All New CommentMILK Version 1.0Site Flipping Series Part One - The Website Seller
Want to Learn How to Build a Business Not Just a Blog.. for FREE? CLICK HERE Now to Find Out How!
By Dean Hunt
Buying and selling websites has been big news in 2007, and is set to become ever more mainstream in 2008. YouTube was the most high profile of the year, plus we have had the Facebook deal with Microsoft… and lest we forget about the blogging world: CashQuests sold for 15 big ones, Net Business Blog caused waves when Adrian Cooke purchased it in June 07, and there were many, many more.
So what has any of this got to do with little old me?
Well, for the past 12 months I have been buying and selling websites (Site Flipping) on a very regular basis. I am not going to discuss amounts, but let’s just say that I have been involved in 5 figure deals on an almost monthly basis, and have been in discussions with well over 100 site owners.
Over the coming weeks I am going to be showing you this world through the eyes of the three active positions in this industry:
1) The Site Seller (today)
2) The Site Buyer (coming soon)
3) The Site Flipper (coming soon, but not quite as soon as the second one 
)
I have had experience in all three, and I will be sharing my warnings, my secrets, my stories and my advice. If you own a website, then at some point you are likely to be in one of the above positions, so eyes forward, sharpen your pencils and let’s get started with today’s category: The Website Seller.
The Website Seller
If you own a successful website, then at some point you are likely to experience interest from outside parties in your site, or, you may hook up with a stripper from LA and have to sell your site to pay for your new addictions. In either case, you are naturally going to want to get the highest possible price for your website.
The Clash of Perspectives
The first thing you will need to do is change your perspective. It really doesn’t matter that you spent 1,000 hours of your time working on the site, it doesn’t matter that you paid some kid in Romania $3,000 for the back-end, and it doesn’t matter that the site has personal value to you.
All of those factors mean nothing in the real world!
So whilst it may not be natural or comfortable, make an effort to try and see things from the buyers perspective.
Spreading the Word…. for FREE
The next step is to spread the word about the possibility of a sale of your website. Contact your buddies on Facebook, contact the people on your IM, sell your site on forums, email friends and ex-colleagues…. utilise your contacts and spread the word about your site. There are two reasons for doing this:
1) It is Free
2) It is likely your contacts are already familiar with your site, and therefore there will be some element of brand influence in your favour.
Website Marketplaces
If you haven’t managed a sale from your contacts, then the next step is to go to a marketplace and put your site up for auction.
Sitepoint.com has a great marketplace, but it is not free to list. The team at Midascode are listing sites for free for the first 90 days of 2008, so that is worth trying before you hand over your heard earned mooney to Sitepoint.
Here is some info you will need to include when listing on a website marketplace like Sitepoint or Midascode:
* BIN or Reserve prices (BIN = Buy It Now price, and the reserve is the minimum you would be willing to sell for)
* The URL (obviously)
* traffic statistics (Focus on monthly unique visitors, and use the past 6 months average as your figure)
* Revenue details (Revenue is the single biggest factor, so make sure you list it)
* Age of site (People like to see the site’s age, so include that)
Additional Listing Information
I spoke to the team at Midascode and they said that the following is also useful information, especially on bigger sales:
* Any legal issues (if your site is called CocaColasuck.com then this is especially important. It is also an issue with Fan sites)
* Sources of revenue (include info on all revenue streams)
* Cost of advertising (If your site costs $50,000 per month in Google PPC to maintain, then make sure you include this info)
* Main Keywords (You are well within your rights to NOT share your main keywords on a marketplace, but giving access or screenshots to potential buyers may be required)
Valuing Your Website
This is a tricky area, but before you list your site you should have a BIN and minimum reserve price planned. If you simply want to list it and hope for the best, then you may accidentally sell your site for a lot less than it is worth.
I wrote a post about this earlier in the year: how much is my website worth?
Here is a snippet from that post:
the main set of factors we will look at when assigning a value to your site:
# Site Revenue - It is always a good sign if you are making money
# Site overhead - Hosting, designers, moderators, staff, ads etc….
# Search rankings - How much traffic do you get from Google and co?
# Stability of search rankings - How long have you had these rankings for?
# Legitimacy of search rankings - Do you do anything that could get your site penalised?
# Current and future revenue potential - Current is more important, but we don’t fully ignore future potential.
# Loyalty of user base - have you had many members for x years? etc
# Size of the site - in terms of brand and pages
# Unique Content - where does the content come from?
# Yahoo linkdomain: - How many backlinks do you have?
# .edu and .gov links - Do you have any genuine .edu and .gov links (comments do not count, as they use the nofollow)
# Affiliate relationships - Do you have any affiliate deals with related sites?
# Content relationships - Do you get links for content? do you use other peoples content in exchange for links?
# Site Profits - Making $100 is not good if you are spending $200 on ads
# Earnings per visitor - Unique visitors per month divided by monthly profit = earnings per visitor
# Costs per click - Do you use PPC? what is your average cost per click?
12 Reasons Why I Don’t Want to Buy Your Website
Here are some factors that generally make me NOT want to purchase a website: (note: these are not strict rules, but I am extra cautious when dealing with any of these)
* Your website is Banned from the search engines
* Your website has not been promoted
* Has a bad reputation in the industry
* Huge amount of competition
* Little or no room for growth
* is turnkey
* is a site with a low expected life span (e.g a site for a new computer game)
* is a site that can be easily replicated (e.g arcade sites, proxy sites, myspace sites)
* is hosted on Blogspot or related sites
* has a potent copyright infringements in the domain
* is very expensive to maintain
* requires a lot of work to maintain (e.g a blog where the seller is the only author)
Site Selling Summary
Selling your website can be a great idea, especially if you are short of cash, or are looking for a new and more exciting project. I hope this article will help you if you ever decide to sell your site or blog, and you can contact me directly with any questions at my blog, or you can speak to the team at Midascode.co.uk.
Website Selling/buying Interview: I recently interviewed Adrian Cooke (the guy who highly controversially purchased NetBusinessBlog.com), if you want to hear his thoughts on the sale and buying/selling websites, then you can read the full interview for free here: Net Business Blog Interview
Did You Download Your FREE Copy of "How to Build a Business NOT Just a Blog" Yet? Click Here Now to Get Your Copy!
that was honestly, too long and spread out a post darin and i usually enjoy your stuff!
sorry i mean dean!
Great piece of advice but some people say its worth 10-12x your monthly revenue, what you think about that?
Abdalla,
Great question. I will be answering it in detail in part two of this series. But in a nutshell, there is no calculation that can determine a site’s value. There are simply too many factors involved. That said, there are 3 scales that I use depending on the size of the site:
Small site 0-8 months
Medium 10 - 24 months
Large 24 - 48
Huge 49+
By huge I mean Youtube.com
By Large I mean a site like SEObook.com
By Medium I mean something like Johncow.com
By small I mean everything else
There are of course exceptions, and I will go into those in more detail, but the above can be used for a VERY rough estimate.
Dean
Mahdi - Sorry to hear that. There is so much information that it unfortunately HAS to be long. If I start adding my usual humor to it, plus add all the info I want to add, then a 3 part series will become 10 parts
Thanks for the feedback though, I will work on it for part two.
Dean
Cow you are back on form with Good Topic Excellent Post Great Work Five Star for this Post
Thanks vhxn, glad you enjoyed it.
Dean
I like this. Are you thinking of selling John?
is there any favorable type of site in the marketplace? Like maybe blog worth 5x whereas website just 3x or maybe more than blog’s value. i don’t know you are the expert.
Excellent post, is nice to grown a website but is bad to say good bye to it
. I suppose you may be careful to not fall in love with the website 
, I will be waiting the other guides.
contender for the longest post of the year already..lol
Some good tips in there. I find myself holding onto every site I start rather than dumping them off for the cash though. Most of the websites I own are forums and I think that you can lose a lot of members depending on how you sell the forum.
Can’t wait for the buyers’ view as i have no idea how to find websites that haven’t been fully exploited yet.
Thanks for showing.
Interesting post, I’ll keep this in mind.
-Mike
liked the post I noticed you were on the top ten of alex’s movers and shakers why do think this is like you’re blog. I thought about buying you’re bob meets world but decided not to Can you mention the the standard process of payment (safest)when buying or selling a site.
Thanks Cow, This is definitely more informative than many of the web site flipping ebooks going around.
Thanks for the great info about site flipping…LOL u have included a site for a keyword
Nice info! I’ll keep it in mind.
Thanks for the reply dean, that makes sense, I cant wait for part two!
That really was a long post, but I agree that there is lots to talk about site flipping. I already do it myself and have earned a generous amount of $$$ from it. I’ll be looking forward to Part 2.
Wow, one of the longer posts I have read here. But, it had a lot of good information. Good work.
Did you sell the “Bob meets world” site yet Cow? BTW–your name is Dean, I thought it was John
?
AL
on the techerorati 100 their is a blogspot site that does really good but I am wondering since I have a blogspot site is i possible to keep it hosted on blogspot and have a main domain too but I know you want to buy it but to me out of all the free websites out there blospot is the best by far and I too want o be avid site flipper and a domain seller