If you know your way around a website and have a keen eye for spotting ways they can be improved, website flipping can be an excellent way to generate some extra cash.
However, to do this successfully, you need reliable and trustworthy places where you can purchase quality websites with big potential and then sell them for a fair price, reasonably quickly, after you’ve improved them.
That’s where online marketplaces and brokers come into play; they allow you to tap into a thriving community of thousands, if not millions, of other website buyers, investors, and sellers. Plus, the best ones also offer safeguards and vetting processes to ensure nobodys getting screwed.
Who are these top marketplaces and brokers? They’re who we’ll be revealing and reviewing today: the 5 best places for flipping websites in 2024.
What is website flipping?
Website flipping is the art of buying existing websites, finding ways to increase their value, and then selling them for a profit. For instance, you might discover a website for sale that was once thriving, but the owner has lost interest, so it has become neglected recently.
However, you know that with a little work and attention, this website can flourish once again. So you put in a fair offer that gets accepted and then get to work updating its theme, publishing new content, refreshing old content, improving the site speed, and improving SEO. You also find some new ways to monetize the site through affiliate links.
After three months of working on it, the website is now generating more traffic and revenue, and it looks and functions a whole lot better. As a result, its value in the marketplace has increased, so you list it for sale online, and it sells within two weeks for double what you paid for it. This is website flipping in a nutshell.
The best places for flipping websites
Here are the 5 best places for flipping websites in 2024.
1. Empire Flippers
With a name like Empire Flipper, you can kind of already guess that this will be a great place to flip websites. Empire Flippers is one of the leading marketplaces for buying and selling online businesses, which, of course, means tons of websites are bought and sold on the platform.
You can find all kinds of sites here, including affiliate, e-commerce, display advertising, lead generation sites, and more, at a range of prices, starting from the thousands and going into the millions of dollars.
Everything listed here has been thoroughly vetted by their expert team, ensuring all sellers are verified individuals, traffic data is not manipulated, and revenues and profits are accurate, among other things. This means you can browse through the sites for sale without worrying that you’re wasting your time on sellers who aren’t trustworthy.
All in all, Empire Flippers is a great place both to find fixer-uppers and to sell them for maximum profit after you’ve improved them.
2. Flippa
With over 12,000 deals done here annually and dozens of quality sites bought, sold, and listed here daily, Flippa is another paradise for website flippers. This thriving marketplace, with over 600,000 users, provides everything you need to succeed in the site-flipping game.
Flippa carefully vets each listing, ensuring you will only find real deals here and no smoke and mirrors, and they help facilitate sales in a way that’s fair so everyone wins. What you see is what you get on this marketplace.
All you need to do to start using this platform is sign up for a free account – you don’t even need to add any card or payment details immediately. Then, you can start hunting for sites with growth potential, listing your own sites for sale, and communicating directly with other buyers and sellers on the platform.
3. Website Closers
Founded in 1998, Website Closers has been helping people buy and sell websites and other online businesses since the early days of the Internet. Website Closers is renowned for the quality of its listings, which have sold for between $500k and $20 million, and its team of highly skilled brokers.
Website Closers has vast experience working with affiliate marketing, eCommerce, eLearning, subscription, display advertising websites, and more, so no matter what type of website you are looking to sell or buy, they can help.
The team at Website Brokers understands that buying and selling websites can be very exciting but also stressful and even risky when done improperly, so they strive to provide a safe and secure brokerage service, using their decades of experience to ensure you get the results you want.
4. Acquire.com
With over 200,000 entrepreneurs making deals on its platform, Acquire.com is another stellar place to buy and sell income-generating websites and other online businesses. You can find all types of websites sold here, and they will even notify you when new listings that meet your criteria come up.
Their goal is to help you buy and sell websites in less than 30 days by connecting you with the right buyers and sellers, thoroughly vetting listings, and utilizing time-saving tech to streamline the acquisition and sale process.
You’ll find all the key information you need on this platform to help you assess whether a website has potential, including P&L summaries, monthly recurring revenue, website age, traffic, and more, and when you’re ready to go further, they will connect you with the owners to start negotiations.
5. SideProjectors
If you’re looking to buy smaller, cheaper websites to do up and flip for a profit, SideProjectors is an excellent place to find them. On this marketplace, you will find people buying and selling their digital side projects, including all types of websites.
This platform is unique in that you can find websites suitable for the smallest budget, starting from just a couple hundred dollars and going up to the tens of thousands. This makes it great for those just getting started in the world of website flipping who don’t have much capital to invest.
You can easily filter the listings down to find your desired type of website, such as e-commerce, dropshipping, affiliate websites, blogs, and more, and you can also sort based on price and niche.
How to flip websites for profit
Step 1 – Find websites with potential
The first step is to build a list of websites with potential. Now, this will also depend on the skillset you have and your budget.
Do you have experience improving sites in all areas, or do you specialize in a few key areas, such as content production and SEO? How much are you willing to invest, not just in buying the site but also in improving it?
Considering the above, create accounts with all the top marketplaces listed above and then search for sites you believe you have the skills and budget to improve.
You also want to check the site’s quality and content and ensure it hasn’t been involved in shady practices, like black hat SEO, spamming, or plagiarism. Avoid buying anything suspicious.
Step 2 – Buy a website
Once you have a list of candidates, it’s time to start negotiations with their owners. This is also a good time to assess further how the site has been built and operated.
Jump on a call with the owners (you can usually do this on top marketplaces like Empire Flippers or Flippa) and dig deeper into why and when the site was launched, whether they are the sole owners, who created the content, how it generates revenue, why they’re selling it, and how they think the site can be improved, etc.
Websites owned by individuals and hobbyists often offer the most flip potential, as they’re willing to sell for a lower price, and the website hasn’t been exhausted of all its potential yet.
Step 3 – Transfer the site
When you make a purchase, you must transfer the site’s ownership to yourself. Essentially, you need to ensure you get access to the hosting account, ownership of the domain, access to Google Analytics and other third-party services, social media accounts, all files and digital assets, email accounts, and anything else included in the sale.
If you choose a leading marketplace like Empire Flippers of Flippa, they will have a migration procedure set out for you, and their teams will work with you and the seller to ensure everything is transferred over and nothing is missed.
Step 4 – Improve the website
This is where the real fun starts. You are now the proud owner of a website, and it’s time to get to work improving it so you can sell it for a profit in the future.
You should have already identified the key areas you think you can improve before you bought the site, so now it’s just a case of putting that plan into practice.
This will likely involve improving the SEO, creating new content, and improving the look and functionality of the site, with the goals of improving traffic and monetization, as these will increase the site’s value.
Step 5 – Sell for maximum profit
Whether it has been a couple of months or a couple of years since you bought the site, at some point, it will be time to sell it. On average, people wait for around 7-9 months before selling.
This allows time for you to make all the required improvements and for SEO and other changes to start working their magic. Of course, you’ll want to ensure you’re valuing your website correctly; the valuation tools you find on leading marketplaces and brokers can help with that.
We recommend using a leading marketplace, like the five we’ve listed above, as they will put your website in front of the most potential buyers, ensuring you can get the best price possible for it. They will also help facilitate the sale, ensuring everything goes smoothly without any hiccups.
The bottom lime
That’s our list of the five best places for flipping websites, along with some tips for doing it successfully. We hope it has come in handy. These really are the cream of the crop; it’s not worth trying to buy and sell websites from less reputable places, as the risks are too high. Good luck!
