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Now there's an interesting title for you. Flipping websites is something that has begun to be talked over in mainstream but has yet to be all that visible here in adult. Over in mainstream there's even an e-book out about building and flipping websites and it's produced by one of the bigger mainstream webmaster boards so it must be becoming popular.

But what is flipping websites? Well it seems that if you build a website with a view to selling it for a profit then you're into flipping websites. Of course you not only have to build the site but then you have to build it up to the point where it actually has some value. Actually making that sale can be quite easy because there are people out there who do want to buy the finished product rather than putting in the hard work themselves.

Of course buying and selling websites has always been around and over the years I've built up a few link lists and then sold them for some quite tidy sums but that wasn't my original intent when I first started the sites. Several friends of mine have extended their business by purchasing competitors websites too and for them making those purchases has been a very wise business move.

But if you're into flipping websites then you're building it with the sole intention of selling it fairly quickly and if you're buying a website like that then you really do need to be very careful. There are a number of factors to consider if you're buying and it's not always possible to get a clear view of what the future potential might be for a site that you're buying.

If you want to buy a ready-made site then you're going to want to see what the traffic levels of the site are like. You're going to want to check on the back-links and you're going to want to see what Google and the other search engines might think of the site you want to buy. You'll also want to know whether the traffic, back-links and search engine love will still be there once the sale has been finalized.

If you're building with a view to flipping the site then those same factors are ones that you will want to concentrate on and you're going to want to build up. Quite often you will want to take all those factors with you when you sell the site too.

There can be a conflict of interests there and if you're buying then you really do need to be cautious. You also need to be cautious because, all too often, the figures that you may be tempted to rely can be almost meaningless.

One reference site that seems to be much favored by flippers and buyers can be found at dnscoop.com. It claims to be able to give you all the information you need to make an informed decision about the value of a website. It looks at the age, the current Google page rank, the number of inbound links, the number of pages on the site, the Alexa rank for the site and the estimated value of a single link on the site.

From all those figures it the produces a figure that it claims to be what the site is worth in dollar terms and basically I have to say that in my humble opinion it's a bit of a joke. While some of those figures are important the fact that it relies on the Alexa rank for a website to help fix a value for site makes it very questionable.

To test the site we ran a couple of our mainstream domains through the site and had a good laugh when, after assessing the Alexa rank, the site declared that our domains saw 'little or no traffic'. The fact is that the sites we tested see a lot of traffic ... but I guess our surfers just don't have the Alexa toolbar installed.

Even when assessing websites that Alexa says do get a lot of traffic dnscoop.com seems to have a problem making up it's mind about that traffic. This is what it had to say about thehun.net:

'Though this site is in the top 10,000, this Alexa Traffic range still tends to vary wildly. Traffic could be anywhere from 500 to well over 100,000 daily visits, depending on the audience.'

The figure dnscoop.com reported for back-links to The Hun also seemed rather low too.

If I was going to be buying a flipped site ... or any other site for that matter ... I'd much rather go on Webalizer stats from the server, some keyword research and other back-link analysis tools rather than what I might find at dnsoop.com. And I'd also want to think long and hard about the information I found. What does the traffic graph look like? Does it show a steady progression in traffic or are their peaks and troughs that might suggest that the traffic could have been bought.

Who owns the sites that are providing the back-links? Does the person who is selling the site own those other sites that are linking back to the site that I'm interested in and will those links still be there after I've bought the site? And basically will this site be an asset to my business and pay for itself or will it be a drain on my time and my resources?

Those are factors you should be considering if you're thinking of building sites to flip too because those things will also influence the sale price.

I'm sure that buying and selling flipped websites can be profitable for both sides but they can also be a major waste of time and money for both sides as well. It all depends on what effort you put into the site before selling it and the amount of research you do before buying it.