The prior way of verifying ownership of an iOS app is no longer effective so we’ve rolled out a new process for verifying iOS app ownership.

You will need to add the verification token we provide (token ID) to your promotional text or copyright field on your app’s page in Apple App Store Connect. You can read more about the process here.

This is done as Apple no longer allows the Support URL to be updated as before, and changing the copyright field and promotional text don’t trigger a review by Apple’s team. Our ownership verification process of apps is unfortunately manual at this time, so please let us know when the update with our token is live on the US App Store (not just when you’ve added it in App Store Connect). This can take up to a few hours.

Please feel free to leave a comment or email support@flippa.com with any questions!

What was your background before you started operating in the website/online business space and how did you make the switch to being your own boss?

I worked for IBM as a Project Executive, operating 9-figure outsourcing deals for Fortune 100 companies. Then I took a totally opposite direction moving my family to a small central Asian country where we served students and families in a humanitarian role.

While overseas I started some small businesses that needed websites, so I got my feet wet in the internet world for the first time. Soon I discovered that websites were not just marketing channels for brick and mortar businesses but could actually be income-generating businesses in their own right.

Seven years later when we moved back to the United States I had started generating cash flow from my websites. I decided not to reenter the corporate world, and instead to grow my online portfolio primarily through buying websites.

What prompted you to make the jump?

When I bought my first successful website – Note: my first website purchase was NOT successful – I discovered I could make a couple of thousand dollars a month from a relatively simple online business.

I didn’t know exactly how to do it at the time, but I knew that if I could make $2K per month, I could probably grow that to $10K per month. That was the magic moment that convinced me it was possible to do this full time.

What does a typical day look like for an online business investor?

I think it is different for everyone but I start every day at Panera Bread which is a coffee shop/bakery about a mile from my home.  I work from my laptop and sometimes I stay there all day, but usually, I hang out in the morning and work from my home office in the afternoon.

I don’t have an official office because I use freelancers to do all the day-to-day operational tasks. Although I’ve had websites using almost every business model, I tend to focus on content websites that are more passive.

Depending on the phase, there can be plenty of work to do, but it is almost never urgent. That gives me the flexibility to take days or even weeks off to do non-business projects. It also lets me meet with friends, family and other entrepreneurs any time during the day that they are available.

When did you first discover Flippa?

My Flippa profile says I made a purchase 9 years ago. I probably had an account before that.

What is your favourite monetization method?

I love non-transactional monetization because it doesn’t require customer service or personal selling. Display ads, lead generation and affiliate monetization methods fit these criteria.

I’ve done dropship, FBA, SaaS, eCommerce for digital products and straight services business. All have pros and cons.

What are the first three things you look for on a website?

I start with the fundamentals.

Traffic and income graphs should be flat or going up. If there are peaks and valleys, there should be good explanations for those. Age and consistency are important.

I look for inappropriate concentrations. Too much traffic from one source, too high a percentage of traffic landing on one page, too much traffic from the wrong geographies, an unusual mix of device types, concentrations of expense or revenue – all of these are potential negative signals.

There needs to be a well defined and understandable process for customer acquisition. If I don’t understand a repeatable process for getting traffic or customers, I back away.

Why do you buy websites?

I try to identify opportunities that have the potential to be held for the long term. Occasionally something will turn up that is riskier but has some strong upside potential. These deals have to come at a lower multiple to offset the risk. They typically either do well and lend themselves toward a flip, or don’t do well and hopefully at least pay for themselves before going to zero.

What are the steps you take to grow websites that you’ve recently purchased?

The quickest wins are usually in the financial realm. On the revenue side, adding entirely new monetization sources using existing traffic usually increases revenue by more than it cannibalizes. A classic example is adding display ads to a site that is monetized only with affiliate links.

You can also easily increase revenue by patching holes in the funnel. Adding upsells and downsells, optimizing conversion rates, making additional touch points to prospects and following up with existing customers can all yield revenue growth.

Another financial move is eliminating or reducing expenses. Business owners often spend money on non-critical functions or overspend on basics like webhosting or freelancer support.

Traffic improvements often take more time. Basic on-site SEO improvements can sometimes result in substantial traffic growth. Things like site speed, title optimization, heading optimization, and content updates make a difference.

How did you learn how to run and operate a website?

I learn from anywhere I can. The basics of WordPress and setting up a website were all self-taught. But I’ve taken many courses over the years to learn methods and systems. I’ve also hired coaches along the way and pay for membership in high-level mastermind groups. Spending money on mentoring and networking can help you focus and speed up success.

You’ve been focusing a lot more on teaching and coaching recently, even writing a few articles for us talking about website multiples and another discussing how to make one of your website investments passive. Do you still actively buy and sell websites or is most of your time spent helping others acquire and grow their own portfolios?

The vast majority of my time, energy and resources is spent on growing my own website portfolio. I negotiated the sale of two of my sites this morning. While I really enjoying teaching and coaching, my main focus is on growing the value of my website assets for an eventual exit.

You also have several courses and webinars over at FlipMinds. Can you tell us more about what Flipminds is?

Flipminds is a community of entrepreneurs that Sunil Jaiswal has developed over a period of more than 10 years. They are investors in property, traditional business and online businesses.

In the early days, most of the group were property investors. As online real estate became more compelling, I joined the Flipminds team to help train entrepreneurs on how to develop cash flowing assets in the world of web businesses.

Now we have an active member community, mentoring resources and training in topics like paths to Financial Freedom, Website Investing, Property Investing, Online Business and Content Website creation.

When it comes to making mistakes when buying websites, what’s one thing you wish you knew sooner?

It is natural to think that putting less capital at risk is safer than putting more capital at risk. That would be true if all businesses had the same intrinsic risk profile.

But the truth is that older, more established, higher quality online businesses are much safer investments than their less expensive but lower quality counterparts. So I would have avoided many mistakes simply by focusing on businesses with better fundamentals.

That is not to say that it is impossible to find good websites at lower price points. It is also not to say that all, or even most, larger online businesses are low risk. That isn’t true. Even very high-income sites can have attributes that make them bad bets. Websites generally have high ROIs and with those ROIs come risks that have to be accounted for and mitigated.

Compared to 5 years ago, is it easier or more difficult to find a deal when looking for a website? How does the future look for this?

It is more challenging to find underpriced deals today than it was 5 years ago. There are more buyers now and the buyer community is better educated and has more resources for making informed investment decisions.

Additionally, price levels are going up. Multiples are growing not only because more buyers are entering the market but also because website assets have attracted the interest of private equity groups, larger private investors and institutional investors.

Despite the fact that big-money investors have entered the fray, there will continue to be opportunities for buyers and sellers at every price point because there is a market for websites at every stage of size and maturity.

As technology evolves, online apps take on different forms, adapting to a variety of devices and platforms. This creates new business models, new niches and new ways to deliver online solutions that will continue to create opportunities for anyone willing to master a little corner of the market.

I am very optimistic about the marketplace for online business. Economies grow by increasing the productivity of their workforces and websites and internet technologies are key elements of that productivity growth.

If you want to learn more about buying an online business, you can sign up for Jeff’s free training course via Flippa here.

Jeff Hunt is an internet investor,  marketer and website owner. He actively buys and grows websites with the intent of creating multiple passive income streams, and enjoys capitalizing on internet opportunities to help others to do the same. You can learn more about Jeff and his courses here.

Having an awesome listing is super important on Flippa – it can often be the difference between selling for a great price and not selling at all – but with all the data, descriptions, analysis, attachments, verification requirements and everything else that goes into a great listing, it can be a very complex and time-consuming process to create it.

Then once the listing is live, it is also important to manage it well by responding to questions, updating information as required and generally helping buyers to do their due diligence. This can also be very time-consuming.

For large and complex businesses, using a broker is a great way to manage the process. However brokerage isn’t an option for many sellers, as brokerages tend to be very selective on which businesses they represent. This is where our Listing Management team can help!

Drawing on their experience creating and managing thousands of listings over the years, our dedicated team of experts will help your listing be the best it can be, giving you the best chance of achieving a successful sale. And our results back it up – managed listings are much more likely to sell on Flippa, and sell for a higher profit, than non-managed listings.

Our listing management team are not brokers – they do not represent the listing on your behalf. Rather, they are advisors who assist sellers with the sale process and provide expertise on how to sell a business or asset on the Flippa platform.  In particular, they specialize in:

• Producing realistic sale estimations based on your businesses performance
• Creating a powerful listing description that promotes your business or asset to potential buyers
• Optimising your listing based on buyer comments and feedback after it has launched
• Promoting your listing on the Flippa website in our featured section
• Marketing your listing to qualified buyers through newsletters, direct email campaigns, platform upgrades, and more
• Assisting with any questions or issues you experience whilst the listing is live
• Providing experienced advice on enquiries from potential buyers
• Enabling swift and safe payment through Flippa escrow

We’ve been offering some of these services for some time, in return for a slightly higher success fee. But now eligible listings will be entitled to this benefit for free!

Want to learn more? To find out if your listing qualifies for free listing management assistance, contact us today at prioritysupport@flippa.com.

* Note that not all listings will be eligible for free listing management.  Multiple criteria apply, but as a starting point, you will not qualify if your listing is valued at less than $1,000. This offer also does not apply to domain listings.

I’m joined today by Ben Novak, who sold wedivite.com for $70,000 last month. Ben is a self-taught web entrepreneur with a passion for building online businesses and discusses how he built and sold wedivite.com.

Tell us about your background as a web entrepreneur.

I started as a webmaster at 16 years old. Since then I never stopped coding, designing and building online businesses. Apart from my own projects, during the past 12 years I’ve worked as a copywriter, designer, developer, creative director, marketing director, angel investor consultant and VP of creative. Some of my top past clients are: Google, Deezer, reddit, Pfizer, Gett (GetTexi), Volvo, IKEA and many more.

What is your education/employment/career background?

I have a BA in Communication and Management, and I’m self-taught in PHP, Laravel, Angular, React, React-Native, PhoneGap, JS, HTML, CSS, Python, Swift, Server management and SQL.

You sold wedivite.com for $70,000, which gives it a staggering sale price of 11.5x its annual profit! Tell us about why the business sold for such a high multiple and what the sale process was like.

Wedivite is an entire branded business, around for 3+ years, with top-ranking google positions (1^st place in mobile wedding invitations and digital wedding invitations). Apart from that, it has amazing WOM (word of mouth) and over 200K couples worldwide have already used it for their wedding. The website is profitable and I spend roughly 1-3 hour a week on it. So this is just the revenue on auto-pilot. If you start investing time in it, you can quickly turn it into a huge business.

It has a great social footprint with a lot of followers (especially on Instagram) and loads of marketing materials, videos and brand assets.

And the bottom line, buyer paid for 1 business but got 2 businesses (vendor directory and app), 2 mobile apps and a web app.

I noticed you had a $23,000 reserve. Were you surprised it sold for $70,000?

Nope, actually, I think it’s a steal price.

Tell us about wedivite.com. How did it get started and how did it grow?

Started as my own wedding invitation. After that, I opened it for free for everyone to create one. Then couples stated asking for more features, so I added some paid features and then it started to get big, so I stopped developing and focused on making it run on auto-pilot- as I didn’t want to leave my day job. 

Why did you decide to sell wedivite.com?

No time to run it, and it was a shame because it’s had great hype and functionality. So I decided it should “live-on” with someone who’ll take better care of it.

You worked with Cristina Javier, one of our account managers. Can you tell us the experience of working with her and the rest of our account management team?

Everyone was cool. Cristina gave an initial evaluation of the product.

Was this the only online business you operate?

Nope. I have a few other products:

Thinger

3D printing models discovery app. “Find hot models for your lonely 3D printers”

https://thinger.rocks

OfficeHealth

Work-break reminder app with non-embarrassing micro office workouts

https://officehealth.me

What would advice would you give to those looking to sell their websites and online businesses?

In general:

• Don’t try to sell a product you don’t believe in.
• If you created a product and couldn’t scale it, describe the steps you tried and why you think you have failed. Sometimes this info will save the buyer a lot of time and worth a lot of money.

For me specifically, I had a feature request tool generated by Wedivite couples (users) and voted on with had hundreds of votes and ideas. This serves a great starting point for your buyer to continue working on the product, as well as a great user base.

Want to get in touch with Ben? Add him or LinkedIn or Twitter!

SOLD: $82,500

VIEWS: 11,984

WATCHERS: 421

BIDS: 18

This private label FBA personal care products business has 6 total products with a 4.7-star average review. The business generated $32,000 profit over the trailing twelve months and included the Amazon Seller Central Store, Amazon Vendor Central Store, and $25k of inventory at cost.

Kurt is among the first to sell his Amazon FBA business since we launched our dedicated Amazon FBA section on Flippa, and we were lucky enough to sit down with both him and Alan, the new owner.

What are your professional backgrounds and how did you both get started with online businesses?

Alan: I am an entrepreneur and have been my entire life. I have run a marketing agency, The Peterson Group for 27 years. I now own two online eCommerce businesses. I also coach entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses, improve their leadership and create strategic plans that align and engage their teams.

Kurt: I have a Bachelors and Master’s Degree in Accounting and am a Certified Public Accountant. After working in public tax accounting for several years, my entrepreneurial drive drove me to spend full-time efforts on my other businesses. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial drive and have learned over the years how to identify markets and execute on growth opportunities. I love to march to the beat of my own drum and enjoy the benefits of my entrepreneurial lifestyle. My other businesses include a payments software company, concessions business and multiple online businesses in the health, beauty, and sporting goods industries.

How did you get started with Amazon FBA businesses?

Kurt: I started online with BigCommerce stores and then expanded to Ebay, then Amazon, and then Walmart. Some of my other businesses are FBA only, some are a combination of online marketplaces. The Amazon FBA model is very convenient once the infrastructure is set up and the business is on auto-pilot with very little effort required. The benefit and draw of Amazon is obviously the volume of buyers purchasing on Amazon and well as being able to leverage the fulfillment channel of Amazon. Some of the downfalls of Amazon I’ve experienced include the massive amounts of seller competition, the marketplace fees, and the limitation of products Amazon will allow to be sold on their marketplace.

How and when did you each discover Flippa?

Alan: I found it via surfing the Web when I started seeking businesses a year ago.

Kurt: Being an entrepreneur, it seems like I’ve always known about Flippa but have only casually watched the site and I prefer to grow my own businesses rather than buy. I recently re-engaged with Flippa to assist me in selling one of my FBA stores.

Why did you decide to sell your FBA business on Flippa?

Kurt: Flippa provides instant access to thousands of buyers. While I knew [Flippa’s] FBA section was new, I thought I would give it a try.

You were one of the first Amazon FBA businesses sold on Flippa since we launched our Amazon FBA section. What was the sales process like?

Kurt: I gathered the requested information for Flippa and they had the listing live in a matter of a couple days. I immediately started to get contacted and engaging with buyers. I didn’t disclose my reserve publicly but did give serious buyers the number I was looking for. I was very reasonable with my price in mind and had market comps and industry average multiples to back it up. This quickly weeded out the non-serious buyers. In the end, I had over 8k views, 500+ watchers and over 400 different people send me messages. I had several low ball offers that I did not accept. I ended up having about 5 pretty serious bidders that were private messaging me offers. I had several offers that were very close the final winning number that I almost accepted. In the end, one of the buyers offered the price I deemed fair and had in mind and we closed the deal 30 min before the auction ended.

How long did it take to transfer over all the business assets and what was the process?

Kurt: Transferring an Amazon business can be very difficult or fairly simple. The entire process can be accomplished in a day if you know what you’re doing. The main Amazon seller central user just needs to be handed over. We went ahead and allowed the buyer to update the email address of the main seller central user. This doesn’t change the account but simply changes the email address for logging in and subsequently allows them to reset the password and change it. All credit cards, addresses, etc. etc. will remain with the account. Also, Amazon users are the same throughout Amazon’s platforms. Meaning if you use the same user for your Amazon purchases and your seller central account, the buyer will now have access to your order history, credit cards, etc. Just something to be aware of as you prepare for a transition. Ideally, your seller central account is a different amazon account than what your spouse orders diapers with on your prime account. If it’s not, and you’re using the same account, you need to get the spouse set up with a different account and then delete out your personal info because you will have to give away your seller central account.

Once the buyer has access to the seller central account, they can simply update all the legal, bank and other information through the Amazon portal.

Other transition elements may include accounting for the current balance in the Amazon account, inventory not at FBA warehouses, and third party service provider accounts. Each transition will be different depending on the seller’s infrastructure.

You also had the opportunity to work with our account management team. Can you tell me what that was like?

Kurt: The Flippa sales team was very quick to respond and provide feedback and answer questions. Also, they helped me get a game plan for responding to the many inquiries and weeding out the serious vs non-serious buyers. Especially for a higher dollar transaction like my recent one. I would suggest to Flippa that they provide more information about the whole process (what Flippa does and does not do/assist with) up front so there wouldn’t be so many questions from me/sellers.

What tips would you give anyone looking to sell their Amazon FBA business?

Kurt: If you are a serious seller, you will find a serious buyer. Do your homework on a FAIR price and go get it. Too many people think their business is worth way more than the market is paying. Also, make sure you understand how to transition all the aspects of the business including third party vendors. Make sure you’ve positioned the business for success. You never know how long it will take to sell a business (it’s a lot of hard work), so you should continue to operate it as if you weren’t selling it.

What was the process like for buying an FBA business on Flippa?

Alan: The process can be very easy and professional. However, from my experience, that has been dependent on the quality of the buyer, and the seller. In this case, Kurt and I are both very professional so the process was seamless. Kurt, the Seller of this business, was a “10” in respects to professionalism and support.

As the buyer, what steps did you have to take to receive full control of the business? 

Alan: The Seller and I came to our agreement and memorialized the Agreement in our Asset Purchase Agreement. We executed the Agreement, and then I coordinated a non-escrow, wire transfer with the seller so that we would work together on timing of the escrow and transfer of Amazon account information. We did this while I was at the bank via a video webcast, so that we could work with each other on the Bank Transfer (and the Seller could verify the transfer taking place), and via the webcast I was able to work with the Seller and verify the transfer of the Amazon and other account information. Essentially, within an hour, we both executed the wired monies and account information and I took control of my new company.

Is this your first FBA business you’ve operated and/or bought?

Alan: Yes. My other company sells on Amazon, our BigCommerce website, and eBay.

What do you plan to do with the business?

Alan: Grow it significantly! I will enhance marketing, launch a website, and add additional products.

If someone was looking to purchase an FBA business, what tips would you have for the buying and due diligence processes?

Alan: Do your homework. Understand what a fair price is for the company. I look at EBIT/Net Income, what growth opportunity is there, and evaluate accordingly. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. And conversely, many Sellers think their company is worth more. I look for companies that are genuinely a “deal” – assuming I am willing to do the work, turn the company around, and bring synergies to the deal that ensure it’s a deal I only work with professional Sellers. If their communication is suspect, poor, non-responsive, then it’s too much of a risk for me to engage in that deal and I pass. I also look for deals where the Seller wants to move quickly, to ensure that the deal will move quickly. On Flippa, I encourage buyers to “beware” and be very careful with the quality of the Seller. I have had multiple conversations with other Sellers who have been “suspect,” unprofessional, change the terms or snooze their auction, or don’t communicate well or professionally. It’s important to be able to assess: Is the Seller professional, does he/she have integrity and is the representation of what is being sold honest and accurate.

How can our readers learn more about your projects or get in touch with each of you?

Alan: Please contact me via LinkedIn if you have any questions, or I can support you in anyway: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanpeterson/

Kurt: I love to connect with fellow business owners and entrepreneurs. You can reach out and message me via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-hansen-cpa-38055b88/

I want to thank both Kurt and Alan for taking time out of their schedule to talk about this transaction with me. If you have any questions on Amazon FBA businesses or this deal, in particular, drop a comment below!

Also, if you’re interested in buying or selling an Amazon FBA business, take a look at what’s for sale on Flippa here, or get a free business valuation here.

Between the premium sellers and super sellers, you may start seeing a new sheriff, err, badge in town.

Over the past couple months, Flippa has partnered with a handful of brokerages to provide highly curated listings to the marketplace. Brokered listings are unique, in that each listing has undergone a thorough due diligence check by the broker.

As a broker, you have the opportunity to fully customize your listings and work directly with our team to ensure a smooth and successful sale process.

With that, any broker that we’re working with now has the new badge. Here’s what it looks like:

How Does One Qualify for the Broker Badge?

First and foremost, to get the broker badge, you must own or operate a brokerage.

Second, you’ll need to agree to a certain set of performance and quality expectations. The two biggest things that brokers will have to do is to perform a comprehensive due diligence check on every asset, and also list every online business asset they are representing, for sale.

If you’re interested in being a broker on our platform, head to this page to learn more and apply.

Perks of Being a Broker on Flippa

So what’s in it for the brokers?

For starters, brokers who partner with us will see decreased success fees on all their assets listed. On top of that, brokers can expect free promotional upgrades, including homepage upgrades and inclusion in our online business newsletter, which reaches nearly 400,000 active Flippa users

Additionally, brokers will have a dedicated contact at Flippa, who is available to help out at any time.

Looking Forward

Our goal is to become the way the world buys and sells online business, and brokerages play a huge part in helping us move forward with our vision.

Get started! Fill out our form and we’ll get back to you: Flippa Broker Partnership – Expression of Interest Form

Have any questions? Drop a comment below!

Tell us about your background as web entrepreneur.

Even early in life I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I loved numbers and finances, and was always fascinated with businesses and wanted to learn how they operated, what made them successful and how they could be improved and optimized. I studied Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where I had a few student jobs, but was fortunate to discover the potential of the internet for entrepreneurship early on.

Around 2004-2005 I first learned that you could start a business online with minimal investment and I was hooked! I read everything I could find online and quickly started building websites, learning about SEO and organic traffic, and experimenting with adsense and affiliate marketing. After some initial successes, I decided to reinvest the extra income into buying some more established websites that I could improve and grow further. Later on, I was able to sell some of these websites for a profit.

As the business grew I decided to turn it into a career and founded Domain Magnate in 2008 to focus full time on buying and selling established websites and premium domain names. We’ve since completed hundreds of deals with millions of dollars in value.

You’re one of the biggest users on Flippa, with a 100% positive feedback rating from 38 transaction and $282,000 TTV. What brought you to Flippa originally and why do you still use Flippa?

I was using The SitePoint marketplace since 2005, before it was rebranded as Flippa, and was fortunate to be among the first Flippa users when it was launched.

Most of our sales and purchases are currently done privately, through the network of buyers and sellers I’ve built over the years, but I also still use Flippa often for both buying and selling, as there are no other websites and domain names marketplaces that can rival Flippa’s scale and reach

You just completed your largest sale yet, $165,000, by selling the site 420beginner.com. Can you tell us about the website, the sale, and what you did to achieve such a high sale price?

420beginner.com and bigbudsguide.com (which was included in the flippa sale) are two amazon affiliate websites that focus on selling various products one would need to grow cannabis at home. Most sales are for specialized led lights that are used for growing. The sites feature review articles and in-depth guides that drive organic traffic from Google. Due to superb content and carefully planned on page SEO, as well as a few quality links, they are able to rank very well in google for highly competitive keywords, and drive targeted traffic which translates to sales.

I acquired the website in February 2017. The previous owner was interested in selling, but he didn’t have good stats. In the previous months the revenue ranged between around $1K and $5K per month as he was trying different monetization methods and the google analytics data was missing.

That didn’t deter my interest in it, because it had high quality content and good backlink profile in a profitable niche. I expected that I’d be able to increase revenue by improving monetization, and updating the site further with more content. Upon carrying out my due diligence, verifying the data, and interviewing the seller I was able to confirm my initial assessment that led to us agreeing on a deal in a short space of time.

After about 5 months I managed to increase the revenue to $8K per month, but I didn’t have as much interest in it as before, so the website wasn’t growing and started to get neglected due to other projects. I decided it would be best to sell it to someone who can take it to the next level, to allow me to reinvest in other properties.

I first offered it through our list to some of our frequent buyers, but the offers were lower than expected due to the niche. Flippa was the obvious choice for the sale due to its unprecedented reach and a large number of buyers from different industries. I was able to find a good buyer, who took a serious interest in the website and I’m confident that he’ll be able to grow it further.

We agreed on a price, processed the deal via Flippa escrow, signed a contract and handled the transfer. All went smoothly. After the sale I provided some training for the buyer and his employee to learn how to manage it successfully and grow further. I also always make it a point to follow up with my buyers to see how they are doing with the website, and if they have any questions or issues. We’ve had multiple skype calls and email exchanges after to make sure the websites are being properly monetized and maintained.

How many current sites do you maintain in your portfolio?

I have over 100 websites, but most are passive and do not require much input. We also have a small team to help update them.

What type of sites have you managed? Do you have a certain niche or business model you prefer?

I prefer websites that are more passive and easier to maintain. Mostly content websites with organic Google traffic, as they are easier to manage and easier to sell due to high interest among buyers. However, lately also focusing on SaaS and e-commerce websites as well.

In addition to websites, you have also sold quite a few domains on Flippa. As a seller, what’s the difference between domains and websites? Do you prefer one or the other?

I’ve been active in domaining since about 2007, mostly focusing on the more liquid short and 1 word .com domain names. In past years my focus shifted more towards websites, but I’m still active in the community, maintain a portfolio of premium domains, visit industry events and sometimes speak at conferences.

I bought and sold a few domains and portfolios via Flippa. These transactions are generally faster, simpler and less time consuming, however with reselling domain names the profit margins are usually a lot lower than with websites. I think Flippa is a great place for listing your domain portfolio, or for finding a specific domain name for your next venture.

You’ve had some experience working alongside our account management team. Can you tell me what that’s like and if they were helpful throughout the sale process?

I had a lot of help from my account manager, [Colton Moffitt], on this sale. He was instrumental in providing assistance, upgrades, speeding up the regular listing process, reaching out to potential buyers and helping carry out the transaction. It was definitely very beneficial and I would highly recommend the Flippa’s management services.

For sellers out there who are interested in selling their websites, what advice would you give them?

This is what I generally recommend to anyone interested in selling their online business:

1. Start preparing upfront, at least 3 full months ahead before you plan to sell. Make sure to setup google analytics and other tracking software. Set up unique channels and tracking ids for your website in the affiliate and advertiser accounts. Get your finances in order and optimize profit, reduce unnecessary expenses, so you can show comprehensive data to potential buyers.
2. If you know some website buyers, or your competitors who might be interested in purchasing your business, it’s always worthwhile to contact them first to check if you might be able to sell directly, or just see what they can offer.
3. Always use a reputable escrow service, like Flippa escrow, or Escrow.com, unless you’ve done business before, or trust the other party.
4. Prepare a very detailed Flippa listing. Be sure to explain the business operation, finances, include all the screenshots, try to have visual proofs for all your numbers. Use Flippa tools to verify GA and Adsense, and make a video for showing your revenues. For a higher revenue website utilize Flippa’s managed listing services or account managers.
5. If your website makes substantial revenue buy Flippa upgrades for more visibility. The more people see your auction, the more bids you have, the higher price you can usually get.
6. Promptly answer all comments and questions, and update your listing with new screenshots.
7. If a bidder has no activity on Flippa yet and no feedbacks, no connected social profiles, you can contact them to ask for some extra information, to make sure they are a serious buyer. Sometimes new buyers change their mind, or simply do not have the funds available, so it’s best to check before approving a potentially winning bid.
8. Provide good after sale support, keep up with the buyer to help grow the website further.

In addition to selling websites, you’re also a pretty prolific buyer. Tell us about your buying process (due diligence, payments, etc) and any tips you can give others looking to buy an online business.

At domainmagnate.com we focus on providing quick business liquidation service for online businesses. Most of our purchases generally take just 1-3 days. We save people time, as most other venues have lengthy listing and waiting periods.

My due diligence relies a lot on experience and also involves verifying stats, interviewing and researching the seller and site’s history, and evaluating risks.

My main advice to new website investors would be to

1. Start small, do not risk most of your money on your first purchase. Set a budget range and stick to it.
2. Learn and understand the risks associated with the type of website you plan to buy, and how to maintain it.
3. Look for an advantage. Go after the type of deals that help you utilize your experience, expertise, interests, connections, analytical skills, or other areas where you excel, in order to increase your chances for success.
4. Do your due diligence, verify everything you can, but also trust your gut!
5. Instead of negotiating over price, it’s often more prudent to get better sale terms and after sale support

What other projects are you working on at the moment?

Lately I’m also focusing more on investing in and advising startups, as I believe that’s where my skills can be best applied to have the maximum effect.

I strongly believe in the blockchain technology and smart contracts, and expect they will play a much more significant role in the near future. We are already seeing major financial institutions, technology companies and even governments  investing more in research and development of decentralized blockchain based systems. They provide substantial benefits and optimizations compared to the current centralized systems in many industries.

I am also passionate about internet privacy and security, and recently joined the Privatix.io team as an adviser and early investor. It’s a new startup by an established VPN company that aims to build a P2P decentralized VPN network on the Ethereum blockchain. Privatix will enable Internet users to sell their unused bandwidth and get paid in cryptocurrency, while helping bring much higher degree of security and anonymity for its users.

Why did you decide to join Privatix and what are they currently working on?

The Privatix team have a proven record of achieving fantastic results, testament to their many years working together. The team have built a popular VPN network and other profitable applications. It completed its pre-ICO round of contributions in just 3 minutes with a $500K cap and is currently raising funds via an Initial Coin Offering by selling its tokens that will later be used for services in its network.

There is strong interest among investors, and a community of fans backing and contributing to the project. I believe the company is in a great position to implement the peer to peer VPN service, which will greatly improve online privacy, security and reduce Internet censorship.

How can our readers learn more about your projects or get in touch with you?

You are welcome to watch my Flippa listings, reach out via email or follow on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin.

Sidenote: Joe is the only person on Flippa to hold all three seller badges on Flippa: Gold star (for 2+ years of positive feedback), Super Seller (recognizes number of sales and the sale value), and Premium Seller (for selling multiple high-quality assets).

As Joe Burrill has plenty of experience in both buying and selling websites, the video dives into many topics, spanning from performing website due diligence, valuing a website, and what steps you should take before selling a website you own.

Check out the full interview:

The video is broken down into separate segments, so if you’d like to view a certain segment of the video, you can pick from below:

1. Buying Websites and Performing Valuations
2. Selling Websites on Flippa
3. Website Monetization
4. Using Flippa to Buy and Sell Websites
5. Website Due Diligence

If you’d like to follow Joe Burrill’s listing on Flippa, you can navigate to his seller page here and hit watch to get notifications on any new listing he posts.

Below is the full video transcript:

Tony: Hi everyone. My name’s Tony Barrett. I’m CEO on flippa.com, the world’s leading marketplace for websites, mobile apps, and domain names. I’m really excited to be joined today by Joe Burrill. Joe is a professional website investor and portfolio owner, and he is also the only person who currently holds all three seller badges on flippa.com. Very exciting to have him today. Joe, welcome and thanks for joining us.

Joe: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Tony: Fantastic. I wonder, Joe, if we could start by getting from you a little bit of your background, and in particular, how you got started in websites.

Joe: Yeah, sure. It all started about seven years ago, when my older bought us, the family, a board game named Cashflow by Robert Kiyosaki. That basically taught me the basics of investing in just everyday return on investment and that sort of thing. At the time, I was working full time in my day job, earning a decent wage and just getting by. I was always fairly good at saving and so I had about 10 grand saved up in my bank account, just sitting there not doing anything. So, after learning a little bit about investing and realizing that’s an option for me, I started looking at all sorts of different investment opportunities, things like shares and property and so on.

In the end, long story short, I ran into a couple called Matt and Liz, Matt and Liz Raad. Went along to their three-day workplace, and was instantly hooked. I just knew that that was exactly what I was looking for. Signed up for their high end mentoring course and then the rest is pretty much history.

Tony: Matt and Liz, we know them well. They’re fantastic, aren’t they?

Joe: Yeah, yeah.

Tony: What was it about websites in particular that attracted you as opposed to shares or property or other ways to invest your money?

Joe: I have had a background in tech type stuff, like I did a diploma in multimedia design. That’s much more of design stuff, and to be honest, I learned pretty much nothing. Nothing usable anyway. I built a few sites in the past, although they were pretty terrible. I learned more with Matt and Liz than in my diploma, or anywhere else. That was what it was that interested me. Obviously the return on investment seemed to be out of this world and it was even better back then than it is now, which it still is really good. Yeah, I suppose that’s why.

Tony: Okay. Perhaps digging a little bit more to  the way that you do operate your portfolio, how many websites might you be owning and managing at any one time?

Joe: It fluctuates a fair amount. I generally go through buying and selling phases. At any one time, it’s pretty much between 5 and 15. I like to keep it at 10 or less if I can, but I can manage up to 15. Out of those sites, I’m usually renovating or working on regularly, about maybe two or three of them. The rest are sort of sitting there, just being maintained, you know what I mean?

Tony: Yep.

Joe: I look at them maybe a few times a month and that’s about it. Usually don’t have to do that much more with them.

Tony: Is that a full time job for you? Does it take you 40 or 50 hours a week to manage those websites, or less than that?

Joe: No. It usually takes me about 10 to 20 hours actually maintaining those sites. The rest of my time I spend looking for new sites to acquire, generally. That actually takes up a good chunk of my time, because it requires lots of research and stuff which we’ll get into probably later on.

Tony: I think we will.

Buying Websites and Performing Valuations

Tony: What I’d really like to ask is, when you’re looking for a website to buy, what are the things that you look for in a website?

Joe: I mean, there are a lot of factors. Lots of things that I really like to see. In general, it’s high margins. I like any site that has high margins to it. Low expenses, high profit, or high income. What that does is it gives me room to reinvest that money into the website to grow it. There are a lot of other factors like domain authority, history, and more obscure type stuff that’s sort of not really possible to put an exact value on, but yeah. That’s usually what I’m looking for.

Tony: Do you subscribe to the Warren Buffett approach of invest in what you know?

Joe: Invest in what you know? Yeah, yeah. Although having said that, I am in plenty of niches I know pretty much nothing about, so not always.

Tony: Do you have particular favorites, I guess, in terms of the types of niches you look at, or the types of sites that you like to invest in terms of how they’re monetized or how they operate?

Joe: No, actually, I don’t. I definitely have favorites. Not niche, but favorite monetization methods and generally the content type sites are the ones I like the most. Advertising or affiliate revenue, because the passive ones that don’t require my attention 24/7.

Tony: Fair enough. Do you believe in terms of return on investment and that sort of thing? That they’re the best ones for you to invest in as well?

Joe: Yes. Return on investment is pretty much everything, when it comes to this. When I invest in a website, I always intend to make that money back through the website if I can.

Tony: Absolutely. Why wouldn’t you?

Joe: Exactly, yeah.

Tony: You mentioned before that you tend to renovate some sites and work on some sites, and others are more passive. When you’re buying a site, are you always buying it for resell value and to resell it in the past? Sorry, resell it in the future. And, how often would you typically hold a site when you do buy it?

Joe: Yep, okay. So a few questions there. Let’s see. I hold a site generally between 6 and 24 months. I will hold it for longer than that if I can see that there’s potential, but usually when its made its money back, I’m looking, “Okay, when should I sell? When’s a good time to sell?” Then, it’s never really set in stone. It depends on the trajectory of the site and so on, things like that. But every single site that I buy, I have the intention to sell eventually, yes.

Tony: Okay, so you wouldn’t look at investing in a site and holding it for a long period of time just to generate revenue through that?

Joe: Yes.

Tony: It’s not really your game?

Joe: Maybe eventually. At this point, no, I’m not doing that yet. I do own a couple in my portfolio I know I’m going to hold for more than 24 months, so there are definitely ones that are exceptions.

Tony: Is that something that you can recognize upfront? You know when you’re buying it that it’s going to be one of those ones you might hold for a longer period of time?

Joe: Yeah, I can tell.

Tony: You can tell?

Joe: Yeah, I can tell. They usually have a lot more established business. They’ve got history that is consistent or slowly up trending. Yeah, I can usually tell, but I mean, you set a plan and then those things generally change over time anyway. Never know 100%.

Tony: No, exactly. I imagine as someone who is buying sites for resell value, you’re always on the lookout for really well valued sites, so sites that you can buy at a lower price and then sell for a higher price later on, right?

Joe: Absolutely, yes.

Tony: So can you tell us a little bit about the evaluation process that you use? How do you value a website that you’re looking to buy?

Joe: All right, so it pretty much … Because we’re looking mostly at ROI, a lot of it does come down to the profit, the monthly profit. I look at the expenses that I’m going to incur, not what the seller is incurring. The seller will sometimes have expenses or won’t have expenses that I will have. Whether it’s because I’m outsourcing something that they’re not or my hosting is going to be a little bit more, or if I’m going to intentionally post more content, whatever.

Tony: That’s a really important point, right? That what they do might not be the same as what you do, depending on your skills and your contacts and all those sort of things.

Joe: Exactly, yeah.

Tony: And as someone who runs 15 sites at a time, you don’t necessarily have the time to put 20 or 30 hours a week into one site, so you might incur more costs to outsource that?

Joe: Yes. What was the other half of that question? I’ve forgotten.

Tony: I just wanted you to walk through a little-

Joe: Evaluation process.

Tony: … bit of your evaluation approach, yeah. How do you-

Joe: Yeah, sorry.

Tony: … value a site?

Joe: Yeah.

Tony: You talked about the expenses side which might be different from what the seller has.

Joe: I generally get the profit and then figure it out, monthly multiple based on that. There’s lots of other factors, like I said before, history and so on, like that. General rule of thumb, though, is I only spend less than what I think I can sell it for. If a site I think I can sell for 20 grand, the seller is offering it to me for 15, that’s a good deal for me, because I know that I can get that. That’s something that I’ve built up over time through experience. It’s not something that you can, a newbie can come along and know. It’s something that I just know from myself, “This is the sort of site that I think I can sell. I know that the [inaudible 00:10:03] value around this is this, and so on.”

Tony: But you know that because you’ve been doing this for a number of years, so if you were talking to someone who was looking to get into this space, then is experience the only way for them to get to that point and to learn it? Or, are there other things they might be able to do to get up that experience curb more quickly?

Joe: In terms of buying and selling, no. You just have to do it, because it’s a different world. Like, you can be at an expert at building sites but have no idea how to sell them, or have no idea how to buy them. There’s a lot of things that you don’t really think about if you haven’t done it for at least a year, I would think, which is why one of the biggest advice that I would give to anyone starting out is to start small, very small. Never, ever invest, for your first website, never invest more than what you are prepared to lose. If you’re happy to take that money and flush it down the toilet, that’s a good sign. You should get that one.

Tony: Not that you want to do that.

Joe: No, no. Obviously your intention is to make money with it and eventually make your money back, of course, but when you’re new at something, you make mistakes. That’s just a fact of life. So long as you’re aware of that and you keep moving forward, that’s fine.

Tony: Joe, I just want to close out a little bit more on evaluation. You spoke a little bit before about how the expenses that a seller who’s selling you a site might incur might not be the same as the expenses that you incur when you take over the site. Does that apply to revenue, as well?

Joe: No, it doesn’t. The reason being because it takes a fair amount of knowledge to know exactly how it’s going to perform. I don’t ever presume that it’s going to make X amount once I’ve bought it. I always take previous revenue as my base. Because that’s how much I know that it can make. Anything passed that is a mystery, and I’m not going to take a bet on that. I’m always going to say, “Okay, this is how much it has made. This is proof, this is obvious.” Even if I plan to make some changes in the future, I don’t know what those … It could be worse for all I know. I don’t know, and so that’s part of the testing and measuring, and so if it comes down when I was expecting it to go up, and I’ve paid as if I was expecting it to go up, I’ve made a bad investment. Does that make sense?

Tony: It does. You might look at a site and say, “I think there’s opportunity on the revenue side there,” but you’re not going to take that into account in your valuation and how much you’re prepared to pay for it?

Joe: Exactly. Absolutely, exactly, because you just never know. You just don’t know.

Tony: If you’re taking historical revenue and you’re looking at the cost base and saying, “What am I going to have to spend on this site?” How do you then, at a high level, take that into account in your valuation? How do you then arrive at what you’re willing to pay for that site?

Joe: Okay, so when it comes to potential, like I said, I never buy based on potential, but it is a factor. I’m very well aware of that. If I can see that the person has neglected a site, for example, for a long period of time, and they’re not doing anything with it and it’s still performing well, then I know that someone … If I was just to jump in and start giving it some love, it will no doubt go up. Scenarios like that, it will bump up my multiple a little bit, but a little bit. It’s conservative for sure, because like I said, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Tony: In terms of multiples you put a multiple on the profit that a site makes?

Joe: Yes.

Tony: What are the range of multiples that most websites would go for? Can you talk a little bit about a couple of the things that might impact on that multiple?

Joe: Okay. Generally speaking, I cap my multiples at 15 times.

Tony: That’s monthly?

Joe: Monthly profit, so if a site’s making 1000 a month, that would be a max of 15. I have broken that rule a couple of times. If it’s a site that I can see has got some seriously good history, it’s got clear potential, things that, like it’s under monetized. There are a few sites that get sold that are clearly under monetized. You can see that there are obvious ways that you can just literally make a couple of tweaks and it goes up like that. Those generally are fairly obvious. Like say for example, if they’re monetizing with Adsense, they have one Adsense block on each page.

Like, obviously if you put two even, then it’s going to increase the revenue. So, stuff like that does impact my valuation, but I mean, I’ve bought sites for as low as eight times, just recently as well. It depends a lot on the site.

Tony: So there’s still a lot of bargains out there that you come across?

Joe: There are bargains out there yes, if you’re looking, for sure.

Tony: All right. We might come back to that a little bit later.

Selling Websites on Flippa

Tony: Joe, we’ve talked a lot about what it’s like to be a buyer and in terms of buying a website. I’m interested also in what it’s like to be a seller. Do you have any key tips for someone who perhaps might have built a site and are looking to sell it and have never bought and sold before?

Joe: Okay, yeah sure. A few tips, number one is definitely documentation. You have to make sure that you don’t document pretty much as much as you possibly can about that website, so that it’s ideally in a package that you can just simply hand to every buyer that comes across. It eliminates a lot of questions that get asked of you and it just lays it out. You want to make it almost to the point where the buyer doesn’t really even need to do due diligence. Like, “Everything is in this document,” so it’s fairly comprehensive.

I use Google Sheets for this. I call it “My KPIs for this” and then you’ll have a profit and loss in there, make sure that’s accurate, 100% accurate. That’s very important. If you’ve got screenshots that are different than what’s in your profit and loss, that’s a red flag and a bit of a problem. Your top keywords that are bringing in traffic, most popular pages, how much traffic coming, bounce rate, time on page, all those sort of metrics. If you’re selling your own product, then conversion rates and things like that also go a long way to help. Return rates and so on.

That’s documentation. The next thing is to answer everyone’s question as if they are your buyer. So, if someone is coming to you and asking you a lot of questions, or even if it’s just one question, “Can you add me to the Google Analytics?” Or whatever. You can elaborate on that. You can say, “Added” and so on. Answer every single response as if they’re your buyer.

Tony: Is that because any one of them could be your buyer?

Joe: Exactly, partly. Also, it shows that you are willing to put in the effort when it comes time to close the deal. If they give you one or two questions and you answer 15, not that you have to do that, but then it shows the buyer that you are someone who’s good to work with, and they will be willing to pay you more just simply because they’re working with you.

Tony: That goes back a bit to what you were saying about the seller before when you were doing due diligence on the seller. You’re trying to prove yourself as a really good seller that people will be happy to buy from and trust. I imagine your experience as well as a buyer allows you to then set up the sale more effectively because you know what they’re looking for. Helps to be working on both sides at different times.

Joe: Yeah, you can definitely organize all sorts of different business structures … Sorry, what’s it called? Structures for the deal, so you can have [inaudible 00:17:46], and those sorts of things, as well. Most common is just a buyout, though, especially if it’s a smaller website.

Tony: Just a straight payment for the site, yep. You also mentioned before that one of the really important things you do as a buyer is due diligence on the seller to make sure that you trust that person and you’re happy to buy from them. Does that work the other way as well? Do you do due diligence on a buyer as a seller?

Joe: No, I don’t. I don’t know if I should or shouldn’t, but generally speaking, there is significantly less risk as a seller that the buyer will drop out. Usually, especially if you’re using a platform like Flippa, there are a lot of buyers. There are a lot of people there willing to spend money on your website, so generally, it just goes to the highest bidder. If things don’t work out with that person, that’s okay. You can just either go to the person who was second and just say, “Look, the first person fell through. Would you still be interested in it?” If that doesn’t work out, you can just relist it. It’s not that much of a [inaudible 00:18:49].

Tony: Does that change at all if there is an earn out involved? You said most are straight purchases, but if there is an earn out involved, then you’d want to know more about the buyer in that case?

Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s definitely more risky when there’s an earn out and it’s not just a straight transfer. I don’t do that very often when I’m on the seller side. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done that, but I am open to the option.

Tony: But you have done it on the buyer side?

Joe: Oh, actually no. Yes I have, no I’ve done it on the seller side, not on the buyer side. Anyway, so yeah, I mean, pretty much any site, usually those sort of earn out ones are with bigger sites and require a little bit more of back and forth. Yeah, getting to know them is a big point then, but I don’t go looking into their LinkedIn profiles and all those sorts of things. I don’t usually bother with that. Because there’s usually so many, as well. There are a lot of buyers on there, so I’m getting messaged on an average listing by up to 50 different people. I’m not going to look into every single one of them, and I don’t know who’s going to end up being one of the highest bidders anyway, so I just let it play out.

Tony: We do find from some of our sellers on the Flippa marketplace that they are interested in doing due diligence on buyers from time to time, but it is usually, as you say the higher quality or … I shouldn’t say higher quality. Higher value websites. It’s also usually where the seller has built the website themselves and they feel like it’s their baby that they’re passing over to the next person, so they have a high level of interest in who actually takes that over and what they do with it. I think in your situation, where you’re buying with an intent to sell, then it’s probably less important so that makes sense.

Joe: Yes, exactly. I’m a little bit more objective, but I see that all the time as well with people. They’ve built this amazing thing usually around themselves, and it’s hard for them to let it go. As a buyer, those are the ones that you definitely want to make sure that you develop some trust and that you care about the business as much or at least as close to as much as they do.

Tony: One question that I’m interested in in relation to that, too, is do you have people that you’ve bought from or sold to multiple times? People that you come back to?

Joe: Yes. Actually, I do. I’ve had a couple of repeat buyers and sellers in particular. I go back to sellers quite a bit and just say, “Hey, have you got any new sites available?”

Tony: Because it’s someone you’ve already done the DD on and you trust them to an extent, and it went well last time?

Joe: Exactly. Successful site sale went once, so it stands to reason that another one would also work out fine. It’s definitely worth it to keep in contact with those people and reach out to them every now and then.

Website Monetization

Tony: Great. One question or one topic we haven’t really covered so much so far is monetization. I’m interested in your views on monetization of a site. Obviously there’s multiple ways to do it. Do you have preferred or favorite ways you like to do it? Both in terms of taking a site and trying to increase the revenue, and also in terms of what you’re looking for in a way a site’s monetized.

Joe: Yes. I’ve said already that Adsense and affiliate type sites are usually my favorites. I’m looking for opportunities where there’s say you can tell that they’re being under monetized for whatever reason. That’s definitely number one. Those are the simple quick wins. A lot of the time, there will be an email list as well, with the site, that is being very underutilized. Usually most sites that have an email list, there is an opportunity for a digital product. Whether that’s an eBook, a course, or just something just simple that you can just digitally transfer through to the buyer. Sorry, through to your customer, and sell it on the platform.

I think that in terms of generating more revenue, digital products, if you can, depends a lot on the site, but digital products definitely go a long way. That’s a massive, big win. If you can see that … Like, a good example. Recipe type sites. If you’ve got an email list of 2000 people and they’re getting emailed every single time you post a new recipe to the site, don’t you think that if you went through your archives, compiled all of your best and most popular recipes and sold it to them as an eBook, they’d be willing to buy that? So that’s an example of what you could do.

It’s literally you don’t even need any new content. Maybe a little bit in between the paragraphs and stuff, but compiling it so that it’s an easy built for you package that you just go, “Here you go.” That’s fantastic, I love doing that one.

Tony: Great tip. Yeah, I’m sure you could do quite well out of that. On the other side of that, are there any monetization types that you don’t like or that you avoid?

Joe: Yes, there are. eCommerce. Physical eCommerce sites. I’ve never owned and maybe never will own. Just simply because the margins are usually a lot lower, so your expenses are really, really high, your profit … Sorry, your income is then also really high but your profit’s only this, which means you only have this much room to play with. Also, it requires quite a lot of work. You’ve got customers to deal with, you’ve got orders to fill, and actually sending those physical products to where it is that they live, returns, and all sorts of inventory type things, warehouses to store the inventory. All those sorts of issues are just, I don’t know, I don’t like it personally.

Also, it’s a lot harder to sell. They’re really difficult. I’ve seen a lot of sites on Flippa that are eCommerce and they usually sell. It just seems like there’s far less activity on them. I don’t know that for sure, but maybe that’s just my perception, but it just seem to be that they are harder to sell. Because you’ve got inventory, you’ve got something that’s extra. It’s not just a website then. It’s more of a traditional business type thing which is not what I signed up for.

Tony: Fair enough. Keep it simple. Keep it focused, makes sense.

Using Flippa to Buy and Sell Websites

As the only person who holds all three of our seller badges on Flippa, you’ve obviously spent quite a lot of time buying and selling on Flippa. Can you tell us a little bit about how you found Flippa in the first place and how you got started on the platform?

Joe: Yeah, sure. It was through Matt and Liz. They were the ones that enlightened me and showed me how to use and operate the website. It’s changed a lot over time and stuff, but that’s where it started.

Tony: Can you tell me a little bit about why you continue to use Flippa? What are the things about Flippa that you think make it easier for you to do what you do?

Joe: Yeah. Number one, above probably anything else is that I have full control over my listing. I have the ability to pretty much put whatever I want in that listing description and I can address every single issue that needs to be addressed in there. If you were to sell it through just a usual broker, they don’t know your website or your business the way that you do. It makes them difficult to put together a document that explains that. With Flippa, you have full control over that, so you can attach documents, attach screenshots, attach anything that you need to to help that buyer understand that business 200%.

The obvious ones are there’s lots and lots of buyers on there, and there’s lots and lots of websites that go up every day, as well. Every time I go on there I see new sites that I can potentially look into. Bit of a no brainer.

Tony: And you’re still finding plenty of good value deals as both a buyer and a seller on Flippa?

Joe: Yes. Absolutely, yeah.

Tony: Great. The other question I wanted to ask you about Flippa was we do get new people who come onto the site who can be a bit nervous about the whole payment process, particularly people who’ve never bought and sold a website before, so they’re worried about, “I’m handing over my website” or, “I’m handing over my money to someone who may be anywhere else in the world.” Have you ever had any issues with money going missing or websites going missing or anything like that?

Joe: I’ve never, ever had any issues with that. Never, nah. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a sale fall through due to any of those reasons before. The reason for that, well Flippa has just recently made it even easier with the escrow platform. It used to be that you had to go outside of Flippa once you finalized the deal inside Flippa, you’d go outside Flippa through Escrow.com or PayPal, or wire transfer, God forbid. Those would be the only ways that you would be able to close that deal and send that money to the seller, or vice versa.

Now, Flippa has a Flippa Escrow service where they hold the money for you. You transfer the assets and then when you finish transferring the assets, they send the money, or you, the buyer, tells Flippa, “Okay, I’ve received the assets, you can release the money through to the seller.” It takes out all the risk pretty much, so long as you’ve put it clear in writing what you’re actually getting. You shouldn’t have any problems using that service at all. Yeah.

Tony: Fantastic. It is something that new people can be concerned about so it’s good to know that someone with your experience that’s sold so many websites and bought so many websites on the platform has never had an issue. It’s great to hear.

Joe: Maybe I’m lucky, I don’t know.

Tony: No, no, I think you’re pretty typical.

Joe: Okay, good.

Website Due Diligence

Tony: What we have been talking about in terms of the profit and the revenue sort of leads a little bit into due diligence. I imagine that as a buyer, that the due diligence process is very, very important in terms of your process for buying a website?

Joe: Absolutely. It’s probably the most important part. It baffles me how many people don’t do it, buy sites. It’s like, “You don’t even know what you’re buying.” Anyway, so-

Tony: What are the most important things you look for when you’re doing your due diligence? What are the two or three key things that matter most to you?

Joe: Yeah, okay. I think it’s worth noting that it usually takes me between five and six hours to do full due diligence on one website. It’s a significant time and obviously I’m not going to cover every single step of that. A lot of it has been built up over time and I add to it, and so and so. Some of the key things, traffic. You want to look at where the traffic is coming on the website, where is it coming from, how long they’re spending on the website, and all those sort of metrics.

Along with that, if it’s getting traffic through Google or organic search, you’re looking at SEO factors like backlinks. Where are the backlinks coming from? Those sort of factors, as well. Next thing is obviously profit. You want to verify every single cent of profit through screenshots, screen shares, and those sorts of things. Along with that goes with the expenses as well. Some sellers are a little bit dishonest when it comes to expenses, because they’re trying to make it look better than it actually is.

You have to be careful, which is one of the reasons why I value sites based on what my expenses are going to be, not what theirs. The next thing is the seller. Traffic, profit, seller. The seller generally is covered by just having an interview with them, just talking to them over Skype or whatever.

Tony: You want to buy from someone who you trust or someone who is trustworthy generally? Is that what you’re looking for when you’re talking to the seller?

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve walked away from plenty of deals because I just get a bad vibe from the seller.

Tony: Wow, okay.

Joe: Plenty. It happens a lot actually, because it happened literally just a few months ago. If you can’t trust a person, you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s a big risk. Because you’re dealing with people. There’s another person on the other side of that computer that’s … Anyway. It’s definitely a massive factor.

Tony: Yep. Just to dig into the other ones a little bit more, so in terms of traffic, you spoke about how much traffic there is and where it comes from. I imagine that not all traffic is created equal in terms of valuation?

Joe: No. Definitely isn’t.

Tony: I mean, organic versus paid is an obvious one, so organic traffic would be more valuable than paid traffic?

Joe: Absolutely, yeah.

Tony: There’s some more nuances in there as well, I imagine.

Joe: Yeah. Like I said, the main metrics is like bounce rate, time on page, or time on site in general, page speed is actually another one that’s become a big thing recently. If it’s a slow website, in some ways it’s an opportunity, if it’s ranking fairly well and it’s slow. But yeah, I mean, traffic from … Another big thing that’s sort of started happening or has been happening for a while is Facebook traffic. Can generate a lot of traffic to your website, and Pinterest and those sorts of things. Each one, they have a certain attention span, so to speak. The users have an attention span and that’s usually reflected in your bounce rate, in your time on page and those sorts or things.

Tony: In terms of profit, obviously verification of revenue and expenses and those sort of things, I imagine there’s a few difficulties and pitfalls in that. You’re relying on the seller to provide all that information to you through screenshots or walkthroughs or whatever. I know on Flippa, we do have issues sometimes with people who have multiple sites who aren’t actually very good at separating the revenue or the cost between their sites, so it’s hard to tell whether it applies to this site or another site, right? Have that problem all the time?

Joe: Yes. Disorganized sellers is a very common thing, unfortunately, and yeah, it’s just something you have to deal with, you know? That’s why having screen share, actually talking with them on Skype helps a lot. There are some sites out there that literally have 10 or 15 different sources of income, and verifying that, I mean, that’s going to take a long time. But you’ve got to do it. Figure out where all that money’s coming from and what can be improved and so on.

Tony: I’m sure as a seller you organize your profit and your-

Joe: Yes, oh gosh. Yeah, every single one of my sites, I do a KPI spreadsheet that I compile. It has all sorts of information, not just profit. Not just income and expenses, it has main keywords, popular landing pages, all those sorts of things in there, too, and I give access to every buyer, to that.

Tony: Fantastic. Love to buy a site from you in that case.

Joe: Anytime.

Tony: Just to round out the due diligence a little bit, do you have any key tips for people who are looking to do due diligence on a new site? Anything that you’d recommend for them to watch out for?

Joe: To watch out for?

Tony: Other than what we’ve already covered.

Joe: Let’s see. Well, there are a lot of red flags that come up for me. Nitty gritty stuff like backlinks and things like that, it’s a bit difficult to say, “This is a good backlink profile, this is a bad backlink profile.” My number one piece of advice for people buying sites is to just ask lots of questions. You’re buying a business from someone and it’s your responsibility to find out as much about that business as you can before you buy it. Whether it’s big or small. By asking lots of questions, you will learn a lot more about the site, and have a clearer picture about whether or not that’s something you actually even want to take on.

That’s definitely an important thing and it’s not really due diligence per se, but it’s just use your head. If it’s something you don’t feel like you can run or you don’t want to run, or you don’t want to learn to run, then maybe you should pass on that one, you know?

Tony: Sounds very sensible. The last question on due diligence is do you have any tools, particular tools that you use that help you with the due diligence that some of our viewers might be interested in looking at, as well?

Joe: Yeah, yeah sure. When it comes to traffic, get Google Analytics guest access. That’s number one. You need to have access to Google Analytics. SEMrush is another tool that I use. Ahrefs as well, but I don’t use that one as much. SEMrush I like quite a lot. That gives you some fairly detailed organic search metrics. For backlink profiles, Majestic.com. There are, again, I think Ahrefs also does that. Domain Authority and MozRank, those sorts of things that come from Moz.com, and Skype, of course, to just jump on a Skype call.

Tony: To talk to the seller, to have run throughs and that sort of stuff.

Joe: One other thing, for content based sites, Copyscape is another good one. Copyscape basically just you grab a bunch of content from the website, paste it into Copyscape and it will tell you if there’s duplicate content out there somewhere.

Tony: Ah, of course. Yes, unique content versus duplicate content, big difference.

Joe: Exactly. You’d be surprised how often content gets duplicated on sites..

Tony: I’m sure.

Joe: You have to be careful for that.

Tony: I’m sure. I imagine in your seven years of experience of doing this, you’ve had a lot of wins, a lot of misses.

Joe: Oh yeah.

Tony: Can you tell us a little bit about one or two of the not so good investments that you’ve made?

Joe: Yeah, sure. Sure. The very first site that I ever bought, I bought it for $700 US. It was a significant chunk of money for me back then and the site was called BlackLaceDresses.org. Basically, I owned it for about maybe three months and then it got hit by a Google update, the exact match domain update. It was ranking quite well for the keyword, “black lace dresses,” and “black lace dress” and then that update rolled out and the traffic went down. I tried to fix it, being my first investment I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got to try and fix it.”

It went up for a little bit, I made it better, but it wasn’t anywhere near what it was when I bought it. In the end, I just let that one go. Yeah, I mean, definitely happens, and there was one other one. I used to be in the desktop wallpaper niche. I’m not anymore after what happened with this one. I bought it, it would have been easily three or four years ago now, for sure, and this site had literally tens of thousands of images on the site, none of which they owned copyright to. Of course, I didn’t know much about copyright back then and one of the photos on the website was done by a photographer and they contacted me and said, “You’re not supposed to display that.”

They essentially threatened to sue me. They sent me letters and stuff like this and I’m like, “Okay, what do I do?” In the end, I ended up losing $1000. I had to pay them a bit over 1000 US to them, just to make them go away. Yeah, that was the end of that niche. Not to say that you can’t do it, like there are plenty wallpaper sites out there that are doing it properly, but it’s definitely a bit of a risky niche for sure.

Tony: So with a bit of experience now with those two sites in particular, is there anything you’d do differently that you’d be able to protect yourself better now or you’d just avoid them?

Joe: Well, I definitely know a lot more now than what I did back then. That is for sure. I wouldn’t probably invest in those websites now. Like I said, I’m not even in the wallpaper niche anymore. Usually you can tell, generally if the site has got good content, you can see that it’s been built, it’s a proper business, you can tell that it’s got some authority, and you can tell just by looking at it that it looks real, that’s a good sign just right there. So, those two sites that I bought that I just mentioned, they did not tick that box.

Tony: Fair enough.

Hope everyone enjoyed the interview as much as we did creating it!

If you could ask Joe a question, what would you ask?

In our series of interviews with website investor Joe Burrill, we uncover his secrets for website due diligence and talks about mistakes he has made in the past.

Full video transcript below:

Tony: What we have been talking about in terms of the profit and the revenue sort of leads a little bit into due diligence. I imagine that as a buyer, that the due diligence process is very, very important in terms of your process for buying a website?

Joe: Absolutely. It’s probably the most important part. It baffles me how many people don’t do it, buy sites. It’s like, “You don’t even know what you’re buying.” Anyway, so-

Tony: What are the most important things you look for when you’re doing your due diligence? What are the two or three key things that matter most to you?

Joe: Yeah, okay. I think it’s worth noting that it usually takes me between five and six hours to do full due diligence on one website. It’s a significant time and obviously I’m not going to cover every single step of that. A lot of it has been built up over time and I add to it, and so and so. Some of the key things, traffic. You want to look at where the traffic is coming on the website, where is it coming from, how long they’re spending on the website, and all those sort of metrics.

Along with that, if it’s getting traffic through Google or organic search, you’re looking at SEO factors like backlinks. Where are the backlinks coming from? Those sort of factors, as well. Next thing is obviously profit. You want to verify every single cent of profit through screenshots, screen shares, and those sorts of things. Along with that goes with the expenses as well. Some sellers are a little bit dishonest when it comes to expenses, because they’re trying to make it look better than it actually is.

You have to be careful, which is one of the reasons why I value sites based on what my expenses are going to be, not what theirs. The next thing is the seller. Traffic, profit, seller. The seller generally is covered by just having an interview with them, just talking to them over Skype or whatever.

Tony: You want to buy from someone who you trust or someone who is trustworthy generally? Is that what you’re looking for when you’re talking to the seller?

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve walked away from plenty of deals because I just get a bad vibe from the seller.

Tony: Wow, okay.

Joe: Plenty. It happens a lot actually, because it happened literally just a few months ago. If you can’t trust a person, you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s a big risk. Because you’re dealing with people. There’s another person on the other side of that computer that’s … Anyway. It’s definitely a massive factor.

Tony: Yep. Just to dig into the other ones a little bit more, so in terms of traffic, you spoke about how much traffic there is and where it comes from. I imagine that not all traffic is created equal in terms of valuation?

Joe: No. Definitely isn’t.

Tony: I mean, organic versus paid is an obvious one, so organic traffic would be more valuable than paid traffic?

Joe: Absolutely, yeah.

Tony: There’s some more nuances in there as well, I imagine.

Joe: Yeah. Like I said, the main metrics is like bounce rate, time on page, or time on site in general, page speed is actually another one that’s become a big thing recently. If it’s a slow website, in some ways it’s an opportunity, if it’s ranking fairly well and it’s slow. But yeah, I mean, traffic from … Another big thing that’s sort of started happening or has been happening for a while is Facebook traffic. Can generate a lot of traffic to your website, and Pinterest and those sorts of things. Each one, they have a certain attention span, so to speak. The users have an attention span and that’s usually reflected in your bounce rate, in your time on page and those sorts or things.

Tony: In terms of profit, obviously verification of revenue and expenses and those sort of things, I imagine there’s a few difficulties and pitfalls in that. You’re relying on the seller to provide all that information to you through screenshots or walkthroughs or whatever. I know on Flippa, we do have issues sometimes with people who have multiple sites who aren’t actually very good at separating the revenue or the cost between their sites, so it’s hard to tell whether it applies to this site or another site, right? Have that problem all the time?

Joe: Yes. Disorganized sellers is a very common thing, unfortunately, and yeah, it’s just something you have to deal with, you know? That’s why having screen share, actually talking with them on Skype helps a lot. There are some sites out there that literally have 10 or 15 different sources of income, and verifying that, I mean, that’s going to take a long time. But you’ve got to do it. Figure out where all that money’s coming from and what can be improved and so on.

Tony: I’m sure as a seller you organize your profit and your-

Joe: Yes, oh gosh. Yeah, every single one of my sites, I do a KPI spreadsheet that I compile. It has all sorts of information, not just profit. Not just income and expenses, it has main keywords, popular landing pages, all those sorts of things in there, too, and I give access to every buyer, to that.

Tony: Fantastic. Love to buy a site from you in that case.

Joe: Anytime.

Tony: Just to round out the due diligence a little bit, do you have any key tips for people who are looking to do due diligence on a new site? Anything that you’d recommend for them to watch out for?

Joe: To watch out for?

Tony: Other than what we’ve already covered.

Joe: Let’s see. Well, there are a lot of red flags that come up for me. Nitty gritty stuff like backlinks and things like that, it’s a bit difficult to say, “This is a good backlink profile, this is a bad backlink profile.” My number one piece of advice for people buying sites is to just ask lots of questions. You’re buying a business from someone and it’s your responsibility to find out as much about that business as you can before you buy it. Whether it’s big or small. By asking lots of questions, you will learn a lot more about the site, and have a clearer picture about whether or not that’s something you actually even want to take on.

That’s definitely an important thing and it’s not really due diligence per se, but it’s just use your head. If it’s something you don’t feel like you can run or you don’t want to run, or you don’t want to learn to run, then maybe you should pass on that one, you know?

Tony: Sounds very sensible. The last question on due diligence is do you have any tools, particular tools that you use that help you with the due diligence that some of our viewers might be interested in looking at, as well?

Joe: Yeah, yeah sure. When it comes to traffic, get Google Analytics guest access. That’s number one. You need to have access to Google Analytics. SEMrush is another tool that I use. Ahrefs as well, but I don’t use that one as much. SEMrush I like quite a lot. That gives you some fairly detailed organic search metrics. For backlink profiles, Majestic.com. There are, again, I think Ahrefs also does that. Domain Authority and MozRank, those sorts of things that come from Moz.com, and Skype, of course, to just jump on a Skype call.

Tony: To talk to the seller, to have run throughs and that sort of stuff.

Joe: One other thing, for content based sites, Copyscape is another good one. Copyscape basically just you grab a bunch of content from the website, paste it into Copyscape and it will tell you if there’s duplicate content out there somewhere.

Tony: Ah, of course. Yes, unique content versus duplicate content, big difference.

Joe: Exactly. You’d be surprised how often content gets duplicated on there.

Tony: I’m sure.

Joe: You have to be careful for that.

Tony: I’m sure. I imagine in your seven years of experience of doing this, you’ve had a lot of wins, a lot of misses.

Joe: Oh yeah.

Tony: Can you tell us a little bit about one or two of the not so good investments that you’ve made?

Joe: Yeah, sure. Sure. The very first site that I ever bought, I bought it for $700 US. It was a significant chunk of money for me back then and the site was called BlackLaceDresses.org. Basically, I owned it for about maybe three months and then it got hit by a Google update, the exact match domain update. It was ranking quite well for the keyword, “black lace dresses,” and “black lace dress” and then that update rolled out and the traffic went down.” I tried to fix it, being my first investment I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got to try and fix it.”

It went up for a little bit, I made it better, but it wasn’t anywhere near what it was when I bought it. In the end, I just let that one go. Yeah, I mean, definitely happens, and there was one other one. I used to be in the desktop wallpaper niche. I’m not anymore after what happened with this one. I bought it, it would have been easily three or four years ago now, for sure, and this site had literally tens of thousands of images on the site, none of which they owned copyright to. Of course, I didn’t know much about copyright back then and one of the photos on the website was done by a photographer and they contacted me and said, “You’re not supposed to display that.”

They essentially threatened to sue me. They sent me letters and stuff like this and I’m like, “Okay, what do I do?” In the end, I ended up losing $1000. I had to pay them a bit over 1000 US to them, just to make them go away. Yeah, that was the end of that niche. Not to say that you can’t do it, like there are plenty wallpaper sites out there that are doing it properly, but it’s definitely a bit of a risky niche for sure.

Tony: So with a bit of experience now with those two sites in particular, is there anything you’d do differently that you’d be able to protect yourself better now or you’d just avoid them?

Joe: Well, I definitely know a lot more now than what I did back then. That is for sure. I wouldn’t probably invest in those websites now. Like I said, I’m not even in the wallpaper niche anymore. Usually you can tell, generally if the site has got good content, you can see that it’s been built, it’s a proper business, you can tell that it’s got some authority, and you can tell just by looking at it that it looks real, that’s a good sign just right there. So, those two sites that I bought that I just mentioned, they did not tick that box.

Tony: Fair enough.

Amazon FBA Businesses

As with the release of Shopify, Amazon FBA businesses will soon have its own space, allowing buyers to seamlessly view the hottest Amazon FBA businesses for sale and for sellers to quickly list their asset for sale in front of over 600,000 buyers on Flippa.

​Users have been able to buy and sell FBA businesses since our launch, but we’re upgrading our marketplace to improve the experience for FBA buyers and sellers.

For those unfamiliar with Amazon FBA stores, running a Fulfillment by Amazon store is as simple as 4 key stages:

1. The seller sources products and stock they wish to sell
2. The seller then ships the products to one of Amazon’s Fulfillment centers
3. The seller lists the sale price and information about the product. This is then displayed on the Amazon store.
4. When someone buys the product, Amazon handles all logistics of the sale from packaging the product and shipping, to providing customer support to the buyers.

Amazon FBA is an amazing resource for lowering your workload, while still increasing the sales volume of your business.

If you are interested in buying or selling an Amazon FBA business, please fill in one of the expression of interest forms:

If you’re looking to buy an Amazon FBA business – Please fill out our Buyer Expression of Interest Form

If you’re looking to sell an Amazon FBA business – Please fill out our Seller Expression of Interest Form

As we prepare our Amazon FBA section, we’ll be working directly with each seller to ensure that each listing is fully prepared.

If you’re interested in buying an Amazon FBA business, please fill out the buyer expression of interest. You may just find yourself getting early access, meaning you’ll see the top Amazon FBA businesses for sale before anyone else! 😉

Does Amazon Allow FBA Businesses to be Transferred?

Good news: FBA businesses are being transferred on a regular basis and it is allowed!

Even better news is Amazon FBA Accounts are easier to transfer than most online businesses, like eCommerce stores or content websites because there is no domain or hosting required for an FBA business! All you need to do is transfer the whole seller central account to the new owner.

We’ll have another post coming soon outlining the top questions we’ve received regarding Amazon FBA businesses. Stay tuned!

Do you have any suggestions on what should be added to the Amazon FBA section of the Flippa marketplace? Let us know in the comments!