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How much is your website worth? Should you consider selling it?

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After investing so much time and effort in developing your website, it is natural to occasionally feel tired of it all and simply wonder where exactly you’re heading with it. When faced with this situation, many people choose to sell their website or take a break to focus on other work. However, before you make any decision, it’s worth asking yourself at least two important questions:

  1. How much is your website worth?
  2. Should you actually consider selling it?

In this article, I will show you how to answer these intriguing questions and turn your website into a most rewarding financial investment.

How much is your website worth?

Strictly speaking, it is quite difficult to say exactly how much you will get for your website if you do decide to sell it. However, there do exist several methods of getting a pretty good idea of the same. For example, the common rule of thumb is to multiply your monthly revenue by 26-36. Let’s say your website earns $2,000 per month; in that case, you can expect to receive around $48,000 to $72,000 after selling it.

Needless to say, there are several factors that determine your website’s value. Potential buyers will look closely at your revenue streams, net profit, and long-term profit before deciding whether to buy your website or not. Obviously, websites that attract plenty of organic traffic are usually worth much more than the ones that depend heavily on advertisements for bringing in visitors.

To get a relatively more accurate idea of your website’s worth, you can try using a domain appraisal tool or a website value calculator like Flippa, GoDaddy, or Empire Flippers. However, you must remember that any number you get is simply an estimate and no more. In actuality, any buyer may offer more or less than that amount if you sell your website to them.

Should you sell your website?

There are plenty of valid reasons for you to want to sell your website, which I’ve discussed below:

1. You seem to have hit a ceiling

In other words, you feel that your website has finally reached its full potential both in terms of traffic and income. If you don’t feel you can get anything more out of it henceforth, or simply don’t want to put in the required effort, then you may consider selling it and taking up other projects.

2. You’ve simply become too bored of it

You may have become fed up with your current website or frustrated with the fact that it’s been taking up your time and resources. Even a website that you may have been extremely passionate about a few years ago may feel less than appealing in the present time. If it is indeed not making you happy anymore, then it is better to sell it.

3. You are more interested in other projects

Even people who own extremely successful websites are often tempted to cash out and avail of other opportunities. Taking your success and success elsewhere and utilizing them in a new project may turn out to be an extremely rewarding experience. Nevertheless, if you decide to sell your website for whatever reason, then you must first learn how much it is worth.

How to sell your website

In the first section, I showed you how to find out about your website’s value. Obviously, the next question that follows is: how does one sell their website online?

If you have experience with buying and selling real estate, then you will find selling your website to be a pretty similar process. Domains are very much like physical addresses while websites are analogous to the properties themselves. Thus, I highly recommend you to use a professional service.

Where can you sell your website?

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You must ensure that you sell your website through a safe, secure, and reputable website broker in order to avoid running into problems. I suggest working with a professional company with plenty of experience in website sales; that will help you get the best price and a smooth transaction. Some of these companies include:

  • Flippa
  • GoDaddy
  • Worth of Web
  • FitSmallBusiness
  • Empire Flippers
  • Siteprice.org
  • SiteWorthTraffic

Things to keep in mind while selling your website

If you actually want to get the best possible price, then selling your website is not just about business value and domain value only. You need to follow certain crucial steps in order to get the choicest deal when you’re selling your website and business, as shown below:

1. Think deeply about the long-term value

Business value calculations usually revolve around profit. Although that is a good way of reaching a sizeable cash value, it doesn’t really take the long-term value of your business into consideration.

If you want to see your website’s value in non-monetary terms, then you must take into account certain additional factors such as your social media presence, the potential for revenue growth, and search visibility. If your website continues to grow steadily, it will gain more profits and better brand awareness, which will further increase its value.

2. Properly understand your target market

As with any other sale, it is crucial for you to know well about your target market’s requirements, what they can afford, and how you must sell to them. For example, the approach to selling a contact-based website is much different from that for an e-commerce website. Likewise, you would expect to attract different buyers in both these cases.

In this regard, you have much to gain by hiring a professional broker. Putting it simply, they have the necessary experience and contacts to approach the right market in the right way, and at the right price.

3. Remember to research other websites’ sales as well

If you are buying or selling a website for the first time, then you likely won’t know exactly how much money is going to be involved. Thus, you should converse with a website broker and find out more about their previous sales of websites in your industry or other similar businesses. By doing this, you will learn to have the most realistic expectations based on real-life experience instead of multipliers and algorithms.

Apart from prices, you should also try to find out more about the information that needs to be included in the listing. And of course, a good understanding of some sales tactics never goes amiss.

4. Introduce your website to the right people

You will find numerous auction sites on the Internet, but not all of them offer the same kind of service. Many of them are simply not right for the job, as some people find out too late. Thus, I advise you to preferably go for the larger and more popular websites that have a long-standing reputation.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that a large audience isn’t necessarily the best audience. If you’re running a relatively niche business, then you should consider contacting a broker with experience and contacts in that particular sector.

Mistakes to avoid when selling your website

We’re now in the most important section of this article. When it comes to selling your website, there are many things to watch out for. Mistakes can result in you losing your money or even the entire sale altogether. Thus, make sure you read the following paragraphs carefully.

1. Concentrating on meaningless stats

People often try to attract potential buyers by spicing up their listings with impressive statistics. However, it is a bad idea to include vanity metrics that are quite meaningless when it comes to business performances. You should strive to be transparent and offer only real statistics, even if they aren’t as impressive.

 Concentrate on listing your business’ achievements, strengths, and most striking data. Don’t conceal the negatives, but highlight the positives as much as possible.

2. Not ensuring that your website is at its pinnacle before selling it

I know that you may not like to hear about selling something you’ve worked so hard on. However, remember that doing so will help you negotiate a much superior price. It is not very different from remodeling a house before selling it. You must then try to benefit as much as possible from your website’s potential.

Consider optimizing everything on your website – from SEO to lead capture strategies and monetization tactics. Even a website that hasn’t been optimized can be sought after by some buyers because they may purchase it at a lower price and subsequently raise the profits with just a little effort on their part.

3. Forgetting about longevity

You might’ve been told that putting together a website that focuses on the latest trending topic or craze is an excellent way of making quick bucks. A lot of people tend to buy a domain just to scram together some pages in a rush and sell them while the topic is still popular. Unfortunately, the truth is that low-quality and low-effort websites like these hardly ever make any money.

If you truly want to make a respectable profit by selling websites, then you must concentrate on the long-term potential of the website and not just a short-term hype. It will naturally take much more time and effort on your part, but will certainly reward you with value and saleability for your website.

Conclusion

Selling your website is a pretty demanding task. Thus, you must do as much research as possible before you actually commit to the idea. If you want to ensure a truly successful sale, then you must dedicate some time to accurately estimate your website’s potential, value, and market.

If you have firmly made up your mind to sell your website, then I recommend speaking to at least one broker and getting real advice that is relevant to your situation. Although it will certainly cost you some money, the investment is undoubtedly worthwhile.