Turning a Blog into a Mountain of Cash With a Simple Flip

Blogs are certainly one type of website that has caught on in popularity by leaps and bounds.

Nowadays, almost everyone seems to have a blog from students, to high school professors, to
politicians. And as the popularity of blogs continues to skyrocket, it is not just personal blogs
that are found anymore, but rather blogs that center around certain niches and subject matter.

No surprises then that blogs have also turned into sources of income, with countless blogs
being employed by marketers for a number of purposes.

And since blogs are now sources of profit, they’re also, and equally unsurprisingly, being traded.

Basically, you could quite easily turn your blog into a wad of cash if you wanted to, and that’s
what this guide is here for: To teach you exactly how to do it.

As you no doubt can imagine, if it was straightforward, everyone would be doing it. And while
many people are, the problem is that many people are also trying to do it, and not succeeding.

Naturally, you wouldn’t want to waste hours and hours of your time on something that doesn’t
work – so let’s be clear about this from the start: Flipping a blog can be a great way to earn
cash, but you need to go about it correctly.

If you felt that you could just start a blog, make a few posts, and sell it for a profit, then you’re
going to run into several hiccups along the way, most notably being the fact that few people
would want to buy a blog like that.

After all, why would someone pay money for something that they can do easily enough
anyway?

And the answer to that is simple: They wouldn’t. No one would.

Over the course of this guide we’re going to be revealing just what would make people want to
part with their hard earned money to buy a blog from you. Best part of that is: It isn’t even
difficult, and you won’t need to be an online wizard to handle it

By the time you’re done, you should be able to really profit tremendously by selling off your
blog, and you should be able to apply what you’ve learnt here to any blog that you ever want to
flip from now on.

Before we start into all of that though, do you know why blogs are so well-loved nowadays?
 Homing in on the Advantages of Blogs

Frankly speaking, blogs are really just another type of website out there that are not so
different from things such as content sites and so on, in many way.

Originally, blogs enjoyed popularity due to the fact that they allowed anyone to keep a
presence online with ease. With so many free blogs, and great blog platforms, practically
anyone could create their own site, and regularly update it with their thoughts, pet peeves, and
adventures.

This however, is the main strength of blogs.

No, not the fact that anyone could pen their thoughts and likes and dislikes down, but the fact
that they are platforms that revolve around being regularly updated.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something that is regularly updated is
going to be building up a library of content pretty quickly. As new posts are added to a blog, the
sheer amount of content that can accumulate really does become tremendous.

Just as importantly though, the fact that a blog is being updated regularly means that it has a
good chance of containing very up-to-date information.

Combine these two facts together, and it didn’t take search engines very long to start to award
blogs with a lot of attention. After all, the sheer amount of content along is something that
search engines have always loved, and the fact that they are regularly updated just furthered
the amount of attention that they obtained.

In short, blogs quickly became a very great way to establish a presence, and get a lot of traffic,
in a small period of time.

As a marketer, this is one advantage of blogs that you can’t afford to ignore. And frankly, it
forms the main reason why blogs are great things to flip simply because you can get traffic with
them quite easily.

Furthermore, the interactive nature of blogs, through the ability to comment on them,
establishes a two-way relationship between the blog writer and reader.

It is this advantage that allows blogs to build up a large following of repeat-visitors, or a ‘fan-
base’ so to speak, simply because instead of just being greeted by a static pile of text, visitors
can actually respond to, and interact with, the blog’s writer.

Just as before, this is yet another important advantage that you could learn to manipulate for
your own purposes, which in this case, consists of flipping blogs for cash.
But in order to do this, you’ll need to know several things that are going to pave your way to
actually flipping a blog for yourself. First amongst all these things is the fact that not every blog
can actually be flipped, and you’ll really need the ‘right’ type of blog to ensure that you can
profit well!

What is it that makes people want to buy blogs anyway? Well, let’s take a peek at that, shall
we?

Exploring the Motivation of Buyers

What would make someone, anyone, want to pay for a blog? It isn’t like it is particularly hard to
create a blog, and it certainly isn’t something that requires tremendous technical skill or ability,
is it?

No, of course it isn’t. So why is it that so many people are willing to buy blogs then?

Frankly, the motivation of buyers could vary quite a lot, but one of the motivational factors is
pretty much constant: Profit.

While it is certainly true that anyone can go out there, create a blog, and eventually maybe
even profit from it – why do that when you could just buy a blog that is already profiting, and
then either improve on it, or just sit back and let it continue to profit?

Mind you, just because the primary motivation of many buyers is profit, this doesn’t mean to
say that only blogs that are profiting will end up bought. Instead, you’ll find that are lot of blogs
are bought for their ‘untapped potential’.

These blogs, for the most part, consist of popular blogs with lots of traffic, but which haven’t
been monetized to take advantage of that traffic yet.

Admittedly, such blogs would not be sold for as much as those blogs that do already earn a
steady stream of monthly income, but they are still actively traded nonetheless.

Furthermore, we just talked about how blogs have the astounding ability to build up a following
pretty easily, and by buying a blog, you’re going to be ‘buying’ that following packaged in along
with it!

In short, you’ll have some regular readers who are fans of your blog and who you know will be
coming back for more, for as long as you can continue to give them whatever it is that they like
so much about the blog that you bought.
All in all, you could look on buying a blog as taking a shortcut. By cutting through a lot of the
hard part that is involved in putting together a blog, buyers are able to just cash in on the
finished product.

Of course, this also means that a blog that stands no chance of turning a profit is not going to
paint an extremely attractive picture.

For that reason, you should ensure that your blog at least appears to be a profitable blog, or
one that could potentially be profitable anyway. Naturally, the more profitable it is, the better a
price you’ll be able to fetch.

Due to this, you should be thinking about ways in which you can maximize your blog’s profit,
and turn it into a catch that any buyer would absolutely love to have.

Perhaps we should look at this a little closer.

Profitable and Non-Profitable Blogs

Some types of blogs are more profitable than others. That much goes without saying but really
it is one of the most crucial things that you’ll learn in this guide.

From what you already know, blogs come in various shapes, sizes, and varieties. Also, you’ve
discovered that the prospect of regularly updated content, as well as interactivity, form up two
of the main strengths of blogs.

Some blogs out there earn tons of cash on a month in, month out basis. Others however end up
making nothing at all.

What is the difference between the two? Simple: Some blogs are set up simply to be non-
profitable blogs.

Most of these blogs take the form of personal blogs, which don’t really have any direction in
particular, and exist only so that a person can put down whatever he or she wishes to, and
whenever he or she wishes to as well.

In short, the person who owns them isn’t particularly bothered about turning a profit.

But does this mean that a personal blog such as the type we mentioned yet is doomed to be
non-profitable forever? In some cases yes, but in most cases, every blog, no matter its style, can
be altered to make at least some sort of profit.

Part and parcel of that alteration is the process of monetization, but we’ll get to this later on.
Really, the main downside of a using a personal blog for profit is that the only common factor in
general is that any readers you get are there to read what you’re saying. While this works great
for people like Oprah, let’s face it, you’re not exactly going to be enjoying that level of
popularity anytime too soon.

Still, it is workable, just it isn’t easy to encourage interactivity without a firmer shared common
interest, or topic to unite on.

So now that you know what isn’t profitable in general, what do you think would be the most
profitable type of blog?

Based on what we know so far, the answer should be simple: The most profitable type of blog is
a blog centered round a niche that provides lots of regularly updated content, and allows
interaction through commenting.

Because a blog like that would be, as described, ‘centered around a niche’, that means that
most of your visitors will share a common interest.

When this happens, and people with shared interests gather in the same place (namely, your
blog), through their interaction you will find that you actually have the chance to build up a
community of blog visitors.

That would certainly be taking advantage of the strengths of a blog.

End of the day, while it’s up to you exactly what type of blog you choose, you should always
keep in mind that this fact is going to prove useful, and by playing to the strengths of blogging
in general, you can’t go very wrong!

Also, you already know that you definitely want a profitable blog – and so making it as
profitable as possible is in your own best interests.

With that said, how about we look at how you can identify some potentially great niches for
your blog?

Identifying Profitable Niches

Part and parcel of building up a blog that is profitable enough to appeal to buyers is to find the
right niche to get into.

Now there are many ways to approach niches, but all are based upon one very simple idea in
particular: Popularity vs. competition. Due to the very nature of the internet, the most popular
niches out there are also the ones that are bound to have the most competition.
This doesn’t mean that they’re impossible to break into incidentally, but just that you’ll have to
put a lot of time and effort into it before you get results. And using the same amount of time
and effort, you could probably get even greater results from a niche with less competition.

To get a rough idea as to the popularity of a given niche, what you should do is use keyword
research tools. Admittedly, the reported figures will be the popularity of the keyword you
enter, but it should give you a fairly decent idea as to what kind of demand you’re up against.
Try Google’s Keyword Tool to start off with!

Similarly, to gauge the competition, you should simply enter the main keyword of your niche
into a search engine, and see how many results show up.

Both of these techniques are the same approaches as used in keyword research itself, and so
you’ll actually be building up a list of keywords simply by doing so. More importantly, you may
find some keywords that are worth exploiting, due to decent popularity, and low competition.

While this is a great way to identify the popularity vs. competition of a niche, you’ll still need to
have some ideas of niches that you can get into.

Generally speaking you could do this in one of two ways. Either put your creative bone to work,
and start thinking about the various interests that you, and others, have, and then try to narrow
things down.

Or, seek out places that could give you ideas. Head over to sites such as Clickbank where you’ll
find various niche-related products that might give you an idea. Check out Google’s Trends,
which will help you navigate through some of the current hot topics.

Depending on how you like to operate, you may find that going about things retrospectively in
this way will give you more ideas.

All said and done, your approach to locating niches is less important than your ability to
evaluate the popularity vs. competition of the niches that you find, and decide which one would
be best for you to make your mark in.

Eventually, once you do find a niche with decent popularity, there is still at least one more
consideration that you need to take care of.

Because no matter how great a niche you’ve found, and no matter whether or not it has tons of
popularity with almost zero competition - the fact of the matter is that if you’re looking to turn
a profit, you’re going to need some method of earning money from your blog.

And this, in a word, is called monetization.

 Monetizing a Blog to Turn a Profit

How do you make your blog make money – that’s the question that needs to be asked and
answered before you can even start to make a profit. And thus, it needs to be asked long before
you try to flip your blog, if you want to really maximize on your gains!

To be fair, nowadays there really are so many options as far as monetization goes that you’re
quite spoilt for choice.

Chances are, you’ve even encountered some of them before in some ways.

So the very first thing that you need to do when you discover a potentially good niche for your
blog is to get out there and start exploring the monetization options that you may have.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is to simply look at any competitors, and see how
they’ve monetized their websites or blogs. That alone should give you a couple of ideas, and
will prove to be an invaluable starting point.

A good rule of thumb that mirrors that approach is this: Find what people are already buying,
and sell it.

What this means is that out there in the global marketplace, there are certain products and
offers for each niche that are more popular than others. If you think about that fact a little,
you’ll realize that these products are probably popular for good reason.

Chances are, these products or offers appeal to the niche that they’re focused on in some
particular way.

By providing the audience of your blog with the opportunity to purchase or take part in a
product or offer that has already proven to be popular within that niche is going to improve
your chances of making conversions greatly.

Keep this in mind, because it will help your monetization along in a compelling manner.

Anyway, if you want to go about finding methods of monetization in a more methodical

manner, you could instead choose to browse over some of the main options manually, and see
if anything in particular catches your eye.

Here’s some ideas of monetization options that can get you started:

1. Advertisements
 Advertising has long been a source of revenue for websites across the internet, and the
idea is that people are willing to pay to advertise on websites in order to get traffic that
they can then use for their own purposes.

Initially advertisement space was sold like it is on newspapers, for a fixed rate
depending on the size and position of the advertisement.

Nowadays however, the rise of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising has meant that most
advertisers choose it as their option of choice. In some ways, this is great, because it
means that you’ll be able to get advertising revenue quickly, and not have to wait until
you’re more established so that people are willing to pay for advertising space.

Also, PPC advertising networks such as Google’s AdSense really smooth the process
along, and you’ll be able to get the groundwork for this type of monetization done in no
time.

2. Affiliate Products

Instead of advertising for others though, you could actually choose to sell something,
and the best part is that you don’t even need your own products to do so!

Enter the world of affiliate products, whereby you can sell products on behalf of others,
and earn a commission for each and every sale that you make. While sure, it means that
you’ll be doing a lot of the grunt work for a cut, it does also mean that you won’t have
to worry about creating a good product.

Also, you’ll be able to choose from a wide range of products, and pick the one that you
feel is best.

Be sure to pick something popular though, that way you can apply the rule that we
discussed earlier to very good effect!

Some affiliate manager websites would be a good place to start off for this, and
Clickbank is one of the best to cut your teeth on.

3. Cost-Per-Action (CPA) Offers

Technically speaking, affiliate product sales and CPA offers are rather closely related,
with CPA offers really being an umbrella term in this case.

Basically, CPA offers involve getting paid a certain, predetermined, amount upon the
completion of a certain action by the traffic that you refer to the supplier. That action
could very well be the purchase of a product, which is where CPA offers and affiliate
products share a common ground.
 However, CPA offers are way more diverse, and other common actions include filling up
survey forms, registering for membership accounts, and so on.

Incidentally, the amount that you’re paid, while predetermined by the supplier, could
still be a percentage of a total sale.

Generally speaking, CPA offers are going to give you a whole lot of flexibility and extend
the range of products and offers that you’re able to provide for your readers. Still, the
same rule of thumb applies, and more popular CPA offers are definitely what you’re
looking for.

Check out hubs such as Commission Junction to get on the right track.

Each of these three options should yield various monetization options for you to then pursue.

Whatever you choose, the idea is that it should be something that your blog’s audience will
appreciate, and that will honestly be of benefit to them. Then, and only then, will you find that
you’re able to make great sales through a blog.

Also, you should be fairly discriminative of the products that you recommend to your readers.

Remember: One of the advantages of blogging is building up a readership, and you’re likely to
lose that readership pretty quickly if your audience begins to feel that you’re pawning off
inferior products onto them.

End of the day, it really is all about trust.

Although we’ve pretty thoroughly discussed monetization, there’s one other option we didn’t
cover, and that would be actually creating your own product, and selling it through your blog.
While this certainly is an option, since you’re interested in flipping your blog it probably isn’t
the best one out there.

After all, the reason you’re after profit, if you remember, is to increase the value of your blog in
the eyes of potential buyers.

Admittedly a great product of your own could do that, but it would also involve some cost to
product, and unless you intend to package it along with the website (which would be a waste),
it won’t appeal to potential buyers all that much.

With that, we’re officially done discussing monetization, and by this point in time, you’re
already halfway on the way to successfully flipping a blog for a ton of profit.
Why? Well, now you know how to make your blog earn money, which means that you should
be able to get a profit, right?

Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple – but with just a little bit more information, it will be!

Initial Traffic Building for Blogs

Having taken your monetization into account, there’s just one step left before you can get all
the profit that you need – and that is to get potential customers to your blog.

Yes, that’s right! We’re going to need to build some traffic.

Honestly, the logic that underpins this is very simple: Seeing as you now have something to sell,
or some other way to make money from your blog, all that you need are the actual people to
come in and click on your advertisements, or buy your products.

And naturally, the more people you can get to do this, the greater your profits will be.

So the first impulse you might have is to go out there and get as much traffic as you can, and
while this isn’t wrong – it should be avoided. Reason being that although a lot of traffic is
desirable, you want it to be more than just any kind of traffic: You want highly targeted traffic.

With highly targeted traffic, the value of your blog is going to be all the more apparent in the
long run. Not only is this kind of traffic more conducive to high conversion rates (i.e. more
sales), but it also is something that many potential buyers will look for.

Getting highly targeted traffic is simply all about ensuring that your visitors consist of people
who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer, or at very least interested in the niche
of your blog.

Obviously, through keyword targeting, search engines become one source of highly targeted
traffic, but there are others too.

Article marketing, for example, is a good way to ‘pre-sell’ your traffic on the product or offer
that you’re promoting, by ensuring that the article serves to indirectly promote it. As a result,
traffic that comes via articles can be treasure troves as far as targeting is concerned.

Even though we’re talking about blogs, you could consider running a PPC advertising campaign
for your blog, if you know how to carry one out. Granted, they’re somewhat tricky for beginners
and those who are new to the scene, but when carried out properly, they’re one of the easiest
ways to get tons of targeted traffic.
Although you want any traffic that you gain to be sustainable in the long term, you could
initially use blog commenting and forum posts to gather a crowd.

Frankly, neither of these methods are sustainable for long, and require you to constantly keep
on frequenting other blogs and forums in order to ensure that the traffic keeps coming. But
when you’re starting out, it could get you a nice boost in traffic.

And due to the aptitude of blogs when it comes to establishing a following, you might find that
some stick around for the long term – which is what you should really be aiming for.

With the right type of initial traffic building, and coupled with monetization, you should be able
to gradually build up your blogs profit record. Of course, there are other things that you could
do in the meantime to help further this cause…

Content for Soon-to-be-Flipped Blogs 101

Some people make the mistake of thinking that just because it is a blog, or because it is going to
be one that you’re selling off anyway, content doesn’t matter all that much.

By this point, you should realize that this couldn’t be further from the truth. From what we
talked about regarding the advantages of blogs, and how regularly updated content was their
hallmark, this should be obvious.

Naturally, the story doesn’t end there though.

Regularly updated content is definitely an advantage that you want to focus on, but that
doesn’t mean that you should do so at expense of the quality of the content itself.

When all is said and done, the actual visitors that you get to your website are going to be
reading your content, so while low-quality content that focuses on keywords alone might be
good enough for search engines; it isn’t going to be good enough for actual people.

Needless to say, any actual sales copy that you have on your blog is going to have to be top
notch to give you the kind of sales that you desire.

But this really does extend to other portions of your blog too. If you’re trying to build up a solid
following around your blog, you’ll want as much of your content to be ‘valuable’ to readers, so
that they feel that it is worthwhile checking your blog again, and again, and again!

In a nutshell, that’s the approach that you should take to all of your content: It should add value
to your blog, and should also of course contain the keywords that are needed to get targeted
traffic from search engines.
Applying this dual focus to your blog is something that may take time to master, but you’ll soon
find that it is really quite easy to carry out.

Anyway, let’s give you the whole nine yards as far as writing content for a blog-to-be-flipped is
concerned:

1. Plan out your content

Right from the start, it would help if you had at least a plan of what direction your
content is going to take. In most any niche, there are bound to be certain topics that you
must cover, and certain topics that you should cover.

Be sure to list down all the possible topics that you can think of, and then establish a
plan of how you intend to publish them.

2. Categorize your content into anchor posts and fillers

Some content is obviously going to be better than others. Naturally, not every blog post
made is going to be a masterpiece, but occasionally it will help if you do throw out
something truly amazing.

Anchor posts are basically those ‘amazing’ posts that really capture your reader’s
attention, and stand out of the crowd. Essentially that makes them ideal for social
bookmarking, and other efforts.

Of course, not every post should be an anchor post, and in between you should have
fillers that are helpful, but not entirely set out to impress and awe.

By using a mix of both of these, you should be able to maintain regular updates to your
blog, without running out of material to work with!

3. Adopt a casual, conversional tone

Remember that when you’re writing a blog post, you’re not lecturing a hall full of
students, or trying to impress a crowd at a philosophy summit.

Instead, you’re talking to people – so act like it!

Instead of being dry and serious, try to be conversational, and actually address the
reader by using ‘you’. Although this may seem like a small difference, by talking to the
reader directly you’ll actually be getting them to feel like they’re part of a conversation.

And they’re much more likely to respond, through comments, as a result.

 Keep this in mind, and try to slowly but surely connect with your readers using it.

4. Direct the reader towards the goal that you desire

Despite the fact that you’re going to be generally helpful, end of the day you want to
channel your readers through your blog posts, and on to the products or offers that
you’re promoting.

Hard-selling, or try to ‘force’ products onto blog readers generally doesn’t work very
well.

Instead, you should provide options, and choices, but be sure to emphasize on the
benefits that await them should they opt to do what you recommend.

End of the day, by focusing on what they’re going to gain, you won’t appear as though
you’re trying to ‘sell’ them anything – but rather more as though you’re trying to
‘advise’ them as to what might be best.

All in all, your content should be, as far as possible, original. While occasionally it won’t hurt to
source content from third party sources, you should always ensure that when you do, it is
because it is really great content.

When a buyer eventually comes knocking, if they see a blog full of old PLR content that has
been rehashed, chances are they won’t attribute much value to it at all.

On the other hand, if they’re confronted by a blog full of fresh new content that is doing well on
social bookmarking websites, and seems to really be attracting the attention of hordes of
readers – then they’re going to do exactly the opposite and really attach a huge amount of
value to the content.

Just to recap and sum things up, your content serves 3 purposes:

1. Attracting the attention of search engines through keywords

2. Providing value to readers so that they really desire to come back to your blog
3. Impressing buyers enough that they feel that the content is worth something

If and when you can safely say that your content fills all three of these criteria, then you’re on
the right track!

Up to this point, we’ve covered a lot of different areas, from monetization, to traffic, and now
content. All of these, together, are going to make your blog more profitable, and therefore
more attractive to potential buyers.

But is there anything left to cover?

Well, there is at least one thing – and that consists of actually flipping the blog itself!

Completing the Story: Basics of Flipping a Blog

After everything we’ve gone through, it would be crime to leave you without this one final
ingredient, and that is actually ‘flipping’ or rather, selling, your blog!

First, let’s take a look at some of the places that you should go to if you’re going to sell your
blog. Bear in mind that each of these places represents a potential marketplace, and there’s no
harm in trying more than one.

However, also be aware that some of them may require you to pay a fee for listing your
website.

1. SitePoint’s Marketplace
2. Digital Point Forums
3. NamePros
4. eBay
5. Biz Buy Sell
6. Website Broker
7. WebHosting Talk

One thing that needs to be said about selling a blog is that, after adding ‘value’ to the blog by
increasing its profits, getting tons of targeted traffic, selecting the right monetization options,
and even making sure that your content is top notch – it would be the shame if your potential
buyer’s didn’t notice that, right?

Well – it is part of your job to ensure that they do notice it.

So long as you have the statistics to back things up, which you should, don’t be afraid to let
potential buyers know just what makes your blog so special compared to all the others that are
being advertised.

Be sure to phrase it in terms of how it is going to benefit them though, such as how the highly
targeted traffic would mean that there are many more sales just waiting to happen. Also, how
your content is absolutely ideal for social bookmarking, and so on!

Honestly, if you play your cards right, you should have buyers absolutely dying to buy your blog.

Bear in mind though that before you get to this point, it will be at least a few months, or maybe
longer. One of the downsides to creating a new blog to flip is that it takes time to build up the
statistical evidence that you want, not to mention getting on search engine rankings, and really
seeing the results of your traffic efforts.

Of course, one solution to this is to simply buy an existing blog, improve it, and then flip it.

Either way, it’s up to you, but using the guidelines that we’ve helped you establish, you should
have little problem doing whatever you please.

Congratulations, you now know how to successfully turn a blog into a mountain of cash with a
simple flip!

Get out there and do just that, now!