We asked Dan Grossman, entrepreneur, web developer and SitePoint forum moderator, about his experience selling WPreviewsite.com.

How did you come across Flippa.com?
I’ve been a member on the SitePoint forums since 2000, and first came across SitePoint before it was SitePoint… remember webmaster-resources.com? I used the original marketplace forums, then the SitePoint Marketplace, then the Flippa beta. I also used the old SitePoint Contests, was Contest Holder of the Year some years ago, and have run several contests on 99designs. I was technical reviewer for SitePoint’s Website Revenue Maximizer Kit. I’ve also been a moderator on the SitePoint Forums for a few years now.

So you could say I’m a huge SitePoint fan.

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Dan, tell us about the site you sold on Flippa.
WP Review Site is a WordPress plugin and theme. Like many of my projects, I originally developed it to scratch my own itch. I wanted to put together a site that let users rate and review different services, and I wanted to use WordPress for it. I built the plugin for that site of mine, and decided to put it up on my blog as a free download for anyone else that wanted it. Some months later I noticed that it had hundreds of downloads and over 100 comments on the blog post with suggestions and feedback. There was definitely some demand for the ability to collect ratings in WordPress.

At that point I decided to redo the plugin from scratch and take it to the next level. I polished it up, added a bunch of new features and abilities, and made it so easy to use that anyone could add Amazon-style multi-dimension ratings to a WordPress-powered site without writing any code. I bundled up the theme from my original review site with the plugin, and turned that package into a new product — WP Review Site. At the time, it was the only game in town — there were no other options than custom coding to add these features to WordPress, a platform with 11 million active site owners.

I then went out and contacted a dozen bloggers in the affiliate marketing and WordPress customization space about reviewing the product and gave out some free copies. They all loved it, and their reviews were glowing — traffic started pouring in and the package sold like wildfire. Customers were buying it, had their user-generated review sites up and running the same day, and were spreading word about this great new tool on their own blogs and marketing forums across the web. Within a month, I had sold $25,000 in licenses.

Between then and the sale on Flippa, over $200,000 in licenses were sold. The site had gained hundreds of backlinks and top search ranks for just about anything you can search involving WordPress and ratings. It also quickly amassed an army of affiliates that continue to advertise WP Review Site for free across the web.

What inspired you to sell your website on Flippa?
It had been over a year and a half since I launched the product, and I moved on to building and promoting other products and services. I essentially left the site on autopilot, with the affiliates and existing customers doing the marketing, while several people cloned the feature set and began competing with the site. Monthly sales started to slide, and I knew there was potential going to waste by not giving it any attention. So I decided to see if there was someone out there interested in taking over and potentially reversing the trend — I firmly believe there’s still significant demand for the product — and Flippa was the place to do that. It’s the most active website marketplace out there.

Can you tell us about the strategies you used when auctioning your site?
My strategy when selling a site is to put myself in the shoes of a serious buyer, someone who’s going to do their due diligence before buying. You really have to in order to sell a site in the price range I was offering it for. They’re going to want to see original records for traffic, for revenue, and for costs associated with the site. So I put all that right in the auction, in detail, up front. Web stats, details of every purchase and all advertising costs were screenshotted or saved from their original sources and attached to the auction. They’re also going to want to know about the work involved in maintaining the site, explanations of any changes in revenue over time, and about how much assistance you’ll offer in the transition. All of these I put in the description up front as well.

What background checks did you do on bidders before accepting their bid?
Checking out your bidders is just as important as the bidders doing their research on the site. Before accepting any bids, I take a look at the bidder’s profile, location and trust rating. I want to see that they’re telephone verified, and not in a country known for payment fraud. I’ll also do any research I can on Google based on their username or e-mail address, to find out what other sites they might run or if there are any negative comments about them. Finally, I won’t accept a bid without first having a short conversation in private messages to ensure the bidder is serious about their offer, is satisfied with the terms of the auction, and is able to make payment through one of the accepted payment methods.

What payment process did you use?
I require use of an escrow service for anything above a few thousand dollars. At that price range, PayPal or a credit card payment isn’t really an option, and if it was there’s a risk of the buyer charging back the payment after the sale, leaving you with no site and no payment. An escrow service protects both parties in the transaction — the funds are received and verified by the escrow service before you transfer the site, the buyer knows you can’t take their money and run without transferring the site, and should there be a dispute, there’s a process for resolving it.

Tell us about your experience in transferring the site to the new owner.
I try to make the transfer as smooth as possible. I prepare the website files and a dump of the database in advance, so they’re ready to be mailed to the buyer as soon as payment is made. I also offer to set up the site on their hosting for them. Whenever I sell a site, I also prepare an “owner’s manual” document which outlines everything the new owner needs to know about running the site, from usernames and passwords for accounts, to the location of files to edit to change configuration settings, to ad copy used in previous marketing.

Overall, how was your experience selling your website on Flippa?
Overall my experience selling on Flippa was great. Flippa brought me quite a few parties that were interested in, and had the financing, to buy this site, even with the high price tag. At the same time, I still had to reject a few bids, as there are those who try to derail an auction with bids they don’t intend to follow through on.

Dan Grossman is the founder of Awio Web Services LLC and blogs at http://www.dangrossman.info.