I don’t usually sell websites, the point of making money online for me is to create sites that make money and then keep them making money. However the wife and I are raising some funds for construction costs on our new home so I just sold one. Here are a few tips now that the sale is fresh in my mind.

The Site

The website I sold was registered and active since 2004 and has earning $500 per month for the past 12 months. I have not done anything to the website for over a year except check up on it from time to time.

Tip 1 - Patience

It takes time to get a site ready to sell. You want to change passwords, delete files you never did anything with, collect all the stats, etc.

So when the site finally sells and the offer is accepted, it’s natural to want to get things moving along. However there is still time after the sale you need to consider.

You will need to transfer the site, give the buyer a period to review the site, get funds transfered, affiliate/adsense links/accounts transferred etc. This will take a few days.

I am not patient, especially when it’s dealing with one of my assets, however by being impatient it sends the wrong signal to the buyer and they might begin to question your motives, “are they just trying to get this over with before the shady stuff shows it’s face?”

Just know that selling a website takes more than a couple hours (unless it’s a one page site and you don’t care about verifying funds first) so know going into the transaction you will need to show some patience.

And be prepared to answer bunches of questions and to make yourself available to do so.

Tip 2 - Escrow.com

I HIGHLY recommend using the services of escrow.com. They do charge a decent fee, however it is well worth the fee to get some protection for the buyer and the seller.

How Buyers are protected:

• Escrow.com verifies with the Buyer and/or the WHOIS information that the domain is transferred.
• The Seller isn’t paid until domain name is transferred to the Buyer.

How Sellers are protected:

• Escrow.com confirms when the domain name is transferred.
• The Seller is authorized to transfer the domain after Escrow.com verifies good funds.

You can read the entire escrow.com process here.

Tip 3 Set Your Bin HIGH

If you have a valuable site then make your Buy It Now price very valuable to you.

I’m not sure where I’ve heard the “10x earnings is what you sell a site for” but it’s really wrong.

My site was earning $500 per month and 10X earnings would have been $5000.

However because I knew the site had a strong history of earnings I asked 16x earnings or $8000.

Guess what? That was cheap! I had FOUR buy it now offers within a few hours of posting the site.

The final sale price was actually $8500. You never know what could have happened if I listed the bin much higher but next time:

If I’m selling a site with long earnings history I will start with a bin of at least 24x earnings.

You can always lower it if the auction goes on without a BIN ;)

Tip 4 - Where To Sell Your Site

Marketplace.sitepoint.com. I would hit the other forums only to drive traffic back to that sitepoint. They have a great interface and a great audience of buyers and sellers

Tip 5 - How To Transfer Your Site

Domain transfers are easy and most domain registrars have step by step instructions to do this.

Transfering the site files might be a bit trickier because all hosts are different and so are everyone’s skill levels. Your site might work on your server but not someone else’s or the new owner could struggle setting it up.

The way we did the recent sale was to purchase a shared hosting account at hostgator.com.

I uploaded all the files there, gave them a quick run through, changed database passwords and uploaded the database there, and made sure everything was working.

When the time came to transfer the site I simply gave the new owner the login info and they had the site in their possession. (note: hostgator will allow you to transfer a hosting account. Just change the user info to theirs and have them contact sales to combine the accounts)

Tip 6 - IM

IM = Instant Messenger

Email is ugly, spammy, untimely, and gets lost many times.

I’m not a fan of IM but did use it during the sale. It’s great to get questions answered quickly and easily for both parties involved. Having both of you on instant messenger talking can help smooth over the process.

Your Site Selling Tips?

I don’t sell or buy sites very often. I usually buy a domain and build a new site. Hopefully my selling experience will help you. Have any tips I didn’t mention about buying and selling websites you want to share?