Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
My question is, are there any guidelines anywere as to how one should go about selling a site? I would presume it should all be done through solicitors and the like. The price is likely to be in the region of £50,000.
Is it advisable to put a "For sale" sign on the actual site in question, or would this be considered a little amaturish?
Can anybody recommend a website where it could be advertised?
Thanks,
Phil.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld
Why not try ebay?
Be ready to defend the price, the 3-5 rule seems to be the best way to show that you have realistic expectations.
korkus2000: Traffic wise, it receives 300-900 visitors a day. Yes, £50,000 is a tidy sum, but this is only a starting figure. As the site doesn't generate any real income at present, the price is based on potential, bespoke software that drives it and high ranking google keywords. A competitor with similar traffic, but less potential earnings and a very basic layout is receiving offers around £30K, so I *think* I'm in the right area.
The domain name is a 5 character .com of a very well established brand.
the 3-5 rule seems to be the best way to show that you have realistic expectations.
RC - What exactly is the 3-5 rule? Does that mean valuing a business at 3-5 times earnings?
One of our sites will create £50,000 in turnover, and as it is entirely web driven with its own electronic product and no staffing costs we will be paying about £40K out in dividends (US$60K). Unfortunately not all to me...
Anyone really want to give us US$ 300,000 for a web business in a (computer)box? The shareholders would probably give that SERIOUS consideration.
My guess is that serious buyers are hard to find... and Lawyers are easy to pay...
Even so - the question still stands - where do you go to sell a web business if not on Ebay?
Dixon.
Anyone really want to give us US$ 300,000 for a web business in a (computer)box? The shareholders would probably give that SERIOUS consideration.
Not in my dreams,
I am currently being pitched 2-3 business plans or websites a day, and not getting past the 1st page on most.
A lot of people think we are back in 1999
Shak
I'll just keep banking the money then :)
I don't see how a busy site without a revenue stream will be valuable Phil. If it CAN be turned into a money maker, surely it is best for you to do so?
Gotta be easier than negotiating with hard nosed businessmen with lawyers...
I might have got it completely wrong here, and if so I apologise.
but is this your project:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Shak
Apology accepted :)
2. You say you have a great domain name and good traffic and have some good software. Yet you are not making any $$$. Why would I make any money if I bought it? Sounds like I would be making all the investment and taking all the risk in any potential future earnings.
3. 3-5 x zero is zero. So, the site has no inherent value.
4. Maybe the domain name itself has value. However, the domain name market is very slow today. I have 3,4 and 5 letter .com names and they are not generating offers in the USD50-75k range at the moment. 1-5 letter .com domain names will increase in value in the future of course, because these names are scarce resources.
1) No sign - I go along with that
2) I am not making any money with the site because I have effectively chosen not to. As I mentioned before, this is not the area I specialise in. Someone with the right background could turn it into a profitable venture - just not me. As an aside, the software in development time alone would have cost in excess of £50K, but this is not the reason why the site has value.
3) As above
4) I have no interest in selling the domain name and would never imagine it would be worth any more than a few hundred quid on its own.
I'm not going to post the URL, but to make it clearer, I will state that the site involves the listing of over 600 widgets (each costing between £20 - £110K) at any one time. There is currently no charging scheme in place for this service. With an audience of say 700 people a day (without any paid-for advertising), the possibilities for revenue are clear. But yes, as with any venture, there is a risk of failure.
I'd agree no listing on the site, my guess is your best path is to come up with a sales sheet where you quantify (from the buyers perspective) the individual values they are getting with the purchase.
300 visitors / day = 9,000 per month
Get an average Overture bid amount for the traffic value,
If you are capturing a database of visitors, those are also worth something in relation to the bid amounts on the keywords
Not sure what the software is and if you are giving them a license or they will "own" the software exclusively ... but try and come up with a value on it as well
Don't write-off ebay too fast, granted they have alot of crap, but they also get decent stuff that goes through there and sells for amounts like you're talking about.
Added - Are there any other sites that sell the same widgets? If so do they have an afffiliate program?
You may also want to do some searches at Google for selling a website, and see about posting it for sale on some of the results
Your best plan of attack may be to lease the traffic to another site, ie; if your keyword was casinos and people are paying $10 per click you could start contacting sites paying that amount and offer your traffic at a substantial discount
[edited by: jbauder at 6:02 pm (utc) on Feb. 25, 2003]
Yep. I know a WebmasterWorld member who turned down US$ 200,000 last Fall for only one site from his network. The deal was with solid, known resort site developers, and it would have been more than 5x revenues (for that site, when considered separately from the network). One consideration is whether or not the revenue stream ports well with the move, or if it requires key management to be on-board as well. In this case, the 2 shareholders decided to keep going to the bank themselves rather than cash out.
Kudos for creating something so popular. It's great when ideas take off and have a life of their own!
That being said, I have a hard time imagining any business that would put money down on an unknown quantity - shareholders just hate that kind of thing - and if a big business did to that, it's a SURE thing that the site is worth many MORE times than you'd imagine. Like the site RCjordan mentioned - I'll bet if they offered 5x for it, it's probably worth 10x in the end. First rule of negiotation - never start at your highest sum. I remember reading about the Hotmail.com negiotation when it was sold to Microsoft...the MS lawyers came in and started bidding at $10 million. Only the owner himself deal with them. He sent them home immediately. In the end, he held out for some insane amount, over $200 million for sure, possibly as much as $400 million... while that was a "bubble" property, the point remains the same...MS started bidding for it at only $10 million!
But I digress: how to solve the problem? Simple: rent it out, just like someone would rent out or lease out a restaurant space or business space!
Let someone come in and "take over" the site for a specified period - say one year - let them try to generate revenue from the site. And either split the costs of running it with them & the profits, or demand a % of every sale that happens.
This might solve the problem of selling it altogether, if you see money from it. Or this firm might purchase it from you. But even if they don't want to buy it off you in a year, you'll show other businesses that it can be done, and assign a strong, "real world" value to it.
In any case, this is an option you can reserve for negiotation, should they weaken or start to fall through...
Good luck, and let us know what happens.
I am not surprised. If I spent all my time on that one site I'd be a far richer man now than marketing other people's! But I didn't know that five years ago of course.
