Webflippers Try to Turn Poorly Designed Websites Into Popular Niche Sites

Posted on August 11, 2008

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an interesting article about webflippers - people who buy websites with the hope of improving them and then selling them for a higher price. The name comes from the home buyers who flip homes which works best is a good real-estate market.

One webflipper bought bird-cage.com for $1,800 and then sold it three years later for $173,000. Dave Hermansen told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the bird cage site was "very, very poorly done." He was able to fix the site and promote with advertising. Once it was popular he sold it for $173,000, which is quite the turn around from his purchase of $1,800.

The article says webflippers also use SEO techniques to boost the popularity of the lame sites that needs fixing up. It's much easier said than and done and to be able to do it you would have to have very good idea of what the search engines are looking for. But if you have the skills to dramatically increase traffic to a niche website that has little exposure you should be able to flip the website once you are done. The webflippers sell websites using online marketplaces, such as Sitepoint, where there are always a number of websites and domains up for sale.

Like the real-estate market the method of buying bad looking sites with potential and flipping them may only work during web boom periods.