I recently listed Private Party sales as one of the only two places I would suggest selling a website. Not only can private sales save you the time and money involved in listing a site for auction, they also often result in a much higher sale price and thus, a bigger profit on your flip. Unfortunately, finding people that want to buy their site outside of a marketplace listing can be difficult and sometimes intimidating for people that are new to site flipping. To help you overcome that initial fear or hesitancy, I’ve compiled a quick list of three easy places to find private party buyers for your website.
Businesses in your Niche
If you’ve picked a profitable niche for your website, chances are there are businesses that are in the same niche or at the very least, would be able to serve your reader base. While many businesses are becoming more and more web-savvy, their web presence almost always leaves room for improvement. By contacting these businesses letting them know what your site is and how it could benefit their business, you can quite often create an interested bidder that wouldn’t have otherwise been involved in the process. And, businesses will usually have a built in method for monetizing your site’s traffic so the site may very well be worth much more to them (read as: much higher sale price), than it would be to a random SitePoint bidder.
Previous Buyers
In the business world it’s a tried and true statistic that once someone buys from you, they’re MUCH more likely to buy from you again. That’s why customer lists are so valuable and why companies will often break even or lose money on low end products just to acquire another customer who will purchase higher priced items from the same company later on.
While websites are often higher dollar transactions, the same principle holds true. If someone has purchased a site from you in the past, they are much more likely to buy one from you in the future. By keeping a list of your buyers and their contact information, you can often sell your site with a simple email or two, without ever having to put it up for auction. Some site flippers that focus on creating and selling turnkey sites will even get requests for other sites from their previous buyers. Now I don’t know about you but I think having ready and willing customers requesting sites from me would be a lot better than having to go through the trouble finding buyers or creating auction listings.
Readers
The final often overlooked source of potential private party buyers is your site’s readers! If your website has been up and running for a while I’m going to assume that it has a bit of traffic and probably a few frequent visitors. If your site is a blog, chances are you’ve developed a group of loyal readers or subscribers. Whether this group is 5 people or 5,000, they’re also a pool of potential buyers.
These people already see the value in your site, otherwise they wouldn’t keep coming back. While many of them might just be there for the infomation you present, chances are you’ll have a few people that have considered starting a site of their own. By letting your visitors or readers know that your site is for sale, you’re alerting them of the opportunity to own the site they’ve been visiting, without having to do all the work of creating their own site or starting their own blog.
If you rely stricktly on marketplaces auctions, you’re not only severly limiting the size of your pool of potential buyers, but you’ll also be leaving a lot of money on the the table in the sales you do make. While you may not find a private buyer for every site you sell, these are three very easy ways to give it a shot.
Have you ever tried selling a site privately? If so, did you make more or less than you would have listing it for auction? What were some problems or challenges you faced? If you have any other tips or questions about finding private buyers for your sites, please leave them in the comment section below!
December 1st, 2008 at 11:41 am
I haven’t sold to previous buyers, namely as at the time I was very much ‘cut and run’ with my sales. Once the transaction was done, I just wanted to forget all about the site, and hence the client. I’ve heard though its best practice to always ask them if they are ok with you storing their details.
I was hired privatly once by a buyer who wanted a copy of one of my sites – they had lost the auction at sitepoint – but sadly the deal fell through.
reply:December 6th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Like Dan, I used to be very “cut-and-run” with my website flips, but I have grown to stop doing that and follow up with buyers because if they are thoroughly happy. They will definitely buy again from me.
I haven’t built a list of buyers, but I do know a site-flipper who has done that and is able to close auctions within days just from e-mailing their list of buyers. Buyers actually appreciate it when they are told first.
reply:December 8th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
It’s kind of hard to convert blog readers to buyers. Hmmm
reply:December 8th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
@Desmond – DesmondBlog.com: It doesn’t have to be that difficult, although it probably does depend on the topic of your blog. Just mention that your selling (or considering selling) and would prefer to sell to someone who already is a part of the “community” that surrounds your blog. Ask anyone interested to contact you and if you don’t get any inquiries, you’ve only lost a few minutes of your time that it took to write the post. In my experience you’ll at least get a couple of contacts and you might well wind up with a sale.
reply:December 9th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Hey,
(First time comment ; Why is this text so small?)
Anyways, I have seen a lot of success in selling to previous buyers. You don’t even have to list it, just ask a couple of them. If it’s a quality product, more likely they’ll take it.
Excellent post!
reply:December 9th, 2008 at 3:27 am
@Swastik: hey, thanks for coming bye! Actually the size of the text in the comment box is on the list of things that need changed. I’m hoping to move the site over to using the Thesis theme soon and I believer that will take care of it.
Anyway, I’m glad you’ve had success with previous buyers. A lot of site flippers have been surprised by how often they are willing to buy sites again and as you said, then you don’t even have to bother listing them for sale etc. For the little amount of time it takes to put together, it’s a great resource to have.
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