Preparing a Site to Sell

If you are growing a site organically it might be worth it to sacrifice the short term earnings for long-term growth, but what happens when it comes time to sell a site?

If you site has a strong brand or other intangible brand type assets worth far more than current earnings consider those before making any changes, and do not tarnish the site’s image. If you site does not have those, and will likely sell at an auction it will probably sell for some multiple of current earnings, based on a number of factors including:

• how much work it is to keep the site earning what it is (fixed costs, in time and money)
• general category growth (upside potential)
• site position in the category (upside potential)
• how aggressively it is monetized (upside potential)

Almost everything that has the word potential in it is going to be heavily discounted. Some people will not see the potential, while others will feel that they don’t want to bid based on potential (because they feel that is their value add after they buy the site). Before you sell a site, make sure you spend a few months tweaking the monetization to max out your current revenue numbers. That is the base which most buy offers will be built from.

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