Selling Your Website? How Do You Price It?
You’ve created a website, poured your energies into it for a while and now you have decided to sell it. I have seen more than a few people ask about selling their website. When you do decide to sell, one of the hardest questions to answer for yourself is the question of worth. What is my website worth? After all, if you don’t know what your website is worth, it will be impossible to figure out an asking price or a minimum price you are willing to sell for.
When you are trying to figure out the value of your website, there are several factors that you should take into consideration. Different buyers have different things in mind when looking to purchase a website. You have to remember that your website is really only worth what some buyer is willing to pay for it. With that in mind, the idea is to provide as much useful information to the largest audience possible so that you have the best chance to attract the highest offer for your website. You need to look objectively at your website, as if you were a shrewd buyer who always does their homework on a sale in order to be best prepared to sell to that buyer. So, you need to provide as much accurate and relevant information as you possibly can to your target audience, the potential buyer. If you can do this, then your chances of getting a better price will increase over the idea that you can just post the URL and an asking price on a forum and get what you want for it.
Some of the factors to research and provide information on are:
1. The age of your domain and the domain name. Older domain names are viewed by some as more valuable than one that was created 3 months ago. The domain name itself is also a factor. .COMs tend to be worth more than .NETs and .NETs tend to be worth more than .BIZ or .INFO or .US.
2. Your website’s monthly income. A standard rule of thumb on many forums where websites are sold indicates that one measuring stick being used is a factor of twelve times your website’s monthly income. Sit down and figure out how much money your website takes in each month. You should use the last three months as a guide, dividing that number by 3 to get the amount of income for a single month and then multiplying that number by twelve to estimate yearly income. Take your income from all sources (AdSense, Affiliate Income, Link Sales, Other Sales). Provide screencaps as proof of monthly income wherever possible.
3. Assets. Are there any assets that belong to this website? Assets would include things that you have paid for that are an integral part of the website you are selling. Are there any software licenses that you are including with the sale? What is the current cost (or actual cost, if the software can no longer be purchased) of the software? What about giveaways on your website or products that you sell? Do they have a value? For example, I have a website where I give away free beautiful and creative phpLD templates. Each template I give away is an asset that has cost me approximately $100. You should consider that factor when selling.
4. Work that has gone into your website. This one is usually a little tougher to put a value on, but you should mention it all the same. If you’ve had custom programming done to change a standard script to make it better than what everyone else has, you should mention it. Did you get a unique and professional design made for you? Mention it.
5. Current Google Page Rank. This is almost always going to be high on the list of concerns for almost anyone who is looking to buy your website. It should definitely be included in your informational “for sale” posting. Don’t make a prospective buyer look it up. They are going to want to know this for sure.
6. Current Alexa Rank. This one doesn’t seem to matter as much as Google PR, but it is still important to include your Alexa rank because there is a subset of website buyers who are going to want to know this information.
7. Current Backlink Counts. How many backlinks does your website have? Provide backlink counts for Google and Yahoo. It would also be nice if you can link to backlink counts so that people who are looking at your post can check for themselves easily.
8. Indexed Pages Counts. How many pages of your website are reported in Google’s index? Yahoo? You should include this information in your post. It is an important factor that is sometimes overlooked.
9. Unique Visitors And Visits. How many unique visitors does your website get each month? How many total visitors? Is the number on the rise? All of this is important. You should include your monthly uniques and visitors and provide a screencap of a stats program as proof of this traffic. Traffic is extremely important to your potential website buyer.
10. Monthly Searches For Your Keywords. You don’t necessarily have to give the keywords away in your post, but it would be nice if you could provide some information to your prospective buyer about how often your targeted keywords are searched each month. That will give your website buyer an indicator of potential traffic.
11. Subscribers Or Members. If you are selling a blog, the number of subscribers to your feed may be an important factor for your buyer. The number of contributors (comment authors and post authors) may also be an important factor in selling your website. Include these numbers. If you operate some kind of membership site, include the number of members that you have. Your members (or subscribers) are a potential audience for your buyer. Show them off.
In short, when you set out to sell your website, you should be playing Devil’s advocate and try putting yourself into your potential buyer’s shoes. Be very thorough in your research of your website. A well thought out and presented website sale forum thread is more likely to attract serious offers. After all, that is what the end goal is here, to get the best price you can for your website. The best chances of that lie with providing as much of the above information as clearly and accurately as possible in an organized manner.
One more thing I feel that needs to be mentioned. That is payment. When making your “for sale” post, clearly state what methods of payment you will accept. This will avoid any misunderstandings that might lead to a website sale disappearing into thin air. And, if you can avoid using PayPal, you should. There have been far too many chargebacks with PayPal to even consider it as a reliable method for accepting payment on a website sale. I would recommend using escrow.com. It will likely cost you more, but you don’t have to worry about chargebacks.
Good luck with the sale of your website!
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Great article you have written here. After reading this I have a better understanding on how i would go abouts selling a website and getting the most money for it at the same time.
Thanks for the info and tips