Go to websites of closest competitors and figure it out. It's pretty obvious how everyone makes money. There is no secret sauce.

The hard part is bringing in customers/traffic and there also is no secret sauce for that. Hard work and many hours/years seems to do the trick for top sites.

Anyone have any idea about websites or other places where I would find RFP's (request for proposals) from companies for large website or management consulting type projects?

Every freelancer website out there does the first part, right?

As far as management consulting, it seems like these sorts of jobs are done with real life sales / proposals.

Yeah I should have better defined my question, I realize there is a matter of access but I know these type of private sites exist and email lists exist. For example a friend of mine has access to one for development type work would say something along the lines of "need a central management system for 1000+ websites with varying levels of internal access... etc."

For the real life / proposals aspect, I'm interested in what it would take to build a pipeline. Would doing something online like Twitter, Linkedin, blogging facilitate this?

Problem is, most companies don't want to open up their proposals to randoms. They want people that they have dealt with before, reputable locals that hang out in the same circles, or acquaintances of vetted people. Well... at least that's how we did it at my 300-600 person company. We would never think of having a bunch of randoms review our RFPs...

Does anyone use Namejet to pick up domains?

Can anyone explain what the different categories mean: Backorder, Prerelease, Wishlist, Pending Delete.

Their FAQ doesn't really address what this means in practical terms to me as a buyer, what the chances are of getting that domain, when my CC would be charged, at what point do I actually 'win' a domain and it's probably mine, etc. I also could not find any good description about this via google.

here's some info on the process: http://www.registercompass.com/wiki/...ingdelete.aspx

imo you won't "win" it until pending_delete is over, and it's actually registered to you. iirc there's not much any person/service can do to try and ensure who gets it, other than try and time/spam registrations at the correct moment - though I am unsure and could be completely wrong.

Any idea when they charge the credit card? I don't want to have X,XXX in charges only to be refunded 3 months later because I still didn't get any of the domains.

And I still don't really get what "Backorder", "prerelease", "wishlist" are.

I am being offered PPGS.com for $500.

Opinions?

A question regarding seo, how bad is it to have the same internal links on a page, e.g.:
A site that compares poker sites

Which in a sidebar has the top 10 best poker sites (which is static), not only on the homepage, but on every site with a little bit of text beneath it, e.g.:

#1 Pokerstars (incl internal link to your review)
The no.1 site with an xxx signup bonus
Sign up now! (incl internal link to your review)

does this guy even stop for a sip of water?? lol.. i've gotta be about 30 minutes into this thing right now..

the pages with lots of internal links will be viewed as more important than the others by google.

Has anyone been looking at Flippa auctions for websites to buy?

I have.

It seems like all the non-crap/spam/slimy sites are going for pretty sizable multiples. For example, most recently I was looking at and bidding on this one. At first hand, it seems like it is going for about 10 month multiple, but reality is that fall and winter will be dead and it's probably more like 20x monthly profits.

That is basically what real life businesses usually sell for... 12-24 months profits. The difference is that web properties are a lot less stable.

I also noticed that a lot of listings get relisted because of non-paying bidders. This basically inflates prices for everyone. And scum sellers can simply bid on their own properties and if they get a real buyer they sell, and if not then they relist. (I think...)

Anyone pull the trigger on anything?

Also, are there any other places aside from Flippa that has some good quality listings?

i browse flippa pretty regularly.

i definitely would not be interested in that listing. revenue stream is too short, dropshipping always sounds easy/non-time-consuming, but it never is -- now take into the account that you are drop shipping motorcycles (and offering free custom paint jobs on them). too many ways for it to end up as a huge PITA and timesuck, provided the revenues stay steady. that itself is too much of a risk on its own though, not enough history and red flags from the owner like "Just put $350 into SEO Company for this month. Ranking should start in 1-2 months."

There definitely seems to be a lemon problem in websites. The good ones, people don't want to sell because they can't get what they think the sites are worth. 95% of flippa is no worth owning in my opinion.

Have you bought anything recently?

nope -- i completely agree with your assessment. it's almost all crap. still fun to browse though

That's my experience. 95% is junk, and when occasionally something decent shows up it goes for very high monthly net. At least the sort of multiple I don't feel comfortable with...

Advice seems to be to buy sites one can change for the better and increase revenues via some easy/simpler changes. But very few people who get web sites off the ground and producing legitimate revenues are not smart enough to do some testing and improvements themselves. (I thought I could add something to the listing above because of my industry knowledge and some fair contacts and fair reputation, but for the price it sold I didn't think it would be worth the effort.)

I'm curious to see if anyone has actually bought anything and how it's working out.

Or even if someone saw an interesting prospect that they bid on, to hear their rationale for why it would be a good buy and whether they thought it closed for a fair price or not...

If people do post these experiences, I guess this thread would go full circle to its original post after a
hundred page derail.

I've bought a handful off of flippa. Only one hasn't worked out.

This is one I would like to know how it worked out:
https://flippa.com/122221-premium-do...e-rapmusic-com

$300k was out of my price range.

I know the previous owner of that site. He runs a very successful t-shirt printing business in Tennessee, I believe. The site was rejuvenated by the influx of battle rap fans. He made a lot from his private ventures/business and wasn't interested in the site anymore.

maxtower,

I emailed him when you posted a question on his site, letting him know you weren't just a tire kicker like a lot of the people asking Q's on big Flippa sites.

Incredible thread. Turned a lurker into a registered user.

So I wanted to pick your guys brains a bit.

I know a lot about tuckpointing. Boring and mundane to most, but for anyone looking for info online about how to do it can be impossible. Finding quality info that doesn't look like it was outsourced to India or some hack that thinks a hammer and chisel will fix everything isn't possible.

So I bought the domain tuckpointing101 . I use it now just to tinker on other sites and using wordpress. I've started writing how-to content about every aspect of tuckpointing I can think of, and other projects closely related like caulking.

Once I'm finished with the majority of my content, I'm not quite sure what direction to go and am looking for some advice. Should I put teaser videos and info with the option to purchase the full how-to's? Should I release it all and try and convert on affiliate links to amazon for certain tools etc.? Maybe a one time fee for full site access with some product placement ads scattered throughout?

I would just start by monetizing with Adsense and Amazon probably. Once you get the site built up a bit more and a nice flow of traffic then you can see which offers are doing the best for you and tinker your monetization through that.

If most of your money is coming from tool sales, I would look to contact a few of the tool companies and see if they are interested in ad sales. If you money is coming from AdSense job listings, then maybe go the route of collecting your users name, address, and job and passing it on to contractors. If your ads aren't making you money, but your customers keep returning or reading multiple pages of content per visit - then setting up a subscription based site could work.

I know absolutely nothing about your industry and how hard it is to make money, but you are 100% on the right track. Just keep writing content about the different tuckpointing topics you know use something like Google Analytics to know how people are finding your website. Once you understand how people are finding your website and for what reasons, then you can let that decide the fate of your site instead of trying to force it to be something that users don't want.

Definitely sounds like your on the right track. One thing to point out though - do you know what sort of demand there is for this sort of content? How many searches are there for this sort of thing etc. Maybe there's not much quality content because it's not worth making, from a purely monetary point of view. You're obviously knowledgeable about the subject, so if you enjoy writing about it then it'd be an awesome learning experience regardless of outcome.

Personally, I would forget about adsense. To make decent money from Adsense, you need major traffic or some super-high paying niche and this doesn't sound like a high paying niche.

Since you have neither, Adsense will just clutter up your site and turn off visitors and gain you almost nothing financially in exchange.

If your site is directed to DIY crowd, then I guess you need to need to upsell them something. Tools, videos, etc.

If it is general info site, you probably want to pitch it to tuckpointing contractors as well. You might as well pick up some tuckpointingwashingtondc, tuckpointingchicago, tuckpointing_city_ domains and see if you can make this into a little network that ranks for these terms and hopefully get real adverting banners via private sales from some contractors that do this.

While Adsense isn't the best way to monetize, upselling something like tools on an information based website is rarely going to happen. People aren't finding his website from tool review keywords or purchase tool x keywords; they are finding his website because they want information on tuckpointing. These people probably have the tools already and are learning new techniques. Visitors that are looking for information will very very rarely convert to buying a physical product.

People that are not in a buying mindset almost never make quick decisions on internet purchases. If anything, you have just proven this person likes to research topics on the internet - so they will likely end up researching the tool you recommend anyway. This is going to just be a conversion for the guy that ranks for Tool X Review, etc.

Matching visitor mindset to your monetization technique is extremely important and not doing it properly will crush your profits. Adsense is great at offering a broad range of ads quickly to narrow down your audience. Once you find out what type of Adsense ads are making you the most money (available in the Adsense back end) you can then just go to those companies directly and cut out the Google middle man.