How to sell your website
When it comes to selling products and services in our daily lives from cars, home appliances, insurance policies, food and beverages … yes we all know about them and how the smartly dressed sales person comes to you with that wide grin on their face and you know what you are going to expect. But imagine you have a website that you have conceptualized, designed, built and nurtured and it’s generating a decent amount of revenue with a fair number of dedicated users and you ultimately decide to sell your website for a good deal to keep you happy at least till you start planning for your next web venture. Till this point everything is going according to plan and then the big questions turn to face you … How do you sell your website, how do you reach out to someone who is ready to buy your website, what would be its value, so on and so forth and we arrive at a dead end.
Fortunately this article will attempt to shed some light on those big questions and by the time you finish reading you may end up thinking that it’s not the end of the road after all. So let’s move straight to the point. How do you sell your website?
The first thing you should know before starting to sell your website is calculate how much is your site really worth? The answer to that is not so simple. There are many indexes and references which attempts to value a website but finally you are the one to decide on how much you wish to offer. A simplistic measure of calculating the value of your website would be to calculate the average monthly revenue the website is earning minus the monthly cost of running the website and multiply the difference by 24 or 36 depending on how many more months you think the website could be still be in demand before it finally loses its appeal. But there are lot many factors to consider like the industry your site operates in, its competition, how much skill is required to manage the site and whether the business is growing, its future potential and whether the industry is booming or declining. You may decide to take the help of a professional valuator who can provide help on determining its value.
Once you have determined the value in which to sell your website the next big question is where to sell it and how to reach out to potential buyers or investors who can offer you the money you are looking for. The first approach would be to look for buyers within the industry the website caters to. Target individuals who will understand the value of your site because they will be the first to understand the true potential of your website without the need of educating what it is all about. You can start by researching the web, online directories and social media for contact details of people within that industry and spread the word around. You should definitely use your own social and business contacts and let everyone know that you are looking for a buyer.
A better option is to advertise in popular forums like the SitePoint where you can list your site for sale. The best thing is to search the forum to see what other sites have sold for in the past. By comparing the details you can get a feel for what your site might sell for.
As you may have realized that searching and contacting individually is a long drawn tedious process and you have to keep hoping that you will find someone ready to offer you the right amount. A better and more efficient way to reach out to potential buyers is advertising through online buy/sell website marketplaces where you can try and sell your site. These websites are dedicated to the purpose of buying and selling websites. You have a good chance that your listing will be viewed by the right people. There are different categories to choose from and you can post your listing in the right category or industry. Most of these websites have a paid advertisement policy where you get greater exposure as compared to the free ones. Be ready to spend a little, after all you need to have a budget that you should be willing to spend on advertising purposes.
Finally when you have interested buyers who have contacted you everything boils down to your own ability to convince the buyer. During negotiation you should keep in mind the following:
1. What are the terms and conditions of the financial agreement and how the money will be transferred?
2. You should have a legal contract in place which protects your interests and is also fair to the buyer. You could take professional legal help while creating the contract draft.
3. Negotiate with the buyer regarding the support period. Rarely does a website sale happen outright and you get the money and forget about everything. There is a gradual phase out till the final handover takes place and the buyer’s team takes responsibility of all operations.
4. Make sure that you have your web hosting, domain names, auto responders, mailing lists, software, subscriptions, paid directory listings and any other third party subscriptions in place to be transferred to the eventual buyer.
Finally if you do manage to sell your website and get the value you were hoping for you can take this as a great personal achievement. Probably this would encourage you to plan for something even bigger in the future. So happy selling !!!
Paul Jackman is an eminant author on various topics of web related businesses. He Has his level of expertise of writing various aspects of internet related online business transactions. He suggests visiting sell your website for more information.
Processing your request, Please wait....
