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Buying a Website: It’s Done!

Buying a Website: I (Finally) did it!

buying-a-website

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you will know this. But for those who haven’t and are just finding their way here now, I’ll give you the brief update. I taught English in South Korean universities for 10 years.

A couple of months ago, I returned to Canada. I wavered back and forth about what to do upon my return, but eventually decided to go all-in on the digital entrepreneur no matter how crazy it seemed. The 9-5 would make me die a little on the inside each and every single torturous day. Frugal living, 12-hour days. I was willing to do whatever it took.

The Big Question: Money, What to Do?

The big question was what to do with the pool of money that I’d be taking with me from Korea, which ended up being around $80,000 USD. I already has a large pool of other money tied up in dividend paying stocks so I decided that investing more money in the stock market wasn’t a particularly good option.

That left me with a couple of other options including buying some real estate, or buying some established websites. Real estate didn’t seem particularly good because I didn’t have enough money to buy something outright, nor did I really want to be tied to a physical location. So buying a website (or two or three) it ended up being.

How Buying a Website Went Down

I’ve been listening to the Empire Flippers podcast for years now and although I’ve never met them, they seem like really legit kind of guys. Straight up, honest, and not sketchy in the quite often sketchy world of online. They’re basically a website broker who matches buyers with sellers and they do a lot of the work including vetting the sites, holding the cash in escrow, transferring the site over, etc. They aim to take the friction out of buying a website, which I’m all about too!

I regularly cruised Empire Flippers looking for Amazon affiliate sites  in the $10,000 USD range. There have been quite a few in the past months but they get snapped up in about 10 seconds. I think there is another buyer (or few) out there who are trying to do the exact same thing I am.

Anyway, I (finally and thankfully) got my hands on one for $9000 USD that is currently earning around $360 per month in the sports accessories niche. I’ll reveal the URL in a later post once I get my hands fully on it and make it even more awesome. It’s still in the process of being transferred over as I type this.

The Future: All-In on the Amazon Affiliate Sites

I started my first Amazon Affiliate site (Reusable Menstrual Cups) a year or so ago and despite making a ton of mistakes, still made money. This really encouraged me, especially since I now know a lot more about what not to do. I add an article every month or so to this site but there really isn’t a whole lot more I can write about on this topic.

I then started another Amazon site (Kitchen Gadget Reviews) and turned most of the writing over to my virtual assistant. I focus mostly on SEO and promotion. It has a lot of content (and potential) but now it’s just a numbers game with the traffic from Google.

In the process of starting Kitchen Gadget Reviews, I discovered another niche that had a decent number of searches but very few websites with solid information. So, I bought a domain and started getting some content up on this third one, which will be revealed later when it has more content on it. The plan is to get the virtual assistant writing for this one too.

And then of course the new site which already has a ton of content on it. I mean there’s really a lot of content. The plan is to dig around and see what I can tweak to optimize sales as well as do some keyword research and see what is missing and either write the content myself or get the virtual assistant going on that one.

Although I still make more money from self-publishing books on Amazon, affiliate marketing is way more interesting to me so onwards and upwards with this! I’d also like to buy another website or two so for now it’s just about being patient and waiting for the right one to come along.

In Random Other News…

And in other news, I had planned to live for free on a farm on Vancouver Island (in exchange for a bit of work) but that was a total and complete bust. So, I moved to Vancouver, bought me a sweet travel trailer for $6000 USD and through a series of events, now live basically for free in a driveway. Frugal power fist-pump! The trailer driveway thing is way radder than it sounds, in case you’re maybe thinking that it actually sounds terrible. The trailer is a super-pimped out 26-feet of awesome, complete with a 10 foot power-slide that is best seen in action.

Exciting times ahead!

2 Comments

  1. Hi Jackie, I don’t know if this is the right place to ask but do you have any advice for people looking to get out of Korea in the way of setting up a bank, getting credit/ a credit card while still living over here? I think it would be really helpful for your readers…(self included) Good luck on the websites and say hello to Brad next time you see him!

    Terry

    • Hey there Terry…I think most people already have that stuff set up back home before they went to Korea? Otherwise, I’d probably do it when you go back to visit your family. Just lie and use your parent’s address!

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