How To Sell Your Website Without Coming Off Like a Jackass
In order to fill the database for our site I didn’t want to write a spider, I wanted to do some data entry myself and figure out what I was in for. I scrolled through a few thousand forum posts just to pull out 200 legitimate sales with quality information attached. It took months, but I learned a ton in the process. The most shocking thing to me is that so many people act like jackasses when they sell their websites. It’s like they want to pull a fast one on somebody and sell it for more than it’s worth. Don’t. You’ll get a bad rep and will have problems selling other sites. I’ve seen it happen on countless threads. And the truth is, many many many sites sell for more than the standard 10-12x monthly earnings. The way to do that is to find the right buyer, someone who gets more value from the site than just the monthly cash flow. So how do you find a good buyer? Start with a good listing.
My definition of a good listing.
1. Include the URL - Why not? I never understand why people want to keep this private. What are you hiding? By making people PM you for it, you miss out on a lot of good potential buyers.
2. Post traffic numbers - I don’t think I have ever seen a website for sale where the seller didn’t list traffic numbers and the buyer didn’t ask. It’s usually the first question on a thread if it isn’t included in the seller’s first post. Include unique visitors, visitors, and pageviews. This tells a buyer whether you have repeat traffic or not, and how much people poke around the site when they come.
3. Be prepared to disclose revenue - My personal preference is to post this publicly, but if you are uncomfortable with it, be prepared to provide proof to people who ask. I like to see a full year’s worth of earnings to understand how revenue fluctuates. I’ll buy a site with only one month’s earnings, but I’m not going to pay much.
4. SEO Stuff - Post age of the site, pagerank, and any keywords it ranks highly for (if you rely on SE traffic).
5. Be honest about where traffic and revenue come from - Seriously, do you think the new buyer won’t figure it out?
If you can’t post at least the information above, don’t waste your time because answering a million questions on the thread just to weed out non-buyers will waste too much of your time. Now, in order not to come off like a jackass, I suggest you do the following things too.
1. Post a bin upfront - I am amazed at how many people wait to see where the bids fall before they post a BIN. You own the site. You should know what it’s worth to you to let it go asap. And with a BIN, you are more likely to sell it quickly to someone who really wants it. You can always lower your BIN later, no one will complain, but not setting one sends a message that you don’t know what the site is worth.
2. Don’t sell then back out - Some people sell a site at BIN, but then get a higher bid and dishonor the BIN. Those people are jackasses. I should compile a list of everyone who is done it, so you know not to buy from them. Some people don’t get the bids they hope for, so they refuse to sell. If that’s a possibility, set a reserve price up front.
3. Make sure your site is ready - I have to laugh when someone tries to sell a site and the next post on the thread is “your site is down” or something like that. Look, websites do go down from time to time, but this happens on probably 6-8% of sales threads. That’s too high.
The way to make money selling websites is to find somebody that has a real reason to value the site more than you. If you have an adsense site that makes $30/month, and I own a high PR site on the same topic, I’ll probably pay more than $300 for yours, because I know that a link from mine will increase the adsense earnings.
So don’t be a a jackass when you sell your site. Be honest, be open, and you will get a good reputation that will serve you better when you sell sites down the road.
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