Straight off the bat, here are a few key insights:
- Selling a website depends on revenue, costs, growth, and market potential.
- Valuation is often 2-3 times annual revenue.
- Prepare detailed data for buyers.
- Reach out to industry insiders first.
- Negotiate sale terms carefully.
- Post-sale, invest profits wisely for future ventures.
It is a joyous time when you are ready to sell your website. While you will be fraught with questions and unknown variables when ultimately you decide to sell your website it can be like winning a jackpot and a big change to your life.
You might have been building your web business for years, consistently working on it day after day and night after night.
When it finally sells you get a (hopefully) big cash injection and move on to new projects feeling renewed and excited about your future prospects. But before this can happen you have to make the sale, which in and of itself is a tricky task.
I sold a website back in 2004 and at the time it was a pretty big deal for me. I had built the site for a hobby in 1998. It went through 3 different domain name and site name changes, at least 4 major design changes and I put in thousands of hours working on it over 7 years, but damn it was fun most of the time.
Table of Contents
How To Sell A Website – How Much Are Websites Worth?
How To Sell A Website (Getting The Ball Rolling)
How Much Is A Website Worth?
Selling Your Website (The Preparation)
Selling A Website (Finding Buyers)
Where Can I Sell My Website? (Making The Sale)
Moving Forward Post Sale
Eventually it became time to move on and pass my baby on to new hands that would keep it growing and moving forward. The funny thing was I didn’t really think about selling my site because it was making money so consistently. It had become so routine that it was just part of my life. One day it dawned on me:
Why can’t I sell it? It produces revenue so has a value – let’s give it a go! I really wanted to move on to other projects and just the idea of not having to look after the site was a huge relief – I knew selling it was the right thing to do. But how on earth do you sell a website?
How To Sell A Website (Getting The Ball Rolling)
I’m going to recount the processes I went through to sell my site. By no means should you consider what I did as hard and fast rules but they should give you some guidelines. Remember that there are many ways you can go about the process and you should explore all your options before deciding to sell.
How Much Is Your Site Worth?
Your site is worth as much as someone is willing to give you for it. Simple answer really. I know, that doesn’t help when you go out advertising a site for sale and everyone is asking how much you want for it and you don’t know what to say. You don’t want to undercut yourself especially after years of hard work, but then again, you are selling a website – virtual property – it just seems a little bit strange doesn’t it. That’s what my friends told me after I sold my site.
Friend: “You sold a website?!?”
Me: “Yeah”
Friend: “But a website isn’t anything, how did you get money for it?”
Me: “Well I took the average revenue the site was earning minus the costs of running the site and then multiplied by 2.5”
Friend: “Ahh, okay, well, umm, that’s great (walks off muttering about geeks…)”
As with traditional business, website business or even just a hobby site that brings in money, it’s hard to determine a selling price. What you need to consider are what you will be happy to walk away with and what the numbers tell you. Other variables that will come in to play are the industry your site operates in (competition too), how much labor and technical skill is required to manage the site, the costs (hosting, marketing, staff, etc), whether the business is growing and how fast, the future potential and whether the industry is a buyers or sellers market (supply vs demand). And that’s just part of it.
Some people will tell you a business should be sold for ten times it’s gross profit, or 5 times average revenue or 2 times last year’s total revenue. EBizBrokers state that generally an e-business website is worth three to six times earnings before interest and tax, so if your website profits are $100,000 you have an asset worth $300,000.
When I first decided to sell the figure of 2-3 times yearly revenue went through my head as a fair valuation given if the new owners kept things at least constant they would recoup the buy price in 2-3 years. I would be happy, very happy, to get that sort of price for my hobby site.
your site is worth how much someone is willing to give you…
In my case my website operated in an industry and had a target market that would be hard to extract much more revenue beyond what I already was getting from advertising. Yes it certainly was possible, but it would take a new income stream to make significant gains. My website operated in a small niche that would not present me with a lot of buyers – but you won’t really know demand until you try and sell of course.
I had a special personal consideration to think of as well, I didn’t want my site to go to just anybody, it had to go to someone that would look after it and keep the dream alive. I didn’t want some overseas buyer to absorb the site into their business and lose the great community that I had.
The new owners had to share the passion I had when I first started and hopefully take the site to new heights. In the end though I would have taken anything if I exhausted all options to find good owners – I wanted to walk away with something for my hard work even if it meant the site would die a slow death under new management.
Yes this might sound heartless but I’m being honest and I didn’t really believe I would be forced to sell to a potentially bad owner.
Selling Your Website (The Preparation)
The more information you can provide to potential buyers the better. Raw statistics are especially 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 including unique visitors (averages and totals), pageviews (averages and totals), growth rates over time, which countries they are from, how much traffic comes from search engines and direct bookmarks, which keywords your site is popular for and the PageRank of your site. I made available direct access to my log files with a statistics package like Awstats or Webalizer so serious buyers could get a good grasp on my site’s performance.
Most web servers come with a statistics package. Ask your web host if you don’t know. The most common are Awstats (demo) and Webalizer (demo) which often are preinstalled on many hosting packages. Become familiar with these packages so you can accurately assess your site traffic.
- Your financial figures. If you run a proper business then you should have these in some form of accounting package. The profit and loss statement is a popular choice for potential buyers but of course the more data you can provide the better. Because my site was a hobby I didn’t have any detailed bookkeeping records however I did record some figures including all the money advertisers had paid me for the last 18 months. I also had bills for expenses such as hosting and domain names and given those were the only costs and income for the site I provided those figures to serious buyers.
- You need a good sales spiel email letter introducing your website and you, your site’s history, why you want to sell your site, what your site offers to the new owner (current financial and future potential) 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.
Selling A Website (Finding Buyers)
Once you have decided a rough figure you would be happy with you can head out and find buyers and see how much demand there is. With my 2-3 times revenue figure firmly planted in my mind as a goal to work for I went off to find a buyer.
Searching Your Industry
My initial thoughts were to find a local buyer in my home country (my site was focused on the Australian marketplace). I figured the best place to start would be the retail outlets that sold products that my market was using. I emailed all the stores I could find contact details for, some of which I had already established relationships with because they advertised on my site. I also emailed some of the largest overseas online stores and websites that I thought I should at least notify that I was looking for a buyer to get some interest going.
When you first head out to find buyers you should look to contact individuals that will understand the value of your site because they will be the easiest to sell too (they won’t need to be “taught” about your marketplace). They will also be the most excited about the prospect because most likely they already sell to the same target market and you will be bringing them a lot of potential new customers.
Searching Outside Your Industry
Once you search locally with no success you might want to try and search simply for a buyer looking for a website. This could be a web entrepreneur that sees the potential in your site or simply someone interested in running a website and would prefer to buy one rather then build from scratch.
Obviously with this method you are going to have to do more explaining if the potential buyer doesn’t understand your industry and even worse if they don’t understand website hosting at all you will have a lot of technical training to do if they buy it. 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 understand.
There are a handful of online places you can try and sell your site. EBay’s Business/Websites for sale section is a popular choice but remember eBay is an auction so the negotiation and haggling is all automated. Your auction listing page will have to be very good to get a good price and you will be very much at the whimsy of eBay’s traffic which might not be ideal for what you are selling.
A better option in my mind is try a few forums like the SitePoint SiteSell area where you can list your site for sale and get some exposure. The best thing about this is you can go in and search the archives to see what other sites have sold for in the past. By comparing the details of previous sales you can get a feel for what your site might sell for. Try hunting around in other forums such as SearchEngineForums – buy my website and businesses for sale/brokerage sites such as BusinessBroker, BuySellWebsite, WebmastersMarketplace.com and eBizBrokers) to drum up some interest in your sale and conduct research.
Where Can I Sell My Website? (Making The Sale)
Eventually you should find someone interested in your site and the negotiation will begin. As with any negotiation the mindset and “state of urgency” of the buyer and seller play key roles in determining who has the upper hand. If the buyer is not desperate or the seller is then the power can rest in the buyer’s hands and she can dictate the terms and price.
Of course it can be the other way around with the buyer very eager and the seller not so desperate, or any combination. Each case is different but as a seller remember to stick to your guns and don’t sell unless you are happy with the terms. No regrets.
In my case I had my set price in mind but I was also new to selling websites so to be honest I was a little star struck to think about the numbers I could get from my site. In the end I presented my price, we negotiated terms and eventually I was discounted down $1,500 off what I presented, which I was quite happy with.
We agree on details such as where the site would be hosted, how long I would make myself available to train the new owners and the transfer of ownership record changes. It took about three months for the new owners to get the hang of things and for about a year after the sale I would jump in and help now and then with technical matters.
When finalizing the details of the sale I suggest you keep in mind these points:
1. How and when will the money be transferred? I suggest an upfront partial payment (we did 50%) and a final payment once the transfer has been made. Are you going to use a check? Direct bank wire? Cash in hand?
2. Write up some form of formal contract with dates and agreed upon price and have all parties sign it. Of course if you are completing a big bucks deal then get yourself a lawyer to make sure you stay on top of the legal concerns.
3. Define how long you will provide support for. I chose to make myself available for a long time and even today I still help out occasionally. You might want to play it safe and document the mandatory period you must provide support.
4. Stay on top of all the technical little things. Web business is a complicated task and there are a lot of web tools that you might be using and have even forgot about. Don’t forget web hosting, domain names, autoresponders, mailing lists, software, subscriptions, paid directory listings and any of the host elements that might be used by your web business that you need to transfer to the new owners.
Moving Forward Post Sale
You’re all smiles, your pockets are laden with cash and the world is a wonderful place. Now don’t screw it up and blow all your money on partying too hard, stupid investments or get rich schemes. You’ve learnt what it takes to build a web business and sell it.
No doubt you would like to do it again and you have more business ideas to test. Remember how hard it was first time around with no capital available? You had to bootstrap your business, provide your own funding or beg family/friends/the bank for funds. Now you have capital which you can use and invest wisely. Sure celebrate a little, have some fun and enjoy the moment, but remember you didn’t get to where you are by wasting money and you’re not about to start wasting it now.
Free Workshop: How To Buy & Renovate Websites For Passive Income
I recommend if you are serious about this business model that you take this free workshop from my friends in Australia, Liz and Matt Raad.
I’ve known the Raads for years and they are two of my favorite people. They are down to earth, easy to learn from, very supportive of their community and have been incredibly successful buying and selling websites and helping others to do so.
You can take their free introductory training here:
I’ve attended their live three day conference as a guest and a speaker several times. I know they are truly the best in the business at teaching this strategy.
You will learn a lot from them, so go sign up for their workshop now.
Yaro
Internet Entrepreneur
Very good point Jon, thanks for bringing that up. Definitely worth considering if you operate in an industry that advances in short periods of time. I’m glad I’m not covering computers or mp3 players.
Iv allways valued a business by its potential. Not its worth.
Basicly to get a rough estimate you can take its monthly revenue, mulitply by 12 and thats it sell value.
This would need to be adjusted for a few things:
Is there potential of growth?
Is it in the middle of a marketing campaign?
Why are the owners selling it?
There are many people that specalize in internet real estate, and its a booming business.
People are prospecting like its the Wild Wild West.
I quite like peekstats.com to establish the worth of my websites.
Hi, Any one have idea how much i can sell it this website for??
My daily unique visitors : 100-200
My monthly Average income by ads : Still Calculate
www[dot]getfreedomainhosting.co.cc
I have paid for the development of a dating site I planned to start http://www.kamadate.com – it should be ready by the second week in February. It has some crazy cool features and offers free and paid memberships and reasonable prices. Even the free members get some really cool features.
Unfortunately, due to health issues in my life, I am forced to sell the project as I will not be able to manage it.
I open to offers for the sale of this site if anyone is interested – it will be completed and hosted for a year with a full admin module for back end changes to be made. Control profiles, send newsletters, control funds, create, add and remove ad banners etc.
The site offers live video calling, flash IM, all sorts of cool stuff. It will be completed and then sold but am looking for a buyer pre-launch. I will cut my loses, just need an offer.
Where do you suggest looking for website prospectors? i don’t really want to put an ad on my site!
I have a nice portfolio of high quality domain names (no website or traffic) and a business network that I spent years developing but never launched. I would like to sell these assets to help with the family and use for another project. Any help or suggestions?
How much the content and website is worth is also dependent on how long the content is valid. If you have a lot of reviews of consumer electronics gadgets such as TV or mobile phones or whatever, the content will be close to worth less after a couple of years. How many are searching for names of mobile phones that were hot 5 years ago?
Good post. I would add this: Selling a blog is a little different from an ecommerce website.
A blog needs regular updating to maintain its value over time. Also, the updating has a certain personal flavor to it, and not everyone can maintain readers’ interest.
The ebizbrokers site is quoting a price for an ecommerce site with a product line to sell.
As a buyer I would think twice before paying a traditional “multiple of earnings” or “multiple of revenues” purchase price calculation for the typical ad-supported blog site.
As a seller I would want to add in some projected future revenue/earnings potential under the argument that the future money-making potential would grow.
That makes sense Anita! So how would you value a typical ad-supported blog site?
Great article Yaro. There’s some really useful points in there, particularly the part about providing after-sale support.
Wow I hadn’t even considered half of these things – I’ve bookmarked this for future ref. Thanks for the tips Yaro.
Great info Yaro!
A few additional points. You should never provide a potential buyer with sketchy or incomplete information – after that you’ll play catch up the entire time and the buyer will most likely lose trust in you. Once trust is lost, it is seldom regained.
It is not smart to assume you will sell your website fast, for all cash and for full price. Plan on being flexible somewhere and also plan on negotiating with any serious buyer.
Don’t believe your own hype – a serious buyer certainly will not. Don’t waste your breath telling a buyer a website could be worth millions in a short period of time. Most serious website buyers will not pay for promise – unless their analysis indicates promise.
When you are ready to sell your website, go to http://www.VotanWeb.com
I think the most important thing is the traffic.
Because nobody is going to pay for a website that does not bring visitors.
Just started reading your blog. Thanks for all the wonderful information.
You brought up some excellent points there. One thing you might want to mention is using an escrow service. I have sold a few websites in the past and have always used escrow unless the buyer (Or repeat buyer in my case) doesn’t mind wiring the funds straight to you.
Would love to know what site you sold, but I guess you had to sign an NDA. I have also found no better place than Sitepoint to sell sites.
Great article.
Thanks again.
Dave
Hi Dave – good point, yes escrow services are certainly valuable. I probably forgot to mention them in this article because I’ve never actually used one, but that’s probably because I’ve had some form of relationship with the people I traded with and we trusted each other.
Escrow though is certainly something worth considering, especially if the parties have no prior history.
The first big sale I made is not secret – you can find the story in my business timeline and the site is MTGParadise.com
And yeah, sitepoint is fantastic, although it’s getting a bit too popular – hard to find a bargain 😉
Hi Michael – Sitepoint is certainly the market leader but that doesn’t always mean you will get the best price. The sitepoint audience is by no means all inclusive so depending on what type of site you have it may be worthwhile trying elsewhere to get maximum return. Sitepoint will do good things for your exposure though.
Digitalpoint.com is another similar forum to try.
Having looked at your auction I think Sitepoint is the best bet. If that fails you may want to try a deal broker as well as they might have some alternative avenues for finding buyers. I know Jeremy Wright from http://www.ensight.org/ has brokered some deals in the past for big sales, but I’m not sure if he wants to keep doing it.
Any other places to post a site for sale? I’ve just purchased a listing at SitePoint but not sure if it’s the right place to be.
Just for your reference:
http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/393?
Thnx,
Michael
To sell your site, you could always try the old eBay.
Some sites actually mention it on every page of their site–that they’re selling it. By that, the trust of the visitors may leave the site–and then the site is worthless.
Has anyone tried eBay? Sounds like a great idea! Thanks for sharing your story, Yaro. Inspirational.
I’ve heard that another point of valuation by Google is how long the domain has been purchased for. Any point of truth to that?
I know this article is a little old, but I found it at the perfect time. Thanks for the tips. Trying to unload a few of my many sites.
I love this entry. One of my sites just reached 300,000 Alexa traffic, and I got the idea to sell it. However, I don’t think I’ll sell it because it’s not very targeted.
My new site is a weight loss community that was built to sell. Hopefully I will get this one sold one day.
Thanks for the tips.
HI guys,
Excellent article. Im currently wanting to sell one of my sites – http://www.egaragesales.com.au – but am unsure of its value. Its currently first page Google, NineMSN and Yahoo for the search term “garage sales” and has been for the past 2 years. Its making roughly $1000 a month, and I love have enjoyed enhancing and developing it, however I want to move onto other projects.
Would anyone have a template “for sale” letter that i could possibly use?
John
If anyone is interested – here it is!
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Garage-Sale-Business-For-Sale_W0QQitemZ200134741930QQihZ010QQcategoryZ80350QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Yaro,
I’m currently selling a web address (not a developed site) and I’m having trouble determining how it’s actually done. My web hosting company wants me to simply go into my account, modify the account “contact” information to the new owner’s name/address, and give them access to that portion of my overall account. This just doesn’t sound right.
Are there any ICANN forms or procedures for the legal transfer of specific web addresses between two parties?
Thanks,
Bob
Also i am interested to hear your answer to Bobs Question. I thought there was some sort of legal transfer that needs to be undertaken. Hope to hear your reply Yaro
Hi Bob,
Generally you just need to transfer the hosting account and the domain administrator ownership into the name of the new owner.
They can then change the passwords if they like so you no longer have any access.
I’ve never submitted a form or anything like that. A website is just a domain name and a place to host the files, so whoever owns that, owns the site.
I intend to sell http://usgirl.org. This website is hosted by my reseller account, If I transfer to the potential buyer the full archive and I change the name servers from my godaddy account it’s enough ? how do I sell the domain from godaddy? I can sell it ?
Yaro, thanks for the great post.
Please could you explain how you gave buyers direct access to your web stats without giving them your cpanel login?
Thanks, Rosie
There is actually one more site called WebSiteBroker.com at http://websitebroker.com/ where you can list existing websites for sale as well as look up listings of site currently for sale. From what I understand it’s one of the oldest existing marketplaces for existing web sites.
I prefer to buy a website that is
a) rather new but has potential to grow (because it is cheaper).
b) useful to everyone (more traffic).
c) simple (because I do not want to do much data and code cleansing).
My next target for the next few months, haha: http://www.tipskey.com/
All roads lead to Yaro…:)
Just researching this subject for a few of my sites and here you are…. again…. Love reading your blog. Thanks for the tips… See you at Blog Mastermind!
Ok, but what if the site is selling an off-the-shelf product and it’s revenue depends on how much marketing work you put into it?
I have this accounting software website I’m looking to sell now, but I can’t really make estimations. If I spend a week chatting to clients and sending e-mails, i can make with it like $2000 or so… otherwise nada.
Also, traffic doesn’t matter in this case, nor the expenses ($20/month hosting)
Any ideas?
Thanks
Sean – what you are talking about basically is the amount of effort required to create a result.
Time and energy are resources so if they are necessary to make a website profitable, then they definitely impact the valuation of the site.
The more marketing required to make it work, the less it will sell for.
I want to sell my site if anyone interested …..
Yaro,
Just come across this post today – I can’t believe I missed it out before… – thanks to your random featured article at the top of your blog 🙂
To comment, I’ve tried to sell one of my investment with no luck – perhaps because it is a niche market (webmasters stuff) – so not really many people want to buy such site – I have to agree with you – the price of a website equals how much people are willing to pay for it.
Cheers!
My biggest concern in selling a website is a scam. I am afraid to run into a scammer who will pay me by a bad check, or money order, or will do a wire into my bank account with money stolen from another victim’s account. When I read repsonses on these forums where sites are listed for sale, so many are obviously left by Nigerian scammers, I can tell from the way they are worded. I am afraid to lose my site and not get any money for it. I heard many escrow services are run by scammers, too. How to protect yourself and make sure that a buyer gives you the real money? The problem is, even banks cannot determine those fake checks and deposits right away. Sometimes they bounce back as fraud a month later, after you’ve already cashed the check and transfered the site!
I started my website back in December 2007 and have already changed the design 3 times.
I found the best design is the current one, just simple and not overloaded with flashy design etc.
Since April this year, I’ve had approximately 100 visitors a day, and I haven’t really done much to advertise it apart from YouTube and my students in my school. I also give out business cards or leave them anywhere with my site URL on.
My long term aim for this site is that it will become one of the well known ones in the ESL (English as a Second Language) field. There are several good ones out there at the moment, who went the same way: mes-english.com; english-4u.com; genkienglish.com and others.
I actually remember when each of these sites first came on to the internet. I don’t expect my site to be popular over night, but it IS already showing many many visitors, despite the fact that it’s a work-in-progress. (And will be for a couple of years or more yet, as ESL sites require a LOT of content and popularity before they can be considered a ‘normal’ site and my time is limited for adding to it, etc, due to my J.O.B. but hey, one day I will NOT have to go to a J.O.B. because of this site (and it’s links and ads too I hope).) Oh yeah, and you HAVE to believe in yourself and believe in your vision for the future as far as your site goes.
Don’t put ANYTHING on your site that you wouldn’t want on someone else’s! And that includes MUSIC that plays automatically or other sound bites. People, 99% of the time, BACK CLICK from such sites, never even letting the first page load up!!
Make sure your site works for you, not YOU working for your site!
This means you should be able to go on holiday for a month and know that your site is working while you are away.
Take the time to learn software you can use to build the site.
Take the time to learn software you can use to improve your site.
Take the time to MARKET your site.
Take the time to realise that your site is NOT going to make you rich overnight. Over several years, maybe.
When choosing domain names, remember, NO ONE except the Japanese, likes biglongun-necessarynameswith(&strangesymb#ls_them_.com.co.strange.countryhere.
Choose one by actually taking the time to view a dictionary and find the
meaning behind a word and its mix.
Make sure the domain name is COMPLETELY relevant to your site!
I can’t say that enough!
Your domain name is your first point of advertising. People remember
your site for it’s name, logo (if any) and content.
At the end of the day, your site is only going to be worth something, even if it has a million squidillion pages, IF it something society can use, and indeed, DOES use.
(I know a guy who has over 9000 (nine thousand) adsense pages and barely makes $200 a month!)
GET NOTICED!
Put your site URL in sites like THIS for example!
http://www.englishnowtv.com
http://www.lonevideo.com
http://www.fatshock.com
http://www.inyouriphone.com
PS) All the sites above are for sale except EnglishNowTV.com
That’s my baby right there, riches or not…I am building this one to make a difference in the ESL market, given that I live in Japan and know the English market here sucks!
If i own a website that has contents on various topics and are unique, then how should i determine how much the we b is wroth for? You said ebusiness sites are usually 2-3 times worth of its oprating revenu, but can u tell us about content websites?
Ah, wow. I just realized I have several sites I could sell, and haven’t really considered before reading this article. I haven’t yet tried to monetize the site, so do you think there is any traffic/subscriber barometer for how much a website is worth?
Hi, Any one have idea how much i can sell it this website for??
My daily unique visitors : 500-600
My monthly Average income by ads : $450
My month income in sales : 180
http://www.fastrecharge.com
hi nice post, I want to ask, is there any site which automatically tells the value of your site instantly?
Although this article is written in 2005(3 years ago), the advice and suggestions are still useful today.
Great information- I agree with the posters that feel the market sets the price. “The market” includes many things such as current rev. and future (potential) rev., how locked up the asset/site is (do you own all domains?), brand awareness (future brand awareness), and many other things…
Awesome stuff-
Chris
The Senior List
http://www.theseniorlist.com
Great Info Mate. But I think even Digitalpoint Forums Buy Sell Section works great. Most of the Webmaster Forums do.
there are website value calculators that will give you a rough idea on how much your site is worth. just type in your website value into a search engine. There are a few of these calculators which all give different estimates. so i recommend getting results from a few then averaging your data.
Yes, there are many website value calculators out there, but non of them are industrial standard. so be careful of over estimate the value of your website
Thanx Yaro for the good information!
Right now I am selling a web hosting review site which I have had since 2004.
The reason I am selling it is I have lost interest in the site – and so I am no longer maintaining it.
Years ago, I would never have thought of selling it, since it made me up to $2000 per month rather easily…
However, I have never been too interested in web hosting and I got bored with the whole thing. And as I lost interest in the site it also made me less money.
Right now it is listed for sale at Sitepoint – they provide a really nice ad code to be put wherever you please:
— Also, I strongly recommmend using Escrow.com to handle the payment, unless you know the person you sell to.
Though I’m not planning to sell my site.. It is worth knowing about it… Thanx for your article..though it is lengthy I loved it..
Thanks. I’ve have seen sites that claims to have $43,000 revenue a year and the owner will sell the site for $10,000..hmmm it just don’t sound that good for some reason! Thanks for your solid advice in this article.
I was recently offered $6000 for a site that I bought for $3000 one year ago. The site is not making any money, so I think I will sell. However, the buyer requested to split the payment over ten months, offering to sign a letter to ICANN giving permission to reclaim it if they did not pay. Is that a valid offer you think? Does ICANN care about these small amounts?
I don’t think that letter is worth much, but you could hold onto the domain, or put it in escrow with the terms that you retain ownership and they forfeit monies already paid if they fail to pay the full amount within a certain time period.
Thanks for this… unless I overlooked, I was wondering was the site you sold a blog? i have heard that there are different ways to value blogs vs. retail shops online etc…. Any specific ideas on that ?
Well, this is one subject I haven’t had much dealings with and appreciate all the great information!
Like anything else when you try to sell something, it will always depend on what the market will bare.
Take Ebay for instance…why do certain collectibles sell for so much money? Because even though there’s no inherent value, there’s a grip of people all vying for the chance to take it home with them.
Thanks for the post. I have been wanting to sell a couple of sites so that I can focus more on what really matters to me. But have shied away from doing it mainly because of lack of knowledge in doing so. Anyway this post will help me get started. Thank you.
Nice article. There are couple of good ones from websitebroker.com about selling and buying websites as well. They also have a free valuation tool for your website although it is not very comprehensive.
You should also consider http://www.websitefact.com ; they provide a nice summary of the website performance. I find their WF rank being more accurate than Alexa.
To sell your site, you could always try the old eBay.
Some sites actually mention it on every page of their site–that they’re selling it. By that, the trust of the visitors may leave the site–and then the site is worthless.
Interesting formula for pricing a site. Means I have plenty more work to do…
Although I’m not in the position to sell an online business I would like to be in that position some day and I found this article very enlightening starting point.
You have to think about both what someone else is willing to pay for the site versus what it’s worth to you. I built my law firm around my website. We do well advertising our own services, not selling ads to others. This makes the site pretty valuable to me.
But at the same time, we get plenty of visitors who have problems we can’t resolve – perhaps they’re in another state. Someone else might get more value out of our site if they are able to monetize those visitors. Also, our site has some authority on valuable search terms. That adds further value someone else might benefit from.
The challenge is finding the buyer who would benefit most from the site. In the end it will probably be me. Few others have the ability to get value from the site and the money to pay enough to buy me out of it.
This is an interesting article and has given me something to think about. I have always found it hard to put a value to something you have put so much time adnd effort into. At the end of the day it all comes down to how much traffic and potential profit your website is capable of making I guess.
I would agree with Anita, revenue is also an important factor. Lots of great resources mentioned here. There’s also another cool thing you can do to help you towards your valuation tasks with a domain you wish to sell. One of our radio show hosts does a show each week on domain name monetization. Great topic.
His name is Monte Cahn from http://www.Moniker.com. As I understand it, they were the first registrar to be able to do a valuation on your domain asset and it be accepted by the IRS. They also handle a very large Domain Name Auction series. So when it comes to domains, they really do have a clue. I would recommend checking them out, if you need Valuation services for the domain name proper…then of course rolling that into the other considerations detailed in Yaro’s post…methinks you would be armed for bear!
Also, I would recommend using a service like theirs (there are others who handle this as well if you don’t like Moniker) to initiate domain sales, and placing the money in an escrow account…protecting both buyer and seller. Many a domain name has been lost due to not paying attention to the smallest of details as Yaro mentions.
Again, great post and awesome contributions.
How do you sell the web site but not the company and people that goes with it. ?
What people are you talking about?
If the website is owned by a company then you transfer it from one company to another or another individual. Nothing strange there.
Great info. I will bookmark this article. I am a domain trader but not yet started selling a developed website. Domaining is also a hot industry and so as website development if you have skills in it.
Thanks for useful tips, they will help me in future. From my point of view traffic of the site you are going to sell is quite important. Who is ready to bye a site having just several readers per day? I am sure nobody is.
Interesting. Despite how old this post is, I found it very valuable. It was linked from Blogterpreneur’s post: 16 Ways to Make Money Online – http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2009/01/16/16-ways-to-make-money-online/comment-page-1/#comment-24785 This shows the power of a very written blog post. Thanks, Yaro.
Hi Yaro,
Thanks for the awesome post! I am considering selling a website/service I created, and waffling on how to do it, so this is very helpful.
I would love to know what you think of the best way to sell something like my site.
It is a website service/plugin, sold as a yearly or monthly subscription. It’s based on software, not content, and the software is complete, so there is nothing to write or produce, just a bit of marketing to sell the service – mostly adwords.
It currently has about $32,000/year income, and great growth potential.
The only expenses for it are about $1,800/year in hosting, plus marketing expenses averaging about $3,000/year. Both of these could be reduced pretty easily, and the marketing expenses are only to gain new business, the current revenues don’t depend on it.
There are no employees, no resources necessary, no programming, no copywriting, etc.
There is very little work involved – just a few minutes a day in admin time, answering email sales questions, processing refunds, etc.
There is a tiny bit of programming necessary for some features I haven’t automated, but I could automate them before selling it, so that there was no technical ability necessary to run it.
How would you go about selling something like that?
Thanks again for the post!
A couple of years ago I operated over 10 blogs… today I operate only one because – I was able to sell all the rest. The only three factors that the interested parties were curious about were unique daily visits, seo and page monitization. Each of the sites made barely $100 a month in AdSense, about 150 unique visitors a day and the pages were optimized best to what information was available to us then. And all 10 sites sold (adter we put up a “Website for Sale” page linked to our blogs.
We have a site that profits $100,000 a year and has nearly $200,000 of inventory in stock. We need about $600,000 to break loose from the site, but it’s hard as heck finding someone with that much cash on hand.
Wow! I wish my website worth at lease $1000.
If you love the website as a hobby a lot, you shouldn’t sell it. You can find many ways to continue to profit more on the website. The residual income isn’t there anymore because you sold it for a lump sum.
What if you build a site and it doesn’t produce revenue (yet). Can you still find a buyer? Have you heard of anyone selling their site after one month of building it?
Are the estimates provided by a website analysis tool, like the one available at Professional Link Building, of any good merit at determining website value? The tool defined the value of this blog at $613,048. I have been using this tool as a guide while I am executing SEO of my own.
This is a great way to make a revenue out of the sites made by you but same question is in my mind that What if you build a site and it doesn’t produce revenue (yet). Can you still find a buyer?
Great article. It really gets me into the mood to sell one of my websites. With this article I’m sure I could quite easily. It explains things so well. Once again great job.
How to Jump Higher
Thank you Yaro for such an amazing article on selling your own website. I guess this brief blueprint could help every interested person to get started with a business model based on creating and selling websites.
While it may take a little bit long time to have a cash flow in this business model, I must say that it is both lucrative and fun. You come up with a new idea, turn that into a new project called a website, build it, grow it and then sell it.
I really enjoy reading this article and took advantage of these bullet points and some criteria when it comes to selling a website.
Once again thanks Yaro and keep up the great work.
To Your Success!
Hooshmand
The value of a website is definitely very subjective, if you can find the right buyer that can make the sale much more profitable. I’ve had sites go for 2x annual revenue up to 6x. It really has a lot to do with how the site is trending and what the niche is etc too.
Thanks Yaro for a great blog post on where/how to sell a website. I have heard you say this before but to read about it again will help keep in mind for when we go to sell our website Our Path To Prosperity.
Thanks:)
This is cool! But i would still consider earning by selling using my website. Do you wanna know how to earn by selling with the increased speed of cash flow? Well i’d like to recommend this page i wrote : http://www.internetbusinesspath.com/tag/upsell
You can ask me questions too! happy selling!
How about start up websites?
Anyone want to venture a guess what my blog is worth? I haven’t monetized it much at all… but it’s doing well as far as searches on the big G.
This is some great advice. It’s likely that many people have tried creating a website and hadn’t realised how much work needs to go into it. There are also tons of places on the web you can buy/sell sites… I’ve even seen people selling websites on eBay.
i cant refuse that you are posting great articles all the time Yaro, i am planing to sell one of my 1 page site with approx USD30 revenue per month, but i found that most of the site selling web require a listing fee which i dont really willing to pay……..maybe selling in ebay is one of the choices though…
Very nice article Yaro 🙂 I just sold my domain for 4500 USD and man did that feel good. I know it was worth more, but well well 😀
That was pretty much Wakas! It was just the domain name or the whole site?
In fact, I’m planning to sell my 2nd blog which is a money making ideas blog, but I’ve no ideas how to sell it and where to sell. I’ll be following your tutorial and see what can I do next Yaro. 🙂
Cheers,
Lee
Ya lee… Just the domain 🙂
I’ve always wondered how to determine the worth of a website. I recently got into website creating and planned on selling some of my sites in the future, this post helped me grasp the idea of how to determine the worth of my site. I bookmarked this post so I can re-read this information when it comes time for me to actually sell a site. Thank you so much for the informative post!
Thanks for the post. I’ll have to refer to this if the time ever comes haha.
I once posted an April fools posting telling my viewers that someone had offered to purchase my site (http://blog.cleancutmedia.com). I personally knew some of my readers and they would look at me and go “don’t sell out!”.
I actually was not expecting such a response. It really motivated me to keep at it since there were people who valued the content enough to ask me to continue.
If you make money from the website why sell it in the first place ? Get some one to do the work for you, and still get money off it, or if you cant handle to much just pick 2-4 business opportunities and make the most of them, if you are to greedy in the end you will end up loosing overall.
Nice article, I was just going to sell my site, and I sold it for more using this article 🙂 thnx a lot
Great article, perhaps the most useful I have found covering details on how and where to sell. I would think you have to get some good traffic to be able to sell well.
In any case I have bookmarked the page just in case.
Great article. A few years back, I sold a domain name and its associated files for $4000. The site was get about 180 unique visits per day. I used an escrow service and too was nervous. I did not release the name and files until the check cleared. It was authentic. The buyer was in Canada and myself in the U.S. One just has to proceed with extreme caution. Right now I am considering selling a blog that gets about 700 unique visitors a day, and I don’t know if I would have similar success. Best of luck.
I really enjoyed reading this article and checking those links in the article,I am 100% sure this article is a good reference for people, those looking to sell their websites. Sitepoint.com marketplace is good for selling websites.
So what about targeting the purchase of a locally, often used name. ie… Naperdesign was what i bought simply because it’s in Napeville Il,. Doesn’t this add to more value for selling it later?
Honestly, I don’t like the idea of selling your website. It’s kind of sad of giving up something you have worked hard for. There are many lessons one may learn in the pursuit of his goal; but giving up so easily is a waste of that valuable opportunity.
That explains why there are few people like Mr. Yaro, who possess the wisdom to understand the challenges inherent in every journey of success.
Despite being on the deep end of this list, I’m truly delighted to have expressed my thoughts. 🙂
Hi Yaro thanks for all the information. I came accross your blog and never thought I can sell my site. I agree with Walter. I am very of sad of giving up something I have worked hard for. Giving up so easily is a waste of that valuable opportunity. I never wanted to give up and I never even wanted to sell my site but due to some financial reasons I had to. I have no idea how much the site worth but your comments and help will be very appreciated..www.brainwoodentoys.com Wish you all the best and have a wonderful day.
Thanks
tasi
Virtual real estate is an exciting market to dabble in, and selling a working website is but one aspect of it. If you have a keyword rich domain that is unused, do put up a couple of pages and do a bit of link building towards your targeted keywords. In that way you’re going to definitely increase the value of your internet real estate.
I do sell websites as a income model online. In my experience when your site has traffic and some income (even as low as $50) per month people have wallets ready in their hands to buy your site 🙂
Yaro,Great post,invaluable information in there.
I would appreciate it even more if it includes advice for people who are not just looking for a buyout but more importantly some sort of partnership to grow the website business together.
I wonder how one would determine a rental price for a site. Let’s say somebody wanted to rent out an entire site. What should he or she charge? Does anybody rent out entire sites?
If I had a valuable asset then I wouldn’t want to sell it.
Back in 2001 I sold a couple of sites for a total of $17,000. Neither site was more than 5 months old. These days it’s a little more difficult. I hate ads -so I run no ads on AimforAwesome.com. How to value that site? I have a PR5 and decent traffic – some great spikes, over 260 posts and it’s been around 2+ years. I’m considering selling it – but, it would only bring in $4-5,000 if I’m lucky without an earnings history.
Is it me or is it getting tougher to sell websites? I’ve tried with some other sites I own and had a rough time of it. Sites I was making $ with or that had high traffic. I think I’m in the wrong places online!
Yaro – you’re one of the good guys – I enjoy your blog – read it everytime you post. Keep it up my friend! And, come to Thailand to visit and I’ll set you up!
I don’t think it’s as easy to sell a website now a days. $17k doesn’t seem like that much money for a website either. I think the goal of selling a website to be to sell it for the millions and have a website that is generating Tens of thousands monthly.
I think how the website is much worth as the highest buyer is ready to pay. So it is a mix of all. The reputation, the traffic and the earnings.
Best regards,
Volksphone!
Iv allways valued a business by its potential. Not its worth.
Basicly to get a rough estimate you can take its monthly revenue, mulitply by 12 and thats it sell value.
This would need to be adjusted for a few things:
Is there potential of growth?
Is it in the middle of a marketing campaign?
Why are the owners selling it?
There are many people that specalize in internet real estate, and its a booming business.
People are prospecting like its the Wild Wild West
Thanks for such valuable information regarding the selling of websites. I am looking to do this very soon so the information has been very helpful. Thank you.
Great information! I think the market has been flooded with “flippers” and as Vern L previously remarked, it is getting tougher. There’s always some trash you have to wade through to find the gems. The same goes for the domain market.
I’ve been trying to sell a couple of my sites but so far no joy. It looks like nobody is interested in the sites i’m offering for sale but hey am gonna keep keeping on and i know there’s a buyer somewhere.
It’s not that easy to sell your websites. The price would depend on the traffic you have, PR, alexa and number of sites. good luck with that!;)
Hi Guys, there is another website worth valuator out there called Web Worth – Web Worth can estimate a web sites worth or value, daily ads revenue, daily page views, back links and directory listing – http://www.webworth.info/ looks like the figures are from traffic stats.
Very interesting post. It can be difficult to estimate a website’s true value. In the long run, you can often make a lot more by holding onto the website. So you should avoid selling unless you get a particular tempting offer. Ideally the amount would be enough to cover building up a similar website again.
Webworth.info just uses raw web trend analysis and uses that to come up with a figure. Good if you want to justify to someone that placing an add on the site is worth the money. However, value starts to fall off fast. We have brokered 4 website sales this year and there is a ton to consider. The biggest is the technical nature of the new owner and can he or she SEO correctly and bring down operating cost fast. Just my 2 cents.
I would not pay more than 2 times the previous years total sales for a business….unless i could see easy potential to increase those sales without huge effort. I do agree it is worth what people are willing to pay though.
2 years ago we paid $2,500 for our domain name protechservices.com. It wasn’t even one of our top 3 choices. The other choices were way over priced. However, the name had been around for a several years before that with actual content; so it was a benefit for our internet marketing efforts.
A very good site that i cam across a while back was http://www.websiteoutlook.com ( i am sure that there exist other websites similar to the above mentioned one) which can give you an estimate of how much a website could be worth.
Also a website worth looking to buy and sell domain names and websites is http://www.localstring.com
Hello I have run this forum based website for many years (seven in all) it does have sponsors and local advertising, I am thinking of moving on and considered selling the site to someone who has more time than me, it is probably small fry to many but it grosses annually €16K without much effort or selling, I was wondering if the site has any worth…if so I may move on..
thank you.
4 years later and this post is still pretty useful. Amazing.
Congrats and Thanks Yaro.
I think it’s tough finding the true value of your site. There are a few sites that claim to give you a ball park estimate based on the amount of traffic your site generates.
I think at the end of the day it basically boils down to how much someone is willing to pay for it. Your right, of course, the more revenue it generates the more you can ask for.
I’m looking to sell a website for the highest price possible. Is Flippa a good place to start first, or is there a free place to try my hand at somewhere?
How much would http://www.buyfromtheuk.co.uk be worth?
This is Kyle, the new owner at BuyingAndSellingWebsites.com. I was researching what other resources are currently available online related to buying/selling websites, and this was one of the more popular destinations.
Ravi, thanks for the comments about the course. Max did a fantastic job laying the groundwork in BASW, and I’m excited with where it’s going in version 2.0 (slated to be live by January 1).
If anyone is interested in learning about buying and selling websites, check out our site or send me an email. We have a lot of great free videos introducing people to this industry.
I think the website value also could be calculated by how much you get. For example you could have a site full of content but is not getting any traffic or revenue. the right buyer could be saved time and energy by buying the site at a certain price therefore giving the site value
Great hints! Thanks for the nice work.
Well l can say the value of a website is up to the peoples interested in with ur site, how much they need it or how much it helps on their goals. Their effections will be based on the traffic of your websites mostly and the source of ur traffic is the main issue.
Me personally would not buy a website for three-six times what it is making a year. But of course it depends on the site.
Question to ask in these situations is why are they selling? What do they know that you don’t….?
Selling a website is something like selling your own kids
Any ways good tips
Ha ha! Really?
Do you have much experience in selling your kids off? 🙂
Selling a website / web-business is a beautiful thing. You build up the asset, then build up the value to the interested party. They get a new toy to easily milk for profits, and you get a healthy payday and “closure” on a business you built from nothing to the value it is now (the price you just sold it for).
I use Web Site Outlook for Estimated worth. My web site estimated worth is $ 3920.1 . You can use web site outlook for it also.
I have a website for sale, but need help with estimating the real value. I’ve tried your suggested links and the range is quite wide: $800 to $11000. Don’t know what to do.
Great post Yaro. I am currently working on two sites with the sole purpose of flipping them after 6 months. The sites are giving me good income in adsense and I’d base my price based on the adsense earnings as you have suggested. Thanks again.
Great pointers. I’m thinking about selling one of my sites. One question though, you suggested giving serious buyers access to your stats. Did you allow them direct access to your control panel?
Hey Zupreem,
I wouldn’t give them direct access to your control panel because people could easily steal your website. What I usually do is take screenshots of the important awstats information.
I usually include the monthly graph, daily traffic numbers, and anything that would let the potential buyer know where the traffic is coming from. If they are interested in further information like what country the traffic is coming from, then you can give that upon request, but I’ve never had anyone ask me for that.
Selling own website is really hard, It is your brainchild..Always have to try by submitting in directory listing site..But sometimes it is really frustrating, So best way to try in bookmarking sites..like http://digg.com, http://tweetme.com, http://ja-ta.com
i can’t say anything about it, but i think if want sell a website traffic is very important……….
thank’s for information yaro.
You have a lot of knowledge. You probably wont even see my questions, but is all of this simply from experience?
It seems that in a time when soccer mom can sell and get decent revenue out of a garace the selling of a website is still a damn hard nut to crack. But it only means that there is a market for online auction siten that has specialized in selling the site and handling all the paper work and money transfer.
As always, very valuable information and thanks for sharing.
Pete.
if you want to buy a site
1)Traffic
2)content(if the content not interested you.Site will be down in few months)
3)The average revenue the site is earning(this is not important in the begining if you think the site have potential but this is very important about how much you will pay for site)
4)Domain quality(generic,keyword,LLL,LLLL domains is very valuable if you will shut down the site you can sell it.)
yes, it is really good article.thank you. in my opinion, the value of a web site depends on the traffic mostly. pagerank value is not too important for me. At the same time, all of us know that the content is the king.
Wow, finaly some good solid ROI information on how to price your website, so much of what I have read online is domainers squating on keyword rich domains and massive sites sold. Very little of the info I have seen is what a modest site is worth to a little guy.
Any chances that you plan on doing an updated version of this post 5 years later? Seems to be a popular topic as of late. Site Flipping and All!
Mark you can used forums.digitalpoint.com in there buy and sell domain. they allow the seller to bid there website. You can sell your site if you like the price of the bid of your site.
Regards
Sikat Ang Pinoy
Hey I just wanted to tell you that I sold my first website…! Before I just hosted them with my provider and nobody cared about them…
I have read your post, but I have a slightly different angle. I want to buy a domain and the current owner just has it parked as some search site. I asked to buy it and the said the selling price was $2600. The domain is http://www.sunsetcinema.com and I want to know where they come up with this figure. Since it is not really an active website are they basing it on how much the ads are fetching them? or what other industry domains are selling for? I can’t afford that price, but is it worth low balling them as I don’t think it is a highly demanded domain?
I believe that its not worth to sell sites that generate organic traffic. Monetize them by yourself. You can make x10 times the amount in a year, just do you research
I created a news website and 5 days into its beginning I have achieved US rank of 20807 and global rank of 45104 as per the BIZinformation.org website.
I am willing to part with the website now if thre is any potential customer. Can someone tell me how much will anyone pay me if I wanted to sell the site which is hosted at orissa.000a.biz and if sold I am willing to give the whole site and the new owner can take any host and any domain he or she likes.
Wow, I didn’t realize there was so much too it. Have bookmarked to properly take in info. I have a website which I thought I could get quite a few for but now not thinking so. Is a domain name that is page rank 2 worth anything?
Great post Yaro. I’ve had a website for some time now, this article got me thinkin about selling it. Before now I’ve never really considered it! Thanks!
Yaro, I’ve been reading a great deal of your information for the last few months, and I’ve decided to focus on creating a few high quality sites after mass-producing exact key word domain sites for the first two plus months of my internet content generation learning curve (turning a profit while getting an education, rather than the other way around..). I’ve been able to consistently generate profits by hand registering exact key word .info domains and utilizing site development tools to create a raw site, and then enhancing the site through basic seo and adding fresh content little by little. But, Ive realized that I can apply this on a larger scale by focusing my efforts on a handful of higher quality sites after reading this blog, and it’s now going to be my very next project. Thanks for the information-appreciated as always. -Eric Kearns
Mark,
I agree with Ravi. Escrow.com is a great service. We use it all the time here at our website brokerage firm. Although it only uses domain names as a hold back, it is still the best escrow service out there and they are working on a way to get more options for holdbacks.
I have run some websites which web scripts are made by myself. I don’t know how much is the best price to offer. I still look for the formula to calculate the best price for such condition. Any idea?
Turning something you do for fun into cash is pretty good – very inspiring!
These tips were just great, I’m going to sell one of my websites and this will really make it easier for me to set up a price:) Thanks for a great article!
If you have a lot of reviews of consumer electronics gadgets such as TV or mobile phones or whatever, the content will be close to worth less after a couple of years. How many are searching for names of mobile phones that were hot 5 years ago? I usually include the monthly graph, daily traffic numbers, and anything that would let the potential buyer know where the traffic is coming from. If they are interested in further information like what country the traffic is coming from, then you can give that upon request, but I’ve never had anyone ask me for that.
There are a lot of automatic services to count your website worth, but most of them gave you strange estimation. Some of them gave thousands of $$$, others just few cents…
I personally think that a website is only worth as much as the highest buyer is willing to pay. Contributors are the site’s reputation, the traffic, the earnings and age of the site.
May I also make a suggestion if you are buying a cashflow property – test it out first. Give the seller a 7-day income advance, and have the seller replace the ad/affiliate code to your account and see the cashflow is for real.
Hey Yarro, in this article you have written somewhere that as your website was your hobby, you didn’t keep any detailed bookkeeping record for it. So my question is for the tax purpose the income you generate through your blog is considered as tax free or you have to file tax on it at the end of the your through your ABN number? (I am talking about Australian tax law here, I live in Melbourne). Please let us know that as it will be useful to other fellow Aussie bloggers as well.
Hi Viraj, today all my income is accounted for under a partnership with several companies I set up. It cost a lot to get the accountant to do it, but once you start making six figures and beyond it becomes worth it.
I’m looking to sell my website, but don’t want to undercut myself in the sales price. The website, which is a website shopping directory, consists of 8,926 pages. It also has listed near enough every village, town, city and county around the whole of the UK and Ireland, as well as the countries for the rest of the world and a mountain of categories. I have more or less just been adding affiliates at the moment, where the National Lottery is getting placed under roughly 8,500 pages alone. What I am thinking of doing in the near future is selling it on ebay and having a hefty fixed price or a fixed start off bid, but is selling it through Ebay okay?
Hi this is registerdomain.
There was a course I had bought some time ago on buying and selling sites which is very comprehensive. It also came with sample documents for the paperwork.
Selling a web site is a new thought to me but it has been surfacing regularly , lately. Thanks for the simple explanation, resources and all the points to take care of. This is something to look into.
Great post. Great reference. I would also definitely recommend using escrow when selling a website. It’s very important. I sold a site in the past and received payment through PayPal. After a few days the funds were reversed and let’s just say, it was quite a bit of work getting the site back! Be safe and use escrow!
Selling a website is not as simple as selling hotcakes down the street. You need to transfer the whole account and hosting and sign some contracts. There is a whole process for this. Thanks for sharing this one, gotta check mine too
I really like your post Yaro. very informative.I am still newbie in that web site selling market. but after I reade your advices in your post, I really utilized from your mind.Thanks again.
I want to sell my 2 sites if anyone interested please let me know …..
Website is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
I have a website with great traffic, but my visitors are mainly teenagers, and I don’t know how to monetize it properly. For someone who knows what to do with that kind of traffic website is valuable, but to those who don’t know what to offer to teenagers – not very much.
Also – if that’s your very first site, or you built it yourself, it will be harder to sell it cheap. It’s like a first baby 🙂
Some realy good information was provided. However what I am looking for is what are the steps after you have found the buyer?
Do I just give him access to my hosting account? I dont think I would but I am wondering what do I do to actualy transfer the ownership to the other person.
Do you include all the articles on the site?
Do you give him or her the opt – in list?
Does anyone know of a site that could answer some of these questions thanks.
Selling an internet business can be a confusing complex process that most internet business owners have little to no experience with. While many entrepreneurs think it may be best to try and sell a website on their own, most are bound to make unavoidable mistakes because of their inexperience with the process. These mistakes can range from pricing the business too high or too low, accepting an initial offer without some “skin in the game” on the buyer’s part, leaving your business exposed without proper buyer screening, etc.
Of course there are hundreds of business brokers that can professionally represent your internet business, but there are only a few firms that exclusively deal with internet based businesses. Choosing to work with an internet business broker will increase the probability of a successful transaction with a fair market value. With the financial crisis slowly rescinding, we have seen business selling between 2 to 5 times the TTM net income. Of course the range will depend on a number of different factors including looking at many of the intangible assets that are common with established websites for sale. Sure the primary focus with buyers usually revolves around the “bottom line”, but we always take into account the quality of the site’s traffic, the historical performance, the growth opportunities, overall business model, profit margins, competition, etc. It is difficult to expect a traditional business broker take all of this into account when forming a valuation, as they usually represent 1-2 website businesses a year. As an internet business broker, we only deal with internet businesses and generally only represent websites for sale that have a minimum of $100k in annual revenues.
A professional internet business broker can handle everything and guide website owners through the overall process which includes preparing a company prospectus, marketing the business with discretion, screening buyers, handling negotiations, preparing the different agreements involved and keeping both parties on track to ensure a smooth transaction.
I think Yaro makes some great points in this article and his advice definitely points internet entrepreneurs in the right direction. Just came across this blog and I’m sure I’ll be a frequent reader because of the robust resources geared towards internet entrepreneurs.
So I guess this isn’t factoring in the liabilities a business owns and the assets (that don’t generate cash flow but increase in value).
Really cool article!
Using this and a domain value calculator will help people drastically improve there sale price!
Thanks,
Andrew
Well, Yaro it might be a bit ridiculous to say that my website currently is (obviously) less than $100 bucks. But to me it’s worth more. It’s the time. I’ve put in 5 months at the site and I think it’s actually very near to start ranking. It’s not in the top 1 Million yet . . .
To add my own 2 cents article. I think a website’s revenue of just 2.5 to 3 times (in other words revenue of 3 months) simply can’t be the value of a website! At least not if the site is worth $100 Million. Maybe then you can say that it might just be about $300 Million considering the costs to keep it running.
Correct.
The revenue / cashflow is not the only factor in a potential buyer’s decision to buy. It may also be the smallest part of your asset.
Suppose you build a social community, a hyper-active niche forum, a new XYZ tool with 400,000 users worldwide, a GroupOn knockoff with retail partnerships in major cities across the states and 120,000 registered users, or your website has a domain name that is easily brandable (possibly even one word); or you built a high content property that you never monetized…
Brand, domain name, traffic, link-backs, community, lists, etc are all assets.
The cashflow, in many models, is the least important .. I say that because maybe you did a great job building the community, the content, the SEO, the brand … but you’ve been doing a piss poor job monetizing it. Then I wouldn’t care about your sad cashflow (in fact, your low cashflow would excite me)… I’d care about all the other assets you’ve already put in place for me.
That way once I buy it, I could get proper monetization in place and quickly be enjoying the revenues and recoup my investment.
As a silly example… imaging if Facebook still didn’t run any advertising. (I know, silly exaggerated example but stay with me). The brand, the domain, the community etc is, of course, extremely valueable even if they had never flipped the ad-revenue on yet.
So you’re right… cashflow is just ONE piece of the puzzle. Some buyers are looking for a cashflow business. They want to invest and make sure that with little (or no) work, they’ll be eventually making more back from the cash streams you’ve already setup.
That’s one type of investor. And it’s right for their mindset.
A more creative and aggressive entrepreneur though cares about your full asset portfolio… what else do I get? Email subscribers? Direct mail buyer list? Email/SMS list? Active community? Strong brand in the niche? A lot of organic traffic? etc.
Could anyone please help to sell my site. Its a eyewear E Commerce portal made on magento platform. Its includes all the advanced add ons like google base, google checkout, onestepcheckout, compare tool and lots more. Its just 3 month old portal which sell more than 50,000 USD product. So that comes around 18,000 USD per month. The monthly expenditure of the site is approx 1500 USD per month including everything. As every one is saying the cost of the site is revenue multiply 2.5 minus the cost of maintenance. So it comes around 43500. But i am not demanding that much amount. My cost is 20,000 USD. If any one help to get that amount. i will ready to pay 10 % as a commission.
Wow! What a great post! I’m in the process of trying to value my site. What makes it difficult is that the sales are for a product we also make ourselves. Many people want a site that is a site only. Or there are those who prefer to make a product and sell it offline. Bundling the two, which is how we’ve built our business, makes it more complex to set the right price and find the right buyer. Nonetheless, I found this article extremely helpful and will be pushing the pencil different ways tomorrow as a result. Thank you!
Great resource about the factors to be considered for selling a website.
Mr. Yaro, thanks for sharing your great resource about the factors to be considered for selling a website.
I sell websites for a living as a broker. In 2010, most buyers expect to recoup their investment in about 3 years. Therefore, they do an equation based on current income and decide whether it is likely to continue as is, increase, or decrease. If your site is rich in traffic, they will try to figure out what it will take to monetize the site and recoup their investment in about 3 years. If you have an ecommerce site, they will tend to discount it if you hold a lot of inventory since money tied up in inventory cannot be invested elsewhere. I actually built a free little calculator which gives fairly accurate ballpark estimations of the value of your site…but I don’t want to make this a commercial for my site. If I see others request the link, I’ll come back and provide it. Thanks.
Thanks for the valuable info on how to sell and value websites, when valuating a website you should also consider http://www.websitevaluebot.com as it will give you a value based on every aspect of the fundamentals of a website except for revenue which is the only real way to work out a websites value.
For true value of a website you should calculate monthly revenue times 6-12 depending on brand name, age and content and this is the reason no website estimator online is accurate.
Nice detailed post Yaro! this is an area of Internet Marketing that where there are one helluva lot of variables so thanks for flagging some of the potential pitfalls in selling web sites. I can see how this post has attracted so much link love
Great post by Yaro.
As a website broker, I understand the challenges a seller faces when wanting to sell their websites. There are a ton of questions that buyers ask that sellers need to be prepared for in order to sell their site for the highest price. Having a professional on your side is recommended for any site owner that has a valuable site they are looking to sell. If anyone needs any advice or guidance, feel free to drop me a line.
Wondering since this was written in 2005, if there are updated places to sell your website, such as Flippa, etc. Would love an UPDATE on this post. THANKS!
very nice post but would like to know few things about newly developed websites “specially” designed for selling purpose. I mean, such sites doesn’t have any traffic and authority. So what would be the price in that case?
Ovais
I have a driving school website which sells driving courses & products. This time last year i was probably getting double the amount of sales compared to this year, which i think is related to the current global financial situation. I think timing is crucial if selling a web based business as if sold the website last year it would have been much more appealing to a buyer. I have been re-designing the site to make it more user-friendly & appealing to my audience in the hope of generating more sales next year.
I have been looking for a simple answer to this question. Just like any business that is sold, the stats and numbers is what sells it and what price to point.
i have been using a site called value your own site free site to use to value your site http://www.valueyourownsite.com
to sell the valued site i would use http://www.quick-bidding.com it is soley for domain names and websites established or not
Other useful things you can do is analyse the links to your site (inc PR) and demonstrate their high quality.
Even better, if you can demonstrate why your links have better quality than your competitors, you’ll be giving an idea as to whter your revenue has a solid base – and you may be able to get a better multiple of it as a result.
Also, consider the ease of maintenance of your site. The architecture and on-page SEO of some sites is so complicated that a new owner will want to rebuild. This would clearly be a great destroyer of value.
People have been offering me 100USD/year to place an ad on my website http//www.justpacifictrading.com
Is this about the price I should be accepting? Can anyone help?
Nelson.
Lots of good food for thought here, we have quite a few sites that – though they make us money – really are a drain on our resources. Perhaps it’s time to bite the bullet and sell….
Really nice article, I enjoyed reading this very much indeed. I have sold a couple of websites over time, and have always made the price 3x the yearly income but the reason for this, is because the websites I make relies on search engine traffic. I do not post money in advertising of the affiliate sites, but if I did the figures would also look a bit different. Already now I have sites making six figures a month just from search engine generated traffic.
Me personally would not buy a website for three-six times what it is making a year. But of course it depends on the site.
Question to ask in these situations is why are they selling? What do they know that you don’t….?
Wow, this is a really comprehensive post. Will definitely come back when/if I buy or sell a site.
Nice article. I’m looking at buying AdSense websites at the moment, if anyone is interested I’ve got a calculator that gives a rough estimate of what I’m prepared to offer, you can see it here.
Thanks for the Greet infomation!
I am a website broker for Quiet Light Brokerage and I built a calculator which is pretty accurate based on numerous deals we have done that have actually closed. The URL is http://www.whatismysiteworth.info. Typically sites sell for a multiple of the owner’s discretionary income. That multiple for most sites is in the ballpark of 3x income. If a site has declining earnings, a short history or requires a lot of work, the price comes down. If a site is growing, has a long history and/or requires minimal work, the price MIGHT go up a little, but not by much.
i m intertested in selling my blog thephotofun.com the domain is 3 months old.
i want to know that i have to give google adsense a/c with my blog. do i get more money for giving that a/c ?
If you don’t have any adsense a/c on your website / blog then how can you determine the revenue of your website. Does website value checking website gives sufficient data to make an estimation revenue value?
Excellent Article. I really looking to sell one of my websites. I will sell my website using this article listed. Thanks a lot.
Ravi, I think mentioning escrow.com is a very good idea and one of the top places for buying and selling websites and things.
Is there any international site where you can buy and sell hot websites?
Thanks for sharing your great post,wish you have a nice day,happy every day!
I just couldnt leave your website before saying that I really enjoyed the quality information you offer to your visitors… Will be back often to check up on new stuff you post!
Hi, I have a small, service based website (so no need to write content) that has generated about $150,000 over the last six years. At this point, it’s almost entirely passive, taking a couple or three hours per week to run.
It gets about three phone calls for support each week, but it’s pretty easy to use, so most members don’t call.
If I were to want to sell that, what kind of a deal would I want to structure? What would it be worth, lump sum? Any ideas?
Thanks!
Oh, and the expenses are about $175/month for hosting, but I have it on a dedicated server that has other applications too. It could likely get away with about a $50/month hosting account.
This is still interesting stuff 5 years later.
a nice and very informative article, iam also into selling domains and websites and have sold a couple of domains in the past, iam of the view that no matter how good website/domain you have its price actually depends on the buyer willing to pay, this has been my own personal experience so far
There’s a company called, http://www.valueyourownsite.com, where it will give you information on how much your website can be worth. Though again it is literally up to yourself if you want to let it go for the amount that they’ve priced. As having created a website for o2 myself, where I got the thumbs up to do, they are now wanting to buy the domain name and have the website removed, where they are paying approximatelly 4 times the amount it was priced through http://valueyourownsite.com, due to covering the cost of my expenses for creating the website.
Also if you’re looking to promote your website don’t hesitate to email me and get advertised on my website http://www.non-stop-shop.com, that starts from as little as £5 per year and has had over 310,000 pages viewed, email me at: – logos@non-stop-shop.com
Getting money by selling our site is a good idea, but when it has become a part of our life it’s difficult to give it away for money!
I think it is incredibly difficult to value a website. First and foremost is it the website that needs valuing or the company as a whole, which if course will include the website.
Does anyone know of a Dutch website that gives advice about the value of Dutch websites?
Flippa.com is a good place to sell and buy websites. I’ve only every had experience buying websites from them not selling, but what I’ve bought so far has turned out ok. Organic traffic and original content is the first things to look for. Great post Yaro!
I always thought about 1 years net profit is a good price. Then why would you hear people say that they sold it for 2+ years profit? How important is the nice? I could imagine that the selling price is higher for something that is an evergreen?
Hi!
I would like to know bloggers opinion about Flippa! Some are saying that’s a dangerous option, because is being infested with scammers!
I have a MRR webstore, that i would like to sell, but just don’t know about flippa!
Best regards!
GR
Hi guys, hope you cool. I wish to sell my website http://www.entrepreneurshipsecret.com contact me if you are interested.
Selling websites can really be a great way to make money online. I am developing few niche sites right now and I’ll try to sell them when they’re finished. I hope I’ll make some decent money with them 🙂 Thanks for sharing your tips and guide, much needed and helpful 🙂
I think that the value of your website will depend on the content and the traffic it gets through internet. With colorful presentation, relevant content and seo traffic your site will be the favorite one.
Thanks
I think the hardest part of the process is to find potential buyers that will understand the value of your website. Many wnat to be online entrepreneurs will not be able to understand the value of an established, developed site vs a brand new build.
Traffic these days is also hard to value and with so mnay web businesses out there, sale is the only hard measure of success. I agree with the commenter above that says there is value in potential, but selling this to hard nosed investors or ‘brick and mortar’ buisnessmen is a hard sell.
J
joyous? selling a site is anything but joyous…. it’s a pain and hassle the ONE time I tried it… and complicated.
😉 Great Blog. Thank you very much for the excellent info.
Best wishes … C. H. Electronics (Cornwall, UK.)
try posting in http://www.popularbookmarking.com..
A another free bookmarking
Wow, so these posts started in 2005 and here I am in 2011 looking for info on how to sell my domain names. I’ve tried a couple suggestions listed but they no longer exist. (ironic) Maybe somebody bought them? 🙂 So does anyone know where is the best place to list just domains?
I just show how old is this post and it’s still up to date even 6 years after Yaro wrote it and still provide helpfull information about how someone can sell his website
I have sold a couple of websites over time, and have always made the price 3x the yearly income but the reason for this, is because the websites I make relies on search engine traffic. I do not post money in advertising of the affiliate sites, but if I did the figures would also look a bit different.
Just been reading several of your posts, tons of valuable information in here. I’ve actually spent the last 6 months building up Adsense websites to flip. I’ve sold a dozen of them and pocketed 4 figures. Picked up several tips for my next batch.
nice one jamie, keep at it mate. Adsense sites are a great start to the market. and they are really good for not much work.
I’ve recently received offers that I consider ridiculously large for my website http://www.SurfSunSea.com. At what point do you start thinking “it’s gotta be a scam?”
You can always use escrow.com to sell your website, it is save because you can transfer your domain name and website after the payment is received by escrow ( a tirth party ). Make sure you do go to the site directly and don’t follow a link in the email of the potential buyers, because there have been scams with sites that where build to look like escrow!
I buy and sell websiteson a regular basis but the figures I read here of 3 times yearly profit are really high, Most sales I have seen are 1 to 2 times yearly profit tops…
It al depends on how long the website has been around, how long it has been making steady profit, and the competition in the niche. If all is right I thing 3 times yearly profit is still to much because there are many changes going on in the search engines algorithm, with updates like panda (Google) that have had a big effect on traffic on many sites, some have had a 80% drop in traffic! Nothing is sure online thats why sales that go for 1 to 2 times yearly profit are more common.
Anyways If anyone wants to sell their website sent me a email I am always interested. cur_e_c@yahoo.com
Regards,
Ben
Ben, escrow is a great way to transfer a site. Another good service is moniker.com it helps if you domain is with moniker though, if not, you will have to transfer it there.
Does the price of the site change if it has a very narrow niche?
Your MessageYaro although this post is quite old it is still highly relavant. Always creating evergreen stuff great work.
Mark in response to your question, the whole family is sick ploy, really need the money is a bit of a give away in regards to scams. I came across a similar site last year where a guy was selling an adsense site a really low multiples. I’d say anything too good to be true is a warning.
Just be careful of things like that. If you are paying big money for it, maybe it is a good idea to pay someone to do some due dilligence.
It is more than the value to sell. I do not think there is a specific method of calculating the value of a website.
One of the most miserable things I have recently realized is that you must never abandon your site! Over the past year or what I have neglected my blog because I don’t really have the time for blogging and all that.
Blogging has become a full time things and is no longer a ‘past time’ thing if you don’t want to look that behind . . .
Often finding private website buyers can be a great alternative to brokers and marketplaces. For instance, this site has a form where you can submit your site for sale to a private buyer http://www.flipwebsites.com/sell-your-website/
@chris, Thank you, I have been looking for private buyers for 3months time already.
@ben are you still buying website/s? please send me a message, andkon247@gmail.com.
Hi,
I have one question
I have created some websites using wordpress. I write my own content as well as I installed some wordpress premium plugins. like WPRobot etc for autoblogging and backlink creation. And also I used paid themes.
If I sell website what happens to these paid plugins and themes? When I bought themes and plugins, it was mentioned that I should use only on my own domains.
Please help me to find answer
Regards
Niya
Because those plugins are part of the site, it only makes sense to include them. If you paid alot of money for those plugins or you just want to make some spare change off them (Im guessing it wasnt that much, wordpress plugins are quite cheap) then you can always add them to the total of the quote
Jitendra, how do you expect a $100 plugin is going to add any value to the eventual sale when you could go and buy it yourself ?
Sure if you were making the plugin yourself and it was only designed for your purpose and then no-one else had developed a similar plugin to you and it was unique that would add some value.
However I disagree with you on that.
Anyone interested in my site? http://www.productivitybits.com. Send me you proposal!
Can you email me the profit details, traffic etc from the past year. cur_e_c@yahoo.com
i have found when buying and selling that using an escrow type payment is best as you can with hold the payment until you are happy that the details within a sale are correct. lots of sites out there offer this service when selling/buying, i myself have created one recently.
thanks for the blog post
I am looking to make money online for some time now. I have attempted a whole lot ofimportant things, from internet marketing, to affiliate marketing and likewise to style and design and offer my personal products. After i look at your guide i think that i’ve found out some useful material and that now i am prepared to make some real money online fast from home.
Are these internet based predictions any worthy ? I mean different sites show different worth for a particular blog/site. Confused whom to trust
Curious to know how selling a website works regarding taxes? My wife sold her site this past November for a sizeable chunk and now we’re wondering if we have to declare the full sale amount?
Thanks,
CJ
I am the owner of web site:MYFATDISSOLVE.COM and have decided that I have too much on my hands with my other my clinical ‘Hands on’ hospital work and other web sites: http://www.consultdrminas.com and http://www.aestheticforever.com and
http://www.drminasmemoirs.com and would like to sell this web site- could you assist me? Best wishes, Ashley Minas(Dr)
Great article with very useful information!
I’m just starting the process now, and hopefully I can come back one month from now to thank you for helping me sell my website 🙂
Thanks for the article. I am also looking to sell mine and I have absolutely no clue on how to execute the sale process.
Hi,
After making the sale, how would I transfer the website over to the buyer? Would I just download the website via a FTP client and then send it to the buyer?
Kind Regards
Dan
There are websites now with calculations put in place if the site is making money through advertising only. One website worth calculator is http://www.siteworthit.com it is a really quick way of doind a calculation. Its not an end all number but it can give a good idea of a sites value.
Thanks for this great article. I have recently decided to pursue selling my website http://www.CompleteReviews.net and this has given me some great ideas on how to get started.
As a website broker, I’d suggest to the person being asked to make a decision in 24 hours to say no. It just sounds fishy.
It’s good to see a positive feedback.
Have you any suggestions as to how to sell at the right price and who or how you trust the person your selling to???? As I may be looking to sell my business in the very forseable future.
I actually use http://www.sellmyapplication.com to sell my website. They allow you to post an ad to find the right buyer. Once you find someone you work out the terms of the deal and complete the transfer. I like this better than auction sites since those seem to put to much pressure to sell. If you’re site is not a distressed asset you shouldn’t be selling at any auction sites. The other nice thing with sellmyapplication.com is that they will serve as your broker if you need one.
Im in the process of finding a buyer in Brazil. Its a HUGE market, and my niche is a popular niche in Brazil. A billion dollar industry. My website don’t have a lot of traffic, but I have a great generic domain name.
thanks for all the information, but what i personally feel is there should be a branded consultant who can buy and sell websites or an auction place with the commission charges after selling websites
Anyone interested in my site? http://www.producerpack.com
Excellent post.
I’ve read a few articles on valuing website tonight, but many that I’ve found are full of ‘techno-talk’ and ‘babble’ and hard to understand.
I found your post much easier to understand, so thank you Yaro.
Ben.
Thank you for the article. I spent many months trying to gather info on how to sell websites and other businesses. I also compiled a few online calculators for either websites or businesses. Forgive the link please: http://wp.me/p2NHIp-2A
Keep up the GREAT work….
my site — launched just one year ago — never made a penny because I chose not to monetize it. It is a swap & sell site currently in Maintenance Mode because the spam (despite a couple of different security measures) was debilitating it. I also have some interesting Forums but while I am successful in design & marketing concepts, I am not at all good with technical issues. Any ideas? Does something with no revenue still have value?
How do you actually transfer the site to the new owners? Do you contact the host( Yahoo in my case), and transfer their name to the site being sold? Who handles this ? And how?
I have recently started earning for my website. It is just 2 months old site. I have earned around $3 per day. I spent around $1.5 in advertising it. Can I sell this website? If yes shaould should be the right price for it?
Hi… I’m not exactly a web site seller but I move in the enterpreneurial world and I don’t think tha there is an easy way of determinig a web site price for sale. There are so many factora to consider that I don’t see a smart and easy way of doing it. But, the variables to consider in a business are: 1.- All business buyers want to recover their investments in 6-12 months; so, prices must be in that range for a website “as is” in order to be attractive for anyone. But, 2.- the price shouldn’t be less than the cost of creating it, so, we have a problem because the ciphers simply don’t add. I’ll stress the second point because most people don’t realize they are giving away his hard work in their website. for example, you worked 100 hours in your web site, no matter for hoy many years, just consider the amount of dedication hours and how many you earn for an hour of your actual work (for example). If you make $10 an hour, your website must worth at least $1.000 plus the potential earnings that the buyer could make for the first 6-12 months. so, lets suppose that you can make $200 a month with your web site, that means: $1.200-2.400. So, as with many business (we dont speak of price but “price ranges”) we have $2.200-3.400 range. For negotiation porpuses, lets start with $4.000 to get close to $2.800. That is for a basic website, but the fact that it has other things like E-Shop capabilities for example, add up to the price.
just my two cents
Great piece and thanks for your terrific endorsement of Flippa as the #1 marketplace for buying and selling websites.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience Yaro but people are buying websites like a vegies and fruits where you given a proper definition to them Actually i was suppose to sell one of my blog got a good guidance from you by G search engine! thank You !
Closely related to this wonderful article I have developed a website worth estimation algorithm that you can try here:
http://www.webuka.com
Keep up the good work!
For Selling and Buying Websites Flippa is currently the No.1 site in my opinion, i have bought one site through Flippa, is there any better than Flippa then please reply
If you’re a buyer, I’d recommend going through brokers to find websites. Flippa doesn’t vet their sites so you end up spending days wading through garbage and shady sellers. Brokers vet and only list/put you in touch with profitable sites.
Some brokers to check out:
http://empireflippers.com – I personally work for these guys. We focus on $10k-100k sites.
http://feinternational.com – Previously Flipping Enterprises
Sound advice Vincent. I’m actually on the list of about 8 different brokers who send me deals ranging from a few thousand dollars to a few million. Flippa actually as a brokering service for their bigger deals as well, which I only found out about recently (they sort of hide it).
I cover these things in my guide – How To Buy And Sell Blogs And Websites For Passive Profits
Going through a broker is one of the safest ways to find a buyer (who’s willing to pay a good multiple.) They’ll weed out the tirekickers for you and find you someone who’s serious on buying sites. We personally list our sites by taking the average net profit of the past 3 months and multiplying by 20.
Hi again Vincent, I’ll put the same note here since you replied to two of my blog posts. I’m actually on the list of about 8 different brokers who send me deals ranging from a few thousand dollars to a few million. Flippa actually as a brokering service for their bigger deals as well, which I only found out about recently (they sort of hide it).
I cover these things in my guide – How To Buy And Sell Blogs And Websites For Passive Profits
Hello yaro, awesome article, i’m seriously having a headache getting anyone to help in selling my site, gistandrhymes.com please can you help, i know of flippa and all the rest, just want a private sales
Hi I have been operating an UK Based online car accessories business with a neiche for 4 years, i have a turnover of 110,000 uk pounds last year at aproximately 33%+ net profit and there is massive growth potential as i only focus on a couple of products. I dont take telephone orders and i log in once a day to process orders and updates, The product is also manufactured by my manufacturer and sent direct to the customer under my banner,
I have a completely new project that i am looking to do and considered selling the business. I was wondering if anyone could give me some idea of a potentail realistic sale price of this business as there is repeat trade as well as new trade and the sites sales are growing year on year.
Many Thanks
This is an very well written article! I stumbled across this website very randomly (to say the least), while reading another website’s experience with Google PageRank penalties. Wow, awesome quality of educational content and personal experiences. I know for me at least, these figures had me stopping to do a little bit of long math.
Yesterday I could not have ever even swallowed the idea of selling my website, my hobby, my “where I started my career in computer science, coding, design, and writing”, my passion. Although after reading this and the comments, seeing figures like 650,000 thousand dollars is remarkable! Motivating. Thanks for sharing!
Yaro I am completely agree with you about what conversation you described between you and your friend because as my thoughts could be same. I gone through lots of articles about this but most of the time I ended up with a link to calculate how much the site worth. You provided absolutely clear and clean description about selling site as well as how to gather information before putting first step ahead.
I just want to ask a simple question as I am still bit confused that does the revenue of any site matters, for example if I have a website with good alexa ranking but 0 income as there are no advertisements shown on site. So should I put advertisement before selling the site?
Thank you very much for posting all information at one place on how to sell website.
Sure you can try and sell a site with no revenue, but you won’t get much for it or maybe no interest at all.
The question of when to sell is a personal one, but whether there is a buyer depends on the market.
Yaro
Hey Yaro, Thanks for the above excellent post. It provided me all the required details which i wanted.Now I got a brief Idea on selling my website.
I need one more help, If you know any genuine website for estimating worth of my website. please reply me as soon as possible.
Thanks in advance.
Hi Yaro Starak,
I just read your articles and found its really worth for new comer.
I have started my website called http://www.viraldunia.com and now i am posting videos from youtube
on daily basis.
My question is i want to sell this site so can someone will buy this. if yes then where and how.
waiting for your valuable feedback.
Thanks
Narendra Dubey
When it has value you can sell it Narendra. Value generally means it has an audience and makes money, but you never know what a buyer is looking for until you start looking for buyers.
I would not buy on ebay, but selling is different.
But Ebay is one of the last places you want to buy and sell websites on.
To much nonsense on there and not worth the time.
There are plenty of other good places to buy and sell domain names and websites. Such as:
http://www.WebitWorks.com
http://www.Flippa.com
Those are my 2 favorite places to buy and sell and I have sold over 300+ domains and over 50+ websites.
I have great experience and nothing is better than diving in head first if you are not.
I am planning to sell my website smartphonetechie.com. Any idea how much it worth?
Hey mary, send me income and traffic details of the last 6 months and add me to the Google analytics, i am interested in buying. Saienzboi@gmail.com
Awesome article, I was figuring out how to sell my website and what are the precautions we have to know. Your post was really helpful.
Great post! In order to sell a website I found a great online free tool for estimating website price here:
http://www.webuka.com
Give it a try!
Thanks for this useful article. I am looking some good place to sell from last two months, awesome article.
Nice article Yaro. I myself have built a nice income buying and flipping old websites. There are thousands of gems out there that are basically waiting for people to buy. Many of these owners want nothing to do with their websites and these can be picked up easily from their owners.
Hey Yaro, really very awesome idea is given by you to buy a website for profit, it will be really helpful to buy a renovator’s dream property at a discounted price, renovate and modernize it and then sell it at a few months later at a profit. This process can then be repeated over and over for a reasonably stable income.
Its really a good article and good opinion of yours. But I disagree on most of the points. One is traffic. If you are going to buy a website looking at its traffic then you need to think it twice. Why I am telling this is I have found many people using bots and many other traffic generation tools which you can buy for few bucks. So, would you like to end up in buying website looking at these traffic.
If I am there to buy some website first I would look at how useful it is going to be fir my users or visitors, second the CPC for the keyword, domain name do matters a lot for me so I look at the keyword used at the domain name and the last thing is that I am going to look at the content, how well it is written.
Anyway thank you for giving your time writing such a good article.
hii..very good article ..can you suggest some good sites where site can be sold quickly in few days??
I am just starting to think about selling my business which I started over 12 years ago now. I found this article to be really helpful. It a big step selling a small business which is really so much part of your life. I hope that I can get a good price for mine!
Imagine I have a website making $20k net a month for zero effort. There is no way in the world I would remotely consider selling that business for 12 times the monthly earnings, not even 3 times the annual earnings. Would have to be desperate or have rocks in my head. I wouldn’t consider anything below 10 times annual earnings.
Hi, I dont know if this is a good enough place to put a hypothetical question.
If I have a website thats roughly a couple of weeks old. I have marketed the website really well and in those two weeks and now it has 1,000 paying members who are paying roughly $50 per month’s membership(Gross income: $50,000. Net:$49,000).
The upkeep of this website is $1000 per month and everything is taken care of so no more expenses for the owner. Even the content is covered and you just have to spend half an hour to checkup on things.
How much can I sell this website for?
It’s really a hard decision to make, especially when you had no plan to sell your website from the very beginning. I would love to sell some of my websites but I’m afraid I have not really put much effort into them and therefore they wont cost much.
I listed site in ebay. It is 6 months old 100 to 200 visiters perday with google adsence approval how much can I expect. I spend totally 400$ for designing this site
Great! Thank you for this in-depth and thorough site flipping guide.
I am going to stop back for sure and ask questions about selling a blog.
Thanks.
KR
my site — launched just one year ago — i made around $12-15 daily and I use to adsense to monetize it.I gone through lots of articles about this but most of the time I ended up with a link to calculate how much the site worth. You provided absolutely clear and clean description about selling site as well as how to gather information before putting first step ahead. Thanks for the well written article.
Hi, I have agreed a price for my website which is just over a yr old built by a web developer in Prestashop as well as code. The purchaser is from the same industry but is buying just the site not the business (ie name or products/images). I have given the passwords for them to see how the site is built but say they want access to all of the web files including any SEO copy.
Please could you advise, are they entitled to this info? My concerns are twofold; I would not want any comeback regarding any copy that I have written and I also intend to start a new business using a couple of the products that I sold on the website. Are there any legal implications I need to be aware of?
Many thanks for any advise
Sounds a great information before selling a website. I think it’s always great to consult professional before someone plans to sell a website or domain name. Flippa is a great place but there are other sites where one can sell or buy websites. I also think it’s great to talk to other domain investors, talk in forums and have basic idea how much money one can make out from selling a website. Educating yourself with all that will help you get maximum profit possible.
That’s look great. I am going to selling my website and your guidelines will help me a lot. Thanks for such a great content.
Sedo also comes in handy for the less techy or those who don’t want to go through all the process of proper review of their website. A very valuable article as always.
ps. I am not anyway affiliate to Sedo.
That’s the exact info what i was searching for, it helped me alot to sell my website in best pricing.
Thank you so much
Hello Yaro,
finally, nice tips you’ve shared. I was searching for this kind of source as I’ve decided to sell one of my established site related to “Yoga”. Thanks for the share.
I think I’ll hold off selling my blog for now and focus on increasing the value a bit more. Thanks for the tips!
Yaro,
Phillip here again. I really enjoyed this piece you make it sound so easy but as a freelance web developer and now blogger I realize its not an easy thing to do.
For a while now I have been building a side project called The Bird Book. With my knowledge in PHP and MySQL as well as html, JavaScript and CSS I wanted to see if I could build a bespoke social network along the lines of Facebook or MySpace but better.
Alas now I am going to build it into a PWA (Progressive Web App ) once I have the time between client jobs. Ornithology is a wide niche and I think it has potential eventually. Once built and its got a decent following I may refer back to this post but for me its a project that combines my 2 passions, web development and birds.
On another note Yaro, it seems I have joined this exclusive club that you , Tim Ferris and Matt Mullenweg have joined and secured me a really good domain for a pretty penny, Would love your thoughts on it?
Been reading the comments on here as well. some really interesting ones and some not so. Quite a few are ones just blatantly advertising their sites for sale.
Once again a great read Yaro, looking forward to some more off you.
Best.
Phillip Dews