This week’s deals feature 2 websites for sale from Empire Flippers and Flippa in the real estate and automotive niches, and 2 from our private Facebook group in the gaming and arts and crafts niches. We also cover an aged domain in the music niche from Odys.
For domains, we share findings on 5 aged SEO domains and 4 branded domains live at GoDaddy auctions.
Aged Domain: PianoCircus.com
Summary
Niche: Piano
Source: Odys Global (see listing here)
Age: 1998 (25 Years)
Listed Price: $4,170
Ahrefs
Notable links: NBC News, The Guardian, BritishCouncil.org, ElPais.com, 100LayerCake.com, Wikipedia (nofollow)
Site History
This domain was used for over 20 years by a musical group that performed piano concerts.
Here’s what the site looked like:
Growth Blueprint
With its long history and “Piano” in the domain name, this domain provides a good opportunity to grow a niche site about piano entertainment, learning piano, and piano equipment.
Here’s what I would do:
- Publish content about piano entertainment like concerts and piano performing artists. This topic matches the focus of the original site.
- Publish buying guides about piano equipment to meet specific needs (e.g., “best keyboard for child to learn piano” has a KD of 6 and volume of 200)
- Find low-competition keywords related to “piano” to target with informational articles (AHREFs shows 42K keywords matching “piano” with KD of 0-10)
- Publish listicles about piano songs with affiliate links to sheet music (e.g., “best jazz songs for piano” has KD of 2 and volume of 200)
Monetization could be primarily affiliate links to courses or apps that teach piano (e.g., Piano in 21 Days) and Amazon links to piano equipment. Display ads could be a good additional source of revenue for monetizing informational articles.
5-Year-Old Real Estate Site Making $2,948/mo on Empire Flippers
Summary
Niche: Home/Real Estate
Source: Empire Flippers (see listing)
Profit: $2,948/mo from Mediavine Display Ads and digital products sales
Asking Price: $132,665 at a 45X multiple using an 8-month average
Ahrefs
Due Diligence Dashboard
Growth Blueprint
Highlights
- More than 330 articles already published
- Significant traffic and revenue rise in last 6 months
- Comes with a digital product with $1,300 in sales in the last month
- Mailing list with 3,500 subscribers
Setbacks
- The increase in traffic and revenue during December is due to unaccounted direct traffic leading to one article
- The website features an active 301 redirect, which accounts for over 25% of all incoming links
- An unusually high proportion of direct traffic
Easy Wins
- Digital product wins: increase the pricing of the product, introduce bundles and upsells using ThriveCart, add call-to-actions throughout articles, implement a popup, and market to the email list. None of this is being done today.
- Add direct affiliate programs for digital course and physical products; there are plenty in this niche
- Add Google EEAT elements such as author box
- Double down on keywords like “container home in [CITY].” The existing articles are ranking well.
Takeaway
The site was created by merging two separate sites. The two separate sites are topically relevant. The site offers a digital product, with a respectable number of sales last month but there is significant room for improvement as outlined in the above section.
The site’s December performance raises red flags that cannot be overlooked. An unexplained surge in direct traffic to a single article, coupled with increased advertising rates, led to a four-fold increase in revenue for the month.
Unfortunately, this spike in traffic is not sustainable, and without a clear explanation for the sudden increase, it cannot be considered in the website’s valuation.
Flippa Site: LamboCars.com
Summary
Niche: Automotive
Source: Flippa (see listing here)
Revenue: $519/mo from AdThrive and Adsense display ads
Ahrefs
Due Diligence Dashboard
Growth Blueprint
Highlights
- 20+ year-old site
- Solid backlink profile with links from authority sites like slashgear, roadandtrack and autoevolution
- Almost 3,000 articles already published
- Stable traffic during the last 12 months
Setbacks
- Seller owns SuperCars.net, which targets most of the keywords this site ranks for. Large conflict of interest.
- Possible trademark infringement (i.e., Lambo)
- Most of the content doesn’t rank at all
Easy Wins
- Develop a newsletter targeted to these car owners. Cover the brand’s news, new vehicles, etc. These would be high-net-worth individuals that would subscribe.
- Social media traffic should do well in this niche, specifically on Instagram
- Perform a content audit; remove unnecessary articles that are short-form and provide no SEO value
Takeaway
The website in question is an interesting find on Flippa auctions. It is a 20-year-old site with 3,000 articles published about Lamborghini cars.
However, the website is under-monetized despite its current traffic numbers, which are not accurately reflected due to a lack of proper GA setup.
Additionally, much of the content is not ranking well, and there may be potential trademark infringements associated with the domain name.
Despite these challenges, the website has growth potential. The website’s revenue can likely increase by improving the display ads already in place and exploring alternative revenue streams such as affiliate marketing and direct ads.
I highly recommend starting a weekly newsletter in this space and selling advertisement spots. This would be lucrative.
🚀 Off-Market Sites
The Website Flip runs a Facebook group where sellers can list sites for sale. Here is a selection of a few sites:
- $1.7K/mo Gaming Site: 1-year-old site earning $1,699 L6M average via Adsense only. Averaging 58K pageviews over the last 6 months. Over 200 articles published.
- $250/mo Arts and Crafts Site: 1-year-old site earning $253 L12M average via Amazon and ShareASale. 167 articles published, receiving about 5K visitors per month.
🚀 Aged & Brandable Domains
Aged domains currently bidding from $32 to $ 3,650 at the time of writing.
- ItalianTourism.com: The site of the Italian National Tourist Board started in 1999. It has a DR of 55 and is ranking for 471 keywords in the top 100 positions. Backlinks from Forbes, NYTimes and TheGuardian.
- DakotahSteakhouse.com: Was a steakhouse restaurant in Rapid City, SD started in 2011. The domain has a DR of 26 and ranks for 125 KWs with backlinks from BusinessInsider, BuzzFeed and CBSNews.
- JustForAll.com: A vegan food manufacturer started in 2017. It has a DR of 54 and is ranking for 1 KW. Backlinks from Forbes, TheGuardian and WashingtonPost. The domain redirected to Ju.st in 2018.
- PilatesStyle.com: Started in 2005. This was the website for a Pilates print magazine with a DR of 46 and ranking for 1 KW. Backlinks from Wikipedia and WeightWatchers.
- HeartlandSpa.com: Was a spa close to Chicago from 2008 onward. It has a DR of 25 and ranks for 8 KWs with backlinks from ChicagoTribune, TripAdvisor and OutsideOnline.
Branded domains bidding from $216 to $12,000 at the time of writing.
