How to Exit

Best way to get out of your ecommerce store...

[mvander]

While we made a decent profit each year, things have begun to change radically. We have come to the conclusion after almost 3 years that we can no longer compete on price. We've been squeezed out. If you don't invest heavily in volume discounts, you cannot compete in our particular niche any longer. (and I will not go into debt to continue)

So now what? What is the best way to exit?

I am thinking of a few options.

1) Sell site and inventory.
2) Sell site separately once inventory is sold.
3) Reduce site products and volume and continue to run on a much smaller volume and make a small income.

[HRoth]

Can you turn it into a content site that focuses on the niche you previously sold in?

[lorax]

I think HROth has the right idea. Liquidate the inventory but keep the site and use for other purposes. If it's a well aged domain which it sounds like it is, and has established traffic, it has value. You could sell the site to a competitor or keep it and position it as an authority in your market niche.

[mvander]

Thank you for the replies. I like that idea. I could keep the pages, and just change it into an informational site with either contextual ads or affiliate ads.

Sounds like a decent plan.

[Demaestro]

I also like the idea of switching it to an info site on the subject. You can use the sites good rep with SEs. It could do well monetized with ads.

The other option is to contact a competitor and see if they want to continue to run the site and sell them all the IP.

Often times these big sites have smaller sites that send all orders to the "bigger brother" to fulfill. That way people who don't want to buy at "Big store dot com" will buy at "small store dot com" not even aware that they are one in the same.