Why would you sell?
- Thread starter Spiderweb
- Start date
Selling, for me, would be similar pruning a tree. Sometimes it's wise to remove some of the sickly branches to expose newer ones to the sun.
Great analogy. I sell when the site becomes time prohibitive to maintain profitability. I can always make more cash but nobody is selling time last I checked.
My friend (IceToEskimos) made a good point that when you sell a site, you're basically short selling it. That is, say you sell a site for $300. You're betting on that it will make less than that in the future, and the person buying is betting that they can take it and make it make more than that.
I agree. I've sold a few sites that were making $x,xxx/mo for low $xx,xxx to throw the cash into projects I cared more about.
I typically keep my eye on those sites after the sale, though. Most of the time the new owners run them into the ground.
Once...and just once...the new owner took the site and ran with it. It's now making between $10k and $15k per month basically on autopilot (its a membership site). Considering he paid me $18k for it a couple of years ago, I'd say he's doing pretty well.
If I were an asshole, I could throw up another site like it in a week and dominate that market again. But...eh. I have morals and he's a nice guy.
That being said I don't sell much. I like to get them to where they're doing their thing with little-to-no maintenance and enjoy the fruits of my loins...er...labor.
I got offered a pretty penny for one of my sites one time. At the time, it was only making about $100/mo but I guess some people saw some value in it and made me a serious offer.
At first I thought it was just spam, but turns out, someone really wanted to buy it for a ridiculous amount.
After thinking about it for a while, I declined. They upped the offer a bit, but I turned them down again thinking I could develop the site on my own and make more money out of it.
Honestly, in retrospect, I should have sold it since less than a year later it pretty much tanked.
These days, I will pretty much take any offer on anything just because money in the bank is better than potential money in the bank. Your mileage may vary.
At first I thought it was just spam, but turns out, someone really wanted to buy it for a ridiculous amount.
After thinking about it for a while, I declined. They upped the offer a bit, but I turned them down again thinking I could develop the site on my own and make more money out of it.
Honestly, in retrospect, I should have sold it since less than a year later it pretty much tanked.
These days, I will pretty much take any offer on anything just because money in the bank is better than potential money in the bank. Your mileage may vary.
Sometimes we tire of sites and would rather work on something in a different niche or with a different target market. There are only so many sites a person can effectively manage at one time.
Ouch. This. I sold the first site that I ever really made consistent money on. It made x,sss a month, and I sold it for xx,xxx in my mind a very fair deal.
At the time, I thought a cash infusion would make my life less stressful - but I have to tell you that site was almost like another child - a feeling I have never really duplicated since. I actually backed out of the deal at one point, but the buyers made the pot a bit sweeter and I sold.
Anyway, a few years later, the domain was driven to the ground, and now it doesn't even resolve to a hosted site - GAWD, I wish I could get it back because there are tons of old links pointed at it.
As I sais, I sold it for $xx,xxx - but by now it would have generated xxx,xxx for me - waste.
At the time, I thought a cash infusion would make my life less stressful - but I have to tell you that site was almost like another child - a feeling I have never really duplicated since. I actually backed out of the deal at one point, but the buyers made the pot a bit sweeter and I sold.
Anyway, a few years later, the domain was driven to the ground, and now it doesn't even resolve to a hosted site - GAWD, I wish I could get it back because there are tons of old links pointed at it.
As I sais, I sold it for $xx,xxx - but by now it would have generated xxx,xxx for me - waste.
I recently sold many of my sites for one reason: not enough time to keep up with all of the required maintenance. For me, this made good sense.
new personal rule, not saying its right...
so if you have a site that is earning $xxx.xx per day and SEO is your traffic source...you'd be smart to sell that bitch. chances are some animal like a common penguin will come by and eat it up and you will be making $.xx per day so lesson learned for me: sell any site for half of 5 years worth revenue that reaches $xxx.xx
so if you have a site that is earning $xxx.xx per day and SEO is your traffic source...you'd be smart to sell that bitch. chances are some animal like a common penguin will come by and eat it up and you will be making $.xx per day so lesson learned for me: sell any site for half of 5 years worth revenue that reaches $xxx.xx
I haven't experience that, but I knew people who sell their websites. Maybe because they want to explore new types of business or the site hadn't gone any progress he/she was expecting.
I sold about $100k in sites within a 6 mo range prior to penguin, all sites are off the map... I feel extremely bad for the guy, but maybe I lucked out?
I sell sites usually because I don't see the market lasting for the long-term, but I'm always upfront about that with buyers. I've never had any complaints.
Because Sale Price > Net Present Value.
Net present value - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Time value of money - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Basically, money today is worth more than money tomorrow.
Money today is worth even more than money next year.
& Massively more than money in 10 years.
Providing you can accurately predict the income from the site & income you will earn on having the sale price on hand to invest, you can calculate whether selling it is profitable or not. Of course in 99% cases you can only approximate, but that's the general jist of it.
As another example, if you could sell a site for $10k, and then with that money build 5 more sites which will sell in 6 months for $10k each, you'd be mad not to sell, and instead choose to keep the site worth $10k and slowly grow it, earning you $1k/mo or something - which in 6 months time would only put you at $6k, rather than $60k earned.
Other things come into it too, for example, say you are 90 years old. $100k today is more valuable to you than $1M in 10 years time, because you'll probably be dead.