Putting A Plan In Place For Your 90 Day Flip
Today I want to talk to you about the end game.
The best way to get the most out of renovating aged domains is to actually have a plan in place.
The reason for having a plan is that there are aged domains that are perfect for renovating and others that make it a little harder. Sure, any aged domain can be renovated and sold for profit, but with a little planning you can make it all happen with a lot less effort. In fact there a couple of tools that I’ll show you that make it very easy.
The key to fetching the highest price possible when it comes time to sell your sites is income. If you have a look at the just sold section on Flippa.com, you will see that the sites that sell for over $1,000 all tend to be making money. It doesn’t have to be much either, but income makes a huge difference.
We’ll go through the process of buying and renovating aged domains in the next few posts, but today I want to work backwards to show you how to move forwards. No, I’m not going to teach you Michael Jackson’s moon walk, but show you why certain aged domains work best for what we’re trying to do.
The key to maximising profits when it comes time to sell and one of the easiest things to get wrong with aged domains is keeping PR. It doesn’t take much to lose the PR that comes with your aged domain, so it’s crucial that you do all it takes to keep it and hopefully increase it.
Playing the PR game with google is in an interesting one. They make the rules, but don’t fully explain how they work.
The stats that google release about your site are anywhere up to 3 months old and not a true indication of where a site sits in real time, so there is never an accurate way to tell where your aged domain’s current PR really sits when you buy it, or what will happen to it when the next update cycle kicks in.
That part of the game is a roll of the dice, but it works both ways. Your newly acquired aged domain’s PR could move in either direction or even stay the same in the next google update. I’ve had PR3 domains drop to PR1 and I’ve had PR2 domains move up to PR4. You just don’t know where in the cycle the domain is at the time you acquire it. Google keep their cards close to their chests with stats. More often than not it’s not a huge shift either way, if there is an movement at all.
The good news is that you can preserve and even increase the PR of your aged domains.
How do you do all this?
The same way you do with any other site. Great regular content and quality backlinks. I wish there was a quicker and easier way, but the rules that apply to regular sites, also apply to sites you build on aged domains. Sure, you can venture down the grey/black hat road and get some great results fast, but what then? How do you sell a site with all the sneaky cloak and dagger techniques attached to it?
When creating sites to sell built on aged domains, you need to make them as organic as apples with worms and spots on them.
If you have a number of sites on the go at once, adding content regularly to all your sites becomes a challenge and some help is needed. There are two resources that I use for adding content and once set up correctly they pretty much run on their own.
You know how I mentioned earlier that some aged domains lend themselves better to renovating than others? This is how it works. If you’re looking for keyword relevant content to feed your site the easiest way to find it is to start with keywords that lots of people create lots of content for.
As an example, recently I bought an aged domain, with a PR of 3 and a few hundred backlinks in the pregnancy niche. Finding content for the site was easy as it’s a popular niche.
The two main sources of content I use to feed my sites are WordPress Direct and Article Marketing Automation. I use WordPress Direct, which is basically a word press manager on steroids. It’s the fastest way I known to setup and manage a word press blog. It also comes with great content posting software included and setting it all up is a breeze.
Article Marketing Automation does a few things, but what we are interested in is the article submission feature where you basically select niche categories that relate to your website and the system regularly feeds your site with unique spun articles and this part of their service is free. If you’re not familiar with article spinning, it’s a way of writing and formatting articles in such a way that every time it is published, a unique version of the article is created. I’ve had sites increase PR purely on the back of feeding keyword rich articles from AMA. This is why it works best with aged domains that use popular keywords. It’s hard to find spun content on more obscure topics.
Now, that you have an idea of why targeting certain markets works best for renovating aged domains, we’ll have a look at how to find and buy aged domains in the next post and I’ll show you how I avoid getting into bidding wars when winning domains at auctions.
cheers
Danny
Hi
Could you please give some advice as to the best way to check if an aged domain is banned by Google. And if so is there any way of getting it unbanned later.
Thanks
Glenn
Glen
These couple of sites might help to find banned domains and confirm PR.
http://www.dnxpert.com/google-banned-checker/
http://www.checkpagerank.net/
John
I understand article spinning, however, I am a little skeptical and too cautious to use it. So many SEO companies are using spun articles making non-sense posts and pages that the SERP’s are starting to show crummy content. If the use of spun articles continues to increase, Google and others will have to write algorythms to track them down and penalize users of spun articles. I am confident they are working on this now. I believe those that use spun articles will be penalized in the long run. I understand it can help you increase profits when you flip a domain. But it is not good for the internet and I believe it is not good for any long term profits on a particular domain. With that, the concept of getting fast results like this is brilliant… from a short term business perspective.
My take on it all is that there are spun articles and then there is just “spun garbage”!
I actually spin the articles myself or have humans spin them and never ever use auto spinning content. I’m yet to see an auto spinning piece of software that didn’t return garbage content.
A well written and properly spun article is a fantastic way to build links to your site and a great way to add relevant content to a site. If it’s done well, you get a well written, unique article each time it’s published. I’ve had so many sites rank really well, all built on spun content. Great content is great content.
You’re right in saying that one day google might come down on spun content and even services like AMA and other providers, but for now it works and it works well. You just need to make sure it’s quality content you’re putting out there.
I ‘ll tell you. I get so much quality information from all of your training blogs. Yoo consistently over deliver and I respect your efforts. Thanks again Danny, Im bookmarking this one and will check back often.
Last week , my hosting company pulled a runner and completely vanished taking 76 domain names and 32 blogs not to mention all my sales sites and everything in between.
By having blogs to reference quality information to at this time for me is the only way that I will be able to get these sites back up and running. Thanks for the lesson and inspiration!
Stop on by and say hello anytime.I should have at least one site set up again by tonight
Have a great day,
Douglas J Gregory
Thanks for the kind words Douglas.
Sorry to hear about your hosting company. That sucks!
Danny, this is the kind of stuff that all of us really appreciate. It so hard to sift through all the guru stuff and find real value in what many of them are saying. You consistently give quality content, you now have another new subscriber. I will check this blog often and sign up for your rss feed.
Thanks again, always trying to learn more.
Art Johnson
Thank you Art, I’m humbled.
That’s a bit more info this time but I’m curious about a couple things…
Would you suggest Market Samurai, a similar software or a specific site for researching the backlinks coming in and also to find the ones that are needed?
My other question is, do you personally use other writers material to spin and if so, does the pr on the site it originated from have potential to hurt your existing pr for a given page?
The reason I ask is because I currently use a service myself, for outsourcing, like you mentioned. I’m just not sure if there have been any negative effects from using them.
(Example: The pr of the site linked to the last article I received to review was lower than mine. Some have even been “0″. And some have lower pr for a specific pages keyword I am targeting)
I have noticed however, my site hasn’t stopped moving since Googs most recent change last month or so. Kinda nerve-racking at times but getting through it
I believed I mentioned on your last post, we are planning to flip a site soon. Answering these couple of questions would definitely easy my mind a bit. I guess I’m one of those guys that does a bit more upfront for people in hopes of offering true value at the sale. I sleep better that way…
So Thanks Again Danny for this post and I look forward to your responses.
Cheers
Shane
Hi Shane,
There are a few ways to check where your links are coming from, but I do use Market Samurai more than any other method. I have it open all day and find it’s fantastic for research. I love the competition analysis module as you can see what your competition is up to and more importantly, what you need to do to move ahead of them.
As things have grown, I have started to outsource writers. What you’ll see with most spun articles you use on your site is that they will have an outbound link to the owner’s site, just as you would have a link to your site in any spun article you submit to directories for others to publish on their sites.
Google like’s you spreading the love, so outbound links are a good thing. The PR of the site you are outbound linking to doesn’t really effect your site’s PR.
Hope this helps.
Good luck with the flip!
If you’re site has stopped moving up the rankings, you need to do some research, see where you are relative to the competition and take action.
Remember, you only need to do enough to get just ahead of the site above you to move up the SERPS.
Also, don’t just focus on ranking. Sure you want to be on the top end of page one, but it’s a balance of posting regular great content and backlinking that gets you there.
Typo: “The make they rules” should be “They make the rules”
Good article though.
Thanks – that typo is fixed now.
Thanks for fixing that. hey, I’m a drummer and all knuckles.
Danny
Seems you’re learning the way of some of my ex girlfriends.
You offer so much (which is appreciated) then you drop us with a promise of more in the future.
Can’t wait for the next offering.
Thanks
Peter
Thanks Peter,
I did learn that from an ex girlfriend. That and and leaving the toilet seat down
Hey Danny,
I was wondering if you have any posts that speak specifically to the acquisition of aged domains. I’d like to purchase a few sites and was hoping you could direct me to a post with a “10 things you need to do before you buy an aged domain.” Your current series seems to key on what to do once you have the sites in your possession. I feel as though I’m reading all about how to ride a horse, yet I don’t have one to ride.
Can you help? No horses please…
Todd
Todd,
I’m putting together some videos to post on my blog next week showing how I find aged domains to buy.
In the meantime, this might help. Some of Kenny’s finest work.
http://www.noblesamurai.com/blog/domains/buying-domain-names-1379
Hi Danny,
Another good post.
I do like the idea of using AMA. I’ve been using the auto content generation plug-in on WPdirect and although I find it good, it does have a tendancy to resize column widths, etc. with a few of the posts. It ends up making the blog look plain ugly.
Thanks also for the heads-up on the dnxpert. I hadn’t tried that site before.
I did have an interesting thing happen the other week to with an aged domain I purchased. It was 2 yrs old with a PR3 (links mostly through one site) and they pulled the pin on all the backlinks and it dropped to a zero PR. I wrote the site off and went back this morning and the PR has stuck again.
I did have a number of pages on the site with original content (and a solid link structure). I’m thinking perhaps the site itself has created a self sustaining PR. Never seen anything like this before.
Do you have any thoughts or have you seen anything like this before?
Hi David,
It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I have seen it before.
My advice is to not panic and in time things seem to correct themselves.
There’s a great story with some solid advice here
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/11/29/what-should-you-do-if-your-google-ranking-falls-and-you-lose-all-your-traffic/
Hey Danny nice post
Have you considered fantastico? Its free with most cpanels hostgator included.
Setup in 5 minutes. Though it doesn’t have the article spinning I am sure you can use another tool.
PS everyone it would seem to me that editing a article spin that was automated could save more time and be more natural .
Last note Danny I was in a band too and I have yet to meet a drummer that wasn’t crazy LOL
Hey Darren,
I love fantastico. It does come with most cpanel hosting and works a treat. I use wp direct simply because it’s the best way to manage lots of sites at the one time.
I agree, drummers are different breed.