For example, if you want to sell a quick flipped starter site (like the future walkthrough here is going to be once I get a final price point set), people seem to be looking for “popular” niches. For instance medical, insurance, legal, weight loss, etc. would do well (known for decent-paying keywords so people are already looking for that starter content). At the same time, they’ll rarely look for something like a music site (a niche where ad payouts are notoriously low).

For those who want to invest more time into fully developing, aging, and monetizing a site before flipping it, it’s a bit different. There you need to not only know the ads can pay well, but you’ll have to make the site reasonably competitive (which is difficult in some of those popular niches). This is where buyers would kill for a gem of a niche – great paying ads, but not oversaturated. It’s one part research and one part luck in finding those. I’ve been lucky in stumbling across two excellent paying, under-saturated niches where I earn several dollars per click on average. I’ve had a five-figure offer on the older one (but I won’t ever sell it b/c of the personal branding efforts I put into it – I’ve had that for 2 – 3 years). If I built it and tried to flip it immediately, I would have been lucky to get mid-$xxx, because no one was really aware of the niche’s potential (and fortunately they’re still not, as it remains fairly difficult to build the recurring audience there to see those long-term benefits). One of the two sites I mentioned is actually one I developed as the third quick flip site recently for this post series. It was completely dumb luck that it monetized extremely well (while I won’t shout it from the rooftops, if you look back through related posts here you’ll find it fairly easily – niche isn’t a big secret).

The real money will almost always be in keeping the sites for residual earnings yourself. But if flipping them can earn some freelance writers more than the $5 – 10 they might be offered from clients, there’s no reason they shouldn’t consider it as a new income stream option.