Writing and selling a website: keep your wits about you

More and more writers are moving into web publishing. They create sites, and sell them.

Is it profitable?

You bet. However, you do need to be a little wary when you’re selling a site. Look beyond the enquiry, at the enquirer, just for starters.

How To Tell If Your Interested Buyer Is A Strawman For A Bigger Player? tells you how to know who’s interested:

“How do I know the ‘true identity’ of any buyer? I’ll ask, when I care to know. I’ll ask for a business address and land line, for starters. I’ll go so far as to ask if they are acting on behalf of another entity in some cases, where I’m just not in the mood for BS.

And, honestly, I feel it’s a bit like admitting like I don’t know my own business to think that pricing is a function of anything other than the intrinsic qualities of a domain, which is exactly why, in most cases, I picked up the domain in the first place.”

If you want to sell a site, here are some tips you may find useful.

1. Know the price you want to get, and the price you’ll settle for

If a site is making $1000 a month for you, then your “I wish” price may be $15,000, but you’ll settle for $10,000.

2. Keep accurate accounts of how much money the site has made for you over time

Let’s say you’ve owned a site for two years, and have done little or nothing with it. In the past three months, you’ve lifted your game, and the site now made $500 last month.

In this case, you can’t legitimately claim that the site consistently makes $500 a month, since you’ve only made that much for one month. Keep it for another couple of months, at least, until you can establish how much the site will make for the buyer.

3. Be wary of “how much?” questions if you haven’t listed the site for sale anywhere

I usually just delete these unsolicited messages; they’re spam. If you sell a site to someone who arrives out of the blue, at best you’ll get much less than the site is worth, at worst, you’ll waste time and energy dealing with someone who has an agenda and just wants to sell you something. (if you’re completely naive, they may even succeed in conning you out of your site. This happens. Once they own the domain name, and site content, there’s not much you can do if they won’t pay.)

Does the sale look legitimate? Use an escrow service

Your buyer agrees to your price, and the sale is ready to go ahead.

Not so fast — use an escrow service, like escrow.com.

Have I put you off creating websites to sell? I hope not. You can make a very nice income writing and selling websites — as long as you keep your wits about you.

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