Selling an ecommerce site, $50K and up

My bedroom website has become a monster. How to sell?

[flyerguy]

My 'one man show' site, an ecomm site <snip>, has grown after 2 years of hard work.

Searching for 'web site broker' does not return results that make me confident I could attract serious buyers in this price range via such brokers.

Can anyone suggest some brokers that deal in higher-tag sites as opposed to the typical $400 dating-site type listings?

[edited by: stuntdubl at 3:51 pm (utc) on Dec. 3, 2005]
[edit reason] specifics [/edit]

[foxtunes]

I'm in the same boat. Sitepoint is popular, but there does seem to be a lot of turnkey sites listed there.

I'm interested in hearing where folks think the best place is to sell a quality site that makes a consistent 4 figure monthly income....With authority inbounds from newspapers, .edu links etc?

[flyerguy]

I posted on sitepoint and i'm starting to regret it. One serious buyer already, however a whole truckload of people saying you can't get more than 12 months Net for a site.. "this isn't the 90s" etc.

This from people who haven't even contacted me for more information. Most sites seem to be in the under 5K range there anyhow, maybe it's not a good spot to do a major deal. I'm sensing a troll-like factor there.. seems like finding a pro broker is the way to go.

[Jack_Hughes]

a website is just a business like any other. go for a regular business broker.

[flyerguy]

Found a couple for brokers for Monday morning. :) Thanks.

[oddsod]

Good luck with that but I suspect you'll end up wasting a lot of time. People looking to spend $50K+ don't give up that kind of money easily. They won't take a third party's valuation (and you can pretty much throw that valuation in the bin). Sorry, but that's the harsh truth. As you may guess from the site in my profile I'm not new to the site buying and selling business.

I'm not interested in buying your site but my advice would be to put together a proper memorandum of sale and to market the business yourself. Brokers rarely understand online business models and even when they do I've found them woefully inadequate at marketing web businesses. The one thing you'll have to either gloss over - or attack head first and explain - is the massive risk your site represents. Any site that is virtually fully dependent on SE traffic could die overnight. And I don't ever buy them for that reason.

[minnapple]

I have a couple of customers that have sold and purchased ecom sites.
Each of these either receive or pay monthly payments for a few years.
Purchase price or sale price was around one years of gross sales.
One seller used a business broker, one buyer answered a post on platform provider's site.

[oddsod]

Purchase price or sale price was around one years of gross sales.

I'm surprised the price was a factor of gross sales rather than net profit.

Any site that is virtually fully dependent on SE traffic

Based on the sticky you sent you seem to have misunderstood this. "Free SE traffic" is the same as "natural SE traffic". And that's the riskiest type. If you're relying on just that... ouch! SEs are fickle and one algo change could mean almost zero traffic for you. If you haven't considered that your buyers certainly will. I'd see your business model as inherently very, very risky. Most webmasters who've been hit by a Florida or Jagger would probably agree.

[Marketing Guy]

I've not had much luck with a site similar to (I guess) the original posters. For example, Sedo has attracted offers ranging from £50 to $1000 - Sitepoint reviews valued it at around $12-18k - I've had offers for domain only at $30k through promoting the sale on the site itself. (I've had more serious offers contact me personally rather through a 3rd party site)

I think if you are looking to sell a site that has a unique value / appeal I would suggest looking to evaluate who is likely to buy it and approach businesses yourself as Oddsod suggests (and be prepared to present a lot of detailed information to them).

MG

[flyerguy]

Having contacted a broker already, he has indicated the sad truth, that my site is what I dubbed a 'tweener': it is too big to just post on a forum and hope to get a simple purchase, yet it is too small for most brokers to deal with (he mentioned most brokers deal with sites starting at 50 K / annum net, 100 K selling price).

Unless I'm lucky, what most have said is probably true, save for an xmas angel, i'm probably looking at slogging it out for one more year of work.