Having multiple income streams is the best financial insurance that ever exists. You could maintain a daily job while having other side jobs, or investments.
There are lots of options to choose from when deciding on a source for extra income. You can sell products, services, join an affiliate program, or build websites and sell them.
In case you’re not aware, you can earn a steady income from building and selling websites. And this post presents a detailed guide to help you get started with building and selling your first website.
In case you do not have the requisite coding skills to build a website, don’t let that stop you. In case you’re wondering why you need to build websites, the next section covers it.
Reasons for Building and Selling Websites
1 – Work at Your Convenience
The major reason this is a great opportunity is the convenience of doing it. Since it’s a side job, you don’t have to maintain strict working hours. You can actually run this business side-by-side with your own regular job.
That means you can decide to do it in your free time, as part-time, or even full time. You are the one to set the workdays and work hours that suit you.
The fact is that it may take up to a year before your website becomes good enough to sell. So, there’s no rush, or race to meet up with the strict deadline or even maintain heavy workloads.
If you want, you can approach it as a hobby, but it is important that you remain consistent with it.
2 – Wide Range of Options
Another good reason for doing this is the wide range of options that it offers you. There are lots of niches or industries that your proposed website can cover. You can create content on business, blogging, finance, news, movies, health and fitness, or pets.
You can also create any kind of websites such as e-commerce, forums, or online education websites. You can create websites or content around any topic, and still have a market where you can sell it.
If you find it difficult to choose any of the niches or categories, you can focus on your hobby. Or simply cover a topic that you would like to improve on and become an authority in.
3 – Develop a Pattern
Ever heard the saying that the first million dollars that you make are the hardest?
After you have made your first one million dollars, it becomes much easier to earn the next couple of millions. And that’s because you have established a pattern or system that worked for you.
It’s the same thing when you’re able to build your first website and sell it for a profit.
If you’re able to follow this guide and implement the tips, you can expect to sell within one to two years. And we’re looking at selling at $50,000 to $200,000 depending on a number of factors.
The important thing to note is that after earning from your first website, it becomes easier to earn again and again – which means you can build and maintain more than one website at any time.
4 – Low Capital Outlay
Building a website requires much less amount to build and start running.
The major costs that you will incur are for the domain name registration, which should be between $10 and $12 a year. That’s if you decide to go for any of the popular domains like .com or .net. Some other TLD (Top Level Domains) may cost you higher or lower, depending on what you choose.
Also, you will need some money to be used for buying web hosting from a hosting provider. An average web hosting plan should cost $3 – $5 a month and much cheaper if you pay annually.
Other costs may include an SSL certificate, though most web hosting providers will give the first year subscription for free.
Those are the basic costs that you have to deal with when setting up your own website.
If you’re using WordPress to manage your site, then you may have to buy some premium plugins and themes. Again, this is optional as you can use free plugins and themes to build nice-looking websites.
So you see that you don’t require so much money to have your website up and running smoothly.
5 – Great Returns over Time
Even though our topic is focused on building a website to sell, there are other ways to earn. You can build a website for selling products or services that were produced by you.
You can also earn commissions through affiliate marketing on your website. Talk about earning from Google AdSense and other ads networks, and a host of other opportunities.
My point is that having a website opens the door of opportunities to earn extra income. So what do you think; still want to go ahead with building your website?
Then let’s move to the next phase where we deal with the actual building of the website.
Step-by-Step Guide For Building Your Website
Not tech-savvy?
No need to worry as the steps outlined here are easy to follow, even for a newbie.
Step One – Decide on a Niche
Before we delve further, I’ll have you know that this step is a bit broad because you will need to first decide on a topic you would like to cover.
A topic is like a theme of what your website is going to be all about. Let’s say you decide that your website will cover men’s fashion for business casual. Or if you want to do something in the health and fitness niche, you could cover work/life balance on your website.
So you need to have a clear picture of what your website or blog is going to be all about. That said; you will be attracting a particular kind of audience to your website. And it would do you a lot of good to define that audience before starting out.
You will need to do some research or carry out a survey about your proposed target audience. Get to know who they are, the kind of content they consume, their language, demography, and other details about them.
Here are the Easiest Ways to Set up a Profitable Niche Business
When choosing the niche, you can choose based on expertise, interest, or because you want to learn about the topic.
Don’t let anyone mislead you into thinking that you must be an expert before writing about a topic. You can learn a subject and pass along what you have learned to your audience.
Go Here to see The 8 Most Profitable Niches for Online Business
Once you have satisfied the requirements for your niche, you can proceed to the next step.
Step Two – Set Up the Website
I remember saying that you do not need coding skills to set up your website. Before going through this step, you’re supposed to have bought the domain name, SSL certificate, and web hosting.
For managing your website, you may need to have it installed on WordPress.
WordPress is one of the easiest content management systems (CMS) to build a website or blog. It’s actually the most popular platform used by site owners because of its ease-of-use.
There are lots of free resources online that will show you how to install and manage a WordPress site. You can also access thousands of plugins and themes that you can use to extend the functionalities of your WordPress site.
See The Best Free Website Builder Here
After you have set up your website on WordPress, you are now ready to start posting content on it.
Step Three – Create Valuable Content
You will need to attract and retain visitors to your newly created website. And the best way to do this is by creating valuable, interesting, entertaining, and educational content.
You need to offer your visitors some value for the time spent reading your content.
Provide contents that offer unique value, or offer some information in a new way. Don’t just copy and paste the content of other websites or blogs onto your own site.
Here are 11 Powerful Ways to Write a Blog Post
The more valuable your pieces of content are, the more time your visitors will spend when they come to your website. And if your content is worth sharing, you’re likely to get lots of social shares and backlinks to your content.
Step Four – Monetize Your Traffic
When planning to build a website to sell, one of the ways to sell it faster is to start earning on it as soon as possible.
Since you’ll be telling the buyer that your website is viable, it is good that it starts earning some money before you sell. Do not be discouraged by the fact that the earnings are very little at the moment. As you keep at it, you will watch both your traffic and your earnings grow over time.
Here are 8 SEO Practices for Attracting Higher Organic Traffic
One more thing, there are a number of ways you could explore earning income on your site. You can sell products produced by you, or sell products and services produced by a different merchant (affiliate marketing).
Here is a Beginner’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing
You can earn from displaying ads, or publishing sponsored content on your website.
Step Five – Be Consistent at It
Your website won’t suddenly grow overnight and become worth thousands of dollars. It requires time and a lot of consistency for it to grow to the point you can sell for good money.
It could take you a year, maybe two, or even more to get to the point of profitability. A lot depends on the efforts and attention you put into it.
Keep publishing valuable content, work at building your audience size.
A lot of people stop along the way simply because they couldn’t see the early signs of growth. But with consistent efforts and application, you will grow your website to the point where it is ready for selling.
Selling Your Website
Why would anyone sell their website when it has started earning daily income?
Different people would have different reasons for wanting to sell their websites. For some, it could be an offer that was presented to them by a buyer or website broker.
For others, it might be the right time to focus on an entirely new project. For others, it has been the plan from the very beginning – build the website to profitability and then sell it.
This brings us to the next phase of building and selling a website!
How Do You Arrive at The True Value of a Website?
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for arriving at the true value of a website. Some buyers consider the total number of organic traffic the website attracts monthly while others look at how much a particular website is earning and then multiply by 20 or 50.
For instance, if your website is currently earning $2,000 a month, it would be valued from $40,000 to $100,000. For completing the website sale, you will need to choose one of the two options below.
- Engage a broker
- Find a buyer yourself
Whatever option you decide to go along with, there are obvious benefits.
I – Engage a Broker
Brokers exist to help sellers get the best deals and the best buyers. And for this service, they earn brokerage fees that range from 10% to 15%. But you don’t have to pay the fee until the sale of the website is complete.
Start buying and selling websites with this amazing platform here
In most cases, brokers’ fees would be justified because they help you get the best possible price for your website.
II – Find a Buyer Yourself
You can source for a buyer yourself from the internet, but ensure you carry out due diligence before dealing with anyone.
Conclusion
There are different ways for anyone to earn extra income online while maintaining a full-time job.
One can create products or services and then sell through any of the e-commerce channels. Or set up a website and then promote products and services that belong to third-party vendors.
And then there’s the option of building up a website solely for selling it for a higher price. As you’ve learned from this guide, you can build and sell your website for any number of reasons.
However, following this guide gives you the required details and guide on how to go about it. First things first, you can begin the journey of building your own website by deciding which niche to focus on.
Do you need a powerful online business platform where you can create your own website and build it to the level of profitability? Do not hesitate to create a Wealthy Affiliate free account starter today and check things out for yourself.