Interview With Desmond Ong – Site Flipping Expert

Desmond Ong is the co-founder of The Site Flipping Code with his business partner, Jani G. Desmond has been regarded as one of the top site flippers on the internet due to his vast experience in the field as well as his remarkable strategies to flip sites.

1. How did you first get started with internet marketing? And eventually site flipping?

Hey Stanley. I got started in internet marketing when I was 15 year old. After reading ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ by Robert Kiyosaki, I realized that I need to make a life changing decision and I decided to make money on the internet.

My first business on the internet is by selling customized stuff on eBay and I wasn’t doing very good. After realizing I need to move on, I bought the late Corey Rudl’s “Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business On The Internet” which is a home study course. I started to get into niche marketing and made some money out of it selling $97 eBooks.

Then, there was this blogging trend when everyone has a blog and I decided to get into the blogging business as well. Unfortunately, I am never a good blogger and decided to sell those blogs away and I was shocked to be able to sell 5 blogs for a combine amount of $3,000.

And that’s how I got into the site flipping business.

2. What was your most successful site flip? What niche was it in? How much time and money did it take?

My most successful flip is really a fitness and diet membership site that I sold back in 2008 for $12,000. It’s not a lot of money but I only took less than 10 days to complete the website and recruited over hundreds of members that will pay the recurring fees.

After seeing the result of that flip, I managed to duplicate the success over and over again.

3. What types of sites should people flip? What types of sites should people avoid flipping?

There are a lot of sites that people can flip – from forums to blogs. I personally recommend people who do not know anything about site flipping to flip turnkey script sites. There are a lot of turnkey script sellers on the internet and sometimes you can even buy them for as low as $10 and best of all, you can use the same script over and over again on different domain names. Plus, it’s very noob-friendly.

The type of sites that people should avoid flipping is really…none. I personally believe that every site can be flipped. Even if the website is the worst website on the internet, you can develop the site for a few days and that website can be sold for a higher price that you could imagine.

4. How do you find the right niche?

I always pick the hottest niches like health, dating and money niches. I suggest newbies to go into the hot niches too because in hot niches – it’s impossible for you to go wrong.

Otherwise, you can always go to Clickbank and check out what’s hot and what’s not. If a lot of people are buying that stuff in that niche – you can always be sure that that’s the niche that you want to get into.

5. What is the number one mistake people make when it comes to site flipping?

There are actually 2 number one mistakes that people always make. 

The first mistake is pricing their sites ridiculously high. I’ve seen some sites that have no traffic, no earnings and bad designs without any history selling for $1,000. For example, not long ago, I just saw a plain blog with plain designs, 6 blog posts, no earnings and no traffic was listed for sale for $450. Of course, that blog was not sold.

The second mistake is skipping the basics. You have no idea how many of newbie site flippers actually skip the foundation of site flipping. You need to learn to start from scratch so you know how to outsource the works easier and cheaper as well as how to build the best sites.

6. Many of the readers here at TUK are bloggers. What are the keys to flipping a blog?

Blog designs.

Blog’s value has dropped ever since the CPA marketing trend took over. But generally, if you can have a blog that makes $100 per month (easily attainable), good theme design, powered by WordPress – your blog should have a value of more than $1,000.

7. How do you grow your website after you’ve purchased it or built it from scratch? When is the right time to “flip”?

The best way to grow websites is to prepare a schedule of when you want to bring traffic to it and also a plan on how to make money of it.

For example, if you bought a product site which sells eBook in the internet marketing niche (big niche in the “money” niche), you can plan out how much you want to run PPC on it. The most effective methods to quickly grow it are to leverage other people’s mailing lists and forum marketing. You can run a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on the Warrior Forum and after making some sales – you could flip it for big profits.

The right time to flip is very subjective as it depends on the market and types of sites which we will cover in The Site Flipping Code.

8. How are you able to demand the best prices when selling your websites? How do you write the best ad copy for your website listing in the marketplace?

Demanding a good price for your site is easy if you know what the main selling points of your websites are. Most of the time, you need to know what the buyers want in a site. Most buyers obviously love sites that are generating good earnings (passive would be even better) as well as good design. Some go for long term potential.

Another great way to demand good price is to increase the number of bids in your auction listing. The more bids you see, the higher chance that the buyers will want to “buy-it-now” bid your site. Of course, you will need to know how to fish for more bids. One method that I like to use to fish more bids is to give away review copy of whatever that I am selling on my site to bidders only. This prompt interested buyers to bid.

Writing a good copy is essential but a listing copy is very different from a sales page copy. The main thing that you need to remember when constructing a listing copy is to be straight to the point and as simple as possible. Lesser words are always better because trust me, no one wants to read a six thousand words listing copy. Use some basic HTML (if you don’t know HTML like me, get NVU which is a free HTML editor) to give the headline and sub-headline some striking colors like dark red or blue. Make sure you use paragraphing wisely.

9. Tell us a bit about The Site Flipping Code. Who do you think this product is for?

The Site Flipping Code was born when Jani G (my business partner for this project) knew that they were a lot of people approaching me to ask me questions related to site flipping as well as paying me big bucks just to coach them on how to make money from site flipping.

Because of this incredible demand, we decided to create The Site Flipping Code which is both of me and Jani’s biggest ever launch.

The Site Flipping Code is really the best product on site flipping on the internet currently in our opinions because it is broken down into many different courses that cater people who have no idea how to make money online to experts who know how to program a powerful website. Most importantly, the theories and strategies that are outline in the course are proven to be effective after we went through many trials and errors that took us over 6 months to test!

10. Thanks for your time. Do you have any final comments?

You’re welcome Stanley.

I know a lot of people have yet to take action even though they want to make money on the internet. My advice is, just do it.

Just take action and do it. If the outcome is successful, then, that’s great because you can make money…and maybe even lots of money. If the outcome is a failure, you still gain something…experiences and lessons. A lesson that will teach you not to repeat the same mistake again. So, there’s really nothing to lose if you take action.

I started out with nothing. My parents do not believe in me. My friends think I’m lying. My teachers think I’m crazy. But so what? You shouldn’t care about what people think about what you think. You know what you want and it’s your own destiny to pursue it.

Thanks everybody. 

Update: Great follow-up responses posted by Desmond below in the comments section