Josh Buckley Internet Entrepreneur

This is the second, and final half of my ‘Selling sites for a great profit‘ post. In this post, i will cover ways to get a great deal when you are actually selling the site.

One thing that i have noticed with previous site sales is that it leads onto new opportunities. You meet people that you can learn from, or have something to offer. In previous sales, people who were interested in purchasing my site, but did not bid ended up hiring me for work after the sale. This is an invaluable thing that you can take away from a sale. Even if you don’t get a good price, try to keep in touch with the buyer.. and the bidders. You never know what it may lead on to.

I generally tend to go with sitepoint for my website sales, digitalpoint for domains. As long as you thing the website that you’re selling will go for above $120, the $20 listing fee at sitepoint should be fine. Choosing upgrades is also a good idea to promote the auction. If you think it will go for over $220, i would: Syndicate on Webmaster-Talk.com and Highlight the listing in orange. The other upgrades are useless.

To BIN, or not to BIN
Buy it now, a.k.a ‘BIN’ is always a handy feature. It is one you must think about very carefully when making your sale. If set too low, you could loose money if the sale had potential to go for more. If you set it too high, it may scare bidders away. There is no clear way of setting out a BIN, although I always like to add one for my sales. I look at the best price i would love to get for the site, yet what is realistic.

The title and description of the auction are both vital points. This is what will draw views in. Stating the name of the website isn’t always necessary, sometimes it is even unnecessary - saying the niche works well. Using powerful words such as “thriving”, “popular” and “established” should be used to start off the title. It helps to draw the eyes and people want to see inside the auction. Finally, if you do have any powerful stats to show, put them in the title. Keep it short, only one stat - e.g. revenue or traffic

Adding a description can be hard after you have just written a title. But, getting it to cover two lines can help. It makes your row larger, and makes it look much more interesting. This is where you can add more information about your stats. Put information about traffic, users, revenue, anything to do with your site. Here is an example of a title & description I would do:

Established webmaster blog - $2500 a month revenue!
A widely known, thriving webmaster blog. Receives over 7.5k daily uniques. High potential!

As you can see, that title & description is pretty attractive. After that, it’s time to focus on the actual auction. This is a very important point. You want to sound professional, yet approachable in the auction.

Before writing your auction description, you need to decide a range of things. You shouldn’t just think about them when somebody asks in the comments. That would show that you are not prepared. Decide on:

• Will the buyer pay first, or will you transfer the files? I always make the buyer pay first, if they wish not to - i will seek for a new buyer unless this is a big sale. Then, you can request 50% first, then give part of the site, 50% after, the rest of the site.
• Whether you will offer after sale support, think of the terms & conditions. How long will you offer this for? 3 weeks? What will be included in the support? The buyer might take this to their advantage and make it a new full time job for you.
• Will you host the website for them on your server, or will you transfer all of the files and data to them immediately?

Preparation is key for the sale. As the saying goes: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. It is no different when selling websites. When writing your description, you are not only selling your website - but you are selling yourself. People want to know who they are dealing with, don’t act shady. Be open. Don’t conceal any information. Check your spelling and grammar, you would be surprised how much this could help. There are some inevitable questions people will ask when serious about a sale. Put them in your description so that there is no need for them to ask.

• Why are you selling the site? (you’re not selling because you think it’s about to die) Usually, you have a good reason. Even if it’s because you have lost interest in the site, which has been my reason a lot of the time in the past. A better way of phrasing that would be “i have a new project which requires all of my time to dedicate to”. Prepare your reason, and have it there so buyers have no need to ask.
• How much work is required to run the site, money/expenses? How much money does the website make?
• Are there any problems with the site? For instance, is it banned from any advertising networks? Any search engines?

Then, there are the obvious. Of course, we all have our forgetful moments sometimes:

• What is included in the sale? Domains? Hosting? Help? Software?
• What are the stats? Revenue, traffic, pagerank, established date.

Once you have everything planned out, you are going well. Ofcourse, you would be naive to think that any site can sell if you write a sales description well. In a lot of cases, people over value their websites. Other cases, you may under value it.

Always think about how you are being portrayed in the sale. The comments can be testing at times, with some people trying your patience - you can lose it all at that point. Dealing with negative comments can be hard, but it’s the internet. Take time to think of a reply. You always have the option to delete a comment if needs be.

Thinking about all these points will not guarantee for your site to be sold. However, using this as more of a resource when selling can improve your chances. I will be more than happy to help anybody out if they need it when selling a site. Just contact me.