oDesk has been around for a few years now, and I’ve used it a few times, hired a few people, but since moving to Thailand a couple of years ago, my staff costs here are so low I never need to outsource, I was in an outsourced country!

But, today with our current major project we need a pretty good flash developer, and we only need someone for about a week, so there’s no point recruiting someone, or even bothering trying to find someone in Thailand, I’ve just posted a new job on oDesk in about 10 minutes.

So easy to do I love it. And the really good thing about oDesk from a buyers point of view is that we have full insight into what they are doing and if they are really doing work – the oDesk system takes screenshots like every 15 seconds so we know if they are actually there doing work or are slacking off doing other stuff…

All round oDesk is a great place to outsource to, it’s just so easy, fast and worry free.

I was curiously running some numbers this morning and I’ve decided to share the results.

If you don’t know already, I’ve sold my web application development business and I’m now in investment mode.

My next simple plan is to start acquiring sites to build a different – diverse portfolio of investments and new revenue streams. My thought was to throw $10k at 4 sites to simply start making $4k a month – a livable income, but I have a livable income already and some, so instead I might acquire smaller sites and more of them to achieve the same effect, $4k per month revenue.

However, I’m going to do it in such a way that almost anyone who has a fulltime income can do – if they can find some disposable income every month to set aside to invest that is.

Why? Well finding sites that are in the $10k range isn’t easy, there’s not as many around as there are $1k sites, so it’s slow going and slim pickings. Other reason is that I’d like to acquire a wider range of sites and see if we can’t network a few together, do some link building campaigns and build the traffic and revenue on them. If we can we might sell (flip) a few of them along the way down the track to speed up some revenue growth.

Ok, so here it is - the plan from $0 a month to $4k a month in 14 months.

What you will need: An endless stream of money, some internet skills and a server.

When I say an endless stream of money, you need to at least be able to set aside $250 a week - $1k a month, that’s like $35 a day, every day.

If you can’t do that, then you’re going to take a whole bunch longer to get there, also, a starting bank of $5k – which isn’t all that much cash, borrow it, steal it, sell something to get it, I don’t care… ok well don’t steal it, but just get it.

So the idea is simple, take your $5k, spend the whole $5k on a site that’s making $500 a month – shouldn’t be too hard, most sites sell for 10x profit. Or buy 2 sites at $2,500 each, either way, spend your $5k to make $500 a month.

Next month, take your $1k you’ve saved, and acquire another site making around the $100 a month mark.

The next month, do the same again, take your $1k and buy a site making $100, BUT, you should have in the bank $1100 from the last 2 months of revenue from your existing investments.

Take that cash and buy another site, so on your 3^rd month you’re spending $2k on sites, not the monthly $1k.

Next month, same again, buy a site with your $1k. By this month you should be making $900 a month from your investments, and the end of this month you should have had $800 from last month, so next month you will have $1,700 in the bank to spend.

So next month pony up some more dough and drop your $1k + your investment revenue, with some luck you should have some growth by now in the sites if you’re working on them (which you should be), so this month – month 5, drop $3k on new sites.

This will leave you now making $1,200 a month in revenue. I think you get the picture now.

So in a little over a year, you should be sitting on $4k a month. With some luck, if you are working on the sites during the time you should be able to build more revenue by increasing the traffic, try and acquire sites that complement each other so your overall traffic can grow.

By the end of all this you might have over 15 sites easy, but, along the way there’s always the option to sell some of them or consolidate them down to less, just as long as the revenue isn’t effected.

A good strategy might be to pick 2-3 niches, pick up a forum for each that has users and traffic already, and work on picking up sites that would be relevant to those forums so you can leverage the sites to drive more traffic to the forums – thus building more members and more returning visitors, and in turn hopefully more revenue along the way.

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every ebook site for sale reads something like this

‘hot ebook – over $1k in sales in a week, looking for quick sale’

This should throw up all kinds of red flags… one, because 90% of the time all the sales are from ebay, so unless you’re an avid ebay trader (I’m not) your going to be shit out of luck there, also, most ebooks have a short life and limited market, they only make those initial sales then die off, especially on ebay where you will be pushing the same book to the same people after you buy the site.

You’ll need to expand the market the book more in other areas to keep the sales up.

Regardless, anyone looking to sell something that’s got 0 track record of sales, wants a very quick sale (a few days), oh and let’s not forget to mention they still want 10x revenue for it – so a $1k first month ebook they will try to sell for $10k…

I’m not writing off all ebooks here, but there’s heaps of them around, only a handful are good, but quick sales for large amounts of cash and no track record is just a dangerous investment if you ask me. If it’s made $1k in its first week or month, why not keep it for 2-3 months, grow it more and then sell for $30k… buyer beware.

Now that I’m back in acquisition mode, I’ll probably be blogging about lots of dot coms that are for sale! Since most of my free time will be devoted to finding some that I like and would be interested in buying…

As far as a sustainable site goes, things that I’m not interested in are proxies, image hosts, free hosts, clickbank affiliate sites, PTC sites, and directories. Sure they all can make money, some do quite well, but when buying one not building it from scratch, you really need to be careful about where the traffic is coming from, how sustainable is it, and will it be switched or turned off after the purchase, the traffic could easily be fed from their other sties they are running.

The other thing is, proxies, free hosts and what not often get banned from ad networks, so revenue options can be limited – as can be growth.

There’s a forum for sale over at SitePoint, it’s actually a good forum, the url is: http://www.businessforum.net/

It’s making $0, it’s pulling over 500 uniques a day, 250,000 page views a month.

But his starting bid is $12k, and his BIN is $35k.

The reality here is that it’s over priced; it only has 7,000 members, 5,000 threads and 24,000 posts. It’s a bit, but not a lot for a 2 year old forum, so it’s been kicking along and slowly growing, but it’s not shit hot and taking off or anything. He’s put a lot of work into it, but it needs a lot more to get it really going, regardless, it is a nice foundation to start from, so it’s defiantly worthy of purchasing… but not at $12k-$35k

I think the main problem here is that he bought the site 7 months ago for $11,600… back then it has 4,000 members, 14,000 posts.

He overpaid 7 months ago for it. And he’s trying to sell it for more now, because in his eyes from the price he bought it for it’s now worth more.

The reality is that he overpaid, back then it was worth $3-4K, and now its worth about $5-6k tops.

There’s no revenue, there’s only 500 uniques a day and only 7,000 members. To really get this forum kicking and making any kind of money, it needs 20 hours a week put into it and more marketing cash invested into it, in 2-3 months you could if you’re lucky kick it up to 1,000 uniques a day, but even then from ads alone you would be hoping to bring in $500 to $700 a month. You won’t do it from adsense, you would be doing most of that revenue from private ad sales.

So after expenses, and all your time, you’re not making much. To keep it going you would be easily spending $200 a month on marketing, let’s say you profit $500 a month (after that 3 months of heavy marketing and time spent), and then you’re looking at a site worth $5k (10x revenue) probably more because there’s revenue and growth and a long history.

Still, not worth $12k minimum, if I was him, I’d spend $1k+ on promotions a month and start putting ads on the forum, sell ads for 3 months, get some revenue in and then sell, at least then you’re showing the potential buyer of the site that the investment is going to be worth it.

My next offline business venture will be into racing. I love motor racing, I think the purest form of racing is karting, and I love the formula 1 (go felipe!).

I’ve stumbled upon a car manufacturer over here (in Thailand) that used to build cars for a racing series that’s finished. They don’t actively build cars anymore, but they have the whole series of cars lying around – about 5 from 2004, and 15+ from 2006 (2 different models).

So I’ve been in talks with some tracks, team owners and guys who run whole other race series to see if they are interested in the cars, and so far it’s going quite well.

We’re going to send a couple of cars over next month to Australia for a test run, see how they compare to other prototype cars (cars that aren’t built by a big manufacturer are deemed prototype), and yeah, going to test them up, check times and setups, check the running costs and what not. We know where we can make the cars faster already so we’ll see how it goes.

Big benefit is the cost of the cars – we can retail them at $10-$15k less than other comparable cars. Other prototypes that run in race series in Aus, UK and US ’start’ at about $45k new, and $35k second hand, our 2^nd hand cars that will be reconditioned and tested first, will retail for $25k, and if we can sell them, we’ll be investing in a manufacturing plant here in Thailand, and then getting into manufacturing the cars for sale around the world, hopefully hitting that $35-$40k new mark.

Here’s our cars:

For those who are into cars and racing, the big black and the black white and red cars are running a Toyota 1.6ltr with a sequential gearbox. The white and pink cars are running a Suzuki 750cc bike engine and box; we’re upgrading them to a Yamaha or Honda 1,000cc and 1,300cc bike engine and box which will redline at 12,000rpm. The cars weigh under 600kg each at the moment, but we’re going to be making them about 100-150kg lighter.

OK, before I start this rant, I warn you that I see something that I think is bad, I can be a real asshole, mostly because I think whatever it is I’m ranting about needs a serious reality check and while everyone around is saying good things and being supportive, I feel there needs to be someone dishing out the reality of the situation, and I’m prepared to be that person. Not out of hate, but to really give whoever a reality check in the hope that they see the error of their ways, and either change profession, or step up their game a whole heap (go back to school).

Today’s ‘why the fuck would anyone buy this’ rant, is about http://www.bidcheap2u.com/

It’s for sale over at sitepoint, http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/auctions/36780 with a BIN of $6,000… and starting bid of $2,500…

It pulls 500 page views a month – 60 uniques – which is about right for search engine bot traffic, not people… Mostly what’s being sold is the code, he custom wrote it, and honestly so what?

There’s heaps of ebay – auction style scripts around that do all that his would do – and probably more, and not to mention, since he’s the only developer and he’s selling the site with code as a once off thing, if there’s bugs, errors, issues, and anything else, then you can’t get support, you don’t have updates, you will have to hire a developer to decipher his code, and then work out the issue.

This site is a liability, not an investment.

He should be selling the code to other developers with resell rights, or an exclusive sale, not a site on sitepoint. Or he should be selling a hosted solution and a singular marketplace, a single auction site with your own code is just pointless, it’s like buying a Russian custom built one of a kind car which you will need to manually comply to drive in your own country, and then find a Russian mechanic who can fix it when there’s issues.

Actually, I might start valuing things for sale on sitepoint and wherever else I see them, because as a designer, developer, investor, business owner, and whatever else I am / have been, I think I have a good grasp on the value of a site for sale. I’ve built them, sold them, bought them, invested in them and disowned them.

OK, so unless you’ve not read my last post, I’ve sold my last fulltime business, and now I’m starting the planning of my next ventures.

Since I’m debt free, have been for 10 years, the cash isn’t going to pay loans, it’s just cash to invest, so with this extra cash I’m going to do some things that I enjoy.

The internet is my life almost, so I’m going to get away from it more but I’m also going to get back into web properties and web business, I think I’ll start by buying some dot coms that have profits of the $1k a month and up mark, and delegate the operations and management of them to a new staff person I’ll take on.

I have the advantage of being in Thailand, so a fulltime ‘web guy’ will set me back about $380US a month, I’ll track him using things like rescuetime.com, and I’ll check the sites and what not to make sure things are running smooth still from time to time. I’ll try to pick up a few sites that interest me, all with revenue and hopefully revenue of about $1k a month and up, usually sites like this sell for 10x profits, so $10k for 1, and I’ll try to pick up 3-4 of them, it’ll take some time because I’d prefer some quality sites, not random proxy sites or short term duds.

I’ll probably spend some time working on the sites and working on a plan to build them up more, some marketing plans and future development plans, see if we can grow the traffic and revenue, and then in 6-12 months maybe sell them? Maybe keep them, who knows, just have some fun trying to grow them and see where it goes from there, it all really depends on what sites I can pick up.

And for offline business… well that’s a whole post on its own…

Ok, so my promise to keep posting after I returned from Australia hasn’t happened…

Mostly because my trip to Australia was in part to bring a separate deal to fruition – and that deal was to sell my development company, which finally has happened J

So, while I’m no longer a owner of that business, I’m under obligation to work with it for a few more months until it’s all settled and then I’m off to my next big venture(s)…

My development company wasn’t strictly a web business – we built and ran dot coms, we were an offline business I felt, we sold development services to other businesses and most of those sales were generated offline (90% were).

My other current businesses are a mixture of offline and online, I have a couple of online stores that also distribute our custom products internationally, and I have a sushi train restaurant in town, so it’s a little diverse – which is great.

Right now the biggest things in my mind is what should I do with the other businesses, keep them going or sell them off too, and what will I do next?

Well the other businesses I think I’ll keep, they are doing fine and they are a nice source of additional revenue.

As for what to do next, I have a million and one ideas so it’s a matter of choosing the best one I guess.

Not even the best one, I think I might do something that makes me happy, something I enjoy.

I’m still in Australia, I’ll be back on Monday!