Sell Site - Where to Start?

Around 1.5M uniques a month

[Jane_Doe]

I have a niche site I am interested in selling. I don't want to sell it for one year's earnings on flippa. It is an aged domain, medium CPC profitability topic, tens of thousands of natural back links, and a high percent of bookmark traffic. Currently it gets around 1.5M uniques a month, about 3 - 4M page views.

If I could interest a media or venture capital firm for multiple times its earnings I would sell, otherwise I would just hang on to it.

Where do I start getting it ready to sell and looking for a buyer?

[nomis5]

Not all sites sell for one year's earnings on Flippa. Some sell for three or four times and more. There are people out there who are looking to buy.

Venture capitalists do look at those listings because sometimes, amongst the chaff, they know that some good quality, high worth websites are put up for sale.

Give Flippa a try, you stand to loose nothing.

[jinxed]

The problem with Flippa is that because 95% of the sites selling on there are pure junk, it brings down the value of the genuine non-spam websites.

[Jane_Doe]

I will consider flippa. Thanks for the suggestion.

I was hoping to find some established broker or listing place where I would only have to deal with serious buyers. I get a lot of unsolicited emails right now to buy the site but they usually seem to be mainly from college kids and scam artist types. It seems like a flippa listing would attract more of those kinds of offers in droves.

[nomis5]

Sitepoint (owners of Flippa) have a page that lists the major online markets for selling a website. Just type in "sell website" into G and look for the sitepoint entry (no 2 for me).

[Jane_Doe]

Thanks, nomis5. I will check it out.

[JustGiving]

you can sell it on some large community like digitalpoint, v7n, imtalk,...

[Dinkar]

There are less hope to find any decent buyer on any forum. Don't try at all.

Find interested buyer yourself to maximize the profit. How to do that? It's easy. Contact your advertisers / affiliate programs. Else try contacting your direct compititor :)

[Jane_Doe]

Find interested buyer yourself to maximize the profit. How to do that? It's easy. Contact your advertisers / affiliate programs. Else try contacting your direct compititor :)

That is good advice. I will look through the advertisers and related affiliate programs. I have thought about the competitors, but I am not sure I want to give them a lot of information about my site. I will think about that. Thanks.

[lucy24]

I have thought about the competitors, but I am not sure I want to give them a lot of information about my site.

Think some more before you do anything. If you have competitors, plural, then they will presumably be each other's competitors if and when you sell. Would you buy a site that one of your competitors may know just as much about as you do? A site that one of your competitors investigated closely and decided against? You'd have to make each one believe that they're the only one getting the inside information. And if you're that good you don't need advice from anyone else ;)

[wheel]

Lots of people want a niche broker, but I don't know that they exist. The money's just not there.

I get asked about selling sites in my niche all the time. I personally don't bother taking a commission anymore, I just email everyone I think might be interested and let them contact the vendor if they're interested. And that's basically what you will probably have to do - start networking, contacting everyone you know that may know someone and asking them to put the word out.

In terms of competitors, that's the wrong approach. Competition online isn't an either-or thing anymore. I speak to my competitors and share information all the time - I call them up and chat with them and share everything I can. And they do the same with me. The only reason I don't stay in touch with my direct competitors is because personally I don't want to talk to them. As long as they're not idiots to speak to, I keep them in the loop.

Because realistically, if you gave traffic information to one of your competitors, what are they actually going to do with that that's going to affect you? Nothing that I can think of.

[Jane_Doe]

And if you're that good you don't need advice from anyone else ;)

I am not sure what that means. I make money from some of my sites because enough people seem to like the content. I don't know anything about networking or selling a site so I am asking for advice.

Writing nonfiction articles for a living and sales and marketing are pretty different skill sets.

[wheel]

There's no science to networking. You just have to pick up the phone and call a few folks, say Hey! Looking to sell my site, you're in my niche, wondering if you knew anyone who would be interested.

Of course picking up the phone and actually calling someone is, for some reason, more than most people seem to be able to do. But if you want bucks for the site, that's one of the best routes you can go.