Before Selling a Website
If you want to sell a website business, you should prepare it accordingly. Prospective buyers evaluate websites from different sides, and one of the most important aspects is the earning potential. It includes attractiveness for advertisers, ability to provide high conversion ratio, good discoverability and more.
Monetize Your Website Before Selling
The sooner you start monetizing the website, the better: most buyers request information about the blog performance over several years. But there is something you can do even if the time for sale approaches: show that your project has a high monetization potential:
- Adding and optimizing contextual advertising
- Joining affiliate networks
- Optimizing your website
While pursuing a higher income, do not forget about the audience. A responsive and user-friendly design will help easily navigate on your website and improve the reading experience.
Don’t forget to add videos, high-quality images and the killer call-to-action. All those visuals and marketing techniques are able to make your website generate consistent revenue and provide high return on investment (ROI), valuable for a buyer.
Calculate Your Website Cost
How to assess the value of my website?
The simplest way to learn how much your website costs; multiply the monthly net income with 20-30. Such multiplication is usually used for content projects. But this method is not clear, as you could have a very expensive 3 letters domain name or have a unique project.
To set pricing, you need to consider such factors as:
- Net income;
- Domain name;
- Traffic;
- Awareness;
- ROI;
- Ranking
- Design, etc.
Website value calculators make calculations automatically, but the results they produce are rather a benchmark than the final price.
While estimating your website cost, consider its earning potential in the future, so the price won’t be equal to the amount of money you have invested in blogging.
Another aspect influencing the blog cost is its reliability:
- Stable revenue
- Scaling and growth
- Automated systems in place
- Several sources of income
- Numerous sources of traffic
- Highly effective USP
- Awareness of market leadership
Additionally, the business model also influences pricing. For example, e-commerce sites might cost more, as they are likely to generate more money: in 2018, online stores accounted for almost half of the total deals on Internet:
Prepare the Documents
Once the website is ready, it’s time to draw papers.
For starters, create an information memorandum presenting your blog’s history, the reasons for selling, USP and offers to the new owner, and other crucial factors. Include also the marketing strategies you’ve implemented, targeted keywords, competition analysis, sales history, conversion rates, etc.
Once there is a prospective buyer, prepare the contract with the agreed dates and price. Also, consider seeking the support of a lawyer that knows local and state business laws and can protect you from scammers.
The documents you prepare should present the proof of ownership, spending and revenue records. It’s not always necessarily.
Making the Sale
Auctions (Flippa, for instance) are the best option for startups and small businesses. On those platforms, potential buyers place bids for your website, and its cost can increase manifold.
If the price of your website is under $100K, use such marketplaces as BizBuySell to post listings identical to classified ads.
Otherwise, websites in the range of $250,000 – $20,000,000 can be sold with such brokers as Digital Exits that help finalizing the sale and making a transaction.
For large deals that amount to $20M, it’s better to apply to an investment bank, for example, Founders Advisors.
Specialized Websites
To speed up the sale, consider using one of the following specialized websites.
Flippa
Flippa is an auction site that claims the lowest fee for sellers and focuses on e-commerce websites, domains, apps, SaaS and content websites.
The platform features a user-friendly categorized interface, a valuation tool and a dedicated discussion board that allows for negotiation with buyers. You will be able to pick a broker or manage the sale yourself.
If you make a transaction, make sure it will be processed through the Flippa Escrow (with a 10% commission). The platform has an impeccable record with webmasters since it selects offers and can deny a bidder if it has any inkling, so the range of products is really good.
Bloggeries
Bloggeries offers 34 blog categories to increase the chances of finding the relevant buyer. For the price of $75 a year, you’ll rank among the search engines and attract visitors to your blog.
The platform manually approves all the sellers, so consider checking the requirements before applying for listing. In the affirmative, your offer will be published on a separate page and be eligible for a promotion on the platform’s homepage.
Business for Sale
Business for Sale arranges the sale of websites of different kinds. There are both free and commercial plans: with a free subscription, you cannot place links, and advertising is available for 20 days only.
If you pay £399 for six months, you’ll get services on a turnkey basis. It’s possible to resort to a broker or act independently.
Empire Flippers
Empire Flippers is a platform offering various services for website owners in addition to the marketplace, for example, you can try their free valuation tool to estimate your website price.
The platform manually approves website sellers, which can take one to three weeks. The major requirements include having a stable revenue for six–12 months, featuring permanent traffic flow and no penalties.
Empire Flippers has thousands of followers on social media, and your website will be promoted there as well. The company takes 15% commission for a completed deal.
FE International 
FE International is a trustworthy website broker and advisory firm that focuses on selling SaaS, e-commerce and content resources. It will examine your website traffic, financials and other aspects in order to evaluate it in the best way.
The company also prepares marketing materials for potential investors. It is fully involved in the negotiation process to help you select the most lucrative deal and close it.
Website Broker
Website broker allows you to reach tons of purchasers without any fees and contact them directly.
Besides, it’s possible to control your listings and amend them anytime. The platform also offers a calculator to check the website’s estimated price and compare it to similar resources.
General Websites
The following websites are aimed at sales in general and allow contacting buyers directly. On the flip side, identifying a scammer remains your task and not one of the websites. General websites include bulletin boards, forums and social platforms.
Craigslist
Craigslist is a bulletin board with tons of categories and sections. It provides plenty of leads but you should select the real buyers thoroughly. The ads are categorized geographically, that’s why it’s necessary to choose one or several cities to target all potential buyers.
Besides, you should create unique ads for each city you post in. The platform integrates spam control to make the process more productive.
Twitter’s functionality allows finding people who are looking for the product you sell. Even though is not a dedicated marketplace, but Twitter helps reaching out to lots of people.
Unlike other social networks, it allows for contacting a company’s CEO directly. You can launch an ad or look for potential buyers in many other ways.
Geek Village Forums
With Geek Village Forums, you will be able to list a website for just $10. The platform offers tons of tips, tools, and relevant resources for webmasters and professional online marketers.
The archives contain information about all the previous sales so that you can compare deals and set the right price.
How to Sell a Website Efficiently
There are many ways of selling your website: using the website brokerage, selling independently via forums and social media and more.
In the first case, you should be ready to pay fees and commissions but you’ll still be protected from scammers and get the technical, marketing and legal support. In the second case, there is no commission and no support either.
Whatever method you choose, it’s crucial to prepare the website for sale and set the price according to your website potential.