It’s a nice side hustle that’s easy to start
One of my current side hustles is building websites to flip for a few hundred dollars each.
I recently sold one for $395 and another for $450. I aim to build and sell one every month or two. It’s easy work once you have everything set up. You just need to follow the process.
A few people asked how I manage to build them so cheaply. After all, there are hosting costs, domain costs, design costs, content costs, etc. They all add up. Well, they do add up if you waste too much money on elements that aren’t essential.
First of all, let’s go over what you need and how much you need to pay.
Domain Names
First of all, you need a domain name. Buying one is a relatively small expense and usually costs around $10. I usually buy mine from Namecheap. Their prices are reasonable and they great support. Where you buy the domain name from doesn’t make a big difference but you do need good support in case of any issues.
Hosting Costs
After trying different hosting companies, these days I use Siteground. Their user interface is easy to use, even for beginners. Their support is excellent and on the odd occasion I’ve needed to use it, they’ve been available within minutes.
They have a few different hosting packages, with the cheapest being around $2.99 a month. This is for one website and up to 10,000 visits monthly.
As I build multiple sites, I opted for the GrowBig package at $4.99 a month.
Note that these are introductory prices for the first year. Hopefully, I’ll be making enough money after that to pay the full price. If not, I can switch to another host and get their introductory package.
The beauty of having a package that allows unlimited websites is that each additional website I build doesn’t cost me anything extra for hosting. So each new site is essentially free to host.
Click here to sign up for Siteground.
The Website
If you pay someone to build you a bespoke website, it could cost anything from hundreds to thousands of dollars. But you don’t need to pay anyone if you’re just starting out.
These days, millions of people use WordPress to build their sites. Once you have your hosting set up, it takes just a few clicks to set up a WordPress site.
If you use Siteground, it will be super easy. Just follow the prompts.
Once that’s done, you just link the domain name to the site. That’s also an easy task that is just a few clicks.
WordPress comes with a basic theme but you can easily change it. I always start with a free theme. There’s simply no point paying for a premium theme at the start. You can always upgrade later if you want.
The Content
Once you have your site set up, you need to add content. If you write for Medium, as I do, writing content should be easy. Write one post a day and you’ll have 30 in a month and 365 in a year.
You can also use your existing Medium articles if you want. That’s what I did. I have written over 500 Medium stories, so that’s enough content for multiple sites.
You may also have articles that you’ve written but never published. You can use those as well.
It’s better to stick to a single niche for each website. This is mostly what I’ve done, but some of my sites are a mixture of niches and they still do ok.
Site Promotion
It’s also a good idea to get some traffic to your site. I use social media to do this. I use Facebook groups, Twitter and Reddit.
Over time, your posts should start ranking in Google Search so will bring in extra traffic.
Conclusion
That’s the basics of setting up a site. You can either keep the site and monetize it or sell it. I do both.
I might expand on each step above if there’s enough demand.
