Anatomy of a Flip: Day 1

This week I am going to be flipping a new domain name of ours FitnessGames(dot)us. With an increased interest in working-out from home and the introduction of Wii Fit people are looking for Fitness Games.

While we contract-out a majority of our domains, from time to time I like to flip a name myself. Sometimes this is because I have a very specific vision for what the site should be, or many times I feel that I can write very high-quality content about the material. In the case of FitnessGames(dot)us it’s a site I could visualize from the moment I bought it and am now ready to bring that vision to life.

I will be flipping the domain in seven stages to teach people what I think are the essential elements required to successfully flip a domain. My goal is to make FitnessGames(dot)us a major destination online for people searching for Fitness Games. I can sell fitness video games and books directly from the site. We want all of our flips to be useful web sites with access to information that people are looking for. At the same time it is important to monetize your traffic so you must always ask yourself, "What would someone buy when visiting my site?"

Just to show how flipping a domain doesn’t have to take-up very much time I’ll let you know the exact time spent on each activity.

To start I outlined the five pages that will comprise the first version of this site.

Main Page/Intro Page:  Intro text about fitness games, Google AdSense
Fitness Books: Text about fitness books. Google AdSense, Amazon Books, Clickbank Books
Fitness Video Games: Text about fitness video games. Google Adsense, Amazon Video games
Fitness at Home: Text about fitness at home, Google Adsense, Amazon books
Fitness Games Forum: Live web forum that allows visitors to interact with each other

Task: Outline 5-pages for site
Time to complete task: 10 minutes

Next I started looking for my stock photography. You always want to be sure that every image used in your flip is completely licensed and allowed for web use. Don’t just use images you find through Google Image Search, this could come back to haunt you.

I found a great image for the top graphic – the headline of the site. I always make sure to get this perfect – it will set the tone for the site and will be the first thing a user sees when they come to your site.

Task: Find stock photography for top image
Time to complete task: 15 minutes

It’s important to know your target market so I like to look on Google at sites similar to what I am creating. It only takes a few minutes to look at the five top sites on Google and might just give you some good ideas for your flip!

Task: Look at sites in same target market on Google
Time to complete task: 10 minutes

Now that I have a good idea of who my target market is, and a nice graphic that is going to set the theme for the site – I’m ready to design the top graphic. This is where Photoshop skill certainly comes-into play. I have used Photoshop for 10+ years so am very familiar with it and can make images quickly. This is one nice edge I had when I started flipping domains and certainly a great tool to develop if you haven’t already. Photoshop will be key to creating high-quality graphics for your website.

Task: Create top image for site
Time to complete task: 10 minutes

Now that I have my top graphic I’ll put it onto the initial shell of my website. I create an index.html file and copy and paste the main header code I use in my pages. I change the meta tag information to suit the content of this domain. I upload this file to my FTP server so I now have a base to start from.

Task: Create index.html page and place top image onto the site
Time to Complete task: 15 minutes

That’s it. Day one has finished. My life is far too busy to spend 8-hours a day flipping domains. Just an hour of work today is fine for me – at the same time I have five other sites being developed by independent contractors – so there’s plenty of work being done. That’s one great thing about domain flipping – if you want to get in on the action and get your hands dirty, you can. If you want to sit back and have the sites developed for you – you can do that too!

I hope that by the end of the week you’ll see that by spending an hour/day or less you too can flip a domain in a week. As always, Happy Flipping!

You can watch the site as it develops at www.FitnessGames(dot)us


Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton