At the event, one of the most popular handouts was a list we put together of the top places to buy and sell websites.  The list had the top 15 sites just focused on buying and selling online businesses, several sites focused on offline as well as online businesses and a shorter list of forums that post sites for sale.

If you want to buy websites or you want to list a site for sale, I’d highly recommend checking out the list and sharing it with as many people as you’d like, just give the page credit.

You can get the list at BuyingandSellingWebsites.com

Why? There is some work involved. Yep, anything worth doing that creates amazing results typically requires a little work.

In this case, it’s a Press Release. Don’t go running off just yet. Although the use of press releases has been widely talked about and recommended by many online marketing experts for years, there is still a hesitation by many to use them.

The reason for the hesitation is simply that a press release requires the work of writing the content and a small fee to get circulated. However, the fees of press release options have come down a lot over the years. I recall paying more than $750 for one press release almost ten years ago and with a lot less exposure than it would get now.

Why Use Press Releases to Sell a Website

The reason for writing a press release isn’t just to build back links but also to drive quality traffic to your auction page as well. People are searching for specific topics related to a site that could be for sale on an auction but have never thought about buying a site before, until they see the press release. You bring in buyers who may have never been a buyer prior to reading the press release.

The key to any press release to get exposure is to be news worthy. Selling a website that has any history or traffic to it is “news worthy”.

Some website flipping experts have said that you shouldn’t attract a lot of attention to your auction in case there are developers looking to recreate your same site or competitors could take your ideas.Here’s the thing: If someone wants to reverse engineer a site they can do it just by using a few basic tools online right now. Anything you share in the auction other than potentially income is knowledge just about anyone can get with a few quick searches. In fact, anyone who knows your industry can tell you what the site is making just based on the traffic figures.

So ignore the naysayers. If your goal is to sell the site, which I would hope it is because you have the site posted in an auction, then page views is what you need and a press release will do that.

Sample Press Release for Selling a Website

Here is a sample press release for announcing an auction of a website.

Title: Largest [your niche to its finest detail] Website For Sale!

Short Description: Established in [month/year], the first [news site / blog / forum] dedicated to [what] is for sale! [Site name] is a website that has gained massive popularity among [who?] during the last [how many?] months.

Main Content:

In [current month], the owner of the website, a [country] based Internet Marketing company [Make up a name if you don’t have one], have decided to sell the website by listing it at an Internet Auction on an Australian-based auction site Flippa.com (or wherever you posted the site)

Commented by [your name], the [your position] for [your (imaginary) company]: “The final decision to sell the website was made already in [month], after seeing how popular the website got when [something that happened back then].”

“Our main business here at [your company] is [name a business other than site flipping] and maintaining websites is simply a side-venture. This particular website was acquired from a private person and re-selling it on a public auction was our main exit strategy ever since the purchase”, [your last name] added.

The company decided to list [the url of the website] for sale at Australian based Flippa.com mainly because this is the largest marketplace dedicated to auctioning websites, as well as because they have had previous success using Flippa’s services.

The auction for [your site] starts at a starting bid of $[bid] and even though there is no reserve price set for this [x]-day auction, the company hopes to see a winning bid that exceeds $[amount].

Interested parties can find the auction at [the URL of the listing].

###

[Company name] is a [country] based company that [what does it do?].

— end —

Where to Publish a Press Release

Although you can submit a press release for free, I highly recommended using a paid service.

Below is the list of some of the best PR submission sites I’ve used in the past and keep using – most of them have both free and paid options:

WebWire (http://www.webwire.com)

This is my first recommendation and the site I use almost exclusively now. The $24.95 option is a good place to start.

Newswire Today (http://www.newswiretoday.com)
THE best free PR submission site if you ask me.

They usually approve new PRs within an hour or two, and Google News seem to adore them, publishing PRs distributed by them almost instantly!

PR Log (http://www.prlog.com/)

Press Releases are published instantly (no manual approval) and Google (I’m talking about organic results, not Google News) seems to index their PRs extremely fast and rank them rather high, allowing you to get your release appearing in page #1 sometimes in a matter of a day or two!

Whichever site(s) you choose, it’s always important to read their guidelines carefully and follow them to the point. If you don’t, you can be sure that your release either won’t get published or will get deleted very soon after getting published.

If you’ve used press releases to promote your site or auction, please provide your experiences in the comments below.

INTERNET INVESTMENT SUMMIT

Don’t miss out on the live event May 18-20, 2012 in Las Vegas. We’ll be sharing the latest strategies for flipping, buying, selling and investing in websites. Plus the networking with other online marketers and investors will be priceless. Learn more and sign-up today for Internet Investment Summit.

If you are buying websites regularly or are a first time buyer, there are some common mistakes you should be aware of that can cost you hundreds and even thousands of dollars if not avoided.

The first mistake many people make when buying websites is they get caught up in the emotion of the sale.  They fall in love with the website before the purchase.  During the website due diligence phase of reviewing the site, they may find something that causes a red flag, but they look past it because they love the site so much.

Once the transaction is complete and they start working with the site, they find the red flag was even worse than they thought and the site’s value is half what they paid for it.

Set Rules When Buying Websites

To avoid the emotion of the sale, be sure to set rules for anytime you are buying websites.  Rules such as the price you are willing to pay, the multiple you are willing to go up to and that the site passes each due diligence check you have set prior to reviewing the site.

The second mistake most investors make when buying websites is not performing enough, or proper due diligence.  Some sellers push the buyers to hurry the sale along in order for the buyer to not be able to do enough due diligence.  That should be one of the first red flags for not going through with a sale.

Buying Websites Due Diligence Defined

Due diligence is the automated and manual checks on a website that if passed will lower the risk of the site not performing at the expected levels.  Expected levels can be the amount of traffic the site gets, where the traffic is coming from or the amount of revenue the site generates.

A few due diligence checks that are critical are to look at a minimum of 12 months analytics for the site.  If the site is less than 12 months old, get all months the site has been around.  If at all possible, get as many months or years as possible for analytics.

The analytics data to look at includes: what country traffic is coming from, the consistency of traffic over time, what referring sources are sending traffic, is the traffic paid, organic or referral, does any one source have a large share of the traffic and what is the bounce rate of the traffic the site is getting.  All analytics data is important and should be reviewed.

The key is to have a standard or benchmark for what you are willing to accept.  Will you buy a website that has 70% of the traffic coming from a foreign country?  Will you buy a website with 35% of the traffic coming from one referring source?  By setting standards you minimize your risk and give yourself a number to work from.  If you find your sites are still not performing to the expected levels, increase or decrease your benchmarks.

Webinar: 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying and Selling Websites

For more mistakes when buying a website or selling a website that you should avoid, register for our live webinar to be held Wednesday March 20th, at 12:30pm Pacific.

You can register here. 

The Internet Investment Summit is a three-day live event for anyone interested in buying, selling or flipping websites. If you are an investor in sites, you need to be at this event.

If you’ve been waiting for a place to meet serious entrepreneurs and investors who are involved in buying, selling, flipping and investing in websites, this event is it.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to network, gain more knowledge and grow your business.

The top three reasons to attend the Internet Investment Summit for anyone serious about investing in, buying, selling or flipping websites are…

Networking at the Internet Investment Summit

Reason #1: Networking – I can’t say enough about how important networking is for any business, but especially for all of us buying and selling websites. I’ve attended or was a speaker at roughly six seminars or live events per year for the last 15 years. Am I a social magnet that loves to meet new people and is totally comfortable in a group of strangers? Hardly!! If you asked anyone that knows me really well, they’ll tell you, “David is one of the shyest people you’ll meet”. In fact, I’ve been at parties where I knew no one and had an anxiety attack.

Which is all the more reason I force myself to attend events every year. I need to get out of my comfort zone and expand the network of people I know. I’ve learned my network is equal to my net worth. The larger my network grows, the larger my net worth grows.

If you are looking to buy more websites, sell a few websites or invest in websites, you need to have a network to tap into. The more people you know, the more opportunities you’ll get to buy, sell or invest.

Chris Yates (my business partner in buying and selling websites) and I recently met a couple guys who flip websites. These guys sell a ton of great sites that may fit our sweet spot for the sites we like to invest in. However, they have so much inventory and so many types of sites, not all of them will fit our criteria of what we want to buy. If you were in our network of people we know who buy sites, you’d likely be sent the deals that don’t match our criteria.

If you were in our network and you sold sites, we’d likely be a good source for promoting your sites as well. I think you get the point. The event is just one source for us and we continue to meet new people every day because we are in this business writing blogs, selling information products and putting on seminars like the Internet Investment Summit. Opportunities such as these offer tremendous opportunity to expand your network and net worth for that matter.

Why 90% of Seminar Attendees Don’t Get Anything From Events

Reason #2: Experience/Knowledge – Ben Franklin once observed, “So the more we know, the more we feel that we don’t know.”

When I attend events I find myself surrounded by a diverse group of people and varying degrees of experience in the topic of the event. There are four classifications I’ll observe that people are in:

• Those who know what they know
• Those who know what they don’t know
• Those who don’t know what they know
• Those who don’t know what they don’t know

Confused? Don’t be. As Ben Franklin said, the more we know the more we start to realize there are so many more things we really don’t know. If you are someone who has been buying and selling websites for a long time you likely feel you know a lot about this business. However, you may be in a place where there are some things you don’t know you know or you know you don’t know and want to learn. If you are new at the business but have done some research or bought a course on buying and selling websites, you may think you have a good handle on the industry.

Let me assure you, there is no one person that knows everything about buying, selling and investing in websites. Chris, nor I, claim to know everything in this business. Although we are the featured speakers at our event – Internet Investment Summit, we also invited three other very talented and well-informed entrepreneurs to speak. We know they have knowledge we don’t. We know they have experiences we don’t. Just like you have knowledge and experiences we may not and vice versa. Chris and I learn just as much as those who attend our events, every time we do one. We never stop learning.

We love to learn from other people’s experiences and what’s worked or not worked for them and we love to share our experiences as well.

The difference I believe between Chris and I and 90% of those who attend events is one thing. Yep, I’m saying it. I think we have an advantage over 90% of the seminar attendee audiences.

We are more successful than 90% of the attendees as well, because of this one thing. What is it? Well, first let me share this: the 90% who don’t do this one thing have an advantage over millions of others who never show up to the event in the first place. So they are more likely to succeed in the future over those who don’t attend, but they need to do this one thing in order to have that advantage.

The one thing is a formula. The formula many of us were taught is that knowledge = power. Well, let me set us all straight. Knowledge does NOT equal power. It’s APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE that EQUALS POWER.

Chris and I along with the other 10% of attendees will take the lessons we learn from events and apply them in our business when we return from the event. It’s easier to follow a system in order to apply lessons quickly and successfully.

I use a 3 Page – Top 5 System. When you attend an event you can get overwhelmed with data, strategies, techniques and great ideas. It can be like drinking water from a fire hose. If you’re not careful you can get blown away and never want to drink again.

When I first started attending events I took copious notes and had binders of data of when I came home. However, because there was so much to go through when I got back to my office, I set the binders on my bookshelf and said I’d get to them later. Six months later I’d look at the binder only to find that I couldn’t remember what the notes meant. In some cases it was years before I’d open the binders, if at all. This is what 90% of seminar attendees do.

So I changed my system for attending events and created the 3 Page – Top 5 System. I took a small black notebook with me to the event. At the first session I sat down and wrote at the top of three pages the name of the event and the dates. On the third page I wrote the numbers 1 to 5 with three lines between each, and left the first two pages blank.

Then as the seminar took place I’d write down great ideas I could implement in the next 90 days. With only two pages for the entire event, I am very selective on what I write down. Then at the end of the event before I leave, I write on the third page the top five actionable things I can do in the next 90 days. I’ll attach a date to complete the activity and whom I will assign it to.

By doing that one thing, I’ve made… (seriously, I know this is thrown around by people a lot, so I want to make sure you know I’m being totally honest with this) …I’ve made millions from the ideas gathered at the events I’ve attended over the years just by using this one system and doing something 90% of attendees don’t do – Apply the Knowledge.

Industry Experts Provide Insight for the Future at Internet Investment Summit

Reason #3: Future Insight. One really important lesson I look for in every event is a topic about what’s next. What is the next big movement, or next big tech idea or next big whatever? Not all industry experts get it right, but it sure is nice to be in front of it if it happens.

Here’s an example. I attended BlogWorld late last year. One of the speakers was Guy Kawasaki. He wrote one of my favorite business books of all time “The Art of the Start”. The man is brilliant, in my opinion. So I went to his session and he spent the whole time talking about Google Plus and how amazing it is and how it’s the future of social media. I heard some people around me arguing whether they believed his prediction or not.

However, I was writing down my actionable items to take home and do over the next 90 days. When I came home the first thing I did was follow Guy on Google Plus. Then I started researching and learning more and more about it. I still haven’t implemented everything I’ve learned yet, but I will be in the next few months.

After the research and using Google Plus I know Guy was right. It will be the next big social media platform that has the ability to over take Facebook. Do you agree or disagree? Let me know in the comments.

So what’s next for buying and selling websites? Who is the next big reseller of sites? Will Flippa.com continue to grow at the levels they have? Will websites get a valuation system? What will multiples be for sites next year?

All of these questions and more will be discussed at the Internet Investment Summit. If you want to network, learn from experiences of others in the industry and hear from experts about what’s next, then you need to attend.

Sign–up for the event before April 10th and get invited to our Investor Reception Friday night and get a discounted registration price. By signing up early you’ll guarantee your spot at the event and lock in the super bonuses.

We look forward to seeing you there and if you have any questions about the event, feel free to write them in the comments section below.

Click here for all the details on the Internet Investment Summit…

8 Things That Add Value to a Website

The first step to understanding how to value your site is to put yourself in the shoes of your potential buyer. Why are they interested in your site to begin with? More than likely it’s for one or more of the following reasons:

• Automation – You’ve created something in your site which lets you “do more with less”. You may have passive income streams or systems you’ve developed that the seller would like to leverage further.
• Scaling – Your site has potential to grow. You may be close to ranking for valuable keywords or you’ve created the business in a way that it won’t fall apart if it doubles or triples in traffic.
• Diversity – You have multiple revenue streams, multiple sources of traffic, multiple suppliers, etc. Your site hasn’t placed all its eggs in one basket.
• Monetization – You have a track record of consistent or growing revenue streams.
• Relationships – You maintain a relationship with your email list, social media followers, rss subscribers, etc. You have solid joint venture partners, suppliers, and other key stakeholders who will remain after the sale.
• Traffic – You generate targeted traffic in a valuable market. You have sources of free traffic or can profitably pay for traffic.
• Buzz – You have a quality backlink profile and your content is being shared around the social web or in the press. You have strong brand awareness.
• Intellectual Property – You have unique, quality content throughout your site. You have create proprietary products.

Think about how each of these areas might affect the value of your site in the prospective buyer’s eyes.

Website Valuation Methods

There are a few typical methods buyers use to value a website. They are:

• Comparable Sales – Buyers may look at recent sales on website marketplaces to find comparable sale data. This is similar to how a company like Zillow values real estate.
• Revenue Multiple – Buyers may base their valuation on historical earnings of a site. These are typically based on a monthly or annual multiple. Higher multiples are achieved when a site has a longer history of steady or growing profits.
• Traffic Value – Buyers may base their valuation on the value of the traffic a site receives. Typically the value is based on how much a business might pay on Google Adwords for the same amount of traffic.
• Reverse Engineering Cost – Buyers will typically analyze time and cost to reverse engineer your website on their own.  This may limit the maximum valuation for sites without proprietary intellectual property or sites in non-competitive markets.
• Customer Value – Buyers who have their own products or services may value your website based on how many customers they expect to convert by integrating their offerings into your website. Sites in highly valuable markets such as insurance may enjoy particularly high valuations due to this factor.

Once you understand the methods your potential buyer might use to value your website, you can work backwards from metrics such as monthly unique visits to determine the approximate value they will place on your site.

How Different Buyers Value Websites

Different buyers will value your website differently. For instance:

• Passive Income Buyers – These buyers want to see consistent earnings over time and place importance on low-maintenance. They will base their valuation on their ability to see a return on their money by maintaining the status quo. These types of buyers typically value sites at 10-24x monthly profit.
• Major Company Buyers – These buyers typically buy a site for the intellectual property or for its ability to generate new clients. A major company knows how much they are willing to pay for each customer they acquire and may value your site based on this. Valuations are all over the place with this type of buyer but they are typically only buying sites for $250,000 or more.
• Improvement Buyers – These buyers typically value sites based on their return on investment after they make improvements to the site. These types of buyers look for sites which are under-monetized, have overlooked traffic sources, or have synergies with their other sites. These types of buyers typically attempt to base their valuations on historical monthly earnings of a site but in some cases will base their valuations from 6-18x the monthly expected earnings after their improvements have been made.

 Conclusion

The biggest key to getting the maximum value for a site is to find buyers who will use a valuation method that results in the maximum price for your site. Once you understand what motivates buyers, you can feel more in control of the negotiation. It also allows you to determine your best option for selling your site. If you’re looking to sell your site to a private buyer, you might want to consider submitting your site on the FlipWebsites.com sell your site page. You may also want to read our article on “What is my website worth?“.

1.) Take Surveys for Cash

Sites like MySurvey and Global Test Market will pay you to take surveys and provide your feedback on the products and brands of major companies. The downside is that you may not qualify for all of their surveys and they typically have a minimum payout which may take a couple months to reach. The website Online Jobs Center has a free list of survey sites that pay cash.

2.) Perform Web Design Work

If you’re in the website flipping business, you probably have the skills to create and market websites. You could provide web design work for local businesses or join sites like ODesk or Elance to get some quick work.

3.) Sell Something of Value

You could be sitting on domains, websites, advertising space or even a garage full of old “junk” which you could quickly sell to make some money. Having a garage sale, listing something for sale on Ebay or Craiglist, or posting items for sale in relevant online forums can be great ways to liquidate your assets.

4.) Get a Peer-to-Peer Loan

If a typical loan or credit card isn’t an option for you, you might want to consider using peer-to-peer lending sites like Prosper. This type of lending allows private individuals to share the risk of lending to you by pooling their funds together. Sometimes all we need is a little “bridge money” to get us to our big payday and using loans can be a great option.

5.) Help a Company With Data Entry Work

If you don’t have the skills to get hired to do complex programming or design work, you can still make money doing a little freelance data entry work. Sites like Amazon mturk will pay you to do a lot of small data entry type tasks.

6.) Write for Money

If you’re a native English speaker, there is a big demand right now for writers who can create quality web content. Join sites like Text Broker to get paid per article you write. This is a great option of how to make money fast when you enjoy writing about topics you are passionate about.

7.) Consider Crowd Funding

If your project is creative and unique, you might be able to get people around the world to give you free money to complete your project. Sites like KickStarter connect creative people with those who give money to support creative endeavors. The best part is that you don’t need to pay the money back in most cases.

8.) Return a Past Purchase

Open up your last two months of statements from your bank account, credit cards and PayPal accounts. Then fish out any cash receipts you have lying around. Take a hard look at each transaction and decide if what you bought was more important than what you need fast cash for now. You might be able to return some of the items to get your money back.

9.) Make Something to Sell

Take a trip down to a local craft fair or browse sites like etsy to see what handmade items people are buying. Create your own marketable and creative item and sell them for cash.

10.) Promote Something to Your Friends or Network

Take another look at your recent purchases and find a few items you bought that you now love. Sign up for the Amazon affiliate program and tell all your Facebook friends, email list, Twitter followers, etc. about how much you love that item and how they should buy it too. Don’t forget to include your affiliate link!

11.) (Bonus) Participate in a Medical Study

This is not for the faint of heart, but you may consider donating your plasma or participating in a local medical study to make some money. Some medical companies will pay you cash for each visit.

Conclusion

These 11 ways to make money are great options if you need a little extra quick cash to help you take advantage of an opportunity. It simply takes a little creativity and some hard work. However, these may not be sustainable methods of making money and are better suited to use towards investing in your true ongoing passion.

Further Reading

• Visit the Flip Websites homepage for more information about how to flip websites for profit.
• Visit Online Jobs Center for a list of other online jobs.
• Read a Forbes article on the major ways to make money online.

If you have any recommendations of other methods describing how to make money fast, please comment below.

1. Change the Copyright Year on Your Site’s Footer

When I see a copyright date on a website that says something like “Copyright 2003. All Rights Reserved”, two thoughts go through my mind.

1. This is an abandoned website. The webmaster hasn’t touched this thing in 8 years.
2. Is this a site a diamond in the rough? Can I buy it cheap, improve it, and sell it quickly? If the site was ever monetized (unlikely), there are likely some opportunities with new website monetization strategies to get this thing profitable in a hurry.

Do you want to leave the impression that your site is neglected? It’s time to edit the code of your site and make sure the date is dynamically inserted, such as with the PHP Date function, rather than manually added in the footer of each page.

2. Review Your Top Landing Pages for Out of Date Information

Log into your Google Analytics or other web statistics program and find your “top content” or “top landing pages”. Read each one of these pages and make sure all the information will continue to be up to date next year. If not, it’s time to do some rewriting.

3.) Search Your Site for Mentions of the Current Year

A simple Google search can help you identify pages which might be out of date. Utilize a command such as “site:yourdomain.com 2011″ to quickly find pages which could be out of date due to mentioning the current or previous years.

4.) Change Your Passwords

When was the last time you changed your hosting control panel password? If you don’t already have a scheduled frequency that you change your password, at least make year-end your time to do this important task. It can help prevent security problems due to account hacking or simply sharing passwords with outsourced teams who no longer work with you. Here’s a basic list of passwords you should consider changing

1. Hosting Control Panel Password
2. FTP Passwords
3. Email Passwords
4. Domain Registration Passwords
5. MySQL Passwords
6. Revenue Account Passwords Such as Adsense
7. 3rd Party Tool Passwords Such as Email Marketing or SEO Tools
8. WordPress User Passwords

5.) Backup Everything

If you’ve been online for any period of time and you haven’t had a hard drive fail, an account get hacked, or a programmer seriously mess up your site, consider yourself lucky. However, it’s only a matter of time before something like this happens. Even the savviest people will run into a case where they need to get a backup of their data. If you don’t have at least two copies of your data in different locations, ask yourself if you would be okay with losing it forever. Here’s a quick list of items I recommend backing up.

1. Website Files
2. MySQL Data
3. Email Data
4. Customer Lists
5. Email Lists
6. Transaction Logs
7. Your Computer

Remember to never rely on your providers (hosting, email marketing, etc.) to back up your data for you. Get a copy of your data and have it backed up at a separate physical location from where it’s stored.

Here’s to a Smooth Next Year

I recommend taking care of these little but important tasks before the end of the year rather than after. This will allow you to focus your renewed energy in the new year on your biggest opportunities. A little preparation now can help you have peace of mind later and save you headaches next year.

Here’s to your most successful year yet!

One thing I thought I should share with the website flipping community is that I purchased a domain for my son which is ryderyates.com. My business partner David has done the same thing for his kids. It will be exciting to see what he becomes in his professional life and I have a feeling he’ll be happy I had the foresight to protect his personal brand in case he ever needs it. By the time he’s ready to use it, the domain will already be 18 years old.

I have no idea if a .com domain will still be as important in the year 2030, but as of now, the age of a domain can be important when it comes to search engine optimization. If fact, I have been shopping around for an aged domain to complete a search engine friendly domain change. Most of the parked domains that are from the year 2006 and older in this particular market are priced over $5000. In fact, one of the sellers was asking $50,000 for a domain. When you are buying or selling websites, don’t forget to consider the value of the age of that domain!

Now, on to the website flipping market news for this week.

Market Overview

This week 625 websites sold. The highest priced website sold for $47,000. Approximately 12 sites sold in excess of $10,000.

We’ve noticed a jump this week in the average revenue multiple up to over 11 times. We’ve been noticing more quality sites popping up in the last few weeks. Could it be due to people needing some holiday money?

New FlipWebsites.com Reader’s Sites for Sale

We’ve added a new section to our site called Established Websites for Sale. This is a free service for anyone who submits their sites through our Sell Your Website page. All the sites listed there are from our community of readers. If you see something you like, let us know and we’ll connect you with the seller. We’ll be keeping it up to date each week as sites come in.

Notable Sellers

Most Active Seller
Seller: Sun Shine
Total Revenue: $3,540
Sites Sold: 17
Avg. Sales Price: $274
Notes: We’re consistently seeing him on the top of this list. This seller primarily uses a “template” style format where he or she sells aged blogs with only 7 days of revenue and calculates the monthy revenue from the 7 days.

High Activity & High Avg. Sales Price Seller
Sun Shine and SmartBusiness have gained this title once again this week.

Notable Website Sales

Highest Priced
Site: medicalmarijuanastrains.com
Price: $47,000
Bids: 28
Seller: reallifeproperties
Notes: This site was claiming over 350,000 uniques/month. It’s in a bit of a regulated market so I think the price on this one was fair for a buyer who is willing to take that risk. I just checked the site and it’s currently showing 403 forbidden for me so I hope the buyer knows what they are doing! It just goes to show that you need to be careful during the ownership change.

Most Active
Site: InstantFiles.net
Price: $2,350
Bids: 88
Seller: Financial Freedom
Notes: This site was essentially a business-in-a-box by providing an outsourced facebook fan service. The auction copy is pretty salesy and focuses on the business opportunity.

Our Watchlist

These are the sites that we were close to bidding on or buying but didn’t. At the time of posting this, they were still actively for sale.

• autocarspeed.com
• readbud.com
• gardenbeet.com
• indyposted.com
• fantasyinspiration.com

With the completion of algorithmic transition to Bing, Yahoo! Search has merged Site Explorer into Bing Webmaster Tools. Webmasters should now be using the Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that their websites continue to get high quality organic search traffic from Bing and Yahoo!.

Please check the following blog articles for more information

• Microsoft Webmaster Tools to support Yahoo! Site Explorer Community
• Site Explorer transition to Bing Webmaster Tools

We’d also like to recommend Sitemaps a useful mechanism to inform search engines about pages on their sites.

You can stay current with the latest news and information by visiting the Yahoo! Search blog site

What This Means to Website Buyers, Sellers and Flippers

You’ll have one less tool available to perform due diligence and utilize for competitive SEO research. Yahoo! Site Explorer was one of the few free tools which would allow you to gather information about thousands of backlinks.

You may also find some of your other desktop SEO tools will stop working or perform differently. This is because they likely relied upon Yahoo! Site Explorer to function.

Alternatives to Yahoo! Site Explorer

If you’re looking for alternatives to Yahoo! Site Explorer, here is a list of possible options:

1. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
2. http://www.majesticseo.com/
3. http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/
4. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

You may also consider using the following style of query on Google: “domain.com -site:domain.com”. It can help you find sites which mention your site.

If you have any other alternatives you’d like to share with our readers, please comment below.

Unfortunately I won’t be doing our usual website flipping update this week. Why, you ask? Well, tomorrow is 11/11/11 and my wife Melissa and I will be bringing a new life into this world. That’s right, my son will be born tomorrow!

I need to put all my focus in preparing for the big day so I’m skipping this week’s site flipping market update. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll be back next week (probably half-asleep from late nights with the new baby) with an update on the baby and on the buying and selling website market.

If you’d like to wish us luck or have any advice on the transition from 1 to 2 kids in a family, please comment below.

- Chris