How to sell a website and make money

If you want to know how to get more money when selling your website, here are some tips that you might want useful. These are questions that are being asked by a reader so I thought it will be a good idea to share the answer to everyone.

Is it better to try to sell them all at once, group sites that are in similar niches or just sell one by one? Which alternative do you think will be able to give me the maximum profit?

It depends. If you have sites that generate significant income i.e. anything above 50, it is better to sell them one at a time. Bundling also reduces the average price per site.

That being said, if most of your site are making less than 50, it is better to bundle them so that as a whole, the revenue is significant enough to attract buyers’ interest.

If you want to bundle, it is better to do so in similar niches.

I've often heard that adsense sites usually sell for around 10x their monthly earnings. What is your experience with this and how could I get more for my sites?

Age and total earnings level will affect the kind of multiplier you can get. For young sites (less than a year) with small earnings (less than USD50 per month), the multiplier might be less than 10. For aged sites with proven earnings record of above a few hundred dollars per month, you can get somewhere between 18 to even 24 months.

I have sold and purchased sites for 15 to 20 months before. Most of these sites earn at least USD500 per month and a year of earnings record with rankings for multiple keywords.

If you have some high traffic keywords that are close but not yet at the top, it might help to push your valuation higher as well.

Just don’t expect a high multiplier for an average site.

If you really want higher valuation, look for niches where there are not many sites that people can buy. One such niche is the amazon sites. If you look through flippa, quality amazon sites are hard to find. Most of what is available are autoblogs with no proven earnings record.

Other minor factors might include the PR, the quality and design of your content.

One thing that I got worried about is when i'm advertising my site for sale on flippa for instance. Since the sites that I want to sell all have adsense blocks, I'm worried that people might start clicking on the ads which could cause me to be smart price or even worse, banned from adsense for invalid clicks. Any tips on that?

It is better to turn off your adsense during auctions. You can take a screenshot of your site with adsense on it and post that as an attachment.

Besides invalid clicks, there are tools that can use your adsense ID to find all your sites that use the same adsense codes.

Same thing goes for your google analytics account as well. Take the code out when you are selling on public marketplaces.

Do you know good resources (paid and free) that you could point me out so I could learn more about it? I've seen those two guys on, what's called, adsense flippers or something like that, but I still haven't managed to read their site.

Selling and buying websites is relatively new so there isn’t too much resources dedicated to it. What I can recommend are domain blogs. These guys are used to buying and selling domains. Use their sale techniques and apply them to websites.

Here are a few that I like:

http://morganlinton.com/
http://selfmademinds.com/200812/my-domain-buyers-guide/
http://www.domainstryker.com/2010/

If you have more questions about selling your websites, please feel free to email me or post them in the comments sections.


Have a merry Xmas 2011!!

Posted in: buying sites to make money