How to Sell a Website
Selling a website is a hassle. Maybe you’ve grown tired of blogging or are just wanting to get rid of one of your older websites (having multiple websites can be overwhelming after all). If you are planning on selling your website soon be sure to consider these things beforehand.
Know what your revenue is
What is your current revenue of your blog? If you are earning money from it now then how much is it and what monetization methods (affiliate marketing, Google Adwords, Amazon, etc) are you making money from?
This is some of the most important information that all potential buyers are going to want to know. You need to find out your monthly earnings and what monetization methods you use. It wouldn’t hurt to be able to show how your earnings have increased over time as well.
Most people, to calculate how much your blog is worth, will take your monthly revenue and multiply by one year (12) to get a price that is fair. So while traffic is certainly worth something in the eyes of potential buyers, the website still ultimately needs to be making something in order to sell.
Recommended Reading: How to find writers for your blog
Identify what type of website you are selling
Is your blog one that has some brand recognition or is it just a micro niche website? If your blog is a brand then you can typically ask for a higher price.
Show what your traffic is
This is another important metric that most people look into when they are looking into a website to buy. Do you have a consistent amount of traffic? Is your traffic from the search engines or do your rely on paid traffic? What about your traffic from other websites? Also, do you plan on including your social media pages with your website? Most or all of these questions are going to need to be answered if you plan on selling your blog.
Higher traffic also doesn’t necessarily mean more money for your website. The amount your blog is worth also depends on what your niche is. If your niche is something like gaming or tech and you rely exclusively or almost exclusively on Ads for making money then your website will probably fetch a bit less than some other blog’s. After all, ad blockers are all the rage today.
If you want to disclose your traffic (you should) when selling your blog then the most popular way to do so is with Google Analytics.
Ways to attract more bids
Having some added agreements can help you increase your bids or overall value of your website.
- Website milestones – the buyer will pay based on after certain milestones have been reached
- Splitting ownership – you agree to split ownership of the website you are selling, which will increase the value in the eyes of buyers
- Post sale support – offer support after you have sold the website
- Zero competition from you – agree to not build a new website in the same niche
How to sell your blog
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, here are the steps you should take when selling your website.
Step 1 – Preparing all of the important information
As already stated above, you need to have important metrics such as traffic and monthly revenue included in your description if you want to attract buyers. You need to detail what your website is, how long it’s been active, how much money it makes, where it’s earnings come from, how much organic search traffic you get, how much referral traffic you get and how many backlinks you have.
General info:
- Detailed summary page that shows the most important information
- History of your traffic
- Indexed list of all of your webpages
- Backlinks, especially from high page rank websites
- All software that your blog uses
- List of all of the contributors to your website
Revenue info:
- How much your expenses are (web hosting, software you use, etc)
- How much your monthly/yearly revenue is
Step 2 – Finding people who are interested in buying websites
After you have all of the needed information the next step is to find buyers. Here are some places to find buyers:
- Forums
- Business for sale websites such as ebay’s business for sale page
- Website broker
There are much easier methods to use when trying to find buyers. So yes, there are websites available that help your sell your website, sometimes for a hefty fee for their services. Some services that these marketplace websites help you with usually include:
- Finding plenty of buyers
- Making sure that your website is set at the right price
- Assists in any problems
- Price negotiating assistance
- After sale support
Here are some websites for such services.
Small website services:
If your website’s monthly revenue is between $0 and $5000 monthly it is recommended that you use either Ebay Business website selling page or buysellwebsite. These are particularly good if you are selling a start up website that isn’t yet established and has little traffic.
Medium website services:
If your monthly revenue is between $5000 and $150,000 then I recommend using a service like Flippa (the most popular website selling service) or websitebroker.
Large website services:
For huge money making websites you really need something more than just an online marketplace to attract bids. This is because when you are attempting to sell a $200k+ website there is a much larger picture that needs to be detailed. In other words, you need more than a few ad screenshots and traffic data.
What you really need is an investment banker to manage such a large transaction and they require lots of information beforehand. You will need detailed info such as your traffic reports since your website went online, how much revenue your website makes including screen shots, income reports, a backlink report and a very detailed spreadsheet of your revenue month-by-month. In short, you are going to need a ton of extremely detailed info that will take you hours to fully compile.
If your monthly revenue exceeds $250,000 then it is recommended that you use a service that specializes in selling large businesses such as founderslib.
Any other useful tips for selling websites? Let us know in the comments below.
