eWritingJobs.com has been sold.

You may remember this site wasn’t one of the quick-flips. I put a few posts up there quite a while ago, and it sat for some time. In the end, it contained three unique posts, and had a pagerank of 2 (brand new sites to flip won’t have any pagerank). There wasn’t a large amount of traffic, and there was little to no verifiable income.

With primary selling points being the unique content, existing link-building efforts (remember several ezinearticles were linked here and talked about in past posts), a keyword-rich domain name, and modest pagerank, the site sold for $250.

I’m sharing this information to show that even with minimal content, you really can earn by flipping small websites (it can be a good way to spend time you haven’t been able to book with clients, or it can even be a step up over your normal article rate depending on what you charge).

The two quick-flip sites that are finished and ready to be sold have been listed for sale at $150 as starter sites with professional content (weight loss and thrifty / budget living niches). A few things could happen:

1. They’ll sell at the asking price in the next week or two, and that will become the price point for the other 9 or so quick flip sites to be built.

2. They won’t sell and I’ll decide to lower the asking price.

3. They won’t sell, and I’ll let them age a few more months (picking up pagerank, maybe adding some content, doing some link-building and marketing, reworking ads,e tc.), at which point the price will actually go up rather than down, as they won’t be sold as the quick-flip variety.

Either way, when those decisions are made, I’ll update you on the process moving forward for the other quick-flips, and I’ll detail my process in creating those more fully.

Week 2 Summary

What was planned / completed:

• I posted two new articles to the blog, including 100+ Blog Posts and Resources for Writers.
• I upgraded my WordPress installation there.
• I updated the main meta tags.
• I added some Indeed job ads to the site to add another revenue stream.
• I added two new articles to ezinearticles with links back to the blog, and they’re waiting for approval (the two from the previous week were approved and are now live).
• I setup a simple writing jobs Squidoo lens for the blog.
• I contributed more than 5 comments with links to the blog on related blogs (no spammy garbage either – only participating in the actual discussions).

In addition to those things, which were already planned, I also:

• Added a resume section to the job board.

And here’s the plan for this week:

On-Site

• I’d like to get two more new unique articles added.
• I want to put up the job board TOS / instructions for posting.
• I plan to get the feed setup with feedburner and add an email subscription option.

Marketing

• I’d like to get another two articles posted to ezinearticles for the sake of getting some relevant traffic.
• I plan to add a few links to related blog posts on other blogs near the end of each post on the blog (beneficial to the readers, but also adds trackback links that can drive more related traffic to the blog).
• I’m going to offer a special deal / freebie for the first few people to post their resume / portfolio there after I post the instructions (so don’t post yours yet if you want to be eligible).
• I’ll comment on 5 – 10 more niche-related blog posts with links back to the site (with useful comments of course).

That’s it for this week. Check back same time next week to see if I reached these goals or not, and to find out what my next steps are in getting this blog ready for sale.

Week 1 Summary

• I took a while to get around to my week 1 edits. Actually, I technically did them during week 2 (this morning). Last week I was preoccupied with a lot of client work, having to go out-of-state early in the week (so I lost a day), and preparing for my yearly holiday dinner party (which was yesterday).
• I did get the intro on the homepage updated.
• I also added one unique article to the blog. I plan to make my content value one of the bigger selling points when I sell this site, so I’m aiming for at least 500 words per unique post (since I charge a flat $200 for articles of that length, and it’ll make the “actual value” easier to calculate).
• I put two articles on ezinearticles, and they’re waiting for approval. Those will not transfer in any way to the site buyer (but I’ll keep the links in them). They’re pulled from info on some of my other related writing niche sites (including one being a post I put here earlier today), and include links both to eWritingJobs.com and my writing-related e-book.

And here’s the plan for this week:

On-Site

• I’d like to get two new unique articles added.
• I want to run the update to get that WordPress installation upgraded to 2.7.
• I want to update the main site meta tags – they’re outdated, and based on when the main feature of the site was a job board.
• I plan to incorporate some job ads into the site as an additional revenue stream.

Marketing

• I’d like to get two more articles posted to ezinearticles for the sake of getting some relevant traffic.
• I want to setup a Squidoo lens tied to the site.
• I’ll comment on 5 – 10 niche-related blogs with links back to the site (with useful comments of course – I’m a completely white hat type).

And I think that’s plenty for the week.  Check back same time next week to see if I reached these goals or not, and to find out what my next steps are in getting this blog ready for sale.

GoDaddy seems to be offering .info domains for $.99.

While they’re not going to be as valuable as a .com when you sell the site, I’ve found they can be just fine, especially if your price is mostly based on the content and the domain is well-targeted and keyword-rich.

I picked up 11 domains this week there with the intention of quick-flipping some sites (since some folks don’t like sales indexed, I’m not going to list the domains here).

They were also offering free privacy protection on the registration (meaning your details won’t be public in the WHOIS records while you’re waiting to sell the site).

I don’t know how long those deals will be going on, but I just thought they were worth mentioning.

While I won’t be giving out the domain names publicly of anything I want to quick-flip, I will be talking about what I’m doing to prepare them in coming weeks (for some it will be more than just slapping content into the site).

On a sidenote, if you do register your domain with GoDaddy, they’re fine for that. I do, however, recommend strongly against using them for hosting if you don’t already have a hosting account. First of all, it’s not a good idea to register a domain with your host (you run the risk of having it held “hostage” later if you want to change hosts). Also though, I’ve found you have far less freedom with Godaddy’s hosting than with others. Just my $.02 on that.

If you’re considering earning a few bucks with a quick flip, these deals make now a good time to give it a try.