The marketplace for buying and selling websites is growing quickly, and buying established websites is a fast and easy way to boost your online income and get targeted traffic to your existing business or ebook or membership sites.

It’s early days for this online boom, which means there is still plenty of opportunity to find rundown or undervalued websites to renovate and sell, or keep for the cash flow – just like real estate!

However just like in real estate, there are both good and bad online properties. So before you rush out and start buying up big, it’s worth educating yourself and having a clear strategy in place.

The most common mistake website buyers make is paying for a website that actually has no value for them. The only reason to pay good money for an existing business is because it is going to save you TIME and MONEY. When you pay for a business, you are paying for the convenience of everything already being set-up and running, and preferably making money!

In this article we want to share our 4 Golden Opportunities to look out for when buying and selling websites, which should keep you from making the most common mistakes that new website investors make.

When you are looking for a website to buy, it should have at least one of these elements:

Opportunity #1: PROFIT

A website that is making a profit means it has been proven in the marketplace and also means instant cashflow for you. It is far easier to quickly make more money from an already profitable website than it is to launch a new, untested one. Buying websites with existing profit gives you INSTANT online cashflow, which can then be used to fund the renovation, or buying more sites.

Often it will only take some simple changes to copy or layout, or even updating broken links or outdated information to considerably increase conversions and profit on the site.

The other benefit of a profitable site is that you can take an already proven system and just add more traffic to make more money. Then you can either keep the extra cash flow or sell on for a good profit.

Opportunity #2: TRAFFIC

After profit, the most valuable part of a website is the traffic. Think about how much it would be worth to you to have thousands of targeted people finding your website and product every month!

But it’s amazing how many people build up a great position in their niche, have good rankings on Google and get lots of traffic every month, but don’t make any money from their site. This is a golden opportunity for you to buy the website at a bargain price, and then offer that traffic something to buy.

So don’t get caught out like many first-time buyers and choose a website that has no traffic, it’s not worth anything unless it is already bringing in the customers.

Opportunity #3: LIST

If a site has no profit or traffic, then the other reason you may buy is because it has a list. Lists can be incredibly valuable as the people on them have asked for more information about a certain topic, or have formed a relationship with the website or business. Again, this is an opportunity to offer products or services that the previous owner has not, especially if they are products or services that you already provide.

Opportunity #4: NICHE

The fourth opportunity when buying websites is to find sites that fit in with a niche where you already own money-making sites. You can use these niche sites for links, or for directing traffic or adding credibility, but also for dominating your marketplace. Imagine if you owned not only the site that was ranked #1 in Google for your keywords, but also the sites ranked #2, 3, 4 and 5.

If you always buy websites that have at least one of these four elements you will ensure you have a valuable online asset that you can sell profitably in the future.