There is a saying that says "buy low and sell high". Have you ever heard of it? Well, the old adage is especially true in buying and selling websites. Let's face it, there are so many people out there who can build a web site. Most skilled web developers can put up a website that looks great and is SEO friendly in about 20 minutes. How do they do this? Believe it or not, who cares? They build great websites and sell them for dirt cheap because they don't know how to get the site profitable and sell it for big bucks. How are you going to to it? I am glad you asked. Pull up a chair and let's get started.
Finding a site is not too hard if you know what you are looking for. If you go to SitePoint's marketplace, look around at completed auctions. Make a list of the winners and selling points. You will have a list of website topics that are constantly raking in the cash. Now take your list over to some webmaster forums. One such forum is Digital Point. You will see tons of sites for dirt cheap. Look for those that match your "hot topics" list. Before you buy the site, we'll go into some criteria for making a selection.
First off, does the seller have a good reputation? Look for sellers with lots of positive feedback. This won't guarantee the quality, but it helps a lot. Look at the domain name. Domains that are at least 6 months old are desirable and I try to buy only .com domain web sites. Look at the design and content. If the content is readable, that should be good enough. For your first flip, look for something under $100.
Once the site is yours, fix all the grammar and spelling errors, fix formatting and whatever looks bad. Now, go and promote the site and get traffic and income will follow if you have great offers. You could also use Adsense to get money for surfer's clicks.
Once the site has traffic and income, you are ready to sell for a nice profit over at SitePoint. Simply repeat the process and build your business from there.