If you’re looking into buying expensive fashion items as an investment or simply as a hobby, one way of lowering the barrier to entry is to find the items on a used goods website.

There are two main leaders in the used luxury fashion items space in Europe:

• Vestiaire Collective
• TheRealReal

Whenever possible, I buy the best products available on the market, which are normally the most expensive. The reasoning behind that is that you get to actually enjoy an amazing product, plus you know that there is the possibility to resell it at a good price. The latter point is important to me as an investor.

A lot of people just look at the price tags of some luxury designer bags, for example, and can’t believe how any person would buy them. The truth, however, is that some of those same bags can actually increase in price over time, making them a great investment. Handbags are in fact one of the most popular classes of alternative investments worldwide. The same goes for vintage cars and certain prestigious sports cars, for example.

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This article will be your ultimate guide for buying websites. This will include some of the top places where you can buy a site right now. This will also include some tips and tricks for anyone who recently bought a site or is thinking about diving in!

Why Buy A Website?

The biggest reason why someone would buy a website is because of the potential profit that can be made. There are a lot of success stories out there of people who have flipped websites for a significant profit. This means that they bought a website at a lower price and eventually sold it for a lot more money.

Think of it like buying a cheap stock and then cashing out after the share price increases. Like the stock market, there is plenty of money to be made if you choose the right stock (or website in this case).

How To Make Money From Buying Websites

In this section, I will provide you with some specific examples of how you can make money in this space. This will give you a better understanding of how it can be done and will maybe even inspire you to get started.

A Hypothetical Example

Let’s just say that you purchase a website for $1,600, and it was earning around $50 per month when you bought it. This means that you purchased the site at a 32x multiple of the monthly income average ($50 x 32 = $1,600).

Let’s say that you then spend a year working on the site and it continues to grow in both earnings and traffic. If things go really well, your monthly income average could grow from $50 a month to something like $300 a month.

With the site now earning $300 a month (on average), you could then flip it for a nice profit. Using the same 32x multiple that you bought the site for, you could then sell the site for $9,600+. It could even sell for more than that as 32x is being conservative. In just one year, you were able to make a profit of $8,000+. Not bad for a website that you only spent $1,600 on!

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First, some personal history for context…

At present day, after about 20 years of working online and never having a 9-5 job, I am in the privileged position of being able to live a comfortable life while working less than four hours a week.

That’s all great, but let’s see how I got here…

When I first started out designing websites, doing affiliate marketing, and myriad other little enterprises one can do online, I was overjoyed to see some money pouring in. Soon enough, instead of just pocket money, I was making a full-time living from my online work, and I was euphoric about the whole thing.

Coming from a tiny island where working online was unheard of at the time (and thus a very risky thing for me to try out) I was so happy to have my ideas and dreams validated.

Prior to embarking on my online journey, I had followed the path that all parents in my country want their children to follow; study hard and obtain a university degree. In fact, I had obtained not only one but 3 University degrees by the age of 23. At that point, however, after having spent thousands of dollars on my education, I flew off on a tangent and instead of getting a job at a local company, I decided that I’d rather do my own thing.

For a long time, my parents and friends thought I was crazy for doing so. In the end, however, it all paid off and I am where I am today only because I had the courage to take that decision back then.

Is it so easy to make money online?

As soon as I started seeing some success with my online ventures, the basic human instinct of sharing knowledge made me start trying to persuade everyone around me to do the same thing that I was doing. I couldn’t believe why my friends complained about their low salaries, terrible bosses, etc, but then wouldn’t even consider putting in some effort to try and earn some money online with the hope of leaving that dreaded job they complained so much about. Heck, they didn’t even seem one bit interested in how I made money online.

This doomed exercise of evangelization continued for several years. I thought that everyone could make money online, that it’s simple and so much better than working a 9-5 job for someone else.

In retrospect though, and after having met many other successful online workers and entrepreneurs, I’ve realized that making money online is not for everyone. It’s just as difficult (if not more so) than getting any other skilled job. It is one of the most accessible ways to generate money, as it doesn’t matter where you are, who you know, etc. All you need is your own knowledge and an internet connection. While it is definitely a very accessible path, it is not easier than the alternatives.

There are so many factors that come into play and affect whether you are successful or not in making money online. I estimate that more than 90% of those who actually try to make a living through any type of online venture actually fail. Of those who do manage to earn some money, only a fraction eventually get to the point that they can earn enough to justify doing that full time instead of having a 9-5 job.

You see, as I came to realize, the vast majority of successful online workers, far from being the average Joe, are highly talented people. Building an online business requires an entrepreneurial spirit, lots of patience, an incredible amount of motivation, support from the people closest to you, and a fair amount of luck to boot. That’s only mentioning the few first factors that come to mind. There are many more.

Most people don’t and won’t ever have the right combination that enables them to go down this route in life. Clearly, for many people, their job is their vocation, and although they complain about their workplace, salary or colleagues, in the end, that’s what they are most suitable for and that’s how they can best give service to the rest of society.

So I’ve stopped trying to persuade everyone and their dog to start an online business and live the life of their dreams. Of course, if someone I know is really motivated to do so and asks me for help and advice, I’d more than gladly share all I know about it, but it’s not for everyone.

 

At the start of this post, I said that I am lucky enough to have to work very little to make a living. I am by no means rich and don’t own any real estate, but I can live anywhere I want in the world and have the liberty of doing what I want with my time while having enough income to support myself and my family from month to month.

The truth however is that I work way more than 4 hours a week. I do that because I love what I do, I don’t consider it to be work but play.

Think about your typical kid, what would he like to do on a perfect day. Play video games, soccer with friends?

That’s the way I feel about working online most days. I wake up with a lot of energy to chase a new idea, or fine-tune an existing business. And all the successful online workers I know have that same feeling about the work they do. They’re definitely not lazing about on a beach for the rest of their lives while their websites deposit money into their accounts as they sleep.

So that doubt in me remains, are these Internet marketing blogs promoting a big lie? Are they making a ton of money off people who can never really make a living online? Are we online workers really being truthful when we say that anyone can earn money on the web? Is it time for a more mature breed of Internet marketing blog, targeted at people who already have established online businesses? What do you think?

Here are some blogs that speak the truth about making money online and don’t try to sell dreams:

• The Truth About Making Money Blogging – TrafficGenerationCafe.com
• A Reality Check about Blogging for Money – Problogger.net
• Is Blogging a Good Way to Make Money? – ChrisG.com
• The Truth About Making Money While You Sleep – Copyblogger.com
• Reality check: You’re not going to make money from your blog – PenelopeTrunk.com
• The History of My First Online Business – SmartPassiveIncome.com
• Harsh Truths To Why You Won’t Make Money Blogging – JohnPaulAguiar.com

What any serious online marketer or blogger will tell you, is that it takes a lot of work and commitment to succeed online. No one can give you a shortcut to earning thousands or millions without any knowledge, simply because there is no shortcut to online success.

Online success = Hard work and commitment + Constant learning + Right timing + Networking

That success is the result of hard work and commitment is probably common knowledge, but I also like to add in the other three less-mentioned factors. Dedicating a lot of hours to something does not equal success unless you know what you are doing, are doing it at the right time and you’re making the effort to network with your peers.

 

Why Publishers Prefer to Work with Affiliate Networks

Web publishers such as news media outlets, bloggers and affiliate marketers, all need a way of partnering up with advertisers and track commissions due to them.

As a publisher, you are usually working with either of the following:

• Affiliate networks
• In-house affiliate programs

In this article, I will list several reasons why you should always try to partner up with advertisers through an affiliate network and not through in-house affiliate programs.

Before we start, to make sure everyone is on the same page, let’s define what’s an affiliate network and what’s an in-house affiliate program.

Let’s start with a diagram of how affiliate marketing works.

The diagram should be pretty self-explanatory. Note that publishers are also referred to as partners or affiliates. Advertisers are also known as merchants.

Here’s an even simpler way of looking at it.

Or perhaps you can relate more to this next diagram which lists the typical personas involved in an affiliate marketing transaction.

What is an affiliate network?

Affiliate networks congregate many advertisers under one platform and simplify things for both the advertisers and the publishers. They use their reach to link the two parties and propose partnerships both ways. They also handle all transaction tracking and billing, as well as other essentials such as reporting.

As a publisher, you have one platform that you can login at any time, and you will see all the commissions generated from all the advertisers you have partnered with.

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How do you reach the market if you are not that good and knowledgeable enough? Fortunately, there is a solution to this. With this method, you can learn from the best and be a good investor yourself as well. For assistance, several new traders shift to copy trading.

All you have to do is to pick a seasoned investor and copy their trades. But, do you think copy trading is a good idea? It has its advantages. Here is how beginner investors can benefit from copy trading.

The best platforms for copy trading are:

• eToro
• NAGA

I’ve also written an in-depth review of eToro since it’s my favorite platform for copy trading.

Is Copy Trading For You?

Copy-trading, in its essence- is very straightforward. You just need to pick a trader’s portfolio you like the look of and then decide how much you want to spend on it. Though, as a reminder, you still need to learn how things work, just like any online investing strategy.

Always remember that your money is still at risk if you are not knowledgeable enough. Do your research and expand your understanding of the markets whenever you have the chance.

As other people say, copy trading can benefit you if you want to trade without any knowledge or experience actively. It is a good way to start if you are a newcomer. Also, you do not need to think about anything because your investor (the one that you chose) will be the one to make decisions for you.

You just need to take the steps that they do. Without any awareness of how things work, you will slowly understand how the market works.

How Do You Benefit From It?

You can also make adjustments and make it more suited for your portfolio- which means that you still have control over the trades you make. The financial market has such vast information, and this method of learning makes you benefit at the same time because you can still make a better profit instead of spending time reading articles, resources, and other papers.

Bear in mind that each person has their learning curve as well. No matter how talented you are, you need the time to learn things.

The most crucial aspect if you want to take things to the next level is that you just have to analyze what the investor is doing and see if his decisions are rational.

Copy-trading brings you to another level

By using copy trading, users can easily duplicate other traders’ success and carefully track their activities. There is no obligation to do an inch of research yourself.

Moreover, many investors use social network feed to discuss their behavior and explain their logic behind their actions. This is a good opportunity for inexperienced traders to learn more about the financial market. As you know, studying involves reading charts, trends, and analyzing maps.

It will take a long time before you can understand those indicators and charts. If you can not read them, why not let the investor you chose back you up instead while you sit and relax and earn a manageable passive income?

When you are looking for a passive source of revenue, you may consider copy trading. Again, you do not need to do anything, but your preferred trader will do it all for you- the dealings of acquiring, selling, and exchanging financial instruments. It can even help you with your emotional decisions.

As you can see, the most common error novice traders make is that they make decisions based on what they feel or based on their instinct. It is not like what you think is always right; bear that in mind.

However, if you pick a professional investor and follow their ways, you do not need to worry about those things. A professional investor has already faced those struggles and difficulties in the past, making them calmer and collected by today.

Things You Need To Be Aware Of

Copy-trading may sound like a super cool thing, and it’s a very clever idea that can help traders move to the next stage, but traders do need to be careful of something.

You should not only go with the flow and blindly copy others.

Final Thoughts

Some aspects still need to be taken into account by you in the end. You should look at how traders are classified and look at the results of their trading. If you want to make a logical and informed decision, your best chances come when the copy trading site that you chose has a rating system on its own.

It can be seen in this article that copy trading is acceptable for several financial targets. If you’re a total novice or you just do not have time to investigate the markets yourself, copy trading offers a solution to several barriers to investment.