When to sell a website
As part of their internet marketing business, some people build websites for sale and generate their income that way. I don’t usually do that: the websites that I set up web sites are to generate an ongoing income. However, even if you do this, sometimes you get an opportunity to sell a website. So should you sell and how much should you sell a website for?
The answer to this question is not straightforward and depends a great deal on the success or otherwise of the website in question.
If the website has been a failure for you then just cut your losses and get what you can for it. However, if it has been successful, you should sell it only if you get full value for it.
For example, say you have developed a website, set up Google AdSense on it and attracted some traffic that generates £3 in AdSense income a day on average and the site takes up 5 hours a year to maintain. If you put a notional value of £50 an hour on your time the site’s annual profit is in the region of £800 after deducting domain name and hosting fees and your time costs. If that were a level risk free income it would be worth in the region of £16,000 ( based on a 5% return). But it is not risk free and it is not level: it may grow or fall. If you take account of these factors and use a 25% return the domain becomes “worth” £3,200.
As you can see, the “perfect” AdSense website that so many seem to aim for ($100 income per day) is a very valuable property: probably worth around $150,000.
However, not many people in the internet marketing world are willing to pay that sort of money so to date I have rejected most of the offers that I have received for my websites.
