When to Sell or Not to Sell a Web Property

When to Sell or Not to Sell a Web Property

Today I was asked for my advice by a fellow web publisher if he should sell his web property, which he’s devoted four years to as a side project, or if he should take it more seriously and put all his resources into it. He was also curious if I worked on eHomeUpgrade on a full-time basis or as a side project as well. Below is my response.

eHomeUpgrade is my full-time gig. I enjoy running it very much. Plus, I love the freedom it gives me. Anyways, I’m not sure what advise to give you on [XXXXX]. I’m guessing that it would be somewhat difficult to sell, unless you have a buyer knocking at your door. It happened to me once, but I didn’t follow up on the offer to see what they valued the property at.

I recently spoke with the founder of Creative Weblogging, Torsten Jacobi, and he told me that most buyers/investors are willing to spend up to $50 per community member. However, that value method is difficult to wrap your head around when your readership is comprised of general site visitors. Under those circumstances, calculating the average number of unique monthly visitors over a year time frame and then multiplying that by a fair number might be the way to go. But how to determine a fair number? Some say 10x your monthly revenue. Others suggest calculating a site’s value by incoming links, pagerank, sector, and age. An interesting online tool that attempts to do this is dnScoop (the Zillow of web property values).

Back to the real question at hand….

The best way to look at things is to determine how much money your site is generating every month through your current ad network and affiliate revenue partners.

And then ask yourself:

  1. How much more growth potential is there in this site? (My 2-cents: If not much, get out while the going is good.)
  2. Is the current revenue stream lucrative enough to continue? (My 2-cents: If yes, and the site’s growth is good, develop it further and increase its value. Also, think about it this way. If you’re making $50k a year and you think you can only get $80k- $125k for it, then it doesn’t make sense to sell.)
  3. If I were to sell, does my site stand out from the rest of the competition? (My 2-cents: If it’s no different than the others and you’re getting bored with it, take what you can get and learn from the experience.)

Easiest place to sell an established website:
eBay - Website Business for Sale
Sitepoint - Established Sites for Sale

Also read:
WebmasterWorld - Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?

As you can see there’s no simple answer to the question. For me it’s about passion. If you’re interested in what you’re producing, and so are your readers, don’t stop. Really, you should only consider selling if something unavoidable comes up, you get an offer you can’t refuse, or you’re just completely bored out of your mind.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Tags: ,

July 21, 2007 | Filed Under: Interesting / Op-Ed 

Comments

Leave a Reply