Flip this website

Flipping houses has become passe as the housing market in many areas has taken a hit. Luckily for the internet-minded there's an online analog. If it were a show, it'd be called "Flip This Website" or maybe "Flip this Site". To accomplish such a feat requires a lot of knowledge and experience in what makes a site successful. Here I present 9 ways to make a site more valuable and 4 concerns that can turn a buyer off.

9 Ways To Make Websites More Valuable:

1. Profit - Assuming you want to make money, profit is the primary goal. Increase profits and your site becomes worth more all else being equal.

2. Revenue - the next best thing to profit is revenue. A steady stream of money means if you can cut costs, you can make a steady stream of profit.

3. Visitors - If you don't have revenue but you have lots of visitors, you just have to think about what sorts of products, services, and advertisements would make sense to them. Then you can get some money that could potentially turn into profit.

4. Stickiness - what good is traffic if people don't stick around. It's best if people hang out all day every day, waiting for a message from a friend, have a chat with a knowledgeable expert, or just trying to get a handle on what's hot right this moment...no, right THIS moment.

5. Cool factor - this intangible has a lot to do with how word of mouth spreads around your website. If you can generate some buzz that brings in whole new groups of visitors, you're on your way to making it rich!

6. Social networking - yeah, it's a buzzword but this has a lot to do with stickiness and its big brother, loyalty. If a visitor has friends on your system, they're more likely to stay, that is until their friend group finds another cooler social network or place to hang.

7. Finished graphics - They say a person's first impression of a website is formed during the first 5 seconds. Polished, tasteful graphics with flow can help that initial impression be a good one. At least, good enough that they'll stick around to find out what your site is really about.

8. No 404 errors - When a link on a site is broken, it reflects badly on the site, it's visitors, and it's advertisers. This is why there's always a message to email the webmaster if an error is found. Likelyhood of that actually happening? 1 in a googol. Test your site regularly and watch those error logs.

9. Cross-browser tested - this appeals mostly to the website maintainers among us, we want to know that a site isn't going to look all screwed up if it's viewed with firefox or IE. It's got to work and the best way to do that is to test test test.

4 Concerns Amongst Potential Buyers:

1. Quality of inbound links - people who buy websites want to know that inbound links are solid. It's important that traffic from other websites is not going anywhere at least during the change in management. If traffic is the result of link exchange, that it's clear so the linking relationship can be kept or improved.

2. Adsense validity - advertising is a major source of revenue for any site that doesn't ship stuff or sell ebooks. The biggest advertising system is Google's Adsense so it makes sense that any site that wants to get sold isn't on Google's blacklist for bad behavior. If it is, you'll need to "come to Goosus" and fix it before you sell.

3. Monthly expenses - A savvy buyer doesn't just look at traffic or revenue, hidden expenses like huge hosting or advertising bills can really drag on the financial success of a website. If your expenses are low, on the other hand, talk your sites frugality up!

4. Admin Tools - It's likely a new buyer is going to want to make some changes to the site. On that front, they'll want to know that good tools make updating the site easy. If code needs to be written, it's got to be in standard languages and technologies for which lots of programmers and designers can be found. If you're using uncommon or restrictive technology, be prepared to sell for a lower price.

As the internet matures and "properties" fall into disrepair, flipping websites is going to be just as common as flipping real estate. With these tips, you're on your way to understanding how to get some cha-ching out of your bling. Happy flipping!