I have been doing a lot of research into flipping web sites lately and I hope to share some of my experience in the coming months. That being said, two days ago, I finally decided to put my first-ever e-business, Treo Express, up for sale. Treo Express is a site that features news, rumors, and hot deals for the Palm Treo smartphone.

Treo Express was our first attempt at marketing a digital product online. My business partners and I put together a 150-page “Treo help ebook” which sold very well thanks to our initial marketing and advertising. We also spread word of the site through the Sprint stores that Josh used to work at.

Even though the ebook was only $4.97, it sold many copies thanks to its low price and huge amount of detailed and organized information. For instance, every step-by-step tutorial of the ebook contains a large picture of the phone detailing a specific function.

Overall, Treo Express made us around $300 total since its January inception. Not bad for a site with little to no link building and just a few PPC campaigns running. The reason I am selling is that I have no time anymore to devote to link building or writing content for the site.

The majority of the work for put into the site was to develop the 150-page ebook, design and develop the site, and write the content. I would estimate we spent 40 hours developing the ebook and another 15 or so developing and writing content for the site.

We are auctioning off the established site including domain, developed website, content, re-sellable ebook, and hosting plan at SitePoint.

With a little link building, fresh content, and new marketing, the site could easily become a $50/day (or $1500/month) earner. There is a huge market for the Palm Treo and many users use Google to find solutions to the phone’s problems. Another potential HUGE earner for the site is the Hot Deals page. Each product on those pages contains an affiliate link to the Palm store. You earn 5% commission off every sale. If that page was marketed more heavily, it could be a huge source of additional revenue.

If you are interested in learning more about the auction, you can do so at the SitePoint Marketplace. The site also comes with a free year of hosting courtesy of my web design business.