Stacy Caprio was desperate to leave her day job.
She ended up doing just that after acquiring – and improving – a portfolio of mini online businesses. In her case, these were websites that make money from advertising.
Now, this asset class can be risky, and Stacy is open about her early failures.
But if you have some online skills, (or management skills to bring people in if you don’t want to run the site yourself) this can be a fast-track to the cash flow you need to fund your lifestyle.
Since websites often sell for 20-30x monthly earnings, they’re perhaps 10-15x “cheaper” than if you were to rely solely on traditional investments and a 4% withdrawal rate.
Sound like the kind of investment that suits your lifestyle?
Tune in to episode 323 to hear where Stacy finds these businesses to buy, her unique filtering criteria, and a few quick ways she’s been able to accelerate the cash flow of her portfolio for even better returns.
Free Bonus: Download Stacy’s Top Tips For Buying, Improving, and Managing Online Businesses
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Inside you'll find all of Stacy's top tips to start a profitable virtual consulting business.
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Learn:
- How Stacy got into website investing.
- How she learned from mistakes made in her first two site purchases.
- The criteria she uses when evaluating a site.
- Her tips for finding a profitable site for the best price on marketplaces.
- How the site ownership transfer process works.
- The ways she improves and doubles the revenue of a site after buying it.
- Stacy’s #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.
Links / Next Steps
- Her.Ceo
- Flippa
- Niche Pursuits
- Authority Hacker
- A Small Orange
- Tools.Pingdom
- Cloudflare
- Monumetric
- AdThrive
- Ezoic
- Backlinko
- Domain Flipping
Download the Free PDF Highlight Reel
Inside you'll find all of Stacy's top tips to start a profitable virtual consulting business.
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I loved this episode. Stacy has a great message and I really like that she is now sharing her knowledge to help others with her.ceo . Can’t wait to see what comes next!
Thank you MK! So glad you enjoyed the podcast and message. Can’t wait to share with you what’s coming next..stay tuned!
Stacy,
Just listened to the podcast, great stuff and excellent tips. I was wondering if you ever used a site like Yazing for increased income on your sites?
Hi Abe,
Thank you, happy you liked the podcast as well. Yes, I think affiliate sites are a great way to add an extra layer of monetization. In the past I have used CJ affiliates with limited success. This is where testing, choosing the right products for your niche and balancing ads/products comes into play.
I really enjoyed the interview and found the topic to be timely. I’m in the process of setting up my own small business website. Developers want huge money to work on my site even for just basic functionality. How have you solved that for yourself? Do you have someone you could recommend?
Do you have thrive themes already? Maybe I can help.
Hi Tom,
Thank you, and glad the topic came into your life at the right time. Personally I use WordPress.org free pre-made themes and host them on A Small Orange or other host depending on site size. You can play around with the WordPress free themes and Google/Youtube for help + add plugins to get more functionality. It’s a little learning curve but only a small amount of patience and no dev skills are needed. Once you get the hang of it it’s quite simple.
I’d recommend trying a WordPress free pre-made theme and playing around with it seeing if you can get the hang of it so you won’t need to hire a costly developer unless you get stuck and need a little help.
Some people also like Squarespace and Wix non-free version which are completely made for you but less flexible and more expensive overall.
I actually don’t hire a developer to make websites for me, I just hire one to transfer sites between hosts – if you’re looking for one to do site transfers, email me stacycaprio@gmail.com because I have a great recommendation.
jacobson.madeline@gmail.com is actually a really good WordPress developer – she helped teach me WordPress basics when starting out. Try reaching out to her if you want to hire a good site developer.
Good luck!
This is a comment from listener Troy:
“I have also tried my hand at Flippa.com, and in short, I would highly recommend staying FAR AWAY from this site unless you already have the technical skillset to manage and minimally edit existing code for mobile apps and websites. You will also need to quickly develop a digit marketing skillset if you don’t already have one. There are a TON of scammers on the site. Similar to Stacy’s first few experiences with the site, I have had my fair share of complete belly-flops. Many of the sellers are foreign, and unfortunately are not trustworthy and our laws in the U.S. do not apply to them. Trying to take legal recourse will just cause more of a headache.
I’ve had some success with the site by purchasing mobile apps, but even with those apps you commonly only realize 1/3-1/4 of the advertised (“verified”) revenue.
BUYER BEWARE!!”
Hi Troy,
Great points, having the minimum technical skills to edit websites as well as being able to learn as you go is key.
& yes, I 100% agree that due diligence is critical. Unfortunately people will try to sell unprofitable sites either intentionally or unintentionally and you have to be diligent in vetting the good from the bad.
When you find a good one (which can be like a needle in a haystack at times) it can be a great opportunity to learn from an already successful site and grow your own.
-Stacy
I listened to the interview with Stacy yesterday, and I appreciate her openness and fair advice. I’ve been burnt once (my first purchase) on Flippa, but after that, it was smooth sailing. I learned that due diligence skills really make the difference.
For example, if the website I am buying relies mostly on search engine traffic, which I look for, you really have to understand how and why the traffic is coming in! Apart from the tools and tactics that Stacy mentioned, I also use keyword tools that show me where the website is ranking for those top keywords, and how much traffic I can expect from those keywords.
Also, you have to factor in that nothing lasts forever, so 1st position today, can become 2nd page tomorrow.
Goran, I agree completely! Sounds like we’ve had a similar experience. p.s. I loved collaborating with you on the her.ceo guest post.
Link to the guest post? Would love to read it!
Hi Nick. I wanted to thank you and Stacy for this episode. I switched my website from Adsense to Monumetric after listening to this. I’ve gotten two checks from them so far and the difference in revenue has been pretty shocking. I had no idea it was possible to make this type of money on ads alone.
I pointed the Monumetric team to this episode when I was doing my initial onboarding so I hope Stacy gets some type of credit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Awesome Janet! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you Janet, love hearing this!
Please continue to provide the transcripts for your episodes!
I find it much more useful to be able to read those than try to watch/listen.
Thanks very much, love the newsletter!