A great way to find what you should sell online is to check out websites for sale. At these times, website owners are more likely to reveal invaluable information on their businesses, from which you can learn from.

For instance, sellers would reveal their web traffic reports, income reports, income sources, optimized keywords, hosting information, expenses and the daily maintenance required. Also, by reviewing the questions and answers posted on the Questions to the Seller section of each posting, we acquire even more information about an online business.

You’ll gain insight on some of the ways these sellers promote their websites. (Some of them will only reveal details of their methods over private messages to serious buyers). In fact, you will also observe the business models deployed by sellers, and possibly the potential of their business.

How to get your online business ideas?

Step 1: Cross check with your own interests

Browse through the listing and descriptions and you’ll see a varied list of online businesses - dating, internet marketing, lingerie, news aggregators, blogs, music, software, etc.

While it’s possible to make money from most of these sites, the potential for each of these businesses differ. Also, some online businesses may be making money today, but may currently already be on a downward spiral.

When evaluating a potential business idea, cross check it with your own interests and knowledge. You’d want to start an internet business that you can relate to. While you don’t exactly need to be an expert in the area, the product and service should ideally be something you are comfortable to work on.

Step 2: Find a niche

What can you do better than these owners who are selling their sites? Are they poor at promoting their site? Are they targeting the wrong target market? Is the owner selling because his or her other businesses have grown? Is the site for sale because sales are diminishing?

To stand out from the crowd, you’ll need to find a way to be different from the rest. If there is no difference, you’ll just be another online seller making some money from the Internet. For instance, if you are selling software, you’ll need to create a difference between your product and that of your competitors. What breakthrough features does your software have that others don’t?

Step 3: Hit the keywords

Of course, the other secret to success would definitely be your ability to draw traffic to your site. The most common method to draw traffic is to use Search Engine Optimization. However, common keywords that are optimized by too many sites become difficult to optimize.

If you are looking at using SEO as one of your major ways to promote your website, you’ve got to optimize niche keywords or long tail keywords with minimal competition.

Otherwise, you need to use alternate online promotional methods such as blog marketing, social networking, article marketing or pay-per-click marketing.

Website for sale Case Study- Mypluslingerie.com

I noticed this website for sale on Sitepoint.com several weeks ago. While this site ultimately did not get sold, I acquired some interesting information about this business just by browsing through this one post. Here are some key points (with the benefit of doubt that the seller is being honest):

• Margins are 40 - 50%
• 95% of traffic is organic, with about 200 visitors a day
• Average revenue of $2000 per month
• Profits are $1000 per month
• Average product price is about $30
• Seller uses Comment Kahuna to build backlinks
• Products are drop-shipped and seller will provide sources

From here we can estimate the average number of buyers would be about 67 buyers a month. (Number of buyers = $2000 sales / $30 average sale price). That leads to about 2 - 3 buyers a day, which is a conversion rate of about 1% - 1.5%. This is a generally accepted conversion rate across industries.

We have also learnt about the niche keywords optimized for this site, and the corresponding site rankings:

Conclusion: An online lingerie store with a niche could be start for an online business, with niche keywords optimized to obtain top search rankings and a significant traffic volume.

Website marketplace links:

www.sitepoint.com/marketplace

www.websitebroker.com