Anatomy of a Flip: Flipping CheapMercury.com

Only a few hours after finishing the Economic Stimulus flip we began work on taking one of our old mini-sites and bringing it into the 21st century. If you've ever watched a house flipping show this is when they find a house they know will sell, it just needs a updates and additions.

CheapMercury.com is the oldest domain in our portfolio, originally registered back in 1999. When we first acquired the domain we put a one-page mini-site up just to provide some way to monetize any traffic that might be there. We immediately found traffic, and on top of that revenue.

2008 was a very busy year so we didn't have the chance to do anything else with Cheap Mercury so decided to let it be – it was generating revenue and had strong search engine placement within its niche.

One of our first goals in 2009 is to take some of our higher-potential flips from last year and update them adding a new look and feel, additional content, targeted video clips, etc. Remember, for me Domain Flipping isn't about making quick money, it is about building a brand and a business with a domain – that is the flip. If you want to perform quick flips, buying and selling domains quickly you can do that but I'm more of an elephant hunter, always looking for the next big deal.

So what changes were made to CheapMercury.com?

We added four more pages of content including a page dedicated to buying Mercury online as well as information about the danger of Mercury. By adding an "About" page we are building in the structure to continue to build this site as a business.

The design was also changed to put less focus on advertising and more focus on content. We want our visitors to know that we are more than just a portal, there is quality information available from our site. By giving it a new look we also put more focus into branding – CheapMercury.com needs to be an online business with an appeal of its own.

The new site contains over four times the text content with detailed information about the dangers of Mercury and links to the top places online to buy Mercury. Adding YouTube videos gives visitors another way to interact with our site and for us to constantly serve visitors fresh video content.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for – the before and after:

Before

Cheap_mercury_before

After
Cheap_mercury_after

Want to learn how to flip websites like this? Read my book!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton