It can feel quite exciting when you are ready to sell your website. It is indeed a big change in your life, so it is natural to face several questions and unknown variables associated with it. You would have worked consistently for years to build your website to its current potential.
When it is time to sell it, you would naturally want to cash in on its maximum worth so you can fuel your prospects. But selling a website can prove to be a tricky task. Therefore, we will give you a set of guidelines that can help you with the entire process.
Keep in mind that there are many other ways to explore your options when deciding to sell your website.
How Much is Your Website Worth?
Website is a virtual property, so it might feel strange to many people why someone would want to pay for that. Just like a traditional business, a website can be a source of direct or indirect revenue for an organization. So how does one determine the worth of your website?
There are several factors that you should consider to come up with an asking price. Some of those factors are projected revenues, industry, required manpower, technical skills, and other costs. You should also check how fast your website is growing to determine its earning potential.
You can try to find a list of the essential factors on the internet, or you can consult advisers and business brokers. They will be able to tell you whether the industry you cater to is currently a buyer’s or a seller’s market. In general, a website is usually sold at 3 to 6 times the annual profits.
If your website operates in a small niche, you may feel that it will not attract many buyers. But the truth is you will not get a clear picture of the demand till you try to sell your website.
How to Prepare Before Selling Your Website?
Potential buyers will look for as much information as you can give them. However, they would need that information as statistical data to understand how well your website is functioning.
You can also determine whether a prospective buyer is genuine or not because they would look for these numbers. You should present your website traffic data, including:
- Average and total number of unique visitors
- Average and total number of page views
- Your website growth rate over time
- Geographic locations of your visitors
- Percentage of traffic from search engines and direct links
- Popular keywords from your website
You can provide direct access to your log files for potential customers through statistics packages so that they can get a complete grasp of your website performance.
You should also include any financial data that you wish to disclose, such as a statement about the revenue generated from your website. A potential buyer might want to look at more detailed bookkeeping records, so share as much as you are comfortable with them. You can also consider asking a potential buyer to sign a nondisclosure agreement before divulging any financial information.
How to Find Buyers for Your Website?
There are several options that you can explore while looking for a potential buyer for your website. You can search for a buyer within the industry that your website caters to or outside it.
Start by emailing businesses and outlets that sell products or services similar to yours. You should include some large international businesses and websites that you feel might be interested in purchasing your website. You can try advertising on LinkedIn or Twitter, but that might attract a lot of unwanted attention from unworthy buyers.
Most of these buyers would not match the asking price and end up wasting your time. However, one of the easiest ways to find buyers is to contact a professional business broker to help you sell your website.
They will ensure that you speak to potential buyers that are genuinely interested in paying the value you are looking for. Moreover, they will try to fetch the maximum possible price for your business because their commission is dependent on it.
How to Finalize the Sale?
Once you have found someone interested to buy your website and your negotiations are complete, you can finalize the sale. However, make sure that you clarify some of these points before you start the process:
- How and when will you get the money? The process of selling a website is not as elaborate as a traditional business. Therefore, discuss the terms of your payment before finalizing the sale.
- Make sure that you have all the formal contracts and due diligence in place. You can also consult a legal adviser to ensure that all the required paperwork gets completed.
- Define a timeframe on the documents if you have to provide support during the transition of your website.
- Make sure the buyer has a complete grasp over all the technical aspects such as website hosting, domains, email lists, third-party plug-ins, directory listings, subscriptions, so on and so forth.
Once you have completed the sale, you have a world of opportunity in front of you. Make sure that you utilize the money you have towards progressive investments and projects. You can take the help of investment advisers to guide you with your earning’s proper utilization.