Sunday, October 26, 2008

Real Estate

The Virtual Real Estate Industry is Exploding!

Yes the above picture was an actual domain/website sale sold for yes, millions...Who Would Have Thunk?

Virtual Real Estate is an industry not talked about a whole lot. Yet silently, lots of folks are going from zero to making $100/day with very little investment and low risk. Think about it, starting a blog with as little as $100 investment and within 6 months you are pulling in passively over $3,000 / month. Could you imagine having 10 of those...you could simply quit your job and run your virtual real estate empire!

What the heck is "virtual real estate"?

It is a website or blog business or a domain name and the best way to explain it is to think about real brick and mortar real estate. When you go to a mall, that building is 'commercial' real estate and the owner rents space to all those stores. The mall is usually located in a very high traffic area convenient for lots of people to drive to and visit. So the Victoria's Secret store, the Gap, the GNC store set up shop at the mall to get access to that traffice and theyl pay rent to the owner of the mall and that owner makes some nice passive cashflow from that.

Well virtual real estate has the same type of concept except it is 'virtual' or the traffic exists on the internet. Believe it or not, your website or blog can be a great 'virtual' mall too and the trick is to figure out how to create your own location that has high traffic.

What Kind of Traffic?

Quite simply, targeted traffic. If you created a blog or webstite about diabetes for instance, then you would start to attract focused visitors to your site. That is huge for advertising as you can monetize your site via adsense (you get paid when people click on an ad on your web page), selling affiliate products or your own product or ebook and maybe even selling the now hot thing, a 'membership' to a private area of your site where you might coach the members, provide private label information, or valuable information. So this traffic or quite simply, a person visiting your blog/webstite can:

  1. Click on Adsense advertisements on your site and that means money to you. If you haven't set up a google adsense account up yet, you should.
  2. Click on a Banner you might have on your site and you have charged a company a monthly fee to allow their banner on your site
  3. Buy a product from you that you yourself have created (such as an ebook) or that you are a commissioned affiliate for (someone else has written and you have found that product via clickbank . Note, it is always good to make sure you select an affiliate product that is related to your blog or website. So for example, if you are writing about diabetes on your blog/website, then you should pick an affiliate product that your targeted visitors would be interested in.
  4. Sign up for your newsletter so you can keep constant communication with your readers.
  5. Buy a 'membership' from you if you provide that on your site. For instance, back to the diabetes example, maybe you start a $7 per month membership for private access to an area of your blog/website where you provide detailed low glycemic recipes each month including a grocery shopping list for your members to save time for your members.
  6. Participate in your forum if you choose to have that on your site.

What does the above traffic mean?

It translates into dollars. For instance, I know someone who went from zero to $100 a day on his blog within six months. Now that translates to $3,000 month that is mostly passive. The 'heavy lifting' is truly in the first month of your 'virtual start up' as there is indeed a bit of a recipe for success in what you write, how frequentlly, articles you write and submit to article directories and a few other things.

Want in on This Virtual Real Estate Boom?


Sedo Stats Confirms the Virtual Real Estate Boom

The leading online marketplace for buying and selling internet domain names and websites just released its Annual Report. The Report unveils the latest record growth for 2007 as seen in the chart above. Nora Nanayakkara, business development director, Sedo UK, commented: "The report highlights another record year for the secondary Internet domain name market. UK organisations and investors are becoming more aware of the value of Sedo's marketplace in buying and selling Internet domains and websites."


Hurray for Virtual Real Estate allowing us to make money!
Hurray for Virtual Real Estate allowing us to make money!

$3,000 a month...then what?

Well, when i worked for a private investment firm, we would value a "brick n mortar" business for sale for x times earnings depending on what industry it was in. It is not unusual for a business to be sold for 12 to 18 times earnings.

Cash Out on Your Way Out

In the case of $3,000 per month in passive income from a blog, $3,000 x 12 = $36,000 valuation. Hmmm...imagine starting a blog today and in six months being able to cash out for that amount? Now people who don't know how to value their 'virtual business' may get offers of 2 to 3 times earning and think 'wow' - getting $9,000 for this site is great, I'll sell! Well, I'd say Wrong - don't sell! You can:

  1. Keep your lovely $3,000 per month passive income
  2. Stand your ground and ask for at least 6 times monthly earnings and your target should be 12 times earnings
  3. Invest more 'time' into your budding 'virtual' business by adding more things to your blog to increase its value...say perhaps a forum to create more 'stickiness' to your site and provide a social interactive community to your targeted visitors.

To learn more about "virtual real estate" or domaining or website development and website flipping, click on the video below to here a Private interview by a newbie with a very experienced domain flipper and broker, Sean Mitchell.

ps - You will notice I've used many 'terms' about virtual real estate and there is a reason why...there is not 'industry standard'...so some refer to it as domaining, some as website flipping or domain flipping and others like USA Today as '21st century real estate'


Oprah.com...Even Oprah Knows the Value Created...

Even Media Mogul Billionaire Extrodinaire, Oprah knows the value created with a website.

She has just bought 50% of a TV network, Discovery Health, worth MILLIONS with guess what...not cash, not credit, but with half ownership of her website, www.oprah.com. Yes, you read correctly - she has created so much $$$ value $$$ with her website that she was able to use that as her form of payment. How is that for a perfect example of creating value with a website!

Oprah will be the voice and the brand of the appropriately named OWN - The Oprah Winfrey Network.

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