Ep 163: Making $88,000 Profit For 5 days Of Work Flipping Websites with Adam Smith

$88,000 Profit for 5 days of work flipping websites – I know this sounds surreal. Only a few know how to flip websites like Adam does! 

In this episode, I had the opportunity to speak with Adam Smith who is the co-founder of Niche Website Builders. He has bought, kept, sold, and flipped many websites. He is an incredible content business owner and strategist.

We have talked about why he buys sites instead of starting them from scratch, what he liked about the site and opportunities he saw before he bought it, where he looks for sites, and how much and what was the monthly income. 

We have also discussed in detail every single step he took to grow the site and how it just took him about 5 days of work to get the site from 2K to $3.3K. What his overall profit is from this flip and how many sites he has in his portfolio.

Lastly, Adam will share the mistakes people make when rushing to buy a website and what it actually costs them.

If you want to hear what his 3 pieces of advice are for people wanting to build a portfolio of websites then, don’t miss this amazing podcast!

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Episode Highlights

03:56 Buying versus starting from scratch 

05:33 Risks of buying a particular site

08:55 What do you think about Ezoic?

11:37 How much time do you spend on due diligence?

14:09 Be patient in search of a business

17:54 Negotiating with sites

18:39 More about the site

26:22 Work on the things that are making more money

27:28 What’s next for Adam?

28:05 Monthly net profit

30:05 Building a portfolio

33:59 Adam’s advice

35:59 Wait for the right thing!

38:10 Where can you find Adam?

Courses & Training

Courses & Training

Key Takeaways

➥ When buying an online business, Adam has a concise checklist to quickly assess if a listing passes the initial test, and if it does, he proceeds with deeper due diligence. Instead of spending a lot of time each week searching for sites, he prefers to wait for opportunities with significant potential returns and stick to his criteria.

➥ It’s important to have checklists for both pre-purchase evaluation and post-purchase optimizations to maximize the potential of the website.

➥ Know when to sell. It’s important to recognize when a site has reached its full potential or when the opportunity cost of holding onto it outweighs the benefits. Avoid haggling over minor price differences when selling and consider the next deal and the capital that can be reinvested.

About The Guest

Adam Smith is the co-founder of Niche Website Builders, has bought, kept, sold and flipped many websites. And is an incredible content business owner and strategist.

Transcription:

How would you like to make $88,000 for five days of work? It seems kind of ridiculous, right? Hi. My name is Jared Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And in this episode, I'm speaking with Adam Smith, who is the cofounder of niche website builders. He's bought, kept, sold, and flipped many sites, one of which he was able to make an $88,000 profit with just five days' work.

And Adam is an incredible content business owner and strategist. In this podcast episode, Adam and I talk about why he buys sites instead of starting from scratch and how he'd like to do both for different reasons. We also talk about why he liked the site that he bought before he actually decided to buy and flip it and what opportunities he actually saw in the site before he pulled the trigger to purchase it.

We also talk about where he looks for websites for sale, where he buys them, where he bought this particular site that we're talking about in this episode, how much he bought that site for, what multiple he paid for it, and what the monthly income of the site was when he bought it as well. We also talk about in detail every single step that he took to grow the site and how it took him just five days of work to get the site from $2,000 a month to over $3,300 a month.

We also talk about his overall profits from this flip, which are roughly around the $88,000 mark if he were to sell it today or at the time of recording. We also talk about how many sites Adam has in his portfolio, why he has that many sites, and what they do for him. We also talk about the mistakes that people make when rushing to buy a website and what it actually costs them.

And then Adam also shares his advice—his three pieces of advice that he has for people wanting to build a portfolio of websites and are new to this, or have just one website business and want to build that into a portfolio. There's so much that we dig into in this episode. It's so damn valuable. We also talk about doing due diligence in this episode, and this is a vital part of buying a website business. So make sure you understand how to do your due diligence.

If you don't know much about it or want to become better at it, make sure you get my due diligence framework. You go to buyingonlinebusinesses.com, and you can download the framework that I use and that all my clients use to buy websites that are already making a passive income. Let's dive into the episode.

Do you want to build or grow your content website? Niche website builders have helped hundreds of people take their content websites from a few hundred dollars per month to over tens of thousands of dollars per month with crafted content creation, buying age domains, and link building strategies.

These strategies have helped people increase their traffic authority, monthly earnings, and website valuation, too. Head to Niche Website Builders Bob to get 10% off any link building or 10% more from their content creation services. That's niche website builders, Bob. I'll put a link in the description, too.

Adam, welcome back.

Thanks, Jared. Thanks for having me back. It's always a pleasure being a guest with you.

It's great having you as a guest because we get to have a great chat before we hit the record buttons. But most importantly for everybody listening, you come and bring value. Last time you jumped on there was, I think you made 18K profit on your website Flip within a matter of.

A few months, maybe.

It actually took weeks. I can't remember. Guys, check out that podcast. Yeah, it was a really good Flip. And now you have another one, and I want to talk about this flip. I want to break it down. Before we talk about growth.

That everybody just wants to squeeze out of you, I want to talk about. The acquisition of it all, because I'm curious.

You've got the ability to go away and build something from scratch with the team and stuff at niche website Builders, and there are people that are in this thought process wondering, Should I start one from scratch myself? What route should I take? and What's the advantage of buying one? So, yeah, I'm curious, what was your thought process, and why did you think about buying this one versus just starting it from scratch?

Sure, yeah, it's a great question, and the honest answer is that I do a bit of both. I do a lot of buying and selling, and I do some building and starting from scratch, but I think it comes down to the kind of tool set and skill set.

Sorry?

I've got the skill set where I can identify sites that either need some work or need something done to them, or they've got quick wins, essentially, that can be exploited. And then, depending on the site itself, I'll either fix those things.

Or implement those quick wins and then keep it in my long term portfolio, or in this case, I'll look to fix them and then wait for the monthly average to increase to a level where I feel it's good to exit, and then I'll try and sell the site back on. So it's not so much a case of should you build it or should you buy it?

Do you have the skill set to identify sites that you can make money on, and then do you have the skill set to go ahead and implement those with the team behind you to help implement them to make money essentially quicker? It's just a shortcut to making money, really.

Yeah. Excellent. And that's something that people listing will pick up after they buy their first business, or if you're going to do some education before you buy your first business, usually you'll be able to identify those things as well. So tell me about the risks that you saw, because every business and everything we do in life has a risk.

I'll talk about the risks, and then I want to move on to the opportunities. What are some of the things that you saw about this site that indicated that there were some risks that you had to really think about and identify whether they were worth considering, and were you able to minimize them, remove them, and whatnot?

Yeah, this website was a pure display ad, increasing the revenue from display ads. There wasn't really much else to it. And one of the biggest areas that I saw for improvement was that the site was monetized through AdSense, and I was just going to switch it over to Ezoic, and that will be a big part of my quick wins. In my experience, like 99% of sites will perform better on Ezoic than they would through AdSense, but there's still always the risk that you switch it over and it makes the same or even less.

And the other risk is that the owner may have already put it into Ezoic, seen that, and then swapped it back to AdSense. So for this site, that was the major risk. The site had been steady for a long time—for a number of years, actually—in traffic, so there was little risk of traffic. It had gone through several Google updates.

Monetization model, just for everybody listening and for you. I bought a site a while ago but did nothing with it. It was a content site, displaying advertising as well. And it's the same; I saw the exact same thing with this. It was monetized by AdSense, and it was making enough to be on Mediavine, so I thought I could just buy this and chuck it straight on Mediavine.

It got denied, and then I put it on Ezoic, and from there there were some tech issues, and not much traffic was going to it, so it wasn't making much money. I was making more money through AdSense. And I was like, This is it; I'll go back to AdSense; it's not the end of the world because I'm still going to make the same amount of money for the multiple I purchased it for.

I left the business for about 14 months, and we did nothing with it. Traffic stayed the same. Well, we had a tech issue, so we lost a bit of traffic, and then that got fixed. Traffic just scaled back up to the same level, stayed the same. And then just recently I changed it over to Ezoic, and hey, Presto, we're making a lot more money just through that change with Ezoic.

Right. The good things about Ezoic—not that this is a plug for Ezoic—are that they have some good SEO tools. What I like about Ezoic mostly is the support, really, because I can play dumb and ask questions as a rookie and just try and work out what their best advice would be. And this is what I do a lot of the time.

I have a bit of knowledge in the space, but I like to just put myself out there as a student, get people's recommendations, and then make up my own mind with what I already have. And I think that's the best way to go about getting advice and figuring out who's good at giving it. Right. So what do you think about Ezoic? Why do you see that 99% of sites would do better with Ezoic?

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Ezoic. Like I said, I don't want to turn this into a plug for Ezoic, but all of my sites are now with Ezoic, and as I've moved more sites or my sites into Ezoic, I've moved up the premium tier level. And I know some people have an issue with paying upfront for ads, but I've always made money with Ezoic Premium.

I'm on a very high tier level now, so sometimes it almost makes sense for me to buy other display ad sites and move them into my premium account to take advantage of the level that I'm on with the premium setting. Now, you mentioned some tools there.

One of the things I did with this site, and I think it's a small part, but it's still an important part, was I used Ezoic Leap to increase the site speed and pass web core vitals prior. When I bought it, the site was really slow, and it shouldn't have been because it was a very lightweight site. It wasn't very graphics heavy, there weren't many images, but I think it was just Adsense, and it just wasn't optimized for display ads.

So, yeah, I like Ezoic for that too.

Why? I think they make more money than AdSense. I think it's because they have access to Google Adex, or Ad Exchange. It's like AdSense on steroids, essentially. And also, I think AdSense still pays on or part of the revenue is made up on a cost per click basis, whereas with Ezoic, it's pretty much all based on impressions.

So I don't really care if people come to the site and click the ads because I get paid either way, as long as they see them. And then you can optimize your placeholders. So they stay in view longer, they stay in the sticky sidebar, and they auto You've got a little banner at the bottom, and they auto refresh. So with ease, I feel there's more opportunity to optimize your placeholders as well for more revenue.

Yeah, I mean, optimizing placeholders or ad placements, whatever you want to call them. In ad senses, it can be done, but auto ads are just not as good as Zoek's ad. It is superior in that sense. Not that we're plugging in Zoic. Everybody has to do what's right for them and make the best call, but it's worked for us, so it's a good thing. So it's worth talking about. Right?

So the site that you bought, you bought one. I'm curious. This is a big thing for people listening who want to buy a site. You've done a few jobs for a lot of businesses. You've looked at a lot of businesses, and for people listening, they're not going to be able to take this as though they can do the same amount of work, look at the same amount of sites, and buy a site within the same time frame as you because you've got a lot more experience.

But what's the gauge like? You've bought so many sites before. How long do you spend looking for sites? Where are you looking at purchasing them from? And how long do you spend on your due diligence sort of thing? Just for a gauge? For us?

Sure. So there are a number of different places I look. This one was actually from Flipper, and I don't often buy sites from Flipper, to be honest. It's very rare that I buy a site from Flipper. I feel there are a lot of sites on there, but not all of them. Lots of them don't pass the sniff test, shall we say?

I think on Flipper, there are a couple of Marketplaces I look at, obviously Empire Flipper, but they're at the higher end of the scale in terms of price and cost. They're also at the higher end of the valuation scale. Typically they're 40, 45, or sometimes even up as high as 50 X now, and as an investor, we make some of our money on the purchase because we buy it at a good price. Right. You can't make those kinds of valuations.

Also, look through Investors Club and Motion Invest. So obviously, I get their emails. When they add new listings, I just go and check them out. But I've got a very specific set of criteria that I'm looking for, so when these new listings come out, I won't spend a ton of time. I'm looking to see if it is monetized primarily through display ads.

And then I'll go and have a look at my literal couple of point checklists, and if it passes the initial sniff test, then I'll go deeper, have a look, and start doing some due diligence. But really speaking, I'm not spending a ton of time every week looking for sites. I'm looking for ones that have an oversized opportunity where I can make lots of returns rather than, oh, I could make a little bit of money with this one.

Or if I dig deep enough, I might find something here. It's that old; I'm waiting for the right one to come. And typically, what you'll find are buses. You'll wait maybe four or five months and nothing will come, and then two or three might come at the same time. So you just need to be patient and stick to your criteria.

Oh, I like it. That's great advice. Be patient and stick to your criteria. Because I've had this many conversations or a lot of conversations with newbies that are like, I can't find the business that I want, and they've been in the membership for two months and they're like, or three months and they're like, This can't work for me. And it's a shame because sometimes people give up when they're on the verge of achieving their goal, right?

And it's a shame to see people say, Oh, I've tried this for four or five months, and I didn't find a site that was good enough. But hey, with an extra couple of weeks, you could have just seen three that are like, bang, bang, bang. Like, which one do I choose from, right? And I'm not just talking about people in the community. I'm talking about people outside the community who have tried this for six months and said, Look, I can't do it. What do you have to say to them about that?

Yeah, this story will tell it all. I've only lost money on a handful of sites over the last couple of years. The one that really sticks in my mind was that it was outside of my criteria, and I thought I would buy it and then only keep it for a very short period of time and flip it, but it didn't meet my usual criteria, so I bought it.

And then, literally within two or three weeks of closing the deal, it got hit by a Google update. And I still own the site now, and I'm going to lose money on the site when I sell it. It's going to be a loss, and it's one of a handful. There aren't many sites I've lost money on, and the one I lost money on was because I went outside of my criteria.

I would have never looked at it, typically, but I was going through a bit of a dry spell with other deals, and I saw the opportunity for her. I'll keep it for a couple of months and make a little bit of money on it, and then it just comes back to bite me in the ass. So, yeah, that taught me not to do that anymore.

That's a great lesson for us to learn. Yeah. Like, Oh, I can't get it; I'm going to force it. And sometimes that can end up in not the best situation. Right.

And I think I've owned the site now for just over 13 months, and I paid $35,000 for it. And if I sold it now, I think I would get about $16,000 or $17,000 for it. So with the revenue it's made, I'm down like $10,000 to $15,000 on that site. It's a painful lesson.

Yeah. The thing is that you've bought so many and done well with so many. So it can kind of be overall positive, but it's one of those things that you just wish hadn't happened. Right? Obviously.

Exactly. That's right. It could have been avoided if I just stuck to my own rules, essentially.

Yeah. And so we're talking about premium listings with some brokers and then some that have better multiples. I think buying them off market, like through groups like your own, is a good thing for people that are buying from sites under The $50,000 range because it helps many people see that you don't need to go with a higher multiple premium listing from a bigger broker.

And I think that's good. It's sort of putting a cap on those bigger brokers from going too high in their valuation. Because what I see is that they've got a brand, they get to pick the businesses that they want to sell on the premium ones, which is fair because I built their brand and understand that.

But they can test the waters to see how high they can go with selling it for a higher multiple. And that is who really sets the industry standard, which can be hard for people who are first coming to it. And something that I've mentioned to everybody is, Look, I think this is worth X amount based on the information you've provided me. And you can get a superior site elsewhere, but it just takes so much more time to find.

Right. That's the piece. Are you willing to pay a premium, cut off the time, and not have to hunt as hard? Or are you going to sift through, sort of like if you're looking through a flipper, all the staff to get the rare fine?

I also find that we can use that to our advantage when it comes time to negotiate for sites, like if we find off market sites through the Facebook group. I mean, one of the great tactics that I always use is to do your due diligence first, and then you get to the negotiation and the valuation part. And by that point, you're already at the door; you're already talking.

They've already opened up to the idea of selling to you. And then you put your offer forward, and then you go back and forth a little bit, and then at the end, you always say, Well, I'll give you X amount, which is maybe 20% lower or 15% lower than what they're proposing. And you can say that's what you would pay a broker anyway, so let's cut them out, and I'll pay that.

And you can usually get at least a 10% discount on the kind of thing you've agreed to anyway; just with that one little bit, you would pay it to a broker. So let's kind of split the difference.

Yeah, of course. So tell us more about the site. So how much do you pay for the site if you're open to sharing it? What was its average monthly net profit? Maybe even the niche it's in, if that's valuable for us to know.

Yeah, sure. So I paid $60,000 for the site, which was based on a 35 times multiple of the past twelve months average. So the site had been very steady for a long time—several years—so there were no ups and downs. It was averaging just under $2,000 a month, essentially. And I bought it. Like I said, through flippers.

And then we used Escrow.com as the middleman to do the transaction with, and we used the seven day inspection periods and the sites in the technology space. And I usually stay away from sites in the technology space, mainly because the content doesn't tend to be evergreen. What's a good laptop today is probably not a good laptop in six months to a year, for example. But this is informational based where the content is typically evergreen. So, yeah, that's the niche.

Okay, yeah. Cool, congrats. I would typically tell people to stay away from that niche as well. And I've got many videos in my community around that. But if you can make it work, you can make it work, right?

Cool. So it's more informational than affiliate type buying this product. You have to keep changing the articles every six months, right? So that's a win. All right. The biggest thing, I guess, that you identified is that you can make more revenue through a better ad network. So you went over to Ezoic.

What are some of the other things that you did that were these things that you saw prior to purchasing the business or these things that you saw after you bought the business through the inspection period? And then, what were those things?

Yeah, sure. So these were things that I saw prior. So it very much helps to have a checklist of things that you can tick off, and then once you purchase, it helps to have a checklist of your quick wins, essentially. And for your listeners who listen to the previous podcast that you mentioned before, the list is pretty much exactly the same. It's the same issues; it's the same things that I implemented on this site; just the numbers are on a slightly bigger scale.

So the play for this was to increase display ad revenue, obviously. So the first thing I did was move it from AdSense over to Ezoic, and then I implemented a couple of on page changes. So these things took me about five days from start to finish to implement. Some were really quick, and some took a couple of days, but essentially, the first thing I did was increase the font size.

So it was on the Astra theme; it was very easy to go into themes and customize and change the font size. And I took it up to 22 pixels, or 22 points, so it's fairly large. And I also increased the line height.

Do you know?

I think it was 18. Okay, cool.

I'm sorry to cut you off.

That's okay. I increased the line height slightly as well. And basically, what that does is just mean there's more scrolling for the user when they're on the site. And typically, more scrolling means more placeholders. And if you're at your desk and viewing the site on your desktop as well, you've got the sticky sidebar and the sticky bottom placement. Those auto refresh after 15 or 20 seconds.

So the more time someone spends scrolling down that one page, the more ads you can show them and the more revenue you can make, essentially. So that was my first quick win. The site didn't have any images at all. Not that I think adding images on their own is a huge factor, but I do think adding images on their own is a huge factor.

But again, all it does is break up the page to allow more plays and get people to scroll longer. So I'm a big fan of the 80/20 rule. I went through analytics, downloaded the top 20% of the pages that are driving 80% of the traffic. Usually it's only a handful of pages on most sites, and then I added several images to each of those posts, so the scrolling was longer.

Awesome.

The site didn't have a table of contents, so I used a plugin called Lucky WP Table of Contents to automatically insert the table of contents. And I think it's important to create each post. You mean Google for each post? Yeah.

Great. Sorry, I cut you off again. What was the next one?

That's okay. No, I was just saying that I think the table of contents is really important and that it's an overlooked factor that most people or some people miss. It creates jump links for Google, and you can see this in your search console. Sometimes if you go in there and you click on one of your top pages in the performance report, you'll see, or if you've got a table of contents, they'll have a little hashtag at the end of the URL in there.

And that's basically where someone or Google has served up an answer. Typically, it's a snippet, and you click the link, and you're actually taken to that section on the page by the jump link, which comes from the Table of contents. So this site didn't have it. So it was a very quick win. I added some FAQs to the end of each piece of content just to make it a little bit longer and a little bit more in depth. I do that for any site, but for this site in particular, it's the type of content that's very generic and informational based. So even though it's tech information, it's very generic tech information.

It's hard to make your content different from someone else's because it's pure information about something. But a good way to do that and make yours stand out and be better is to add FAQs. The easiest way to do that is to grab your FAQs from the People Also Ask box. Whenever you search for the topic, just literally put the title of the post into Google and pull out three or four questions from the People Also Ask box. Interesting note on that as well.

I don't know if you've seen this yet; I've yet to see it in the wild, but I see that on mobile results, Google is now starting to include the People Search for Next box. In addition to People Also Asked, which I think will be interesting because you could almost follow the user journey, if someone's interested in X, this is what they search for next. So that's something to keep an eye out for and play around with in the next couple of weeks.

It'd be really cool to have that at the bottom of each post, right where you have the next three things that they're going to search for next, but in your own articles. Like People Also Like, People Search for Next, or People Go to Next, take these three to four or eight articles and have them on your own site and kind of do what Google's doing on your own page, which increases the time on page and bounce rate. Or decreases bounce rate—sorry, exactly.

And then the only other thing was to increase site speeds using Heroic Leap, like we mentioned earlier. So that was literally my quick win toolbox for this website; implementing those things took about five days, essentially.

So I'm going to just go through them quickly in my head and spit them out on the microphone, and then I'm going to dive into some of each of those things a little bit. So over to Ezoic, use Zoic Leap for the site speed optimization. Increase that, change font, increase linesize, and add more space once you've got your top pages added.

Images, FAQ section, Table of Contents, and I want to ask, just for people listening, like the 80/20 principle, for your top pages. This is what I mentioned to people in my community: if you're going to grow your site, work on the things that are already making more money. The business will tell you what it needs if you know how to listen to it and get the right feedback. So how many articles or pages are we talking about? Was it just, all right, let's start with the top ten that you can literally get from Google Analytics? Or was it more? And if so, why?

Yes, in this case, I think it was between 20 and 30 pieces of content. And literally, I go into Google Analytics, go to Behavior, and landing pages, go to the last 60 days or last 90 days, however long you want to set it, and download it. And literally, you can just highlight it because it shows you the traffic. Just go through there and highlight whatever comes out at 80%. And usually it'll be about 20% of your posts, almost always. It's uncanny.

Excellent. And so, how many posts does this site have when you purchase it?

It's got around 180, I think.

Yeah, cool. Okay. And what's next?

Yeah, so for this site, it's not a long term hold for me, so it's not a long term keeper for my portfolio, primarily because it's in the technology space. And like I said at the start, I typically don't like to be in that space long term, so I'm probably going to try and sell it soon. It's at the point now where I've owned it for six months.

So I've got a nice new six month average that I can go to market with that's significantly higher than before, and then I can realize some of that capital and then keep my gunpowder ready for the next opportunity that comes up that meets my criteria again.

Awesome. The dying question is, What is the average monthly net profit now? Say February is not always the best month in the cycle, right? Of a content display ad business. But what are we looking at in terms of monthly net profit?

So it's increased to around 3300 now from just under.

Amazing.

When I bought it.

Yeah. So an extra 1300 will get you an extra 35, hopefully 38 if we can get that, or more. Yeah. Excellent. So what are we looking at? You've done the math, obviously.

Yeah. When I'm trying to sell a site, I use a 40 X multiple at the moment. So at a 40 X multiple, that comes out to 132,000, and I paid 60 for it, and it's also generated just over 16 and a half thousand in revenue since I owned it as well. so a total profit of just under $90,000.

Congrats. Awesome, man.

Keep it a little bit longer. So it's a full six figure profit, but we'll see what happens.

Yeah, that's it. It's pretty close to it, isn't it? It's pretty close. You can get that up to the five k range and get close to that five k range per month. So tell me a little bit more about your investment strategy in terms of how many sites you're looking at having at any one time. And the reason I ask this is because I think having focus is important.

And I've been in the position of buying multiple businesses at once, and they weren't content sites either. Content sites are far more passive than, say, owning two ecommerce businesses and a membership business and trying to travel and live a lifestyle as well. That was a tough time for me. I was young and hungry. I'm just going to crush it and buy as many as I can.

I've learned a lot from that, and that's changed me. But I'm curious to hear your opinion on how many sites you want to have in your portfolio at any given time. How long do you keep them? Usually, when do you sell them? Let's open up that can of worms. Sure. So at any one time, I've got anything from ten to 15 sites in my portfolio. Some of them are long term holds. Like I said, I want to keep them for the long term, so they're not necessarily enough for a flip in terms of how many I'm actively working on to improve them in the short term or flip them.

It really depends on what comes along. I think maybe in the last six months, I've bought one, two, or three. I bought four sites in the last six months, mainly because they just met my criteria and came up. But I may very well go another six months without buying any sites if none come up. So it's not a case of how many I want, and I'll pass on good deals. It's a case of, Are there good deals out there?

Do these sites meet my criteria? Do I want them in my portfolio? And if I do, then I'll buy them. I don't mind if that goes up to 20 sites, as long as I can manage them. And I think I'm in a different situation than maybe some of your audience in that I own an agency where I've got a team around me that can help and support me if I need it and can write content.

So I'm not sitting there writing content for 1015 sites. It would be totally unmanageable. Yeah, that's the whole reason we started the agency, because I was in that position where I had my own portfolio, and it got to the point where I needed help and I didn't have a team around me. And that's the reason we started the business.

And so those ones that you're holding longer—I presume these are the ones that you're publishing content on regularly to increase traffic, which will increase revenue—is that right?

Yes, most of them, apart from one. And I don't mind sharing this one because I share it with everyone. It's about foxes, and it's a very narrow niche. I've. Covered literally everything you can write about foxes. There's literally nothing else to say. It's the de facto authoritative site for foxes. Cool.

But I like it because it's defensible and the site has covered everything. It would take another site quite a bit of content to cover the same thing, so that one's in there for a different reason. I don't think it will ever grow, but it's been super steady and stable, and I feel it's going to be hard to knock it off. Where it is, but the rest, yeah, I'm adding content.

Yeah, cool. Because people are listening and they're like, You've got a few that you'll buy that are quick wins. You'll hold it for, say, six months, like this one, and get rid of it and not add content. And then you got other ones, and you own a content agency, basically, and then you had other ones that you liked. Cool. You could add your quick wins to it. And then you hold it for a longer term and then add the content. Probably add backlinks and stuff like that as well, right?

Yeah, exactly. And those longer term hold ones, I try to base them around niches that are very expansive. So I have another one that's in the business template space, and I can keep creating content almost indefinitely in that space. There are so many different facets of business and so many different subsections of templates within each of those areas that I'm almost never going to run out of content ideas for that site.

Yeah, excellent. So for those listening who are very new to buying a site or have just bought their first site, what advice would you give them for starting to build their portfolio? Obviously, don't be in the position where you're at; just try to get to 15 as quickly as possible without a team of support. But yeah, what sort of one to three things would you give them so they don't make it harder than it needs to be?

Sure. I think the first one is just a buy. Right. So, like we said at the start, don't be impatient. Even if it takes a couple of months, it's better to buy your first one and have a good experience buying the right side rather than buying the wrong side. You've got some money in your pocket burning a hole, and you end up with something that will turn you off the industry.

Because it's such a great industry to be in and such a great investment asset class to be in. I don't think you want that first experience to be tainted. Yeah, the second one is that, depending on how much cash flow that first site gets, you work on it and work on it and work on it until the cash flows enough so you can save for another one. I'm a big fan of the Snowballing method, where site number one pays for site number two, and then site numbers one and two pay for site number three.

And even though it takes a bit longer, I think doing it that way is very sustainable. And then even if one site gets hit, maybe an update or something, you've got that ball rolling, so go slow and go steady and use the snowballing methods.

And then I think the third one, which maybe people don't tend to talk about too often or I'm not here too often, is knowing when to sell. One of my biggest learning experiences was a couple of years ago when I was trying to sell another one of my sites in the six figure range. And honestly, we put it up for sale, and we had an interest in a buyer. We couldn't agree on the price, and we were like ten or $8,000 apart on price.

Like next to nothing. I was stubborn and said no. And then a Google update happened, and the site got hit, and I ended up selling the site for a lot less than six figures. And I learned from that that if the deal is to be made, there's no point haggling over the pennies. Really. So if you're going to sell the site and you're happy to sell it and you've taken it as far as you can, then yeah, don't let the pennies get in the way of the next deal. And having some money in your pocket.

To go after it, I think that's excellent to think about. The last two are so solid, like touching on not haggling for price and just getting out. I think the opportunity cost is something that we need to consider when we're selling. Like, all right, have you gone to the end of the line with how much energy you can put into the site and even attention on just owning it, let alone rolling it, just owning it, and letting it be passive?

Would you be better off creating more energy and excitement, moving into something else by just taking a little bit less money? Right. I love investing and making money. It's great. But I'm also big on less stress and doing what fulfills you and makes your life better. And sometimes we are too focused on the dollars. I've been there. I've been there. But it can stuff you up, right? Really can't.

Yeah.

The same thing is true about the money burning in the pocket. Like for the last few years, I've had money burning in my pocket and been wanting to rush into things, and I'm so glad I haven't because these other investments that I'm making now are that much better and that much less stressful because I waited for the right things to come along.

Yeah. And I find that I put those deals out of my mind as quickly as possible because it's so easy for you to keep thinking and getting excited, and then in your brain you think, Oh well, okay, that one thing doesn't meet my criteria, but that's fine. And you keep thinking about it, and in your head, it becomes a better and better deal, even though it's probably the worst deal ever because you keep thinking about it. So put it out of your head; don't think about it. Move on to the next one.

It's where people go; I'll do my due diligence, and I need to sell the business to myself. Right. And they end up being in their heads and selling the business to themselves. When the opposite is true, you actually need to prove the business is a bad investment. And that's when people sometimes come to me with their business and they've sold it to themselves, and I give them some advice, and they're like, They've sold it themselves so hard that what I have to say doesn't register at all, which can be scary.

Yeah, amazing. Congrats on your purchase! Congrats on this flip. Congratulations on the portfolio you've built and everything you've done. Adam, it's great to have you on. We'll be doing more of these. And where can we send people to find out more about either your portfolio or the agency?

Sure. So the agency is a niche website builder. So the website is built by niche website builders. We've got two Facebook groups. One of them might be interesting if you are looking for businesses to buy, just because it's called the niche website Flippers Group. It's full of people who are buying and selling sites. And then, obviously, I'm on Facebook, so if anybody wants to connect, then just shoot me a friend request. I'm pretty accessible. I'll answer most questions. So, yeah, they're the best ways to reach out. Website, Facebook group, or Facebook.

There you go, guys. There'll be links to that in the show. As always, Adam, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, Jared. I appreciate your time, man.

Those who are listening and are thinking about buying a science book should really listen to this again. There are so many little golden nuggets that you probably missed out on. It's like reading a book the second time you pick it up. There are some great things that you will realize that you didn't get the first time.

Also, for those who are looking at buying or have friends that are looking at buying sites, please share this podcast episode with them. It's insanely valuable. They're going to get a lot from it. Yes, it helps grow the channel, but it's going to help them as well. So thank you so much for listening, guys.

Want to have more financial and time freedom?

We help people buy established profit generating online businesses so the can replace their income and spend more time doing what they love with the people they love.

Host:

Jaryd Krause is a serial entrepreneur who helps people buy online businesses so they can spend more time doing what they love with who they love. He’s helped people buy and scale sites all the way up to 8 figures – from eCommerce to content websites. He spends his time surfing and traveling, and his biggest goals are around making a real tangible impact on people’s lives. 

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