By guest contributor Maddy Hague, who successfully sold her site, Inspired Bride, earlier this year. Photography by Lackluster.
If you’ve decided it’s time to move on from your blog or website, you’re probably considering selling it rather than just shutting down. After all, you put in long hours, and there’s a lot of great content on there. It would be a waste to just let it disappear from the face of the Earth. It takes a little bit of advance work, but with a little effort, your blog or site could be in the hands of another; continuing your legacy of great content. Here’s how you can get started:
1) Gather Your Information
Potential buyers, as well as domain sales websites, want to know all of the fine details about your site in order to give it a thorough vetting. In addition to monthly unique visitors and page views, you’ll need the following information: last month’s advertising revenue totals, last year’s revenue totals, advertising methods implemented on the site (including direct display ads, ad networks, affiliate links, and any other income), any recent press of note, Google Page Rank, social media statistics, site registration date, and any information related to the intellectual property on your site (particularly, any trademark registrations). You may need to provide verified proof of any of the above information, either by screen shot or by exported statistics from any of your service providers.
2) Prep Your Site
Now is the time to throw some money into your site. It may sound a little strange considering you’re about to sell it, but it’s just like selling a house: a few repairs and a fresh coat of paint are necessary before listing it. Don’t go overboard, but if you’re running on a template that is still pretty generic looking, consider investing in a custom header or a paid template that has some character. Etsy is a very good resource for some unique looking templates at an affordable price, and many designers offer installation services for the not-so-technically inclined.
It’s also not a bad idea to invest a few dollars into advertising to help your traffic numbers. Look at some short-term options that will translate into sustained growth for the site.
You’ll also want to take some time to make sure your SEO is up to snuff. If you’re on WordPress, I recommend using All in One SEO. It’s an easy to use plugin that helps get each post (not just your overall blog) higher up in search results.
3) Ballpark the Value
Of course your website is invaluable to you, but every site has an actual valuation. Using the information you gathered in step one, take an educated guess about what dollar amount you feel is an accurate value for the site. Test your estimation against a few valuation calculators on the web. I find that they can be wildly inconsistent in their appraisals, but they do help determine if the figure you’re envisioning is realistic or not. Average out the valuations for a good idea of what your minimum sales price should be.
Check back next week for the final steps in the process.
