippa, empire flippers, FE international or whatever. The reason why I am talking about empire flippers so much is because that is where I plan on selling my sites and I have sold a site their before and it went perfectly.

Adsense is realistically probably one of the worst ways to monetize a website and there are usually better ways to monetize. Adsense is consistent and will make you money if you have enough traffic. It is very easy to get started with adsense and start earning almost immediately.

I will keep you updated on the progress of this site and other sites that I may purchase, thanks for commenting

Josh

Bas

Thanks for your response.

That’s interesting because the sites they sell in the Netherlands very rarely goes over 10x month profit.

I might have to look into it and start investing a bit. Most are low earners so not really interesting.

Josh
Josh

You’re welcome Bas!

I might have to start looking into buying websites in the netherlands, sounds like there are some good deals there.

Josh

Tom N.

Hey Josh,

Awesome post, great information! I’m fairly young, too (23!), and will be in a similar spot as you in a few months – with around 20-30k to invest so that I can start learning how to manage websites.

I’d love to pick your brain sometime, any chance you’d be willing to chat?

Thanks!
-Tom

Josh
Josh

Hey Tom,

That is awesome and I would love to talk more about website investing. Feel free to email me at [email protected] whenever you want and we can chat. talk soon

Josh

Yaro Park

Congrats on website.
I actually was looking to buy this website as well. Ho do i know what website is this? by the traffic stat you mentioned.
It’s great investment since mostly traffic goes from social and direct.

Cheers,
Yaro

Josh
Josh

Hi Yaro,

Thank you for commenting and I am glad to see you over on my site (big fan of your site)!

And wow that’s funny that you can recognize the site from the traffic, but you are right when you say that this is a great investment. I was lucky enough to buy it before anyone else could!

Josh

Kyle

Hi Josh,
You never cease to deliver, I really appreciate your efforts. One question please, do you intend on ‘SEOing’ this site? That is sending some PBN links to the site.

Josh
Josh

Hey Kyle,

I appreciate that! I plan on doing SEO to the site but nothing that will run the risk of getting it penalized. So strictly on page SEO and “white hat” link building. Thanks for commenting

Josh

Ryan Regan

What content are you talking about? Whats the subject? I find it hard to believe when it is so vague in your description.

Mohit Tater

Hey Josh, good to know about your website investing experiment.

I have been actively investing in websites for over 3 years now and have bought and sold over 30 websites ranging from $5k to $50k. I have a few investors who have been investing with me and have got great ROI.

I would love to discuss with you if there is something we could potentially do together.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Josh
Josh

That is awesome! I would love to learn more about your website investing strategy

Mohit Tater

By the way, which theme are you using on your site. I love the design.

James Russell

how does the income transfer from the seller to the buyer?

Josh
Josh

You swap out the affiliate links or whatever they are using to monetize the site. It is usually fairly easy to do, good question!

Josh

James Russell

I mean, once you buy a site that has income, how and when can you access that income, and also it sounds like you put money into the site/investment and it hopefully continues to provide income, unlike your Amazon trading where you have to reinvest you income to buy more product to keep the gravy train running?

Josh
Josh

I answered your first question in your first comment 🙂

However, you are correct websites and Amazon FBA are different beasts. Buying websites are less risky (when you know what you are doing) because it already has traffic, sales and a whole business already having success and all you have to do is continue to keep that going. With Amazon FBA you are risking more money upfront into a brand new product that you are hoping will start making sales.

Hope this kinda makes sense, thanks for the comment

Josh

Efe

Hey josh

I found your website from Google search. You have great content, I am learning a lot of things. Thanks!

Josh
Josh

Efe – Awesome! Glad to have you on the site and if you have any questions please ask.

Josh

Lewis

Wow talk about eye opening. I can definitely envision a future where websites rule as investments. What books have you read? What videos have you watched to give you this knowledge?

Josh
Josh

I agree, website and online business investing is one of the best ways to get a solid ROI consistently. As for where I got my knowledge, myself. I learned about website investing by creating my own sites and selling them and then seeing the crazy returns. From there I started to get into buying websites that are already making money and I learn as I go!

However, I learned about SEO, link building and content marketing from various sources and those skills have helped me become successful with website investing!

Josh

Kevin

Hi Josh,

First, I’d like to thank you for all this amazing content. Will you be making a video on how to find the right websites to invest in, similar to the webinar on finding profitable products to sell on amazon?

Josh
Josh

Hi Kevin,

I would 100% if people were interested in seeing something like that?

Thanks for commenting

Josh

Clive

Thank you very much for the time and effort you put into helping my self and others.
you have a bright future ahead and good luck with it. I am about to get involved in website investing….thanks to your post, so a massive thanks for your help mate.

Maxence

Hello Josh

Where did you buy the website ? Flippa or Empire Flippers ?

Do you recommand one over the other ?

Thank you for putting this up ! Great read


Leave a Comment