August 2016

Most folks think about website flipping as the only way to make money from websites. However, website rental is actually a more profitable and stable form of online income generation, enabling you to make money now as well as later on through residual earnings.

Think about it- if you buy and sell a website, you need to shell out a good deal of money upfront and then also improve the website through content, SEO, etc. You then need to find a buyer who will pay you significantly more for the online property than you originally, as well as compensate you for the time and effort you put into improving your website.

With a website rental, you can build your online property from the ground up, which means you can build it cheap. Once you find some renters, just plug in their businesses and charge them a monthly/yearly fee for doing so. What’s left after this point is routine site maintenance and occasional content development, tasks that any kind of website owner would be responsible for. However, you could get around even those responsibilities if you really wanted to, and this is something I’ll explain later in this post.

So, how do you get started in the website rental business?

What you’ll need to get started in website rental

It goes (almost) without saying that you’ll need the following: Clients!

So, who are going to be your clients?

To get into website rental quickly and easily, you should target local business owners. There are several reasons why, namely:

Local keywords

The competition for keywords is fierce, and especially in businesses like retail, hospitality, restaurant/catering or home building/renovation. However, as soon as you enter the local arena, this competition drops off and your keywords enter into niche categories.

Niche keywords can quickly launch your website(s) to the top of the search engine results page (SERP). People all over the world might use a search term like “roofing company,” for example, but only 100 or fewer will use a search term like “roofing company in Des Plaines, Illinois.”

Business needs

Many local businesses don’t have the time or know-how to organize a proper website that generates leads and converts prospects into customers. Some businesses rely on word-of-mouth and/or newspaper/radio ads to generate leads. Other businesses have a website (or a Google business listing), but the website is outdated and/or not optimized for search.

Lack of local competition

After looking through Google and Yahoo search engines while using search terms like “website rental” and “rent a website,” I located only three businesses that engage in this activity. These results tell me that there aren’t many people doing website rental just yet. Even if more people enter this line of business, it’s doubtful they would compete with you directly because their businesses would need to focus on your locality.

How do you find local business prospects?

Pitching to prospects should start with you perusing local business websites and assessing how well they are performing. That of course assumes that these websites exist.

If you find a business that has no website, you can send that business an email or make a call and tell it about your website rental service. That is one approach that may work to win you a client.

An alternative approach is to actually start building a website that would be targeted at this potential client. To not end up wasting your time in case your sales pitch is rejected, you should first locate at least 2-3 other similar local businesses that would also work with your nascent website.

If the business already has a website, go through it to find out how usable and relevant it is. Could you, as a customer of this business, use it to learn about the services offered and their pricing? Could you reach the owner? How?

If you find any faults with this website, make sure to take note of them. You can politely suggest ways to improve this website to the business owners once you contact them.

If you find several clients who are all in the same line of business, you might even consider adding them all into a “master” website that is optimized for a local area. That is how one rental website business grouped a bunch of Colorado-based roofers.

Once you have some interested prospects, what will you need to start renting websites?

A platform

You’ll start with a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress to launch and build your websites. Within this CMS you’ll need to purchase domain names, website hosting and backup, and malware and virus protection. You’ll also want to cloak your domain name ownership details, which usually costs a few extra dollars.

Website themes

Unless you are adept at website design, you’ll probably be purchasing themes for your websites that are formatted to include specific layouts, graphics and design elements. You could also peruse your CMS for free themes- WordPress offers many decent ones at no cost. However, for a professional-looking website that isn’t a carbon copy of 100 other websites, you will probably need to buy a theme or three.

SEO

You will need to know something about SEO, and especially local SEO, to make good money with website rental. Luckily, locally targeted keywords don’t have a lot of competition and can be used to launch your website to the top of the SERP fast. You can showcase your high ranking websites to clients when you pitch your services to them.

Business services

If your client businesses don’t have their own emails and/or business phone numbers, you’ll want to set those assets up. To this end, most CMS platforms offers an email that goes along with the domain name. To obtain an 800 phone number that redirects to the business phone number, you can use a VoIP vendor like Phone.com. With VoIP, you can also track how many prospects call the business.

When your business websites first start up, their keyword search volume may not be enough to generate steady leads. You could set up online ads through Google AdWords; doing so also gives you an easy way to monitor how well your website is generating inquiries, calls and leads.

Virtual assistance (optional)

As you acquire clients and build additional websites, you’ll find website maintenance and improvement will take up a larger and larger chunk of your time. There will also be the need to perform content creation. To ease your workload, you may wish to invest in a virtual assistant who can do regular site administration for you including updating plug-ins, triaging comments, and completing site backups.

How much do your charge for rent?

You’ll need to consider how much rent to charge your virtual tenants and whether you should also charge any set-up fees. As a start-up business, you could forego charging any rent and instead get paid for each lead you generate.For example, if a roofer values each successful lead at $5,000, you could ask for 5% of that value, or $250.

As you get bigger, you could then ask for X dollars each month; doing so generates a steady residual income for you. The few businesses already doing website rental charge up to $499/month, which is certainly not a bad passive income.

World Profit (WP) is an online marketplace and affiliate marketing platform that offers website hosting and domains, paid advertising, traffic exchanges, email safelists, autoresponder programs, etc., that members can both use and sell. This company has been around since 1994, is based in Edmonton, Alberta, and was founded by George Kosch, Sandi Hunter and Jeffrey Lant.

You can sign up to WP as a free member; however, you can’t take advantage of its products, trainings and affiliate commissions until you purchase a Silver Membership at $99.95/month. Membership run month-to-month and can be cancelled anytime; alternately, memberships can be purchased for a full year.

Once you purchase the Silver Membership, you get access to the following products:

20-100% affiliate commissions
Sales bonuses up to $1,000
Access to affiliate programs, PLR products, web services
12 websites (as part of WP’s FastCash program)
Access to a content management system for building websites
9 sales funnels with 100% commissions
Landing page builder and 500 pre-built sales pages
Sales offer builder
E-book builder and cover creator
Access to an article directory
Ad tracking software
50,000 guaranteed website visitors
Email list builder

As a silver member, you also gain access to weekly trainings through the program’s “home business bootcamp” and over 100 self-paced training modules.

Is World Profit worth its $99.95/month membership fee?

Here’s what we found:

1. There are numerous complaints about this program.

Every online business has some negative reviews. However, the sheer mass of complaints about WP has me worried that this program is not all it claims to be.

Complaints range from members not being able to cash their WP checks due to bad routing numbers to WP not honoring refund requests. Other members note that the products offered by WP aren’t quite as advertised; for example, the “50,000 guaranteed visitors” actually refers to ad impressions and not actual visitors. Also, the promised traffic and subscribers are both derived from current WP members, apparently.

Other individuals complain that WP promises free traffic and other goodies; however, it doesn’t deliver on its promises. For example, this WP complainant says that the company promises free traffic and email credits in exchange for listening to its sales video. However, this isn’t true and you actually need to sign up for Silver Membership before you get those “free” tools.

2. WP uses high-pressure sales tactics.

You can’t peruse WP’s products and sales pages without first signing up as a free member. However, it seems that WP does this so that it can capture your personal information. Once you are a free member, WP has access to your name, email address, and even your phone number (if you provide it in the optional info area).

What does WP do with this information? Apparently, it uses your personal info to track you once you land on its sales pages.

When I went to WP’s checkout page to learn about its membership terms and conditions, I suddenly heard a voice through my computer calling me by my name and asking me to finish the checkout process and to input any questions I might have into the chat box.

When I looked up at my screen, I saw that I had been placed into a chat room. So, I decided to ask my chat room moderator what was WP’s refund policy for canceled memberships.

Unfortunately, despite inputting this question several times into the chat box, I never received a direct response. Instead, I kept hearing how I would get all these free bonuses, traffic, etc. after signing up as a Silver member. My moderator spent a good deal of time telling me and other chat members “how we’d watch the money roll in.”

I persisted with my refund question and was finally told to contact the head office because the moderator didn’t handle customer service matters.

3. The products aren’t quite as advertised.

WP advertises that it offers numerous high quality marketing products, traffic networks, etc. The products sound good, at least in theory. However, when you start digging into them, you uncover a different reality.

As an example, here are some of the affiliate products that WP advertises on its member site:

When I clicked on the first link in this list, I was taken to Living Off the Net, which is an MLM. Another link took me to EProfits Extreme, which is a scam online business opportunity. Another link took me to a page that brought up a malware alert on my computer, so I didn’t open it.

WP also offers numerous marketing products for its members to support their personal businesses with. However, many of these products are built on outdated techniques such as article spinning and traffic networks. Such techniques are likely to get your websites de-indexed by Google.

4. There are additional upsells.

If you think that paying $99/month is sufficient for gaining access to all of the marketing tools and bonuses that World Profit offers, think again. The WP platform is filled with traffic exchanges, Solo ads, etc. that are all available…but for an additional cost.

Instead of teaching you how to generate traffic to your website, for example, WP’s tactic is to sell you a quick fix product that won’t help you achieve your desired result. However, it will help line WP’s pockets with still more of your money.

Is it worth it?

At a steep $99/month, World Profit just isn’t worth the money and hassle- and especially when there are other online programs that are of far better quality, cheaper, and without upsells- such as our top pick here.

How to Get Started in the Website Rental Business