How I Built and Sold My RideShare Website for $12,500

Every year there’s a growing interest in making money online. There’s the flexibility side of working your own hours, and then the money side. It’s not instant riches. It takes time. But if you put the time and effort, making money online is possible and feasible for the average person. I’m just an average guy.

This is my story of how I built a Rideshare blog about Uber and Lyft, then sold the website for $12,500.

The Back Story

Back in 2015 I started driving for Uber. At the same time as driving, I decided I was going to learn how to earn money on the internet Through blogging So I can travel the world while making money online.

One day, I received an email that advertised “Mother of three makes $8,971 first month online just posting links online” or something like that. Of course, I thought it was a scam so I did some research, verified my thoughts and then discovered a legitimate program that I have been with ever since.

While the website you are on is my “first website”, I spent 6 months working on it before I decided that I was going to create a website about rideshare driving with tips, advice, How to articles, and personal experiences. Putting this website on the back burner.

It seemed like a great Idea. I was more knowledgeable about that niche, The competition was smaller, and The referral bonuses for signing up drivers were huge and really still are.

I always thought of it as a temporary website, however, and always had the intention of selling the blog or just letting it die out till the money runs dry.

At the end of 2017, a few days before Christmas, My dream of traveling the world while making money online was realized. I sold my website as my starting funds and have been traveling ever since.

Now, you may be thinking, “$12,500 is a small number to make a good income from. It’s not even a years salary Brandon!” You have to understand, I was also making a consistent monthly income beforehand.

If you can make $1,000 online you can make $100,000 replicating the same process you made the first $1,000.

In Reality I made over $20,051 for the entire 2017 when including my monthly income. That’s a full time minimum wage job in the US. On top of that, I’m actually still getting an income from the website a full year after I sold it.

Of course, this likely won’t be the reality for most people that sell a website.

The truth is I didn’t actually put a huge effort into my rideshare website or The income would’ve been a lot more. Just to give you an example of what I mean.

On average, the commission of a referral that used my affiliate links to sign up as a driver earned me a $300 bonus after they completed a required amount of trips.

That means two drivers a month signing up and driving is $14,400 for the year.  The bigger the effort you put the more potential money you can make.

But you’ll start to understand the effort I’m talking about once you get deeper into this article.

The Creation of my RideShare Website

After having 6 months of experience learning how to blog, understanding the process of earning money, and truthfully wanting to switch my niche a little bit, I came up with the idea of blogging about rideshare.

It was an epiphany moment that lit up a light bulb in my head where I realized there wasn’t a lot of rideshare websites, and I was a driver with a lot of knowledge that could help other new drivers and even veteran driver as well.

Just by answering all the questions they searched in google about driving in the industry. Plus, I’d be getting some pretty fat paychecks just from signing up a few people. Which always sounds nice. I’m sure you can agree.

It was a win-win for everybody, compared to me being in the “make money online” industry just starting out as a newbie and trying to help others while I was still figuring it out myself.

Now that I have the experience, knowledge, and my own successes, I can come back here with a vengeance.

Building The RideShare Website

In my opinion, from the personal experiences I’ve had, The most important part of making money online blogging is to, well, blog! Lol. But, also blog for your audience.

So when starting my rideshare website, while I did write some personal experiences, I also wrote about the different services, types of cars that qualify, the license requirements, etc.. Some of this info was on other websites as well, but the goal of building a website is to create a one-stop spot for all your informational needs as a customer.

This is what keeps people on your website longer, and brings traffic to your blog. Once you have the traffic, then you can monetize the blog to start earning you an income.

The biggest problem people have though is giving up after a few months with no income results. You have to be patient. The traffic doesn’t come instantly.

The goal is to rank on the top pages of Google to attract an audience and it can takes months for Google to put your article on the first page, and that’s if Google even decides your content is worthy of that honor.

Not every article will rank well.

The easiest way to rank is by targeting low-competition keywords you search in Google that still brings you traffic, and then writing the article naturally.

This is how I was able to bring traffic to my website. Then the basics of monetizing is strategically placings ads, collecting emails to promote products in newsletters, or in my case, I only had affiliate or referral links in my articles to the Uber and Lyft sign up page.

The simplest way is just saying at the end of the article if you want to sign up and drive “use my referral link”, which I would have attached.

It can get more complex than that and you don’t have to be trying to sell on every page because your website is there to help people as the goal. Too much selling will make your content look less genuine and authentic.

But I just wanted give an easy to understand example of how I did things.

Working Off and On Over the Few Years

By the time I sold the website, I averaged $500+ a month for the past year. But, like I said earlier, I didn’t put in a huge effort. Part of ranking well on Google and increasing your income is blogging on a consistent basis. That’s exactly what I wasn’t doing. I wrote articles for the first 6 months, and then took a break from the website.

I’ve had my own personal issues that have helped keep me from the website, but I’m not here to excuse that kind of behavior. This is just how the progress from start to selling the website went. I had some financial issues, and other times I got depressed about writing because I’ve had a lot of close family and friends discourage me from making money online because they didn’t think it’d really be possible for me to do it.

“Very few make money online” and “everything is a scam” was always their thoughts.

After a year and the last 6 months of that not working on my website, my traffic did still increase and I was getting daily comments on one of my articles. So I started posting more content. But, once again, I took another 6 months hiatus.

I was earning a decent monthly income by this point. Some months it’d be $100, but other months I would make over $1,000. During the start of 2017, as well as, the start of my second 6 month stint with my rideshare blog before taking another hiatus, I told myself I was going to travel the world at the beginning of the next new year (2018).

I always thought of my website as being temporary. I, honestly, wasn’t sure if I’d still being getting paid for referrals after I left the country. Which is another reason why I decided to sell my website.

I’d have the money upfront so I can travel and work on other projects during my adventures. Instead of leaving the country and wondering if I’ll still get paid for referrals after I stopped updating my insurance and car inspections as an Uber driver.

I sold the website after taking another 6 months off and owning the blog for two years even though I only, truly, worked one full year out of the two and was averaging $500+ by the end of the second year.

How I Sold my Rideshare Blog

Just like a realtor assist you by helping find a buyer for your house, they have marketplaces to sell websites online too.

This is the route I ultimately ended up going instead of just letting my website die. I had no social media influence, I didn’t do email marketing, I didn’t pay for ads or traffic of any kind, And I only worked 1 year out of the two.

In the end I had 50 articles on my website, which averages close to an article a week. This was the kind of effort I had put into the website. Because of that, I believed there was still huge earning potential for the rideshare blog.

Before selling my website, I wanted to get a fair valuation of what I could earn from the sale. I did put work in the blog and I wasn’t looking to sell way undervalued just to get rid of my business. I had a monthly income and wanted to consider all my options.

I browsed through many websites on the marketplace to see what they were being sold at and the type of income results that were being reported during the sale process.

There are many variables to determining the value of your website. The income being earned now, the amount of traffic being received, and what kind of monetization methods are currently being used are some of those variables you have to look at. From the conclusion I came up with, I valued my website at about $15,000.

The average website that was making $500 a month was in this range and it basically doubled when you were making $1,000 a month instead. Some websites sold for a little less and other a bit more than the $15,000 range I was looking at.

Selling My RideShare Blog on Flippa

While there are a few different marketplaces to sell a website on, in the end, I went with a business called Flippa to sell my website on.

It seemed pretty straightforward, and there were less requirements to be eligible to sell your website compared to some other marketplaces I explored. Though, if I ever were to sell a website again making more money than the rideshare blog, I may just test out the other places too as some I felt you might’ve been able to get a bigger paycheck from.

With Flippa, before you sell, there is an option to get a business valuation of your site. While I did my own research and was confident in the numbers I came up with I used the valuation tool to start the selling process on Flippa. You’ll give your information and details about the website and type of income you’re earning as well as your thoughts on an asking price.

When I did this, I put $20,000 as this was on the upper side of what I’d be happy with. After you give the information I received an email from one of the account managers explaining the services they could do as far as listing the website with the commission of the sale that would be charged.

Flippa is a website where you can either put a minimum price and people bid, or you can sell your website as a classified ad with just a “buy it now” button.

I was told that the Rideshare blog could be listed and some of the services would include getting featured through out the auction so my website would be in front of more eyes.

It would be a two week auction and she mentioned putting my minimum price at $15,000 and then possibly by the end of the 14 days I could get that $20,000 sale. The commission was 17.5% vs 15% as I was getting help with the listing and putting myself in front of more people.

I have my own opinions on how this process worked but I’ll touch more up on that in another article as this post is getting long.

Getting a Deal Done on Flippa

After a few days of my website being listed at $15,000, I decided to lower it down to $10,000 to try to attract more interest and bidders.

The interest picked up. I had a few people messaging me asking questions and requesting access to Google analytics to examine my traffic for the website.

Towards the end of the auction, there was one guy, in particular, that showed good interest and was looking to end the auction earlier with me placing a “Buy it now” option on the listing.

He started low asking for $7,500 for the website, which I respectfully declined. In the end , after a little back and forth, we settled for $12,500 to get the sale complete a day earlier than when the auction was going to end.

While I had my valuation at 15K, I was really looking for anything over $10,000 to be happy with selling the website and ended up a few grand higher than that. While I felt I could’ve gotten more, I didn’t want to let greed bite me in the butt and end up with no sale instead.

So it was a success for me. Plus, like I stated earlier, while I sold the website over a year ago, I’ve actually still been getting a monthly income from the site as the guy apparently hasn’t changed all my links on the website.

Looking back at the sale now, it actually worked out even better than I could’ve imagined because I’ve made well over the original valuation that I gave myself for the rideshare blog.

Learn How To Make Your Own Money Making Blog

So that’s my story on how I built a Ridehsare blog, and then sold it for $12,500. To sum it up:

• I created a website
• Added content to bring traffic
• Monetized the website
• Then eventually sold the website after earning a consistent monthly income

Four pretty simple steps. Had I put more effort I would’ve made more. If you really think about it. It’s pretty crazy that I personally thought of an idea, built the content, created a brand, and designed a business with enough value to have someone willing to pay me $12,500 to scoop the website from me. And anybody could do the same thing when you put your mind to it.

Everything I’ve learned was through one program, and if you’re interested in flexibility, and building an online income then check out the all inclusive training program I used to fullfill my dreams of traveling.

Have you ever earned money online? Let me know in the comments!