Selling a Website with an OPT-IN List

Posted on June 4, 2007 by midascode

I recently spoke to a web site owner who asked me this question:

I’m considering selling a web site I have had for quite some time, which has a list of over 700. The list is a double op-in list.

However, my question relates to what happens with this list when transferring a web sites ownership.

For example, I use Aweber for my list management, and so if I sell my web site, how does the owner get the list as part of the purchase? Or is this the purchasers problem and not mine?

There are a few points to address here… firstly, it is generally accepted that any list built directly from the site SHOULD be included in the sale of the site. If it is not, then you should make this clear and reduce the price.

Secondly, some sites have a double opt-in and a membership as well. So for example, a forum requires you to register and give your email address, but that same forum may have a weekly newsletter on aweber as well. This is rare, but it can cause problems. The biggest issue is the use of the brand name. For example, the new owner may decide to send a weekly email to the forum members via the forum software, he may start the email: “Hi, Jim here, the new owner of xxxx.com” – But the old owner may still be emailing the same people weekly and saying “Bob here from xxxx.com”

In my opinion, any brand or company related list SHOULD ALWAYS be included in the sale… ALWAYS!

So onto my final point… transferring the list via aweber.

Note: I have never done this, if anyone knows of any better techniques, please let me know.

Ok, the main issue with using aweber to do this, is the fact that they require the leads to re-validate their subscriptions. This means that a % are not going to do this. So straight away you are weakening the stregth of a list.

With that in mind, if you are going to buy a site with a list, and you wish to transfer the list to your aweber account, I would set the price based on the final list size.

e.g If the list is 1000 and the seller wants $10,000, I would say “I will pay you $10,000 if 950+ validate, but $9,000 if it is less than 850 and so forth…”

Here is what Aweber say about this issue:

Import Leads:
All imported leads must be verified before they will be added to your mailing list. Within minutes of being imported a notice will be sent to the lead asking them to verify that they did indeed request to be on the mailing list. Once verified they will immediately be added to your account and visible for email delivery. Learn about the many benefits of using verified opt-in, “Study: Verified Opt-in Reduces Unsubscribes & Complaints.”

* Only emails that have specifically requested information from you may be imported.
* Purchased emails or FFA link page email addresses may not be imported.

See the unsolicited email section of the service agreement. If you have questions about this policy, ask us. Violation of the service agreement will result in immediate account closure.

If you are not happy about asking them to re-validate, then you could import the leads to your own list software, but that is a whole new set of issues.

Site Sellers Summary: If your list is associated with your site in any way, then it SHOULD be included in the sale.

Site Buyers Summary: When using Aweber, be aware of the re-validation losses you WILL get.

Something for the High Rollers

Posted on May 22, 2007 by midascode

So you wish to splash some cash on a new website? Today I am going to show you one of the places that the high rollers go to find websites for sale.

If you are looking for websites that are high traffic or high profit then the vast majority of site selling places will frustrate you.

However, there is a place within a popular site selling forum that is great for anyone with deep pockets.

Here it is….

Drum roll….

Sitepoint.com

But wait a minute… Everyone knows about Sitepoint.com already, this is nothing new…

Well perhaps you already know about Sitepoint, but not many people are aware that there is a section called the “Premium Section” that only deals with premium websites.

On the first page as we speak there are two sites for sale at over $250k

If you are sick of crawling through piles of crappy $100 proxy and arcade sites, then this is the place for you.

Enjoy.

Big Shoes To Fill

Posted on May 6, 2007 by midascode

Today I am going to tell you of a hidden danger when buying websites. This is something you will need to be aware of if you want to make a lot of profit from buying and selling websites.

Today I was contacted by a site owner who wanted to sell his motorsports portal. The site looked nice, and certainly had potential. But the source of traffic was mainly from offline word of mouth. In fact, I later discovered that he would go to major motorsports shows and spread the word whilst he was there.

This for me instantly devalued the site. I would be unable to go to these shows, but even if I was forced to go, I wouldn’t have the same knowledge and contacts that the previous owner had… In summary…

His shoes were too big to fill

This is something that you MUST be aware of when buying a site. I am sure you wouldn’t purchase a website in Japanese for the same reasons. You have to be confident that can you run the website AT LEAST as well as the previous owner.

If you want to make big moeny from site flipping, then you will need to be able to run the site BETTER than the previous owner.

So ask yourself: “What is my main asset/skill?”

For some of you this may be SEO, or marketing… for others it may be that you have an indepth knowledge of an industry. Once you have identified your main asset, the key is to look for a website that compliments your skill.

This is actually one of the biggest mistakes site buyers make.

For example, I have a friend who is an SEO guru. He was looking to buy a site, and I found a great site for him to consider. However, he refused to buy the site because the previous owner had no knowledge of SEO.

Instead of seeing this as a negative, my friend should have seen it as a positive. He could get the site cheaper due to the site not being SEO optimized, then he could use his own skills and vastly improve the sites traffic, rankings and revenue.

Be wary of your strengths and weaknesses, then look for sites that compliment both areas.

Dean

BEWARE when buying forums

Posted on April 5, 2007 by midascode

Recently I have been in discussions to buy numerous forums, and on almost all occasions the forum owner has attempted to trick me and their readers.

If you ever consider buying a forum, this may be the most important information you will ever read.

When buying forums the activity/popularity of the forum is vital. Nobody is going to pay good money for a dead forum. So many forum owners have started editing the “users online” stats, thus making the forums seem a LOT busier than they really are.

This has happened to me on many occasions, and not once has the forum owner mentioned this, I always had to discover it myself.

So what is the problem here?

Well, to be blunt, they are trying to con you. If they can make the forum show that there are 500 users online, when really there are only 5, it is obviously going to make you happier to pay more money.

Today on DigitalPoint.com I noticed such a forum: Britney forum. If that link is not working, you can visit the forum directly at www(.)eternal-allegiance(.)com

Let’s have a look at the stats:

Threads: 75,321
Posts: 1,136,730
Members: 4,095
Moderators: 5

Fairly impressive thus far.

—————————-
March 2007
—————————-
29,645 Unique visits
143,262 Page views
7,36 GB bandwidth

This is where it gets interesting. the forum had 143k page views in March. Certainly an admiral figure, but probably about average for a forum.

Let’s compare that figure to a website I launched only 5 days ago (on a budget of zero).

date – – – – visits – pages – hits – – – bandwidth
01 Apr 2007 770 1693 15748 52.75 MB
02 Apr 2007 859 1984 18189 60.61 MB
03 Apr 2007 361 851 7497 25.47 MB
04 Apr 2007 254 600 5384 19.57 MB
05 Apr 2007 539 1251 11526 38.61 MB

So to compare, let’s use the pages figure.

Sellers forum = 143,262 Page views in one month.
My new site = average of 6379 page views per day.

There are 31 days in March, so if I multiply 6379 x 31 = 199,749 page views per month.

So my new site that has had almost no promotion, and has not had one cent spent on advertising, is getting approx 25% more traffic than the sellers forum.

Now let me tell you something that will shock you…. MY SITE DOES NOT GET ENOUGH TRAFFIC TO WARRANT A FORUM!

You heard me right. I could add a forum to my new site, but from past experience there is not enough traffic to sustain a forum.

So in summary, the sellers Britney forum is getting an average amount of traffic, forums NEED high amounts.

I visited the forum, and was expecting 5 or 6 people online. This will amaze and shock you…. how many people do you think were showing as online when I visited this forum?

Bear in mind that I have already proved that it is a fairly low traffic site from a forums standards.

wait for it…..

wait for it……

There are currently 9 members and 1439 guests on the board

1448 people are reading that forum at this exact moment in time. WOW. That is more than DigitalPoint.com, yet according to the stats, the forum is fairly quiet. The alexa rank of 467,751 confirms my thoughts.

If you are ever going to purchase a forum, please do not look at the users online section. There are many mods out there that can inflate that number to any number they want.

This hopefully will act as a warning to forum buyers and forum sellers.

If you are a forum owner and wish to inflate this figure to impress the users of the forum, that is fine. But please mention that in your sales pitch.

Thankyou.

Build a Network – Buying Websites Guide

Posted on March 2, 2007 by midascode

Welcome to part eleven the final part of the Midascode.co.uk site buying guide.

We recommend that you also read the previous chapters:

* Everything changes
* Site buying multiples
* Industry importance
* Traffic relevance
* Traffic quantity
* Established Websites
* Time Is Money
* Content is king
* Website Income Sources
* Enjoy it

Today is the final part of our site buying guide and we hope you have learnt a lot more about buying and sellling websites online.

I am going to share one last piece of advice with you…. Try and build a network!

More specifically… try and build a related network of websites. Last year we purchased websites on almost any type of subject, but now we have focused on a specific industry. There are many advantages to doing this:

1) Interlinking (Within reason you can promote all of your other sites)
2) Brand strength (Your brand is more powerful with 8 sites than 1)
3) Link power (Spread that link love between your sites)
4) Interpromotion (Have a competition on sites A and B sponsored by C and powered by D 😉 )

Having multiple sites in the same niche can be very beneficial, just make sure that you have enought time and resources to run them all.

We hope you have enjoyed our 11 part site buying guide. Feel free to subscribe to our feed for future updates.

MidasCode.co.uk

Enjoy It – Buying Websites Guide

Posted on March 2, 2007 by midascode

Welcome to part ten of the Midascode.co.uk site buying guide.

We recommend that you also read the previous chapters:

* Everything changes
* Site buying multiples
* Industry importance
* Traffic relevance
* Traffic quantity
* Established Websites
* Time Is Money
* Content is king
* Website Income Sources

Enjoy It

If you are going to buy a website then it is vital that you enjoy the topic of the site. This is a mistake we have made in the past, so try not to make the same error.
If you do not enjoy the topic of the site then there is more chance that you will neglect the site, but if you really enjoy it then adding content, finding partners etc will come a lot easier.

Someone once said “If you love your job then you will never work a day in your life“, this is especially true online, so stick that what you know and love.

Midascode.

Selling your website TOOLS

Posted on February 26, 2007 by midascode

What essential tools do you use to determine the value of a website – or how much traffic a website gets?

These are common website selling questions.

There are some tools to help you with your sites value.

How much traffic a website gets – gives details of methods for calculating website traffic.

[assuming you do not have access to website Google analytics]

four tools that will help you value a website

Four tools that will help you value a website

=> Alexa

We don’t treat Alexa as importantly as many other people, but it is a good rough guide to your traffic.

=> Keyword research tool

Look for the main terms a site ranks for.

Check how often they are being searched for and if possible also get the average PPC value of those terms. Another article to check out is:SERP co – this is an excellent article /primer on keyword research.

=> Sites log files – We need to see your site data, so please provide access to your log files, or detailed screenshots.

=> Financial data – How much money you make is the most important factor. If you are not willing to provide this info then please don’t bother contacting us.

Recommended reading: 21 Smart Ways To Increase Website Value

No matter if you intend to sell your website now, or indeed never sell, there is much information here that will help you build a better website business.

Remember…

The Biggest Mistake A Small Business Can Make Is Thinking Like A Small Business

Personal vs. Actual Value

Posted on February 13, 2007 by midascode

If you ever buy or sell a web site then it is vital that you are aware of the difference between personal and actual value.

Put simply, personal value is a value that is only valid to the existing site owner. Actual value is value that is valuable to any owner.

Recently I was contacted by a site seller who had a football sites for sale. I made a reasonable offer for the site and he got angry and said “I paid $3,000 for the sites design, so please add $3,000 to your valuation”

Here is my reply:

“Thanks for the update. Please note that if I bought the site the first thing I would do would be to delete the theme”

This is a perfect example of personal value vs actual value. The site design cost $3,000 so the seller was expecting to recover that cost, but the site design was awful! so it was completely worthless to me.

Another example of this was when a friend of mine was in negotiation for a site and the seller said that he had spent 18 hours per day on the site.

How much time has been spent is also irrelevant! many web site owners waste many hours every day doing things that do not benefit the site. There are automated sites such as popurls.com that probably require almost no maintenance that are worth huge amounts of money. But there are also niche forums that require tons of daily work that make zero profit.

Lets presume I was to try and sell you a Polaroid photo of me when I was three years old. My guess is that my value of the photo would be a lot more than your value of the photo.

Conclusion

Sellers: Please only mention factors that are going to be useful to the new owner.
Buyers: Be wary of a site seller that uses personal value factors to increase the value of the site.

From Dean Hunt

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