If you're thinking about tapping into the emerging digital market, now is the time to invest. Unlike most other markets, digital real estate is something you can invest in without massive risks.
Abraham Piper used to be an ordinary dad who worked at a dead-end job in a warehouse. One day, he decided to start a small blog, just for fun. This simple blog started to grow slowly, and today Piper makes over $17 million a year from his blog.
Piper is one of the many people who became millionaires from blogs and websites. Believe it or not, these entrepreneurs didn't become successful by pure luck. They made investments in digital real estate with a proper plan and got huge returns.
What is digital real estate?
Everyone's familiar with real estate investment. It's as simple as buying a house or land to rent or sell for profit. Digital real estate works the same way. Every domain name, every website and every blog you see online is internet property. It's digital real estate you can buy and sell just like those houses, apartments and lots.
In fact, there are people making a living buying and selling domain names and websites full time. Some domain names sell for millions of dollars, and websites often gets acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars.
And yes, you can make money with digital real estate too.
What are the requirements?
One of the biggest reasons many people stay away from investing in websites is believing that it requires advanced technical knowledge and web design experience to build and manage a website. It's quite the contrary.
You don't need any experience to set up a website and start investing in digital real estate. New technologies and free software platforms such as WordPress have made this process much easier for beginners. Today, you can set up a website with just one click.
Buying vs. building a website
There are two ways you can invest in digital real estate: You can either build a website of your own from scratch or buy an established website.
Each strategy comes with its own benefits and downsides. Building a website from scratch requires a very small investment, but you have to put in a lot of work to make it successful, and it will take a long time before you can sell it for profit. If you decide to buy a website, it will cost you a lot of money, but since the site is already making a profit, you can get a return on your investment much sooner.
Where to buy established websites
If you have enough funds to buy an established website, there are several marketplaces you can explore to find websites on sale.
Flippa is one of the most popular marketplaces where you can begin your search. This platform allows you to participate in website auctions and buy websites that are already making a profit. The website listings in the marketplace show you the exact amount of money the site generates every month and what type of monetization strategies it uses to generate revenue.
When buying websites, you can't always trust the listings. It's best to do your own research to make sure your investment doesn't go to waste. You can use a tool like SEMrush to analyze a website and check its SEO, backlinks, visitor count and other statistics before buying. You can also hire a website brokerage firm like FE International, which handles all that heavy work for you and helps you find the right website for your investment.
How to build your own website
If you decide to build a website from scratch, you can do it all by yourself. All you need to do is to buy a domain name, buy website hosting and install WordPress on your hosting plan, which usually costs less than $100.
Different ways to make profit from your website
After buying or making your website, you need to create content on a consistent schedule to attract visitors to your website and generate traffic. Use Google's Keyword Planner to brainstorm ideas for your blog using words that people are searching for.
If you're too busy to write blog posts and promote your website, you can easily hire freelancers to write content on your behalf. You can find freelancers from sites like Upwork at affordable prices.
Once you're generating enough traffic to your website, you can monetize that traffic to generate revenue from your website. Here are a few ways you can make money from your traffic.
Advertising: You can sell ad space on your website or use an ad network like AdSense to monetize website traffic. When people click on an ad, you earn money.
Affiliate marketing: This involves promoting and selling products created by other businesses. Whenever someone buys a product through your recommendation, you earn a commission off the sale.
Selling products: You can also create and sell your own products, like e-books, online courses and software on your website.
Sponsored content: Advertisers will often reach out to you to sponsor blog posts that promote their own brands and products. They will pay you to write about their products on your blog.
In conclusion
Eventually, you may well start making a profitable income from your website. Then you can decide whether to sell your website for a profit or to continue developing to use it as an income stream. The choice is yours!
The good news is that you don't have to open your checkbook or empty your bank account to invest in a website or a blog. The bad news is, unlike when you invest in stock or real estate, you can't expect the value of your digital real estate to go up over time while not doing anything. You have to put in the work to make your website more successful and increase its value. So, make sure you're willing to put in the work before you invest.