Flipping Easy

One of the most common questions about selling a website is when to pull the trigger and actually list it for sale. There are so many unknown elements when selling that even once you’ve decided to sell, it is incredibly easy to begin second guessing yourself. In the end, the decision to sell is ultimately one that you will have to make for yourself. However, I thought it might be useful to discuss a few of the questions to consider, that will hopefully make the decision making process a bit less stressful for you.

While every site and site owner are different, I’ve found that almost all of them fall into one of the following three scenarios:

The Pet Project

The Pet Project is a site that someone created from scratch and likely spent a lot of time and effort creating. And whether the owner realizes it or not, they almost certainly have some emotional attachment to it as well. Most often the site owner has come to the realization that their site holds some sort of value but may not be sure how much or whether they actually want to part with the site.

In my most recent site sale, I found myself in precisely in this position. I had built the site as a labor of love and really hadn’t given much thought to how much it was actually worth. However, when the offer to buy came in, I found the following questions to be helpful in the decision making process:

What benefit do I currently receive?

Pet Projects usually allow the owner to do something they benefit from even if it isn’t monetarily. For example, the site might allow them to learn or teach a topic they love or to connect with like minded people.

How will selling the site affect that benefit?

Once you’ve established what kind of benefit you’re getting from the site, ask yourself if selling the site would change or put an end to that benefit. If the value is in the community surrounding your site, will you still be able to participate in it? Also, if you do decide to sell, is there any other way you can gain the same benefit, perhaps at another site?

Can I handle the change?

This is one of the most questions that somehow seems to fly under the radar but it’s a critical one. Can you handle watching your site change dramatically? You’ve spent a lot of time and effort creating the site and yet once you sell it, chances are it will change significantly. It can be very difficult watching this transition, especially if you don’t agree with the direction the new owner is headed. What would your reaction be if the new owner stopped updating the blog you’re considering selling? What if they decided to plaster it with ads and post lower quality materials? Remember, once you sell your site, you no longer control it’s destiny.

The Business

If your website is an online business, the questions that you have to answer are a little bit more cut and dried. You know how much income the site brings in every month and you also know how much time and effort it requires to maintain. My first site sale fell into this category and while it wasn’t an easy decision to make, the answers to the following questions helped me put things into perspective.

How much am I currently making per hour of work?

This seems like a fairly obvious question but many online entrepreneurs focus solely on the amount of money coming in, not how much time they’re spending bringing it in. For example, if your site makes $1,000 a month and requires only 5 hours of your time, you might be much less willing to sell than if it required 20 hours to maintain.

What will take your site to the next level?

One statement I’ve read countless times when people sell their site is that with a “little work” the site could “easily” be making twice as much. While that pitch might work on less experienced buyers, more seasoned site buyers will see right through it. However, if some extra work would in fact increase your earnings significantly, it might well be worth the added effort to drastically increase your final sale price.

Is Outsourcing an Option?

One of the most common reasons people decide to sell their money making site, is that they lose interest in the topic or get burned out. If your site requires a lot of time and effort, it can be a really daunting task to maintain it day in and day out for months or years on end. However, if that’s the only reason you’re considering selling, outsourcing that work might be a viable option for you. Writers can be hired to take over your blog, students or other freelancers can often be hired to take care of the monotonous day to day activities, the possibilities really are endless in today’s wired world.

The Flip

While a website that you’ve purchased with the intent to “flip” or resell will often have originally fallen into one of the previous two categories, it’s an entirely different situation when you’ve purchased the site. Chances are you don’t have the emotional connection to the site that we see in Pet Projects and you may already utilize outsourcing methods that were discussed as an option for The Business sites.

When deciding whether to list a flip for sale, the questions are pretty simple:

What return will I see on my investment?

Now remember, we’re not just talking financial investment here. If you buy a site and sell it the next day with the only work being a listing fee, you won’t need to make as much from the sale before you turn a profit. On the other hand, if you buy a site and spend 40 hours improving it, you’re going to need to get significantly more from the site to cover the cost of your time.

Depending on the investment, you might also have to ask yourself whether or not you could make more by listing at a later date, whether you should cut your losses and sell now, or several other questions but in the end, they all boil down to maximizing those three little letters, ROI.

Have you considered selling a website recently? If so, did you ask yourself these kinds of questions? Experienced site flippers, what kinds of questions do you consider when debating whether or not to sell? Weigh in with your opinion in the comment section below!

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