How To Sell Websites

Selling a website can be a great experience and can result in a serious cash injection, but how do you go about it?

How To Sell Websites

You should by no means consider what I have to say below as the hard and fast rules of how to sell websites, but they should give you a lot of guidance and useful tips. Keep in mind that there are many ways you can go about the process and you should explore all of your options before deciding to sell.

How Much Is Your Site Worth?

Easy: Your site is worth as much as someone is willing to pay you for it. Simple answer really. Now, I know this doesn't help you at all when you decide to put your website up for sale and someone asks you how much you want for it. After the amount of hours and hard work you've put into developing your website and building up the traffic and (hopefully) the revenue you don't want to sell yourself short.

As with any traditional business, it's hard to determine a selling price. You simply need to look at the numbers and work out what you would be happy to walk away with. It's worth noting that other variables, such as the industry your website operates in (and it's competition), how much labour and technical skill is required to manage the website, the costs of running the website (hosting, marketing, staff, etc), whether the business is growing and at what rate, the websites future potential and whether the industry is a buyers or sellers market (supply versus demand). This is just a small part of what you need to consider when contemplating the best way to sell your website.

A lot of people will tell you that a business should be sold for ten times it's gross profit, or 5 times average revenue, or 2 times last years total revenue. Generally, an e-business website is worth twelve to twenty four times its monthly earnings before interest and tax, so if your website profits are $10,000 a month you have an asset worth between $120,000 and $240,000.

Preparing To Sell

The more information you can provide to potential buyers, the better. Raw statistics are very important to most buyers, and if they don't ask you for certain numbers, then they don't know what they are doing and are probably not really interested. You should prepare at least these figures:

• Your website traffic statistics. You should include unique visitors (averages and totals, monthly and yearly), pageviews (averages and totals, monthly and yearly), growth rates from month to month, the countries that the websites visitors originate from, the amount of traffic that comes from search engines and direct bookmarks, which keywords your site is popular for and the PageRank of your website. Making your log files available through direct access with a statistics package like Awstats or Webalizer, so that serious buyers can get a good idea on your websites performance and perform their own research, is a very good selling point.
  Nowadays, most web servers come with a statistics package. Ask your web host if you are not sure. The most common are Awstats and Webalizer which are often preinstalled. Make sure you become familiar with these packages so that you can accurately assess your sites traffic.


• Your financial figures. If you run your website as a business, you should have these figures in some form of accounting package. The profit and loss statement is a popular choice for potential buyers, but the more financial data you can provide, the better.


• You need a good sales letter which introduces you and your website, details your websites history, outlines why you want to sell your site, promotes what your site offers to the new owner (e.g. current and future financial statistics) and any other important factors. Don't give away your asking price up front but certainly make note of the important factors, such as traffic figures and if your site is profitable.

Finding Buyers

Once you have done your sums and settled on a sum you would be happy with, its time to find qualified buyers and see how much demand there is. With the 12-24 months revenue figure firmly planted in your head as a "benchmark" figure, start your search.

Searching Inside Your Industry

A good way to start your search for a buyer is to research the retail outlets that sell products that your websites market is using. Email all the stores you can find contact details for, you might even have established relationships with them already if they have advertised on your website. You can also email some of the larger overseas online stores and websites that you think could be interested in buying your website.

Also, don't be scared to contact individuals that will understand the value of your website, as they will be the easiest to sell to (they won't need to be "taught" about your marketplace). They will also be the most excited about the prospect of buying your website as they probably already sell to the same target.

Searching Outside Your Industry

If your search for a buyer within your industry turns up a blank, its time to find a buyer elsewhere. This could involve pitching your website to a web entrepreneur that sees the potential in your site or simply finding someone interested in running a website that would prefer to buy one rather than build one from scratch. You will also need a really good sales pitch and the numbers (financial details) will count for a lot more since that might be the only part of your web business the buyer will be interested in.

There are also a few online places you can try and sell your site. I find it best to avoid eBay as there seems to be too many "scammers" about.
A better option in my mind is to use forums like the SitePoint Marketplace where you can list your site for sale and get some very good exposure. The members on SitePoint are also very motivated buyers.

Making The Sale

You will eventually find someone who is interested in your website and begin negotiations. The one thing to remember at this stage is that you should only sell for a sum you are happy with. Don't sell because you think the buyers offer is "better than nothing".

Don't forget to agree on the finer details of the sale, such as where the site will be hosted, how long you will be available for support, and the transfer of ownership record changes.

When finalising the details of the sale I suggest you keep these points in mind:

• How and when will the money be transferred? An upfront payment of 50% before the transfer starts and a final payment once the transfer has been made would be fair. How will you take payment? Cheque/check? Direct bank wire? Cash in hand? Escrow?


• Write up some form of formal contract with dates and the agreed upon price and have both parties sign it. If you are completing a sale for a large amount it makes sense to get a lawyer to make sure you stay on top of the legal concerns.


• Define how long you will provide support for. You might want to play it safe and document the mandatory period you must provide support.


• Stay on top of all the technical niggles. Online business is a complicated task and there are a lot of tools your website might be using that you may have forgotten about, such as web hosting, domain names, autoresponders, mailing lists, software, subscriptions, paid directory listings and any of the other elements that you need to transfer to the new owners.

Moving Forward Post Sale

You're happy. Your pockets are full of cash and the world is a wonderful place. So what's next? Well, you've learnt what it takes to build a successful website and how to sell it. So why not do it again? It should be a lot easier this time around with capital available. Now that you have some capital behind you, invest it wisely.

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