Nov 8
Clearly describe your website: the purpose of your website, your audience, etc. Highlight your sites' Unique Value Offering: what makes your site different from other sites? How is your content different from all others? What content management system, [CMS] if any, does your site use? Is your site all proprietary custom coded? Joomla, Drupal, or some other CMS? What are the benefits of using that system over another?
List your sources of revenue: where does your income come from? If from various sources, list those sources and the percentages: membership, Google AdSense, Affiliate Programs, on-site banner ads, info-adverts, PPC, website related material, like T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. Show these figures in pie or bar charts. Pictures tell a story words can not convey. People love pictures. Provide them.
List your expenses: your hosting, advertising, salary and webmaster expenses and how much time you, yourself, spend maintaining your site. Again, graphs are good.
Show where your profit, that is, your positive balance after deducting expense from revenue and taking into account your time. Be honest. Honesty should not be the best policy, it should be the only policy. Sophisticated buyers are also usually good male cow dung sniffers. Don't try to fool potential buyers with BS.
Provide statistics: buyers love to see numbers, statistics, charts and tables. How many unique hits per month, number of members, growth rates, trends, Google/Yahoo/Bing/Dogpile URL listings and for what keywords, pages indexed in the major SEs; rel=nofollow [http://www.alexa.com/]Alexa rank, etc.
What does it take to maintain your site? Describe the skill level needed to keep the site running. How much time is spent writing copy, producing the newsletter, replying to emails, dealing with support issues, adding quality content, etc. In short, list everything that needs to be done to keep the site going. Again, be honest.
Disclose any known problems: blacklists, Yahoo/Google bans, unresolved disputes with advertisers, webmasters, etc., in other words, full disclosure. If you can't resolve the problems before the sale, it's better to get the problems out in open before the sale is closed, than to face a possible expensive and wasteful lawsuit post sale.
Your asking price. You may want to state your reasons for asking this price. Use the above statistics - for revenue and profit, to justify your price. If you think the site has untapped revenue sources, state what those possible sources are here. The site could be making more income and that fact might influence a buyer to pay your price. State what terms you are offering; full payment up front, or are you willing to carry with the right buyer? Will you sign a non-competition agreement?
How would you like to handle the transfer? An escrow account? If so, which escrow company? Explain how you would like the transfer process to take place. Be specific. There is one more activity that should be added, but that would make it an 11 point list, and who ever has an 11 Point List? LOL. That is, do a housecleaning. Clean up the site. Remove any personal pictures or files you have stored onsite for only you or your administrative personnel to view. Fix any bugs or broken links. Run a Xenu. Run a new validator check. Are any of the src or hrefs directed to images or files on your hard drive or Photobucket/Flckr accounts? Do a search to find the gossip about your site with a yoursitename + forum in the search engines. What do you find? Can you do anything about the gossip pre-sale? What does rel=nofollow [http://www.archive.org/]Archive.org have on your site? In the long run, preparing these ten items, (oops! eleven items) will save you time and trouble and make the sale of your website proceed much smoother. It will also show any potential buyers your professionalism, which will be much appreciated by other professional purchasers.Best of luck in your sale, luck being when preparation meets opportunity. [http://websitesyoucanown.com/]WebsitesYouCanOwn.com Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Ten-Point-Website-Pre-Sale-Preparation-List&id=5298130] Ten Point Website Pre-Sale Preparation List
Ten Point Website Pre-Sale Preparation List
Before you advertise your site for sale, may we suggest you prepare the following material to save yourself time when providing answers and information to prospective buyers? You may want to do a due diligence yourself, as if you were going to buy your own website. What kind of information would you want to have access to? Prepare that same information and have it ready, perhaps in PDF form. Here's a ten point list to help you prepare: What is being sold with the website? Is the domain name, the copyright to the content, the design, graphics, subdomains, custom coding, associate programs, AdSense program, related domain names, email advertising copy, member list, email addresses, all included in the sale? If so, spell it out, plainly. Also, now is the time to disclose any related businesses / websites / domain names, etc., that are not included in the sale.Clearly describe your website: the purpose of your website, your audience, etc. Highlight your sites' Unique Value Offering: what makes your site different from other sites? How is your content different from all others? What content management system, [CMS] if any, does your site use? Is your site all proprietary custom coded? Joomla, Drupal, or some other CMS? What are the benefits of using that system over another?
List your sources of revenue: where does your income come from? If from various sources, list those sources and the percentages: membership, Google AdSense, Affiliate Programs, on-site banner ads, info-adverts, PPC, website related material, like T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. Show these figures in pie or bar charts. Pictures tell a story words can not convey. People love pictures. Provide them.
List your expenses: your hosting, advertising, salary and webmaster expenses and how much time you, yourself, spend maintaining your site. Again, graphs are good.
Show where your profit, that is, your positive balance after deducting expense from revenue and taking into account your time. Be honest. Honesty should not be the best policy, it should be the only policy. Sophisticated buyers are also usually good male cow dung sniffers. Don't try to fool potential buyers with BS.
Provide statistics: buyers love to see numbers, statistics, charts and tables. How many unique hits per month, number of members, growth rates, trends, Google/Yahoo/Bing/Dogpile URL listings and for what keywords, pages indexed in the major SEs; rel=nofollow [http://www.alexa.com/]Alexa rank, etc.
What does it take to maintain your site? Describe the skill level needed to keep the site running. How much time is spent writing copy, producing the newsletter, replying to emails, dealing with support issues, adding quality content, etc. In short, list everything that needs to be done to keep the site going. Again, be honest.
Disclose any known problems: blacklists, Yahoo/Google bans, unresolved disputes with advertisers, webmasters, etc., in other words, full disclosure. If you can't resolve the problems before the sale, it's better to get the problems out in open before the sale is closed, than to face a possible expensive and wasteful lawsuit post sale.
Your asking price. You may want to state your reasons for asking this price. Use the above statistics - for revenue and profit, to justify your price. If you think the site has untapped revenue sources, state what those possible sources are here. The site could be making more income and that fact might influence a buyer to pay your price. State what terms you are offering; full payment up front, or are you willing to carry with the right buyer? Will you sign a non-competition agreement?
How would you like to handle the transfer? An escrow account? If so, which escrow company? Explain how you would like the transfer process to take place. Be specific. There is one more activity that should be added, but that would make it an 11 point list, and who ever has an 11 Point List? LOL. That is, do a housecleaning. Clean up the site. Remove any personal pictures or files you have stored onsite for only you or your administrative personnel to view. Fix any bugs or broken links. Run a Xenu. Run a new validator check. Are any of the src or hrefs directed to images or files on your hard drive or Photobucket/Flckr accounts? Do a search to find the gossip about your site with a yoursitename + forum in the search engines. What do you find? Can you do anything about the gossip pre-sale? What does rel=nofollow [http://www.archive.org/]Archive.org have on your site? In the long run, preparing these ten items, (oops! eleven items) will save you time and trouble and make the sale of your website proceed much smoother. It will also show any potential buyers your professionalism, which will be much appreciated by other professional purchasers.Best of luck in your sale, luck being when preparation meets opportunity. [http://websitesyoucanown.com/]WebsitesYouCanOwn.com Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Ten-Point-Website-Pre-Sale-Preparation-List&id=5298130] Ten Point Website Pre-Sale Preparation List
