The other reason for lack of posts was that I have been working my butt off trying to get my other business, LayawayGuns.com , into the final phase of start-up so we can launch soon.

The big news I just read is that Jason from theUniversityKid.com is having a blog flipping contest . I think it is a great idea for a contest to not only show people what it takes to flip a website, but to also earn money from the lesson. There will be no real losers in this contest as everyone will be flipping sites and making money.

I myself will be competing in this contest and have a few tricks up my sleeve to make my team the winner.

So head over and find out what to do to signup for the contest. I will see you at the finish line.

The biggest question most of you have is "What do I do during/after the flip? ".

First off, the payment.

On a recent flip, I asked the buyer if he would transfer the money to my bank account instead of using paypal, mainly because I don’t like the percentage they take out. The buyer said he didn’t feel safe doing this and that paypal was the only option he felt good about using. He stated with paypal, he could file a dispute and receive a refund if the deal had gone bad.

So paypal might not be such a bad idea after all and if you explain this to the customer during the sale, they might feel more at ease about the whole transaction and things will go smoother.

Google Checkout is another payment option you might consider. I have not used their service so you will need to check into that yourself.

Secondly, the domain transfer.

My domain names were registered through Godaddy.com (Although I use Name.com now.) and was easily transferred to the new owner through the domain manager. You simply log into the Godaddy domain manager, select the domain name and then click on the ‘account change’ icon. This will allow you to input the users email address or godaddy account username as the new owner.

You will have to check into what it takes to transfer ownership with other registrars you are registered with.

Third, the site transfer.

There are a few ways you can do this and even make you an affiliate sale in the process.

* The method I use most often is to simply have the buyer signup for a Hostgator account (have them use your affiliate link so you make a $100 commission on the signup.) and as part of Hostgator’s service, they will transfer all files and databases over to the new account. Make sure you tell Hostgator which files and databases to move over or they might transfer everything and you do not want that to happen.

* Another great way is to signup for a Hostgator reseller account and put each website you own or plan to flip under its own account with full cpanel and ftp access. You can offer 1 to 12 months of free hosting with the flip or offer the buyer hosting for a cheap price and have residual income coming in from the flip.

* If the customer prefers another host to Hostgator then you are left with 2 choices. You can either backup the database and zip it and the contents of the website into separate zip or tar.gz files and hand them over to the buyer where he will have to install and restore the databases himself or you can take the zip or tar.gz files you made earlier and setup the account for him/her as part of the sale.

My favorite plugin tool for backing up and restoring wordpress databases is WP-DBManager . You can also use it to optimize your databases and schedule regular backups that can be emailed to you. It is a great plugin and I highly recommend it.

Note: Make sure to not switch the nameservers over to the new servers until the website and databases have been completely setup and confirmed to be working. This will make the switchover go smoothly. You can make another backup of the database right after the nameserver switch and restore it on the new server so you do not miss any new comments or posts.

I hope this helps some of you in your website flipping endeavors. If you have any suggestions that I might have missed, please feel free to comment and let me know.

The first is a website I had designed for a company of mine that went under before the site could be finished. The domain name (vrmobility.com) was sniped before I could renew it. The design comes with full flash source files and illustrator files that comes with a corporate identity package that I had designed along with it.

Site Design: VR Mobility
Corp Design: Corporate Identity Package

The second design is one I designed myself for a client that couldn’t pay. It is for a tattoo shop and would be perfect for pitching to one around your area. The image is a photoshop psd file and is not cut up. This will allow for you to change the name, logo and menus as needed.

Site Design: Tattoo Website

I would like to recover the cost that went into the vr mobility site which was $800 but I am willing to take a partial loss on it. The tattoo website was going for $600 and I am willing to take a partial loss on it as well.

If you are interested, please feel free to use the contact form to contact me.

I am currently in the middle of selling one of them for $500 with the stipulation that the buyer purchases the bans software license via my affiliate link before I hand it over. This method not only allows me to benefit from the sale of the site but also from an additional affiliate sale of the BANS software .

With a little more discussion, I found that the buyer doesn’t have a hosting account either. So I suggested Hostgator through my affiliate link and even gave him my blogs coupon code to get $9.94 off his initial order. This sounded too good to be true for him and I made an additional affiliate sale.

So lets tally this up. The BANS software I purchased has already paid for itself as I can use it on an unlimited amount of bans affiliate store creations and they have made more than enough combined to pay for itself. The domain name only cost me $7.15 and I am selling it and the affiliate store for $500. I get an additional $44 from the affiliate sale of BANS and $50 from the affiliate sale from Hostgator. That gives me a total of $594 for one niche site and I only spent $7.15 creating it. Not a bad days work there.

Following with this line of thinking, I decided to start putting together BANS affiliate stores that I plan on flipping. I will design the header myself, do the SEO work and submit the sites and then I will let it stew for a month. That way I can see if its niche is going to create enough or not enough revenue for me to decide whether to keep it or flip it.

Spending some time on a BANS site can determine how much it will make. Adding information pages, product images and a knowledgebase or FAQ section can help your site bring in more traffic. To the potential buyer, he will see this an opportunity to add to and improve the site and in return, bring in a better profit than the site was previously earning.

I am working with an individual right now that I am going to have specialize in custom BANS theme designs for under $100. I will be offering a few of them for free here for my visitors to use and I will be allowing you guys use of my designer if you want to use my method of flipping bans sites.

I will be writing a separate post on his services so stay tuned.