Starting a Site Not Quite From Scratch: My Review of the AdSense Flippers

As I mentioned the other day, I recently purchased a niche AdSense website from the AdSense Flippers.

Although this seemingly goes against what I wrote about a few weeks ago (that AdSense sites are not the strongest online business model), let me explain why I did this.

I wanted to provide a real look at their business model and write an honest, in-depth review of their work.

This is something I may eventually try to do for every top blogger who sells products or services. But I thought I’d start with Justin and Joe and see how things go from there.

So what exactly was I looking to answer?

I wanted to see how exactly the process of buying a niche site from them works, looking at how easy or difficult it might be.

I wanted to judge the quality of the sites they offer, as well as the long-term viability of these sites.

After all, if each site were a real powerhouse, you’d assume they’d keep it for the passive income. So I wanted to see if they’re just selling off their junk, or if they’ve mastered the process and do in fact use the cash to replicate their business cycle.

I wanted to see whether the sites they sell are worth the money. That is, do they sell the sites for a fair multiple, or would it be easier to simply do the work yourself?

And lastly, I wanted to reverse-engineer some of their work.

They’re obviously very successful at keyword research, building a site, and quickly getting it ranking and making money. So I was curious whether an inside look at one of their websites might provide some helpful tips for me to use in the future.

I also wanted to experiment more with niche websites myself.

I enjoy watching Pat Flynn and Chris Ducker build out their main niche websites, and I thought it might be interesting to read about the same experience from the perspective of someone who’s not quite an expert.

These guys are constantly improving their sites and generating a growing stream of revenue, so I’m hoping I can replicate some of this success.

I also wanted to test some theories I have about making Adsense sites even better. Though most sites typically look like spam, I think they can be tastefully made in a Google-friendly and — more importantly — user-friendly way. And so I wanted to see what effect this would have on their profitability.

I already have a few small niche sites of my own, but they haven’t been successful. They rank well… but don’t make money.

So obviously it’s much easier to experiment with my ideas on a site that is already actually making money in a commercially viable niche.

I also wanted to improve upon their work.

The site I bought was small, with a just a handful of backlinks I could find, and with decent content.

I’m curious how the site will perform if I take their foundation and try to improve upon it.

Will adding more articles, more backlinks, and really strong content make the site more profitable, or will this have a negative effect on the ads’ click-through rate (CTR)? Then again, if I can get significantly more traffic coming to the site, a small drop in CTR might be worth it.

I’ll go into the specifics of my plans below.

First, let me share with you the entire process I went through when buying a site from the Adsense Flippers.

I started by emailing them over the weekend, letting them know of my interest.

Within hours I had a reply back.

After you send a 20% deposit, they’ll share the website’s URL with you, along with the Google analytics report and AdSense report.

They require this deposit to protect the integrity of the niche sites that buyers will purchase. After all, if this system weren’t in place, it’d be easy to copy everything they’ve built which would ultimately weaken the site for whomever buys it.

So I received the URL and the reports for a small .org apparel site created in June, running on the CTR theme.

There were a bunch of apparel sites they were selling that interested me, but this one was unbranded (meaning it wasn’t targeting a specific clothing brand).

My thinking was that a branded website would probably always be outranked by the website of the brand itself, so I wanted a site targeting a keyword I had a realistic shot at ranking #1 for.

The niche was something I could see myself working on in my spare time. It’s not a passion or an area I’m an expert in, but it’s also not something that bores the hell out of me.

So then I went to Google, and saw that it had 10 pages indexed — 5 articles, and an About Us page, Privacy Policy, Contact Us page, the sitemap, and the homepage.

The website had 992 views in the past 30 days, and roughly $30 in earnings over the same period. It was ranking on the first page of Google for the target keyword, with a CPC of around $1.10.

The Google analytics report also showed a good mix of traffic sources, with about 10% direct, 13% referrals, and the remainder coming from search. The keyword traffic was also strong and varied; the top keyword drove about 27% of the search traffic, and long tails making up about 50%. Also, only about 45% of the traffic was American, meaning it shows appeal internationally as well.

I used Majestic SEO to track down 11 external backlinks from 6 domains (5 of which were Class C). So my guess is they use a link-building product or service for this.

Alas, it all boiled down to price.

Price isn’t the most important factor when buying a website, but it’s definitely an important one to consider. You don’t want to overpay for a website that won’t be a strong performer.

Ultimately, I paid 17 times monthly earnings for the website.

This may seem high, but here’s why I was fine paying a bit more for a quality website:

1. I trust Justin and Joe. If I went to Flippa and found some random site for cheap, it’s very possible I would have gotten screwed.

I’ve read stories about people who bought niche sites that were eventually blacklisted by Google because of the folks who built it.

I’m just speculating here, but Justin and Joe seem like the kind of guys that, if something like this happened to a site you purchased from them, they’d be happy to swap it out for a similar site.

2.  As I mentioned from the beginning, I have a job during the day, as well as a wife and three kids. Needless to say, my time comes at a premium.

So in my mind, I wasn’t just paying for the website, I was paying for hours of research, writing, setup, backlinking, and the testing time they’ve spent perfecting their process.

If I tried to do everything myself, it would’ve taken many interrupted hours of work — and probably ended up dragging on several months longer — to get the site where it is today.

3.  Because I’m convinced the site has the potential to earn even more money each month. 

In fact, if I can double the traffic, the multiple I paid would be just about 8.5 times monthly earnings. Now I may not be able to do this in a month (though I’m certainly going to try), but I do think there are several steps I can take to draw more Googlers to the site, while getting them to click on the ads.

After I made my decision, I sent them the money via Paypal.

Within minutes, I had a response from Joe confirming my purchase and providing me with a request for the information he needed to complete the transaction.

He asked for:

• Several AdSense unit codes. Again, the site uses a CTR theme, which rotates through ad placements and sizes, so there were a total of four ads I needed to set up and send.
• Domain registration information. They had the domain registered with GoDaddy, so I had to send him my GoDaddy account number, email address, and full name to switch it over to my account. He told me that changing registrars is a bit more complicated, but they’re still able to do it.
• Hosting information. If I used GoDaddy for hosting as well, I would have had to temporarily add them as an Account Executive so they could transfer the site to my hosting account. But all of my websites are hosting with Bluehost, so I had to give him some additional login information to transfer the website to my account. I understand this might make some people nervous, but 1) I trust these guys, 2) they assured me that only one of them would have access to the information, and 3) you could always create a new password and immediately change it back after the transfer is complete.