What does the Virtual Real Estate Investor invest in?

He/she (i have to be fair) invests in web sites. Web sites which are already online and have a revenue model in place. The key lies is choosing a good web property which makes business sense and then taking it further with added investments, better marketing and thus better returns. If this sounds all new to you, you might be a tad surprised to know that there is already a mature marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. Here are a couple of them:

1) http://marketplace.sitepoint.com offers not just web sites but also a wide range of tools which can help you enhance you online business. This includes templates, marketing tools and all the latest gizmos available on online business owners to make their business a bit more successful.

2) http://business.search.ebay.com/web-sites_Internet-Businesses-Websites_W0QQcatrefZC12QQfromZR40QQfsprZ0QQsacatZ46689 is also an interesting place to check out some innovative web sites on sale.

What is a good buy in the virtual real estate market?

The keyword here is ‘potential’. Some of the things to look out for when checking on virtual businesses are:

a) What is the future potential of the business?

b) What is the competition like? Avoid online businesses with out-of-date models are the one to avoid as are those which have too many clones.

c) Is the revenue model sound and does the current owner offer a business plan for the future?

d) Are you to spot three things which will make the web site sell more? If yes, you have a web site with potential.

Taking virtual real estate through rehab:

Once you buy yourself a piece of action online, it is time to see if it needs some rehab before it can live up to its full potential. A checklist of potential areas of reconstruction reads as follows:

1) Business model. Are there any inherent problems with the business model of the site which needs tweaking? Can you change something in the pricing model to make the products/services offered more attractive? In fact, it might also be a good thing to bring in an external business consultant at this point to review the online web site and restructure the business flow.

2) Technology. With the technology taking a turn every couple of years, you need to ensure that you are not left behind. Having an online shopping cart on simple HTML pages is passé…so you would need to upgrade onto newer technology (take AJAX for example) to be able to stand out amongst the competition.

3) Marketing. I would have liked to put this first since making money off the webs ite is the real reason for you to even buy an online business and in practicality, business plan review pretty much increase marketing aspect as well. Make sure you are using the latest trends in marketing such as SEO, White hat marketing, PPC, ad campaigns to market the product/service and grow the business. More business obviously means more returns on your original investment.

There are a number of things you can do after you reach another inflection point with the web site you buy. You can sell it further or decide to keep it and grow the business. Just like in real estate….you can keep a really good property for yourself or sell it further and make a profit!