Selling a Website

"I have several websites I am considering selling. Could you advise me on this matter?" -- Aisha Hud

Selling any business is a tricky proposition. For a fee, business brokers specialize in matching sellers with buyers. Until the Dot-Com bubble burst, online businesses seemed exempt from the normal business conventions of valuing a business, but no longer. Publicly-traded companies are worth their total stock capitalization. A privately held business is valued on one or more of the following factors:

• Tangible assets, such as facilities, furniture, fixtures, etc.
• Intangible assets, such as predictable cash flows, and
• Perception, such as reputation or brand recognition.

Most domain names have little value in themselves unless attached to a money-making business. To have any potential to be sold, your website needs to be either making steady money or attracting lots of targeted traffic which could be turned into a money-making proposition. Without these, the chances of selling your website are nil. You can find more information in the "Selling an Internet Business" section of the Web Marketing Info Center (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mm_BizSale).