Today I learned how to buy a site on Flippa.com.

For those of you who don’t know, Flippa.com is an online marketplace for buying and selling websites.

Essentially, people looking to sell their website can list their site for auction and those looking to buy websites go there to bid.

I’ve never actually bought a site on Flippa.com before, but my friend Tyler Cruz has bought and sold many of his sites on there.

John Chow, Tyler Cruz and Zac Johnson actually did a webinar today on how to buy and sell sites on Flippa which I tuned into and afterwords I felt inspired to buy a site.

(Webinar replay video included at the end of this post)

After the webinar I looked around on Flippa and one website in particular caught my attention.

It’s not a huge site, just a small site I picked up for under $100, and more than anything I just wanted to try it out and get some experience in buying a site.

I figured if I’m going to do it, I might as well start small so that I don’t get ripped off or make some noobie mistake on a large purchase.

Buying My First Site on Flippa

Buying my first site on Flippa was relatively painless.  The hardest part is finding the right site to buy.

Once I found the site I wanted to buy I had to decide whether I wanted to participate in the bidding for the site or to just buy it outright.

The site I was interested in had a current bid of $65 and a “Buy It Now” price of $99.

I just decided to pay the “Buy It Now” price as I didn’t want to end up losing the site for $10 or something.

Meaning, I figured that if I placed a bid for $75 for example the current highest bidder might just click the “Buy It Now” price and steal it from me.

So I just paid the $99 “Buy It Now” price.

Once you buy the site, Flippa has a cool interface that lets you have a private messaging section between yourself and the seller where you can discuss the details of the transfer.

For larger site purchases it’s smart to go through an escrow service, but since this was only a $99 site I just paid for it outright with PayPal.  I checked out the sellers reputation on Flippa and it seemed pretty legit.

The seller transferred the domain to me in no time at all.  I think I had the domain transferred into my name within 15-20mins of purchase.

He then also backed up the database and the wordpress website files, theme and plugins and emailed those to me as well.

The whole process from start to finish took just a few hours.

As I mentioned before, this is actually my very first time buying a site on Flippa but I think I’m hooked.

I’ve got some ideas on how I can monetize and possibly even flip this site in a few months, but I think I might also start looking to purchase more sites in the near future.

What do you guys think about my purchase?  Do you think I overpaid?  Do you think I got a good deal?

Who else has thought about buying a site on Flippa?

How to Buy and Sell Sites with Flippa Webinar Replay

If you missed the webinar, here is a replay of it:

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