When Does It Make Sense to Sell a Website?
Last month, I wrote a couple of posts on buying websites to get a head start in the earning-money-online business, so I figured it’d make sense to talk about when selling sites is practical. Fair’s fair, right?
I’m not big on selling sites myself–I’m more of the buy-and-hold type than the buy-and-flip (or build-and-flip) sort, but I’ve sold a couple of my sites over the years. Sometimes it just makes sense.
Reasons for selling one of your websites
1. You’ve lost interest in the niche
It happens. Some folks are lucky enough to find their passion early on and also make that passion profitable. Then there are the niche-hoppers like me. I started with history (no money there), moved onto fitness, then got into home improvement. Today my interests are changing again, and I’m trying new things while I continue to maintain the “pay dirt” sites.
A shift in your interests doesn’t necessarily mean you should have a fire sale and liquidate all your old websites. Even when I’ve slowed down on (or quit) producing content in a niche, I’m loathe to sell. These quasi-abandoned sites still bring in tens to hundreds of dollars a month with Adsense, and I always hate to see my bottom line go down. Also I like to allow the possibility that the interest will one day be rekindled. If I decide to delve into that niche again, it’s easier to bring an established site back to life than start one from scratch.
But if you’re tired of looking at a site, or it’d be too much work to revamp it and bring it in line with your older-and-wiser standards, then it might be a candidate for a sale.
2. Future trends aren’t looking good for your niche
If you’re immersed in your niche, and you pay attention to the news, you may have a good idea of what the future will bring. And it may not be looking good.
For example, let’s say you have a blog on SUVs. It was a star for you for a few years, but things changed last summer when gas got so expensive. Readership dropped and advertisers stopped paying well. Gas prices have since come down, but if you believe that we’re heading into an era where oil demand will outstrip supply, it might make more sense to start blogging about hybrids and alternative-fuel cars instead.
Don’t just give up on the old blog though. Sell it if you want to cash out. There will likely still be buyers.
Often when you’re immersed in a niche, you see trends that aren’t apparent to outsiders or newcomers. Also someone might want to buy your established, authority site even knowing the trends (people sometimes buy sites in niches they have no interest in just to sell links).
A note on trends: just because something may go out of fashion, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to abandon it. A solid site with a lot of incoming links is going to be an authority in the search engine’s eyes no matter what popular trends are. Rather than starting over, you might be able to use that authority status and just shift the focus of your blog to the new trends. The SUV blog could expand and cover hybrid SUVs or smaller vehicles. The search engines really don’t care if your niche evolves over time.
3. Your site has become more work than its worth
Sometimes its our success and not our failures that create hurdles in this business. When you get a site that becomes popular, suddenly you can be inundated with news tips, email questions, comments to moderate, requests to buy advertising, the pressure to blog daily, etc. etc. etc.
If you’re the entrepreneurial type, this is usually when it makes sense to hire someone else or at least outsource some of the simple things. However, let’s be blunt: a lot of us writers aren’t that interested in becoming business owners.
I know I fall into that category myself. I actually prefer creating the simple article sites that may rank well for a couple of search terms but that aren’t going to turn into the next Gizmodo. My style is to make a good living while committing myself to as little time at the computer as possible (which is why I have a stack of email in my box right now that still needs to be answered…).
There’s also the chance that your site, though popular, isn’t making much money. This is often the case with sites where the owner didn’t set out with a clear monetization plan in place from the beginning. In this case, outsourcing may not be an option.
If the site has grown popular, you’re always going to be able to make money selling it. If it’s taking too much of your time for what you’re getting out of it, this is a third case where it might make sense to sell.
4. You’ve been plugging away at your site, but it just isn’t making you money
Speaking of sites not making much money…
I’m sure I’m not the only one who came to realize that my first niche wasn’t profitable. Looking back, the reasons were obvious, but we often need to learn the hard way, no matter how many expert bloggers there are out there to advise us otherwise!
If you’ve been religiously writing content for–and promoting–your site for several months or even a year, and you’re just not seeing the earnings you hoped for, then it may be time to walk away from the project. It’s worth getting outside advice to see whether you’re just missing something obvious (ad placement, not enough commercial tie-in, etc.), but there are plenty of niches that just aren’t that easy to monetize.
Again, rather than just abandoning the site, you may want to see if someone would be willing to pay for it. You ought to get something for all the work you put into it after all!
5. You need the money
I’d be reluctant to sell a site out of desperation, but we are living in desperate times. One of the perks of having multiple websites–and multiple streams of income–is that selling off one is always an option in tight times.
To make up for the monthly income you’d lose, you can make a deal with yourself to put more work into your other sites (ones that have the potential to become good moneymakers but perhaps haven’t hit their full stride yet).
And if your spouse has lost his or her job, and the mortgage payment is due soon, you might be surprised how much you can get for your original content, especially if you’ve focused on one niche and built up links to your site. Just make sure you give yourself a few days to market the site and a few more for it to “close.” Buyers will often insist on using escrow, and it takes time for money to transfer. Also, it usually takes a couple days with both parties going back and forth with emails and transferring files and domain names and what not.
If it is in your cards to sell your website, you can try auctioning it on theSitepoint or Digitalpoint forums, or–if you’re not in any hurry and will only sell if you get an offer you like–you could just list “this site for sale” or some such in the menu. You never know what kinds of offers you might get that way.
Last month, I wrote a couple of posts on buying websites to get a head start in the earning-money-online business, so I figured it’d make sense to talk about when selling sites is practical. Fair’s fair, right?
I’m not big on selling sites myself–I’m more of the buy-and-hold type than the buy-and-flip (or build-and-flip) sort, but I’ve sold a couple of my sites over the years. Sometimes it just makes sense.
Reasons for selling one of your websites
1. You’ve lost interest in the niche
It happens. Some folks are lucky enough to find their passion early on and also make that passion profitable. Then there are the niche-hoppers like me. I started with history (no money there), moved onto fitness, then got into home improvement. Today my interests are changing again, and I’m trying new things while I continue to maintain the “pay dirt” sites.
A shift in your interests doesn’t necessarily mean you should have a fire sale and liquidate all your old websites. Even when I’ve slowed down on (or quit) producing content in a niche, I’m loathe to sell. These quasi-abandoned sites still bring in tens to hundreds of dollars a month with Adsense, and I always hate to see my bottom line go down. Also I like to allow the possibility that the interest will one day be rekindled. If I decide to delve into that niche again, it’s easier to bring an established site back to life than start one from scratch.
But if you’re tired of looking at a site, or it’d be too much work to revamp it and bring it in line with your older-and-wiser standards, then it might be a candidate for a sale.
2. Future trends aren’t looking good for your niche
If you’re immersed in your niche, and you pay attention to the news, you may have a good idea of what the future will bring. And it may not be looking good.
For example, let’s say you have a blog on SUVs. It was a star for you for a few years, but things changed last summer when gas got so expensive. Readership dropped and advertisers stopped paying well. Gas prices have since come down, but if you believe that we’re heading into an era where oil demand will outstrip supply, it might make more sense to start blogging about hybrids and alternative-fuel cars instead.
Don’t just give up on the old blog though. Sell it if you want to cash out. There will likely still be buyers.
Often when you’re immersed in a niche, you see trends that aren’t apparent to outsiders or newcomers. Also someone might want to buy your established, authority site even knowing the trends (people sometimes buy sites in niches they have no interest in just to sell links).
A note on trends: just because something may go out of fashion, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to abandon it. A solid site with a lot of incoming links is going to be an authority in the search engine’s eyes no matter what popular trends are. Rather than starting over, you might be able to use that authority status and just shift the focus of your blog to the new trends. The SUV blog could expand and cover hybrid SUVs or smaller vehicles. The search engines really don’t care if your niche evolves over time.
3. Your site has become more work than its worth
Sometimes its our success and not our failures that create hurdles in this business. When you get a site that becomes popular, suddenly you can be inundated with news tips, email questions, comments to moderate, requests to buy advertising, the pressure to blog daily, etc. etc. etc.
If you’re the entrepreneurial type, this is usually when it makes sense to hire someone else or at least outsource some of the simple things. However, let’s be blunt: a lot of us writers aren’t that interested in becoming business owners.
I know I fall into that category myself. I actually prefer creating the simple article sites that may rank well for a couple of search terms but that aren’t going to turn into the next Gizmodo. My style is to make a good living while committing myself to as little time at the computer as possible (which is why I have a stack of email in my box right now that still needs to be answered…).
There’s also the chance that your site, though popular, isn’t making much money. This is often the case with sites where the owner didn’t set out with a clear monetization plan in place from the beginning. In this case, outsourcing may not be an option.
If the site has grown popular, you’re always going to be able to make money selling it. If it’s taking too much of your time for what you’re getting out of it, this is a third case where it might make sense to sell.
4. You’ve been plugging away at your site, but it just isn’t making you money
Speaking of sites not making much money…
I’m sure I’m not the only one who came to realize that my first niche wasn’t profitable. Looking back, the reasons were obvious, but we often need to learn the hard way, no matter how many expert bloggers there are out there to advise us otherwise!
If you’ve been religiously writing content for–and promoting–your site for several months or even a year, and you’re just not seeing the earnings you hoped for, then it may be time to walk away from the project. It’s worth getting outside advice to see whether you’re just missing something obvious (ad placement, not enough commercial tie-in, etc.), but there are plenty of niches that just aren’t that easy to monetize.
Again, rather than just abandoning the site, you may want to see if someone would be willing to pay for it. You ought to get something for all the work you put into it after all!
5. You need the money
I’d be reluctant to sell a site out of desperation, but we are living in desperate times. One of the perks of having multiple websites–and multiple streams of income–is that selling off one is always an option in tight times.
To make up for the monthly income you’d lose, you can make a deal with yourself to put more work into your other sites (ones that have the potential to become good moneymakers but perhaps haven’t hit their full stride yet).
And if your spouse has lost his or her job, and the mortgage payment is due soon, you might be surprised how much you can get for your original content, especially if you’ve focused on one niche and built up links to your site. Just make sure you give yourself a few days to market the site and a few more for it to “close.” Buyers will often insist on using escrow, and it takes time for money to transfer. Also, it usually takes a couple days with both parties going back and forth with emails and transferring files and domain names and what not.
If it is in your cards to sell your website, you can try auctioning it on theSitepoint or Digitalpoint forums, or–if you’re not in any hurry and will only sell if you get an offer you like–you could just list “this site for sale” or some such in the menu. You never know what kinds of offers you might get that way.
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