DesmondBlog.com

Many people will start jumping on me for writing this out. I actually don’t consider this a “formula” until Jason Pereira from TUK told me about when I was chatting with him yesterday.

I was Anakin Skywalker for Halloween 2008.

Blog flipping is highly profitable — no doubt about that. There are people who flip blogs for a $200 profits to even $800 profits if you do it right. Today, I am going to guide you on learning the blog flipping formula.

Formula? Like distance = speed/time?

Nope. It’s nothing as complicated as Physics or Chemistry. You will need a few things before you get started:

• A blog (duhh…)
• A designer (unless you can design banners and headers yourself)
• A niche
• A PLR ebook
• A premium theme

Let me explain a little about the “things” we need first.

We will need a blog (Wordpress of course) and I am not going to teach you on how to start a blog here.

Then, we need a designer in hand that can give you cheap rates. Most good designers on DigitalPoint tend to go for $7 per banners. I got mine at  $5 from an awesome Canadian to design mine. In order to get cheaper rate, I highly recommend you to mention that you are a site flipper and you will be returning to the designer for more to the designer.

A niche. Hmm… Almost any niche except some like adults and proxy tend to do pretty well. I have seen some people who start blogs about koi fish, gardening, love birds and Miley Cyrus and sold those blogs for $200+. If you are still unsure about what niche to go into, you can jump into the finance, health or dating bandwagons as these blogs tend to do pretty well with plenty of affiliate programs to monetize with.

A PLR ebook. You see tons of this in the market now. There are many membership sites that required you to pay a small amount (nothing more than $30) to get like hundreds of thousands of such ebooks. Those with Master Resell Rights are the best ones!

You will have to spend some money on premium themes. I remembered back then I was struggling to get the developer’s license for WooThemes (which I highly recommend). Anyway, the reason I asked for premium themes are that this method tend to raise the blog’s value. It also provides a more professioanl (or funkier) designs. If you have $0 for themes, I highly recommend Justin Tadlock’s Option Theme or a customized K2 theme (remembered the original blue Wordpress theme?).

Okay Desmond, I’m ready…so where do I start?

After you get your blog up, all you have to do is get your designer to design an eye-catching, professional header as well as getting your theme up on your blog. After that, it’s time to fill your blog with high quality contents which you can outsource to other writers or write them yourself. 500 words per article for each content is great, but it can cost quite a lot. If you think you can’t handle 500 words, use only 350 words. Plus, you will need at least 15 articles in this blog!

Get ready to spend if you want to outsource! I don’t recommend anyone new to outsource. Get to know the market rates first before outsourcing.

Okay Desmond. I got the articles up, designs are awesome and the website is complete, but how it’ll sell for $200+?

Have you forget the ebook? Yes, the PLR ebook. Your aim now is to sell it on your blog (which you can write a simple salescopy and create a banner to assist the sales of the ebook) and make at least one sale. Yes, you see that right, you only need one single sale and you’re in business.

Now, you’re done!

You gotta be kidding me…

No. Once you list it for sale on Sitepoint (blogs like these don’t fetch a good price in DigitalPoint), all you have to do is talk about the potential of this blog…from a single sale. Recently, I am selling my dating blog at DatingLoveBlog.com (which I recommend you head over to study the blog) and I used a sale of $17 to boast about how you can make $17/day bla…bla…bla. Of course this is even better if you can bring in some income through affiliate programs, PPC or CPA!

It’s that easy! If I can do it, so can you!

P.S. I am going to give away free consultations to whoever who can’t understand what I’m saying in this post. All you have to do is add me in Skype through my ID “desmondblog”.

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I am very sorry for not regularly posting in this blog as I am busy with some other projects and college works. I am actually trying to come up with a major case study so that you guys can learn through examples and able to question this person who I am doing case studies on.

Anyway, today’s topic is branding and building a team — something that I see as one of the most important elements in online success. John Chow is so successful because he has both. So does Yaro Starak, Darrren Rowse and Shoemoney. Here’s an awesome slide that will teach you something about branding and building a team.

So? What do you think? Well, this might not be my slides, but it’s very helpful. I promised I will post something awesome in a few days.

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Sorry that I’ve not been posting regularly anymore. I’ve been busy engaging in chat sessions with some of you here, flipping blogs and studying for college.

Few days back, I was in college and I decided to check my blog if there is any comment since I was in the WiFi room. I was surprised I got 4 comments…from 4 different people…without placing links!

And then, I realized those are spams. Irrelevant or perhaps no-purpose spams.

I am not happy. I know these spams might seem harmless, but it could be an experiment done by some professional spammer who will be doing something (or releasing a product) to guide the blackhat practitioners to bypass the almighty Akismet.

So, did you get any of such spams?

Basically, such messages manage to bypass spam filter because:

• Names used seem real.
• No URL (linkback) so spam filters probably figure that such messages are harmless.
• Simple, short message.

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Barack Obama won the election and becomes the next American President. Honestly, I am not surprised on his victory but I hope you did take your time to check his marketing campaigns since 8 months ago. Okay, I am not an American — nor someone who really studies politics, but I do study Obama’s marketing campaign or specifically, online marketing campaign.

In my very own opinion, Obama wouldn’t had won the election without the Internet. If you look at YouTube and some Google search terms, Obama’s name has flooded everywhere. Plus, this guy can talks and can inspire. Moreover, he can make some of you cry by just his speech. 

Okay right, I am not going to teach you anything here because I cannot give inspirational speech myself. I just want you to realize the power of Internet and Internet marketing is definitely the most powerful marketing method around.

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Few months back, I read that if one media is merged together when some other media, the value if the initial media will increase by at least 200%.

So, few months back, I tried implementing podcasts and videos onto some the sites that I am ready to flip. For example, in one of my health blog that I flipped a few weeks ago, instead of buying 20 articles, I bought 10 articles and used YouTube videos in like 5 other posts.

I tried to replicate this again and more of my blogs and sites are getting sold easier than I could have guess. Well, honestly, the main reason I love using videos in my blogs because at that time, I couldn’t get my article writers to deliver as promptly as she promised. So, I had no choice but to use videos as I was really lazy to type out a 500 words article.

Why Videos Raise Site’s Values?

If you’re into mass communication, you will definitely know that an addition of visual communication and verbal communication will raise the site’s value. 

Plus, most site flippers nowadays are using plain, boring and wordy articles and maybe perhaps accompanied with some really fancy images. I find such sites pretty common because it is sometimes very obvious to the buyers that this site flipper outsourced contents instead of putting their efforts into it to pump out an article.

Plus, adding videos will make your website more interactive and interesting. Your readers will like it and so does your prospective buyers.

Where to get videos?

I simply get my videos from YouTube and some other smaller video sharing sites. There’s no tricks here. You just simply copy and paste the embed code.

I normally write a simple review of the video so that the blog post won’t look like it is being posted by a lazy blogger who doesn’t even bother to type.

If it’s that simple, why not much people are doing it?

It’s like that in life. People always see sophiscated tips as something that will definitely work and then forget about those simple tips. 

Another reason could be that putting videos will slow your website’s loading time. That is why I highly recommend only up to three videos on the homepage. You don’t want to lose readers here. 

Can I have all my posts with videos?

Yes and no. Yes if you are willing to write a long review and explanation on the video. No if you are lazy like me and will just write a 50 words review. 

You don’t want to give impressions to your readers that you are unprofessional. Here how I worked out my post. Normally on Monday, I will post up a video post, and then on Tuesday I will post a 500 words article and this continues alternately.

You are not making sense. Won’t this makes the blog looks like a video blog?

No. Unless you bombarded your blog with videos in all your posts, your blog won’t look like a video blog.

Like I said, alternately postings of 500 words articles and video reviews is the way to go.

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Finally, reviews are in. It’s really tough job to review websites since not websites are awesome like mine. Just joking.

Josh from Nutlegend

Seriously, I don’t know what this blog is about. It’s more to a personal blog but I find it pretty interesting as well because the blog has some pretty random, but interesting contents. The blog’s fonts should be enlarge as I can hardly read anything much even on my huge Dell computer screen. 

Design-wise, the blog is simple and organize. Most importantly, it’s purple. How often do you see a purple blog? By sticking a premium theme on it, putting in some really interesting contents (like 10 ways to hit the girl next door) and making a logo — this blog is going to be pretty valuable. Keep up the good job Josh.

SoccerGoalx from SoccerGoalx

This is a very clean soccer blog — I mean it’s too clean. There’s no much information around and the navigation system is difficult for readers. This could be because of the magazine style theme. Try changing it to a normal blog layout theme. 

The “live score” thing is very interesting and will probably be a traffic bringer. More contents should be place in this blog. Perhaps the blogger is a busy person — so I highly recommend using BlogOverdrive or SyndicateKahuna to resolve this problem.

Sanjay Rao from SanzRao

This is another underdeveloped website — with super clean theme and almost very boring header. It is hard to subscribe to this blog’s feed mainly because the blogger places the feed subscription button too far away from those “hot spots”. Basically  this is a technology blog and more images should be used. Try sxc.hu for free stock photos.

Plus, this blog seems kind of new and the blogger actually links me too. By fixing the header and putting in more images, this blog will look more lively.

Mike from A1CEO

Seriously, I have no idea what this website is about. It is filled with links, boring texts and AdSense ads. Do something with your floating left ads as I find it annoying. You should also redesign a new professional header and reduce the amount of ads.

It seems like this website has a great amount of articles to read — but still, the organizations of links are very improper and messy. Try to make use of Wordpress’ category system.

Aritra from OnLuker.Com

I like this website because the blogger behind this blog take it seriously. Professional-looking theme with plenty of awesome images. Everything is pretty neat and I can see the blogger’s writing skills and blogging skills have improve drastically.

The only problem would be the logo. The logo looks cheap and difficult to read. Try something bold and simple.

There seems to be very less ads too which make the blog extremely clean and easy to view. A few more ads won’t hurt your blog Aritra.  ;-)

Seo Sultan from SeoSultan

This website is currently redirecting me to modem IP address which I don’t know why. So, no review here.

Girish from EarningDosh.com

Girish is a pretty successful person online and has an awesome blog there. His blog is definitely simple, filled with good contents, good designs and bloody red in color.

I see there are a few unneccessary links there to other people’s site, so try to remove them. The header could be a little better and I don’t know about you, but red kind of shuts down my mood. According to studies, red can motivates and angers the viewers. So, if possible, try other colors.

David D from GainingWeight.info

The blogger behind this blog is a jerk. Well, this guy here actually threaten my blog’s reputation and my DigitalPoint reputation. To make things worse, he even asked me to f#@k myself. I would have rate his blog the best among all the other I reviewed today but too bad he got an attitude of a jerk. So no link back. 

Anyway, nice blog over there with perfect use of images, texts and spaces. Very seldom can you see so much to be fit into such small spaces. I don’t think he should shorten most of his posts because it makes the blog pretty much blank. More words will make your blog more professional.

By actually getting a “.com” domain, this blog could actually sell for a pretty good price. Thumbs up to David for building such awesome site, and thumbs down for the bad attitude.

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Everyone loves free stuffs. And since I will be away for quite some time because of college works, I have invited (and paid) Melinda Davids to aid those who have been loyal to DesmondBlog.com.

Yes, I am giving away coupons to Melinda Davids’ simple, but effective online webinar which should teach you a thing or two on domain names flipping. It’s worth at least $70 — so get it fast!

Who is Melinda Davids?

Melinda Davids is a random girlfriend of mine who resides in the nice homes in San Diego, California. She is a typical female teenager, who crazes for Gucci watches, Prada bags and many top fashions stuffs. Thus, she satisfies her pleasures of shopping through domain names flipping. She is currently 18 year-old and makes about $500 every month through domain names flipping.

She contributed to a post here on DesmondBlog by writing an ebook with me. She is also in one of my case studies.

Why domain flipping?

I hate domain flipping. I don’t think domain names should be price at some ridiculous prices. I don’t make much from domain names flipping either. 

So, here’s what Melinda thinks why you should get involved in this business:

“It’s a good way to make money online. It’s simple, easy and you don’t have to work your ass off building beautiful sites or marketing it. Plus, it’s definitely quick and easy.”

How to get into the free webinar?

Firstly, it’s not really a professional webinar because the little girl from San Diego doesn’t know much about online applications other than instant messaging. Thus, she will add all of you in a big chatroom to chat. It’s a little messy but she will sort things out. So, don’t worry.

To get into the free webinar, you will need coupon codes — which yours truly will give away to the readers of this blog for FREE. All you have to do are:

• Write about this awesome giveaways on your blog with a link back to DesmondBlog.com or…
• Subscribe to my feeds.

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This is going to be my final post probably for this 2 weeks due to college works. Sorry.

Many people started emailing me and asking me if site flipping can still makes them money and how can they do this and that. To worsen things, Bryan Clark (former owner of BlogFlipping Blueprint) sold the membership sites for $32, 500, causing quite a steer among the online money makers.

Taken from HaveYouMetTed

So, today I am going to tell you what people DON’T want to tell you about site flipping or they just DON’T realize about it. I know many site flippers are going to come over and hit my head over the statements that I am going to give — but that’s all right. Hit all you can.

So, let’s get things started:

Site flipping is easier than earning through blogging, PPC etc.

Like it or not, site flipping might sounds like the easiest method to make money online. Why? Because you probably will be dealing with hundreds of dollars and you probably would be involved in many process.

However, it is definitely not the easiest method to make money online. Earning through PPC or writing reviews on blogs are way easier than site flipping. Do not forget that site flipping involves you to rebuild or build a site from scratch and makes it sell!

The markets for site flippers?

I don’t know if it’s because of the bad economics or what, but the best place fro site flippers to sell their sites currently has a market that is slower than my tortoise. Simply browse through SitePoint marketplace and you will be in big horror to find out that the average total number of bids has decreased to about 50%.

I know you probably have heard people telling you that they sold a 5 hours work of blog for like a couple of hundreds of dollars? Those are all “Buy It Now” bids. Nowadays, auction is not really something effective to make money — BIN is.

Unless you have a list of previous buyers, you probably should avoid SitePoint right now. I even sell my websites for better prices on DigitalPoint.

I need expensive, premium theme

With Revolution themes going open source and the existence of super awesome themes like the Options Theme by Justin Tadlock — I don’t believe in the sayings that you need premium theme to double the amount of value of the websites.

I recently sold a website with a premium theme for $150. I also sold another website for $170 with this theme you are looking on this blog which is free. What do you have to say?

Competitive niche is the best niche

When I flip websites, I like going into these categories:

• Celebrities (especially on Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears)
• Health (normally on acnes, fitness and nutritions)
• Money (normally on economics, finance and making money online)

I know going into those “unknown” niches like the dog collars niche or USB port niche sound like you do not have to worry about competitions. The truth is, you have to start what is popular — not what is not popular. You need an easily reachable audiences and something that should remain popular for a while.

Any other questions?

I would love to answer your questions on site flipping. Simply drop a comment on this post and I will reply with your answer. It’s kind of like free consultations. Everyone loves free stuffs eh?

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This is kind of a site rambling since this post won’t teach you anything but well, at least I have something to post today.

Some of you who have been talking to me through IMs and emails will know that I am about to launch a membership sites that will benefit everyone who wants to make money online — with almost no price to pay for. Well, the ideas spark off my head when I see how well Bryan Clark’s Blog Flipping Blueprint even though he charges a hefty $97 - $147 for a lifetime membership.

I mean, if a site that charges such a big price tag would bring in so much people, what if I start a membership site that will charge ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!?

Of course if you know me well, you know it won’t happen.  :-p  Of course I will charge some kind of small fees (probably around $5 to $10) just to ward off spammers and leechers. Talking about leechers, this membership sites work through a community basis. Of course I cannot tell you everything just in case someone steals my ideas away.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing it on this blog is to remind myself on the progress. This is what I have done:

• Talked to 6 different designers for my banners and headers.
• Gathered some nice gurus and mentors to help out the new members in the community.
• Found ways for other BIGGER gurus to come into the community and help out.

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