People think of selling their website only when they feel that they can get a good price for the site. However, selling a website is not a one day job-it takes time; it may take you about a few months too. Before you put your website on sale, you must know the reasons why you are selling your website. This will help you not just in reconsidering the decision of selling the website but you would have a genuine answer when the buyer asks you the reasons you want to sell the website.
Before you try to sell your website, eliminate all the snags in the site. You would not like to have your site’s value reduced just because of a small snag somewhere. Run your websites for few days as if you are testing the website as a suitable buyer. This will help you in knowing your buyer’s mind.
You must also remember that when you are considering a sale of your website, you would need to provide a host of private information to your potential customers. You must keep reports about the site’s search engine rankings ready, you also need to provide a report of the income generated by the website (if you use Google, then Google Adsense report would do), traffic reports for the past few months, profit and loss statement for the past few years, customer conversion ratio etc. You can also provide the website’s business model and the future business path. This would lend credibility to the website.
The next thing to keep in mind is whether you should use any external service to help sell your website. There are sites which facilitate website trading. Votanweb is one such site that’s assists in selling (and buying) of websites. Using such professional help would weed out the curious buyers who actually have no intention of buying the website as only genuine buyers would go for any professional service provider to buy a website. This way, your private data would never go in wrong hands.
Now you must also have a fair idea of the price at which you would sell your website. See what your competitor’s are selling their websites for. This should give you a fair idea to the value of your website. But more importantly, you must see your site’s P&L since inception and try and forecast the future revenue stream. When you actually find a buyer, see to it that they use a reputed merchant account for payment (like Paypal). Insist on payment being made through a business account. Finally use legal help to prepare the final draft for the deed of sale.
Remember, try not to hide anything about your website from the potential buyer. There are far too many sites available there to attract the buyer’s attention. A little discrepancy might sow doubts in the buyers mind.