Up Fuel 
I’ve already taught you how to buy a website in 5 steps and because I like to teach by example I’m documenting what I do after I purchase a website in a case study. In the first part of this case study I talked about my plan to first focus on increasing the income on one of my recently acquired websites called CopyCatCrafts.com. Here is the list of items that I planned to do:
Table Of Contents
How I Planned To Increase The Income For This Website
1. Split test Google Adsense vs Rivit Media using OIOpublisher
I didn’t end up doing this because I spoke with my account rep at Rivit Media and she was able to use my Adsense code as back fill when they don’t have enough ads from premium advertisers to use. It became quickly apparent that Rivit Media would continue to be a good source of income for the website when they have the ad space to sell (I’ll get to that in the results).
2. Test Vibrant Media in text advertising
I did get around to installing Vibrant Media in text advertising on the blog and in August so far it has out performed Adsense (see results below)!
3. Use CPC advertising in more locations
I was pretty busy in August with other projects so I didn’t get around to testing Adsense and other forms of advertising in other locations until just a few days ago when I added in a 468 x 60 banner ad just beneath the title of the blog post. I may remove this because so far it hasn’t converted very well and I sort of prefer the minimal advertising that was on the site before.
4. Contact craft supply companies for private advertising deals / joint promotion deals
5. Add Amazon affiliate links on the old blog posts that are related to physical products
6. Optimize high traffic pages with better targeted advertising
7. Start monetizing the email list
Didn’t get to these tasks. I was too busy to work on them and yes I realize that every day that goes by that I don’t complete these tasks I’m leaving money on the table.
Month 1 Income Results: $560.46
August Income Total So Far: $560.46 (With 7 days left)
Estimated August Ending Income: $672.55
Adsense $78.18 (New Income Source)
Vibrant Media $182.77 (New Income Source)
Rivit Media $299.51 (Pre-Existing Income Source)
Income Analysis:
I only did 1.5 things on my list of 7 tasks and the income for the website still went up thanks to the two new income sources from Adsense and Vibrant Media. I expect that if I finish the list of things I planned to do but never got around to the income could rise at least an extra $100 – $200 a month or maybe even break the $1,000 per month barrier. Some days Rivit Media contributes just a little bit of money because the ads aren’t running and the backfill Adsense ads are going instead, so it’d be nice if they always had advertisers promoting because the income is significantly higher on those days.
The best part about this website is that it’s basically passive income for me. I’ve spent more time writing these case study blog posts for UpFuel.com than I have spent working on CopyCatCrafts.com.
Why I Love Buying And Selling Websites
I set a goal this year to buy $100k worth of websites and if I can keep finding good websites worth buying I should easily be able to meet my goal. Part of the reason why I started buying websites is because I want to grow my business faster and just like Fortune 500 companies one of the fastest ways to grow is through acquisitions. I’ve been applying this methodology to my business this year and it’s been very effective so far. I generally don’t share websites that I buy on this blog for obvious competitive reasons but I hope this shows you one way I’m making money.
You can get started buying websites at any price point too, last summer I bought a site for $500 that’s made me around $5,000.
New Copy Cat Crafts Case Study Updates:
Update: I’ve gone on to share multiple new case study update since publishing this post in August 2011. Be sure to read them all below to see how I was able to take this website and generate more money with it:
Introduction – How To Buy A Website
Part 1 – Two strategies to employ after you acquire a website
Part 2 – How I drastically increased the income (You are reading this right now)
Part 3 – Long term income case study results
Part 4 – $4,000 Investment Paid Off
Part 5 – How To Buy Websites And Profit In Less Than 12 Months
Good job Chris,
With a little bit of effort you made a profit, when you really get it going we’ll all be waiting for invites to the castle. 🙂
Hah, I think I’d need to realllllllly scale to leverage this into a business that allows me to buy the Guthrie Castle lol but we shall see.
Thanks for a great blog with many interesting posts!
Thanks Chris, this is cool stuff. I know pretty much nothing about buying websites, so I’m really interested in the stuff you’re sharing.
I feel like there are a *lot* of people trying to buy websites and there’s a lot of junk for sale out there, so any tips you have on how to weed through and find the right ones to investigate. In some ways it seems like stock picking: there’s a ton of stuff out there and you could analyze each one, but you need some mechanism to quickly triage and narrow down to ones worth further investigation. On sites like Flippa, I worry that there’s so much competition from other buyers, it might be tough to find great deals.
Happy Anniversary by the way!
Hey Matthew,
Yah Flippa is tough and I generally don’t buy sites through there actually because of what you just said – low quality and too much competition. Good suggestion on something to discuss in more detail as I’ve been burned before and learned some good lessons.
Hi Chris – Thanks for this blog….I started buying a few websites. I got burned on Flippa, but also got a very nice one there as well. So, things are like the wild west on Flippa, it is not like Ebay, so buyer beware! I got burned…a blog post on experiences to avoid might be a good thing when buying a website..thanks, Kathy
Hey Kathy,
Yes I have had a few bad experiences as well so I’ll be sure to do a post on that as well 🙂
Chris
Hey Chris thanks for this guide.
I never though we could make this much even buying websites. this sounds a great business. This could be difficult task for us as we are new in this field, but with the help from Chris hope to get on track quickly.
thanks,
Vijay
Hmmm…. you’re giving me stuff to think about… looking forward to hearing more about this as buying websites has never been on my radar before. Thanks for the in depth info and HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Contrats to you and your wife!
Thanks Mary – yah it’s a fun area to work in 🙂
I bought a website recently and am working to improve it (have been very pleased with the results so far).
I am curious though, what this site was previously making each month and how much you paid for it.
It was making $100 – $200 a month and had only just recently hit that amount. As for the sale price, not sure if I am going to disclose that just yet. Going to wait for a six month mark or something and go over all the numbers at once.
Fair enough 🙂
The website I mentioned buying in that comment was making a similar amount to yours and improved similarly too after some changes I made and a little extra SEO.
Mostly just wanted to compare.
Also wanted to say thanks because one of the changes I made for the website was to load Easy Azon on it. Less than a month later and your plugin has basically paid itself off! Not to mention how much easier it is to add links to new sites I’m building 🙂
Hey John,
That’s awesome glad the plugin is working well for you 🙂
Chris
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the case study.
Would you mind sharing what kind of traffic this site is getting.
Thanks again.
Mitch
Oh, and Happy Anniversary!
Hey Mitch,
It’s over 100,000 page views per month (I’ll do a traffic post in the later part of the case study)
Oh and thanks for the congrats 🙂
Hey Chris,
Thanks for doing this case study as it is a great way for us to learn. As one of the above posters mentioned, I’d also like more info on how to find relevant websites (outside Flippa) and convince the owners to sell.
Also since this site is more community based than your affiliate sites, how are you focusing on retaining and growing the audience? Do you think too many monetization techniques could turn off the audience?
Thanks again,
Tanvir
Hey Tanvir,
I just gradually add more to the monetization and monitor time spent on page. If it starts to drop it could be because of the increase in advertising, but as I explained in the post I did very little and yet the income went up 🙂
Yah I’ll need to cover that in more detail (finding sites) in a later post
Really interesting stuff Chris – thank you for being so candid. Website acquisition is something I am interested in, although I do not have the time for it at the moment. Conceptually it is sound – acquire an undervalued asset and improve it. Such things are always possible in business – why should the internet be an exception?
Oh and congrats on the wedding anniversary 😀
Yes thanks!
Yah exactly, and most traditional big money investors are too distracted by other things to get involved in internet acquisitions. 🙂
Hi Chris,
Thanks for this motivating post! However, is it okay to use vibrant media ads in conjunction with ad sense ?
Yes otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it 🙂
Nice Chris! I submitted a publisher inquiry request with Vibrant awhile back, but never heard from them…
Hi Chris Guthrie,
This is really very good and informative article. This is very helpful for the neophytes in website management. Well thanks for the information.
Blimey O’Reilly Chris another post choc-a-bloc full of great advice, plus it is great following your development of the site. Cheers sir and have a grand weekend.
p.s. saw the discussion about flippa. would love to read your views on auctions in general and related advice.
Thanks for the great article. I was wondering if you knew, does Rivit Media allow for publishers outside the U.S to participate in the advertising program?
Unsure – you’d have to contact them.
I’d like to second what others have been saying. How do you find websites to buy?
That’s a lot of what we will cover in the course but I’ll write a post covering that in the future as well. I generally prefer to stay away from the typical places like Flippa.com.
Thanks for the response bro. Looking forward to more case studies!
For sure 🙂
Very interesting ideas. Do you think Vibrant Media in-text links have any effect on ranking?
No I haven’t seen any impact…
Thanks for this case study on buying a website. I will come back to learn more.
One more for wanting to know about where to source great websites. I know form a previous post you’ve mentioned in the past on approaching people directly, but would still be great to know places where you’re always likely to find a good deal. Like the others I’ve found there is so much rubbish on flippa and the good ones get pounced on quick.
In addition to this, would be nice to know where you offload sites, obviously selling is a great way to realising the capital gains in a website so I imagine you might be selling as much as buying over the next 12-24 months?
Hey Josh,
Yah I can see people want to know more about where I buy good sites (guess I’m glad I keep hearing that as it’s one of the things I’ve discussed in depth in VirtualMoguls when we launch later this month) but I think I’m going to do a webinar covering a bunch more good info for free on where I find websites (just thought of that now as a good way to cover it).
As for selling I’m not currently selling any of my sites. My goal is to get up to about $20k per month with website income from purchased websites and continually focus on outsourcing the management of the sites so that I can keep my attention focused on much bigger potential 7 figure+ businesses that need as much of my time possible to help direct and manage. Those bigger opportunity businesses are things I may eventually discuss on the blog but for now I am keeping them more secretive.
Bottom line I want to build a solid six figure income from just websites I’ve purchased and use that money to help pay my bills while I turn my attention towards business ideas that can help me buy the Guthrie Castle.
Very interesting article Chris. Sounds like you have a focused plan on what you will be doing. It would be great to see later after you have completed all 7 steps to see a before and after comparison.
Just signed another ad deal for the site which will add another revenue stream of very low intrusive advertising to the site. Should easily hit first $1k month before the end of the year and maybe even $2k – we shall see…
Chris, how do you filter through all the garbage websites and find good ones to buy?
Think I’ll cover this in a webinar that I’ll be announcing for newsletter subscribers in September. Too much of an indepth topic to cover in a single blog post update and because this series is on how I’m taking one website along the steps of increasing traffic and income it doesn’t really fit in that well.
I would love to learn how you start a Internet Marketing business from scratch. I personally don’t have the money to buy websites more then 300-400 dollars so how can I be successful in this business with so little cash and no room for errors?
Sign up for the newsletter and come on the webinar when I cover this in more detail 🙂
So where do you usually buy the websites?
Chris did you consider any of the other in text advertising platforms like InTopic or InfoLinks? InTopic is new and doing an 80% payout.
Hi Chris,
I just listed one of my blogs theapptimes dot com on Flippa for sale. If you are interested in purchasing sites, do check it out.
Trying to buy less blogs these days – expenses too high and the headache of managing as well…
Hi Chris,
Sorry if you have already answered this but where did you find the site and what is the process of tranferring the domain and hosting etc to yourself?