It’s all well and good knowing what website flipping is, how to improve a site, how to increase its value etcetera etcetera, but the key purpose to flipping is selling your site once it’s finished with.
At its heart, the underlying principle of website flipping is buying a site, improving it and selling it for an increased value. Therefore it is vital to know the best strategies when it comes to actually selling your site. It’s far too easy to flog a site for far less than its worth because somebody offered you a seemingly high price for it. While a £1,000 transaction for an immaterial, digital display may seem like a blessing, knowing exactly how much your site is worth and how to sell it effectively is key to making a profit. This article will cover exactly that.
How Much is Your Website Worth?
To put it simply, your website will be worth however much somebody is prepared to pay for it. There is no universal tool to calculate the exact value of any site – it simply depends upon the potential an individual buyer sees in it.
Now, I know, this isn’t particularly useful when people are asking how much you’re selling your site for and you have no idea how to value it. It’s key that you don’t underestimate your site’s worth and sell it off for much less than it’s actually worth – especially after putting a load of work into it.
A good place to start is to aim to sell your site for around three times to six times its yearly earnings, without the inclusion of taxes. Say your site rakes in £5,000 a year – aim to sell it for a minimum of £15,000 – the amount you’d earn in three years of running the site.
Where Should You Sell Your Site?
Flippa is perhaps the most well-known and reputable platform for selling websites. It has more websites than any other platform available for sale and attracts the largest number of buyers – over 850,000 people are currently registered to purchase sites. Flippa is incredible easy to use and provides the option to upgrade listings to attract more attention. Being the top-dog of the website marketplace, Flippa is a well trusted platform that brings in serious buyers willing to buy high prices for websites.
BuySellWebsite is a great site to use to find either well-established or just-started-up websites, differing in prices depending on the establishment of the site. BuySellWebsite also offers the feature of creating a two-month-long listing with a free extra month that’ll feature on the site’s homepage.
InternetCompanyForSale charge no commission on sales made from their sites, giving you 100% of the price paid for your site. You will, however, need to pay listing fees for the site again depending on the level of establishment. Well-established sites cost just less than $60.00 to sell and start-up websites cost just under $40.00.
Audience
As with any form of sale, taking your demographic into account is key to using effective sales techniques appropriate to a specific audience. Advertising a site as being an excellent tool for blogging and creating a community will render useless when trying to sell to a bunch of online entrepreneurs hoping to earn stacks of cash from your site. Tailoring your selling tactics to your audience is vital to attracting a high volume of buyers looking to pay decent prices.
Research
Rather than going completely with your instincts, search around for other sites that have made a decent amount of money in sales and use their advertising techniques. What sales tactics work best? How are they interacting with their audience to maximise their profits? There’s nothing wrong with pinching a few ideas here and there so long as you’re not completely ripping off somebody else’s ad campaign.
Searching for Buyers
An alternative to creating a listing for your site on platforms such as Flippa is to search out buyers directly. This way, you’ll avoid any listing fees/commission payments and can take 100% of your buyer’s payment.
As for where to find buyers, Ebay is an excellent site to use to advertise. The only issue with Ebay is that it’s entirely auction based and relies on an automated bidding system. Negotiation and haggling are great ways to bump up your price to get the most out of your site. Ebay is by all means a good place to start, however your listings will have to be very good in order to get paid full price for your site. If you wish to avoid automated systems and have the ability to haggle, forums may be a better option.
A forum such as SitePoint’s SiteSell area can be used to list your site and increase the amount of people it reaches. You can browse around the site to see how much other sites are selling for to gauge how much yours is worth. Once a buyer discovers your listing and is interested, they’ll contact you asking about your prices and make you offers. This way, you’ll be able to see wht buyers are willing to pay before deciding for them how much your site is worth. As we said before, your site really is worth just as much as people are willing to pay for it.
You want to avoid cutting yourself short by underestimating your site’s worth and accepting a seemingly reasonable payment when actually you could be earning far more. If you can, let buyers offer you a price before you give them one. Don’t be afraid to haggle, either. If you feel they’re offering a lower price than you could ask for, try raising it slightly to see how much they’re willing to pay.
Good luck and persevere.
See Also: Local Business Listing Site
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