Investors and businesses have discovered a new type of property to invest in. Much like someone would buy a home, fix it up and then sell it for a profit. You can do the same with websites. People will buy an established website with good visitor traffic, tune it up, add revenue streams and then sell it at a profit. Flipping websites is another way to earn a living in today’s online economy.

There are three major reasons to buy an established website.

1. Resell: Buy a website in need of work at a bargain price and then fix it up for resell. Many businesses are looking to purchase websites that come with an instant online presence.
2. Traffic: Buy up highly relevant websites to an existing or new business venture. Traffic can then be referred to a new website or lead capture forms can be added to capture new business opportunities.
3. Links: Buy up relevant websites with a high number of backlinks. Use these as a linking strategy to deliver links to your primary business website.

What factors affect a website’s value? You should look at your own requirements and select what fits your business strategy. Remember that when you buy a website, you are really buying a business with real income potential. Generally the most important factors are:

1. Domain: Older keyword rich domain names that are .COMs are the most sought after.
2. Revenue: Just like any business an existing revenue stream increases a website’s value. This could be from product sales or AdSense revenue.
3. Traffic: Review the website statistics for visitors and traffic sources. Ideally you are looking for most of the traffic to come from organic searches for keywords relevant to your market niche. Look at Alexa rankings.
4. Backlinks: Links are an important measure of a website’s importance and its relationship to other websites on the web. Look at the number and quality of links, and the PageRank of the website. Look at the anchor text being used on the backlinks.
5. Pages: Larger sites with original content are more valuable than smaller websites. Check how many pages are indexed by Google. Do you have exclusive ownership to the content?

Investing in virtual properties is becoming big business and is a fast developing frontier.

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2. How Many Backlinks Are Enough?
3. 5 Reasons why Websites Fail
4. Does Google Trust Your Website?
5. 5 Biggest Reasons Websites Fail