Posts tagged Blog Flipping

How I Sold A Website For $100,000+
By Chris Guthrie

I recently sold a website for more than $100,000. I can’t say the exact amount for obvious reasons, but before any haters come out and say that I’m lying here is the link to the press release from the investment banking firm I used to sell the website. They are the same guys behind the $14.9MM sale of bankaholic.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way I want to share some good advice from someone who’s done it on how you can build a six figure website and the steps to go through to sell one as well.

Let’s get started:

Step 1: Don’t make a website about internet marketing

Step 2: No really, don’t make a website about internet marketing

The reason why I’m listing this step twice is because I’m on the Warrior Forum and I know that most of this website’s focus is on internet marketing products. Yes you can make a lot of money in this sector, but frankly there’s a lot less competition and great money to be made in just plain making good websites.

Besides, most successful internet marketers are successful simply because of the money they’ve made selling internet marketing products. When that’s the case, the only thing they can teach you is how to be like them and what they don’t tell you is that becoming them is nearly impossible.

(Yes I do have my own product as someone might point out, but frankly the money I earned from selling it pales in comparison to the amount I’ve made from selling websites and actually running a real online business.)

Step 3: Find an interest you are passionate about and dominate it

This is the hardest step to be successful at because I’m sorry to tell you – yes it requires hard work. If you want to sell a website for a huge chunk of change you need to really be one of the industry leaders in your niche.

In my case I spent countless hours working on breaking news stories, contacting manufactures to get leads on potential new models of products and even flying out to industry conferences to cover them live. When my competitors were simply reposting information from CNET I had manufactures sending me out real product to test and then I’d do a video review of it too. (I sold the site in a little over an 18 month period since I started it)

It can’t be overstated enough that you really do need to shoot for industry leading status. If you weren’t a visionary and managed to register a bunch of domain names in the 90′s you won’t sell a website for six figures+ unless you build something truly authority based. You need a solid steady monthly income stream in the thousands of dollars per month range. Then you need to be prepared to give a boatload of information out while you’re trying to sell it (much more than just Google Adsense and Analytics screenshots if you’re using an investment banker) you’ll need to talk about ways to improve traffic, revenue, what you’d do with $x to invest on the site etc. etc. etc.

Step 4: If your site is making a lot of money consistently every month do not sell it through Flippa.com sell it with an investment banker

You don’t have to sell through an investment banker but based on my own experience I made a lot more money than if I would have simply sold it through Flippa.com. As I’ve said before there is a whole lot more to the picture of selling a six figure website than simply sharing Google Adsense screenshots and Analytics data. Investment bankers also have access to people with a lot of money – as in millions of dollars worth of money. The typical buyer on Flippa is not some company with millions of dollars to spend acquiring digital media assets. They’re people like you and me just looking for a decent website to buy. What I’m saying is that investment bankers bring the big guns to the table.

Step 5: Reinvest your exit money into your business

I have several projects that I was looking to get angel investor funding for, but I really wanted to self fund my own projects until they were sustainable profitable entities. Besides, as soon as you get funding you basically have a boss again that you need to report to. I want to delay that as long as possible and if you can get a big sale it’s a smart idea to try and leverage that success into another success. So that’s exactly what I’m doing instead of buying a new car in cash.

Make sure you have something to do with the money other than pay a huge tax bill!

Questions? / Need Advice?

I hope I gave you a couple ideas for building a big site. Frankly the steps will be different for each niche but the main goal is always the same: be the best in your niche.

If you have a large website and need some advice on how to sell it feel free to contact me. I’d be happy to give you my opinion based on my own experiences and further clarify anything that might help you to decide what to do.

Why I am excited:

I’m excited about this sale for a variety of reasons and one obviously being the money. But it was just a little over a year ago that I got fired from my day job that was paying me $60k a year. This year I easily surpassed my goal to earn $150k in my first full year in business on my own. I can’t say how far I went over that goal, but it’s very exciting for the future. Getting fired from my day job was the best thing that ever happened to me that is for sure.

To your success,

Chris

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