On the positive side I probably would have started making money sooner. I could have then leveraged that income and increased it exponentially.

On the negative side I probably would have ended up taking a totally different path and I wouldn’t have had such a good grasp on the basics.

That last point is the problem with taking short cuts , you don’t learn and master all the finer points of site creations and promotion.

Having said that If you need to kickstart things how should you go about it.

The first thing people will tell you to do is try to find some sites for sale. Flippa is a the option that most people recommend but some sites do tend to be a little expensive there and with most sites with lots of members there will be a few sharks there looking to rip you off.

The big scam at the moment is to create a product sell it as a WSO on the warrior forum then show those sales as income, there is technically nothing wrong with this but it does stink of sharp practice as it’s doubtful you’d be able replicate this income on clickbank or paydotcom.com.

There are several other major problems with flippa, One listing today had the title “Automated Amazon earning $5403 per month Polarized aviator sunglasses”

To read that you’d think it was earning $5403 a month, it’s not in fact it’s earning $0 the $5403 is the sellers estimate of how much it will earn in 3 months. Why Flippa allows crap like this is beyond me! You couldn’t use misleading adverts like this in any other form of media so why allow it.

Do your due dilligence, get as much information as possible and if it looks too good to be true it probably is. Flippa is a great resource but you do need to be careful.

So what can you do to make things safer and less fraught with risk?

I usually use a site called flipfilter.com when i am looking for sites as it allows me to search a number of different market places.

If you are just starting out I would recommend finding someone who will be happy to create sites for you. We have several people in the WordPress goldmine Forum who build and create sites for people. Other members regularly sell off some of their sites within the forum.

For example one of out members owns this site http://websitesforbuying.com there you’ll find several sites for sale.

One final thing you can do is to sign up with a Site Broker, these guys regularly sell sites on behalf of others in return for a commission. The prices will be slightly higher but if you use the right type of broker you’ll be assured of getting good quality sites as brokers protect their reputation by selling good quality genuine sites. One of the brokers I use is http://www.flipwebsites.com/

When you come to sell any of your sites it’s also useful to use a broker to sell your sites.

To sum up, you can get a head start by buying existing sites and promoting them, you will probably not gain as much as an insight into how Internet marketing works but you will probably be earning quicker. Finally be careful, only buy off trusted sources, paying a bit extra for a genuine site is worth it.