Switching gears today a little bit. We are gonna talk about selling your blog. Selling your blog can be a great option to raise capital for an upcoming project, liquidating your digital assets for a big purchase, switching gears and pursuing something different all together, and more. Once you’ve come to the decision to sell, here are a few things you’ll want to make sure you have in order:
Traffic Tracking
One of the things looked at by buyers is how much traffic your site is getting. You will want to have some type of tracking, specifically, Google Analytics (highly recommended) to chart your growth and traffic progress. If you don’t already have Google Analytics, get it now! If you are starting a new blog with the intent of selling in the future, you want to get GA RIGHT NOW! Don’t wait! It’s super important from day 1!
Income Tracking
One of the selling points will be how much income you receive from blogging. Make sure your income sources can be tracked, via PayPal, dashboard screenshots, bank statements, etc.
Free of errors
Go through your blog and make sure you don’t have any issues like slow load times, 404 errors, etc. If you have Wordpress you can just get a plugin that will do a scan on your site and address any issues that arise. Easy.
Now, when it’s actually time to sell, here are your options:
- Sell to family/friends
- Sell via a broker
- Sell via a forum
Sell to Family and Friends
Know anyone that wants to buy your site? That’s probably the quickest way to complete the sale. Make sure you come to an agreement mutually, then put it in writing. Get an attorney to write up a sale agreement, get it signed and notarized by both parties. You may also consider working with an Escrow company that will hold funds until the buyer is satisfied with the web asset and materials.
Sell Via Broker
Selling through a broker is an easy way to get your site seen by a big audience. Keep in mind there will likely be broker fees (usually a percentage of the sale) and it might take a few months to complete the purchase. Here are some examples of brokers:
A note on Flippa: They are one of the easiest brokers to get your listing up and running.
You run your sale in an auction and get bids from buyers. You can monitor the progress online through their site and they have several payment options.
Selling Through a Forum
Selling through a forum like Sitepoint or Warrior Forum is one of the slowest ways to sell, in my opinion. I don’t have much experience with it but I have perused forums and have seen listings up for months with no comments, questions, or offers. Use this route as a last resort. Fees may be lower but ask yourself if it’s worth it, considering it might take twice as long (or longer) than the previous 2 routes mentioned above.
Promotion Tactics
Once you’ve settled on how you want to sell your blog and have you listing up and running, it’s time to get promoting!
Some examples:
- Share your blog sale with your blog audience
- Tell family and friends
- Make an announcement on social media
- Hop on forums and share your site listing details
You’ve sold!
Once you’ve sold, to make things go as smoothly as possible, communication is key. Make sure you try to make yourself available via email and phone often. Submit all your info in a timely manner (hosting, domains, files, etc.). There’s usually a timeline (1-3 weeks or so) that the buyer has to look everything over and contact you with questions.
That’s it!
These are great tips, I will definitely be looking into these options! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you!
Wow, this is great! I can see someone just building websites for a living and making them really awesome and then selling them.
About how much traffic and subscribers do you recommend a person have in order to sell their website? Also, how do you know if you’re getting a fair price or not?
Yes, for sure. Something I might start doing..we’ll see :). I think at least 5K pageviews and 100 subscribers is a good start but you can sell with less. You only have to win over one buyer. I multiply my net profit by 12x to 24x depending on age of the site, consistency in income and traffic, and how fast I’d like to sell. You can always have a site valuation done and you can get it done for free 🙂
Oh really how do you get a free valuation? Thanks so much for writing this blog post, it has been so helpful and you are very gracious to share it with the rest of us! 🙂
Valuations info: http://flippa.com/blog/website-valuations-how-much-is-your-site-worth/
And here: https://empireflippers.com/valuation-tool/
Both of these companies are good. The first I sold my blog through and the second I sold my Ecommerce store through. No problem:)
Thanks so much. You rock!
No prob. Thanks Gin 🙂