Flippa Blog | Buy & Sell Websites » Selling Websites

Design your Auction to Attract the Right Buyer for your Site

Ophelie at Flippa — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:28:13 +0000

Today’s guest post is by Tommy Noonan, better known on Flippa as noonanco.

Just because someone is the high bidder, doesn’t mean that they are going to follow through with the sale and pay for the site. Unfortunately, it’s not 100% within your control, however you have a lot of influence as the seller to attract quality bidders. I’ve had 41 completed sales on Flippa, and only two high bidders went MIA. Thankfully Flippa waives the success fee and will give you a free re-list in this event.

When asked to do a guest Flippa blog post on how I vet bidders, I thought long and hard about the process I use. I realized that my auction description does most of the weeding out for me. It’s all about creating an auction that attracts the right buyers.

Grow Bidder Confidence with Honesty

The relationship with your potential buyer begins when they see your auction description. You want to start the relationship on the right foot by being as honest as possible. A buyer who thinks you are an honest seller is much less likely to flake. When putting your auction together, keep these points in mind:

1. Disclose everything you know about your own site. - Just say it straight up, from the beginning to end. Let them know why/when you created/acquired it. Give them the back story. Even sharing things about your personal life will help foster this new relationship. (For example, you could say: I built a site about horseback riding because I used to ride horses at my grandmother’s farm when I was a kid).

2. Don’t try to hide anything. - Buyers are GREAT at due diligence and digging up dirt/inconsistencies in your auction description. If you are trying to hide something, it is sure to surface and bite you in the butt sooner or later. Avoid ambiguous and vague terms that might create a sense of mistrust in your buyers.

3. Invite everyone to take a look at your Google Analytics. Adding potential buyers as guest users on your analytics really shows that you have nothing to hide. They’ll know just as much about your visitors as you do. Some sellers are hesitant to add analytics users because they fear that they’ll be competitors looking for secret data. I call shenanigans! First, you are selling the site anyway, and second, this is very unlikely. Definitely not worth the potential loss in buyer confidence by denying people access to your analytics.

4. Don’t try to embellish or skew information. Your goal with your auction description is to accurately describe the site. Let the potential buyers analyze the data on their own. Don’t try and interpret the data for your buyers.

Don’t Over-Sell Your Site

You aren’t trying to pedal some generic clickbank eBook with a 5-page sales copy using tons of colors, highlighted text, testimonials and guarantees. This over-sell approach might work if you are selling cookie-cutter, mass-produced, brand new, generic sites with a BIN of $199. If you’re selling a real investment with established traffic/earnings, you’ll want to attract a different kind of buyer.

Don’t get me wrong; it is definitely a good practice to mention the positive qualities of your site. You can even share your ideas for improving the site, but don’t get carried away. Your site isn’t going to turn into the next Facebook, so don’t try and convince buyers of this.

The bottom line is this: you want buyers to know what they are getting into. Don’t give them any false expectations. Make sure they understand that this is an investment, and as with any investment, there is an amount of risk, and no guarantees on future earnings. You don’t want to over-sell them into placing a bid, only to get cold feet when it comes time to cough up the dough.

Make Sure Bidders Actually Read your Auction Description

One of the key indicators that someone has not read your auction description is when they ask questions that are clearly answered in your auction description. I’ll usually scare them off with a semi-rude response such as “Per the auction description: [a sentence literally copied and pasted from the description]“.

I’m sure there are more polite ways to do this, but the key is to make sure that your bidders are actually reading the auction. You spent the time to create an auction description targeted towards serious bidders. How can you be serious about buying a site if you aren’t even reading the entire auction?

Don’t be afraid to tell someone that they shouldn’t be bidding on your auction. In general, the more bidders, the higher the competition and the higher the site sells for. However there is no point in jacking the high bid up if the winner is going to flake.

Use as much industry jargon as you want to in your auction description. CPC, CPR, Adsense, eCPM, Analytics, Conversion Rates, etc. Even if a bidder doesn’t understand a term – but is able to Google it and figure it out on their own – they are demonstrating competency. If a bidder has to ask you what Adsense is, you’ll have to let them know that they probably aren’t ready to make the investment in your site.

Accept Multiple Payment Methods

I personally always accept Escrow.com, Paypal or paper check payment. It definitely increases buyer confidence to show that you’re willing to do the transaction securely through Escrow.com. Forcing a winning bidder to pay in a manner that they are not comfortable with is only going to result in more flaky bidders.

High-End Sites Produce Fewer Flakes

I’m not sure if this is universally true for ALL Flippa auctions, however I’ve definitely noticed it for my own. The only times I’ve had a non-paying bidder are auctions under $1,000. My average auction is over $5,000. I assume it is because buyers are more serious at this price point. The auctions that end for a few hundred will attract a lot of newbies and bidders who aren’t as dedicated as the big spenders.

Answer ALL Questions Promptly and Honestly

While the auctions may sometimes drag on and on, you should always be available to answer last minute questions as the auction is coming to an end. The users who are asking questions right at the end are probably pretty serious about bidding on your site, so you want to start things off on the right foot by being on top of your communication with them.

Be an Honest Seller to Attract Honest Buyers

The old proverb “You get what you give” definitely applies to selling sites on Flippa. Be as honest, upfront and straight to the point as possible in your auction and you’ll get the same bidders.

Tommy Noonan has been buying/selling websites for over 5 years, and has sold nearly a quarter million dollars worth of sites on Flippa. He is also a world traveler and adventurer. He shares his stories and wisdom on his blog: TomsAdventure.com

Restrictions on Selling Websites with Trademarked Domains

Andrew Knibbe — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:41:27 +0000

We’ve talked about trademarks on the Flippa blog before. While there is inherent risk of a DMCA takedown notice when buying a potentially trademarked domain, some buyers aren’t troubled by this possibility, and some domains that contain a trademark can be used under a fair use policy.

As always, we don’t attempt to police potential trademark breaches on behalf of trademark holders but actively work with them when they bring breaches to our attention.

As a result of recently working with a number of these trademark owners, we have developed measures that will now block some specific trademarked URLs from being sold on Flippa.

This list currently includes some frequently-used trademarked names such as Twitter, Google and Facebook and will grow over time upon request by trademark holders.

If a site listed on Flippa infringes on a trademark you own, you can report the listing through our DMCA Procedure (pdf).

Does this guarantee that there won’t ever be trademarked domains on Flippa?
Not quite. While we’re now blocking certain trademarks from being listed at all, this only applies to a defined list of trademarks. It’s still up to trademark owners to defend their intellectual property by reporting infringement. If you’re purchasing a website or domain name listing on Flippa, then we encourage you to run a trademark search via the United States Patent and Trademark office, or at Trademarkia. particularly for .com, .net, .org and .info domains.

Apologies in advance to the owner of FacebookTwitterGoogle.com …

Image: west.m

An update to Verified Google Analytics

Ophelie at Flippa — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:48:23 +0000

Google has been rolling out the latest version of Analytics progressively over the last few months, with new functionalities, different options and an updated look. As of last week, the new version of Google Analytics is the only one available. This has changed a few things about how Flippa handles Verified Analytics reports.

What’s New?

Sellers can still submit a Verified Analytics report for attachment in their Flippa listing, though the instructions for doing so have changed slightly. You’ll find instructions for sending your Analytics report in the Add Analytics Stats link of your listing’s sidebar.

The new Analytics report is shorter than the old version, and it omits several categories such as Traffic Sources, Visitor Location and Keywords. If you’d like to show potential buyers more thorough analytics data, you can include those reports as PDF attachments in your listing.

More Information

Google Analytics is often a big part of due diligence research into a potential website purchase; that’s why many buyers will insist on reviewing Analytics data themselves. You can provide selected buyers with read-only access to your site’s Google Analytics by following these instructions.

Don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website? Even if your listing is already live, it’s a good idea to install Analytics as soon as possible and post Verified Analytics reports periodically.

Guest Post: 5 Ways to Value a Website

Ophelie at Flippa — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:01:54 +0000

Today’s post is by David Gass of BuyingAndSellingwebsites.com. David is one of the organisers of the Internet Investment Summit, happening May 18 – 20 in Las Vegas. Note that early bird tickets end 20 April!

Ask five website buyers what they think your website is worth, and you’re likely to get five different answers. Each buyer would likely have a different valuation number and potentially a different method for creating the valuation.

There are so many factors involved in determining the value of a website it’s easy to understand why valuations will fluctuate from buyer to buyer.

So what is your site really worth? “What anyone is willing to pay for it!” That’s the real answer. However, that’s not an answer you can put in your bank account. To make it a bit easier to find a fair valuation for your site, here are five valuation methods to use:

Website Valuation Method #1 – Comparable Sales

In the real estate market, Comparable Sales are called COMPS. A comparable is found by searching for related sites in your niche that are as close to your site’s age, traffic and revenue as possible. The closer the numbers are for a comparable site, the higher relevance the site has in the valuation.

To create a comparable valuation on a website generating $250 in monthly income from Adsense, with 5,000 unique monthly visitors and a PR of 1, the first step is to search Flippa.com won listings for sites that closely match this criteria.

The following are six sites in the results that can be used for the comparison.

Domain Won Price Profit Mthly Unique PageRank

Onlineincomeportal.com (listing) $2,950 $212 72,062 0

Cheapholidaytr.com (listing) $1,500 $229 4,200 1

Theexpensivecars.com (listing) $1,700 $300 45,000 0

Garnethillcoupon.biz (listing) $2,450 $312 9,237 1

CnaTrainingSuccess.com (listing) $9,000 $366 2,523 3

Bankruptcy-chapter-7.org (listing) $3,700 $152 2,547 0

A Formula for comparable valuation:

Step 1: Add “won price” for all sites sold in the comparable listing: $2,950+$1,500+$1,700+$2,450+$9,000+$3,700 = $21,300

Step 2: Find the average price of comparable sites:

$21,300 divided by # of Sites (6) = $3,550

The comparable valuation would be $3,550 for the site.

In this particular case, I’d recommend dropping the highest and lowest priced sites that were sold to get a better valuation. If you drop the $9,000 and $1,500 sites, the comparable valuation is $2,700.

Website Valuation Method #2 – Revenue Multiple

The revenue multiple valuation method is to divide the monthly or yearly profit by the sales price. Although buyers use this method frequently, it’s not an exact science.

For example, the valuations should be different for two sites with $500 per month in net profit from the same revenue source (adsense for example) if one site has three months of history versus another site with three years of history generating the same income.

A site with just three months history might get 6 times monthly profit as the valuation where as a site with three years may get 20 times monthly profit.

Using the same six websites above from recent Flippa auction sales these are the multiples the sites sold for:

Domain Won Price Profit Monthly Multiple

Onlienincomeportal.com $2,950 $212 13.9

Cheapholidaytr.com $1,500 $229 6.5

Theexpensivecars.com $1,700 $300 5.6

Garnethillcoupon.biz $2,450 $312 7.8

CnaTrainingSuccess.com $9,000 $366 24.5

Bankruptcy-chapter-7.org $3,700 $152 24.3

The multiple valuation method results vary from 5.6 to 24.5 for these sites. Age isn’t the only factor in determining the multiple. The buyer could have additional sites in that niche or know ways to increase revenue for the site that the current owner isn’t using, which is why they will pay a higher multiple.

It’s easy to see with this example that using just the multiple as a valuation method can be deceiving.

Formula for Multiple Valuation Method:

Monthly Revenue divided by Sale Price = x

X is the number of months it would take to earn back the purchase price of the site with the current monetization methods.

Website Valuation Method #3 – Traffic Value

Another approach to determining the value of a site, specifically sites that have yet to be monetized but have traffic, is the Traffic Value Valuation Method.

This method is determined by researching the top key phrase or phrases that drive the majority of traffic to a website. Then find the Cost-Per-Click value of the keywords.

For example, the site we have used in other examples: Bankruptcy-Chapter-7.org has two key phrases driving over 90% of its traffic, the two key phrases are; Chapter 7 and Bankruptcy Chapter 7.

Once you know these terms go to Google Adword’s keyword tool and enter both terms. The approximate cost per click for each term will be found. For [Chapter 7] it’s $5.95 and for [bankruptcy chapter 7] it’s $11.44.

If the amount of traffic going to Bankruptcy-Chapter-7.org is 900 visitors using Chapter 7 and 500 using bankruptcy chapter 7, then you can multiple the cost per click with the visits.

Formula for Traffic Value Valuation Method

Cost per click x # of Monthly Unique Visitors from That Keyword

$5.95 x 900 = $5,355 + $11.44 x 500 = $5,720

$5,355 + $5,720 = $11,075

The value of traffic to the site is worth $11,075 per month if a site had to pay, for each visitor with a service like Google Adwords. The next step is to multiply $11,075 by an amount around 45%. Taking a percentage of the total traffic value creates a more realistic picture of what the traffic will cost if paid, since not everyone would pay the maximum cost-per-click.

Traffic Value ($11,075) x Percentage .45 = $4,983.75/month.

Website Valuation Method #4 – Reverse Engineering Cost

The Reverse Engineering Cost method formula calculates the price to build a site from scratch to match the site being sold. The formula is:

Cost to Build Site + Cost to Drive the Same Amount of Traffic + Time Factors = Value

The cost to build a site is pretty easy to determine. It’s easy to go to developers and ask them to look at a site and give a fair quote for the cost of creating the same type of site with new content. Obviously, a complex site versus a simple site will require a higher cost to build.

The cost of attracting traffic to a site can be difficult to calculate. However, getting a quote from an SEO company may provide some good valuations.

The first time factor includes the amount of hours for the buyer to get the site built and driving the same amount of traffic, whether its outsourced or created on their own. The second time factor is the opportunity cost. How much money would the site make in the time frame it would take to build a new one?

For example, if the cost to build the site is $1,500, and an SEO company quotes $3,500 to build the same amount of traffic, the site is valued at $5,000. Then add the opportunity cost and hours spent by the buyer. If the buyer needs to spend 10 hours and their time, is worth $50/hour it’s an additional $500. If the time to build the site and traffic is six months and the original site would have generated $300 per month, the opportunity cost is $1,800. ($300 x 6)

The total cost to reverse engineer the site is $5,000 + $500 + $1,800 or $7,300.

Website Valuation Method #5 – Customer Value

If a buyer already has a list of customers or prospects, he/she likely knows what that list is worth. There are a few metrics list owners use:

LTV – Life Time Value of a customer

DPE – Dollar per email

To best understand how to calculate the life time value of a customer when taking into consideration other expenses in the business and the acquisition cost of a customer, download the Harvard tool that calculates the LTV.

Once a buyer understand the LTV they are able to determine how much they can spend for a site that will generate x number of customers.

With DPE (dollar per email), a list owner may know, for every email they have in the list that matches the current demographics of their list, they can generate $3 per email. If they can find websites to purchase that have lists with emails that match their demographics, that list is worth $3 per email.

A site with 2,000 emails could be valued at $6,000 for the buyer, without even looking at any other factors. If the site already generates income from other sources, add the value of income with the $6,000 valuation to determine the overall value of the site.

For additional methods of valuing websites, strategies for buying and selling websites and to meet others in the industry, visit InternetInvestmentSummit.com. The event is a live seminar held in Las Vegas for anyone looking to learn the latest strategies and techniques for buying, selling or investing in websites.

About The Author

David Gass is a serial entrepreneur who has started businesses with $200 and grew to multi-millions. His companies have been listed on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the United States three years in a row and he has received several awards for his entrepreneurial efforts and commitment to giving back to his community. He currently buys established websites as a business and teaches others to do the same at buyingandsellingwebsites.com.

How do you generally value web sites? Do you have any questions for David? Let us know in the comments!

Image:plaisanter~

Announcing our New Guide to Selling Websites

Ophelie at Flippa — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:09:29 +0000

Some of the most-frequently asked questions on Flippa are on the topic of selling a website. What makes a good listing? How can sellers make sure that their listing is viewed by as many people as possible? What’s the best way to manage bids and questions from potential buyers?

After the success of our Pro Guide to Buying Websites, which is downloaded around 700 times per month, we gathered the best advice on selling a website into our new guide, How to Sell Your Website, available for download from our Guides page.

From A to Z

This guide takes sellers through every step of selling a website:

Ensuring the site is ready for sale,
Creating an informative, well-rounded listing,
Managing bids and questions,
Collecting payment from the highest bidder.

Together with our help pages, there’s now a wealth of information for website sellers on Flippa.

Something for everyone

While the guide is intended for first-time sellers, it also contains detailed information on how Flippa work, useful even for seasoned website-selling veterans.

We’d like to thank Thomas Smale of Flipping Enterprises, an experienced website seller who reviewed the book and helped make sure it covered every important topic.

Did we omit something important from the new guide? Do you have suggestions for our next guide? Let us know in the comments!

Should you auto-accept bids?

Ophelie at Flippa — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:25:28 +0000

While every seller hopes to receive a large number of bids on their Flippa auction, managing these bids can be a time-consuming process. In an effort to save time, some sellers are tempted to simply choose the “Automatically accept bids for most users” for their listing. Is this a good idea?

Bid management basics

First, a few clarifications. Even when the auto-accept function is selected, sellers have to manually accept or decline bids placed by new Flippa users (who have signed up less than six months ago and have never made a transaction on Flippa).

If the auto-accept option is not selected, the seller must manually accept or decline each new bid. These new bids expire and are automatically declined if the seller hasn’t actioned the bid after three days. During these three days, the bidder has the option to withdraw their offer at any time, so it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on bids and action them as soon as possible.

The only exception to the three-day expiry is Buy It Now (BIN) bids. If the seller doesn’t respond to these after three days, the BIN bid is automatically accepted. If the seller has opted to request PayPal payment for a BIN bid, the bid is automatically accepted once the PayPal transaction has been processed.

Preventing non-paying bidders

The number-one frustration of sellers on Flippa is highest bidders who either disappear after the auction has ended, or wind up changing their mind about their purchase. While this happens in a small proportion of auctions, it can be maddening for the seller.

One of the best lines of defence against non-paying bidders is communication, both in public comments and direct messages during the auction. Sellers can communicate with bidders by clicking the “Talk to this buyer in private” link in comments and in the bid management page.

Should you ever auto-accept?

If auto-accepting bid is such a good idea, why, then, is the option to auto-accept bids even offered?

For auctions with a low reserve and a low Buy It Now, sellers may decide to sacrifice the extra peace of mind in order to speed up bid management.

Some sellers also opt to auto-accept bids early in the auction, before their reserve has been met, and then switch to manually accepting bids. The risk in this strategy is that the reserve may be reached earlier than expected.

You can find more information on bidding here.

Do you find it safer to manually approve each bid? How do you decide which bids to accept? Let us know in the comments!

Three months of Premium Listings

Ophelie at Flippa — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:59:10 +0000

When we introduced Premium Listings back in December, we at Flippa HQ thought the idea of extra visibility, premium placement for a listing and dedicated support for listing creation and bid management might be a little popular.

Three months later, 145 listings have been upgraded to Premium. Let’s have a look at how those listings fared.

One of the biggest advantages of a Premium Listing is priority placement on most Flippa pages, including relevant search results. This leads to many more views per listing: while a regular auction on Flippa gets an average of just under 350 views, Premium Listings are viewed, on average, 4461 times.

This increased number of views translates into more bidders: sold Premium Listings have, on average, 11 bidders, while regular listings have around 4.

The average sale price of a Premium Listing is almost 50 times that of an average listing on Flippa. This has much to do with the types of websites that are being sold as Premium — these sites are typically older than 6 months, most have stable traffic and a good revenue history.

Great previous listings

Some of our biggest sales came from Premium Listings, including MakeCashTakingSurveys.biz, which sold for $395,000.

Other highlights include:

French blogging platform Bloguez.com for $190,000
Travel website SGHoliday.com for $160,000
Furniture shop MadokaModern.com for $85,000

Great sites for sale

We also have several great Premium Listings open right now, including JeepTech.com, which is past reserve* at $11,000. While most Premium Listings are website auctions, the listing for Better.com is also attracting some great attention.

If the Featured Listings page is a little bit too general for you, you can use our advanced search to find sites that are closer to your interests. Premium Listings will appear at the top of those results.

Do you tend to look at Premium Listings more often? Have you thought about upgrading your own listing to Premium? Let us know in the comments!

* The Australians at Flippa HQ insist that an auction past reserve is known as “on the market”. The North-Americans among us are a bit skeptical. What is it called in your neck of the woods?

Questions and Answers with Escrow.com

Ophelie at Flippa — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 03:28:38 +0000

Once a website has been purchased, the next step is the exchange of funds for domain ownership and website files. While there are several ways to transfer funds, including PayPal and wire transfer, Flippa always recommends using an escrow service, such as Escrow.com, to protect both buyers and sellers.

We receive a lot of questions about the escrow process. To answer a few of these, we had a chat with Andee Hill, Director of Business Development at Escrow.com.

What’s the process of using Escrow for transferring a website?

Either the buyer or the seller can initiate an Escrow transaction from the Flippa Sales Completion area.

They simply have to click the “Start Escrow” link. Once both the buyer and seller have agreed to terms, the buyer will be prompted to send payment. Then, once funds are secured, Escrow.com will instruct the seller to transfer the domain or website. When receipt is confirmed, the inspection period (review period for the buyer; agreed upon by both parties) will begin.

During the inspection period, the buyer can confirm acceptance and Escrow.com will disburse funds to the seller.

What are the fees associated with Escrow.com?

The escrow fee is based on the purchase price of the transaction. The fee calculator available on our site https://escrow.com/support/calculator.asp. Flippa customers enjoy a 20% discount off our standard fee when they initiate the transaction on Flippa.

How are buyers and sellers protected by using Escrow?

How Buyers are protected:

The buyer has the agreed upon inspection period to accept or reject the site/domain.
The Seller isn’t paid until the Buyer accepts or the inspection period expires.

How Sellers are protected:

The Seller is authorized to transfer only after Escrow.com verifies good funds.
Escrow.com protects the seller against fraudulent payments.

What happens if I’m not satisfied with the site I’m buying, or if the site is fraudulent?

The buyer has the option to reject the website during the inspection period. If the buyer rejects, they are responsible to return everything received back to the seller. Upon the Seller’s acceptance of the returned merchandise, the buyer is refunded, minus the escrow fee.

As a seller, what happens if the buyer doesn’t pay?

If the buyer does not fund the transaction, the seller can request a cancellation or the transaction will time out on its own if it reaches a specific period of time without us securing funds. The seller is not responsible for any fees.

Does Escrow offer protection for the site, or only for the domain?

Both the domain and the website are protected as funds are held in Escrow until the buyer accepts the transaction, or the buyer rejects, returns, and the seller accepts the return.

Buyers and sellers can avoid much confusion by discussing and agreeing on the transfer and review process BEFORE funds are transferred to escrow (and before committing to buy, if possible).

Escrow.com transactions allow the buyer to receive and review, with the ability to reject and return if the site is not as agreed-upon. A seller should understand this before agreeing to our service.

Buyers should also have a clear understanding of how to verify website stats before agreeing to buy a website. It’s the buyer’s responsibility to confirm this during the inspection (or review) period.

What’s the process for transferring money in and out of Escrow?

All transactions can be funded by the buyer via wire transfer. Some transactions also have the credit card option. Escrow.com can disburse to the seller via check or wire transfer. Disbursement via ACH (Automated Clearing House) is also available for US customers.

Do you have more questions for Andee? Let us know in the comments!

Image: Don Hankins

A new look for the Bids page

Ophelie at Flippa — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:58:50 +0000

We’re always trying to make the bidding process more transparent to maximize confidence for both buyers and sellers – and allay concerns regarding shill bidding to some extent.Our latest addition to the Bids page makes it easier to see a high level summary of the bidders – how many listings they have bid on and across how many sellers.

Who is bidding on what?

The biggest change to the Bids page is the inclusion of a summary of the bidder’s history next to their bid. How many times did they bid on listings across how many different sellers?

A high bids-to-seller ratio may indicate shill bidding – an extreme example may be a bidder who has bid on 10 different listings from one seller. Note that some of this may be skewed by brokers and other regular sellers who have a high number of buyers watching them.

A graphic view of bids

Users can now get a quick overview of bids on their listing by scrolling down the Bids page. Accepted bids are in green, pending bids are in yellow. The seller can see canceled or rejected bids in red.

From here, sellers can still manually accept or reject pending bids.

Keeping your privacy private

This update to the Bids page still keeps the identity of bidders under wraps to other bidders. Just as before, sellers can see who is bidding on their listing, but other Flippa users can’t. Your bidding history is also kept private — the bid history doesn’t link to either listings or sellers’ names.

What do you think of these updates to the Bids page? Let us know in the comments!

Case Study: A Hidden Gem Pays Off

Ophelie at Flippa — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:10:09 +0000

Sometimes an afterthought purchase winds up being worth a tidy sum. That’s exactly what happened to Chris when he acquired Paid2Review.co.uk, a directory for paid surveys and cashback websites, as part of a bigger website purchase.

“We bought a larger business based on the websites, database and income potential. Paid2Review was a bonus, really – we monetized the site better than the previous owners, and then realized the true value of the site”.

When selling just makes sense

This true value, coupled with new monetization methods, left Chris with a money-making site that didn’t require much effort. But after several months, the love just wasn’t there.

“We weren’t spending any time on the site at all. The SEO work was totally outsourced, so we thought we’d take it as far as we could go. To target more keywords would have taken a lot of work, and SEO wasn’t really our specialty, so we decided to sell the site and reinvest the profits into more of what we knew – CPA marketing.”

Chris, who has a business analysis background, knew his time and energy would be better spent on other projects. He had heard about Flippa from some of his colleagues, and decided to give it a shot.

A great first experience

“The sale process was incredible. We had loads of interest from all over the world, and I think the only difficulty was in keeping on top of the questions and correspondence with people, mainly due to time zones.”

Why was the listing for Paid2Review generating so much attention? Besides its enviable $5,800 monthly profit, the listing also included a lot of information potential bidders were interested in.

“I personally wouldn’t buy a website without seeing Google Analytics for it,” says Chris, “so for this listing, we included everything bidders needed to see. We even added the highest bidder’s affiliate codes to the site before completing the deal through Escrow, so they knew what they were buying before the sale went through.”

When the auction concluded, at $75,000 after 78 bids, Chris was satisfied. “The price we received for Paid2Review pretty much matched its true value, so we were happy with this. This was my first experience with Flippa, and I would recommend the service to anyone. I think as long as you know what to look our for when buying, and how to actually market a website when selling, it’s a great resource for anyone”

What’s next for Chris? This venture into buying and selling websites won’t be his last — in fact, his site DuvetDollars.com is on auction right now! “I’m working on some standalone projects and income streams, like 1kSystem.co.uk, including one I might sell on Flippa once it reaches $20k in monthly profit. It should be interesting to see how that goes.”

Have you had a similar experience in selling your website? Or do you have a question or comment about this sale? Let us know in the comments!

Image by jeremympiehler