Collin LaHay Aquires DietHack and Flips It

July 5, 2008 by Collin LaHay
Filed under: General 

Way back in March, I made the post that I was looking for people who were interested in selling their sites to me so I could expand my portfolio. Since that post, I have received dozens of offers, but unfortunately most were for websites that were either web directories, cheap proxies, image hosting sites, or myspace resource clones. However, every once in awhile I find a diamond in the rough.

This diamond in the rough I am referring to was called DietHack. It is a PR6 diet/fitness authority blog with over 1200 RSS readers. It receives a ton of search engine traffic and is in a very high paying and high traffic niche. This excellent site was listed on the SitePoint.com marketplace and I bought it for $3500 through a buy it now offer. The listing was only on Sitepoint for about three hours, so I was very quick to snatch it up.

The moment I hit the buy-it-now offer, I knew the site was valued at $6000-7000 if I resold it that day. I had no doubt in my mind that the site was undervalued at the $3500 price, but the previous owner had a writer who bailed on him, so he could not run it himself. His loss was my gain. I was planning on porting the site from Blogger to Wordpress, getting a new design, and hiring a team of writers, when my plans changed. I received an offer for $5000 (A $1500 profit) within 72 hours. I would rather have continued running the site than taking the $1500 quick buck route, but after multiple talks with the owner, we settled on $9000. While I knew the site would be worth $10,000 in a few months, A $5500 profit for a few hours worth of work was undeniable. I flipped the site and now the new owner is already writing posts and is working on building the site into a fitness blog powerhouse. The new owner also has at least one other site in that niche, so this was a smart acquisition for him because he can leverage the traffic to them both, not to mention the related powerful PR6 links.

All in all, I made $5500 profit for two hours worth of work, and the new owner got a phenomenal site for less than the $10,000+ I valued it at. In my opinion, it is a win win situation for both parties, and I will be watching the site closely to see how it grows. I wish Mike the best of luck!

Comments

16 Comments on Collin LaHay Aquires DietHack and Flips It

  1. Sacramento Weddings on Sat, 5th Jul 2008 12:12 pm

    2. congratulations, it sounds like you have seized upon yet ANOTHER way to make $$$ of the internet!

  2. Link Building Bible on Sat, 5th Jul 2008 3:11 pm

    3. Just goes to show the old adage… it takes money to make money. Maybe I can find a site for $50 and flip it for $200.

  3. logosamurai on Sat, 5th Jul 2008 3:33 pm

    4. A great deal!

    Congrats!

  4. Tom - StandOutBlogger.com on Sat, 5th Jul 2008 3:55 pm

    5. That’s awesome colin! Not a bad paycheck for such little work!

  5. Millespot.com on Sat, 5th Jul 2008 8:42 pm

    6. That’s amazing work – damn you’re smart.

  6. Adelle on Sat, 5th Jul 2008 8:47 pm

    7. Excellent Job! Keep it up!

  7. Cath Lawson on Sun, 6th Jul 2008 9:58 am

    8. Well done Colin – that was an amazing flip and you were smart to take the cash. I haven’t tried site flipping yet but I love reading about all these successes.

  8. Harris on Sun, 6th Jul 2008 10:50 am

    9. That’s an awesome start. Keep up the good work. I will support you all the way

  9. Approaching The Sale From A Buyer’s Point Of View | The University Kid on Sun, 6th Jul 2008 12:27 pm

    10. [...] exists is a piece of business done by a friend – Collin LaHay over at Mixed Market Arts, who flipped a website for a net profit of $5,500 after acquiring it a couple days earlier. It looked a good purchase for [...]

  10. Collin LaHay on Sun, 6th Jul 2008 12:40 pm

    11. this is a test comment to test aweber optin comments.

  11. David from PPC on Mon, 7th Jul 2008 12:48 am

    12. Love it! You got a really good deal there, the person that built this up must rue the fact that they didn’t hold on for a wee bit longer, but that is business, pal!

    $5500 for being on top of things ain’t a bad profit at all. There are loads of opportunities like this, one just has to be on the ball!

  12. Dennis Edell on Mon, 7th Jul 2008 6:04 am

    13. I’m with you buddy LOL.

    Good job Collin!

  13. Freelance Jobs on Mon, 7th Jul 2008 11:46 am

    14. Great job Collin. Congrats for making such a profit. if only i got PR6 blog for such a rate.

  14. Carnival on Mon, 7th Jul 2008 7:48 pm

    15. Great case study.

    How do you go about sourcing your leads? I’m trying to find Niche RSS aggregation sites to purchase. I’ve tried digitalpoint, but didn’t get any bites.

  15. Stefan on Mon, 14th Jul 2008 11:08 pm

    16. Excellent job. This is something that I am taking an interest in. Do you think you can post some guidelines on what to look for when purchasing sites and finding likely profitable ones? That would be a great post! Thanks

  16. Pay Per Click Fool on Sun, 27th Jul 2008 8:52 am

    17. Nice turnaround … sometimes it’s good just to get it off your hands so you can focus on other things :)

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