Looking to Sell Websites? Check out this Guest Post from the Blog Tyrant on optimizing your website auction content.

boring website description

Photo: JD | Photography

Did you know that the human brain has an inbuilt detector that subconsciously stops you from making bad decisions? And did you know that this detector is activated by certain parts of your Flippa listings? Well, now you do.

In this article I am going to tell you what you need to know about the human brain in order to achieve a successful website sale. If you sell websites on a regular basis or are thinking about selling one in the future it is a really good idea to know this stuff.

Why do I need to know this?

When I first set about selling a blog back in College I had no idea about dopamine cells. I had no idea that certain words I used or didn’t use on my listing would have a subtle negative subconscious impact on everyone who viewed it.

Luckily I sold the blog for $20,000. But not everyone will. In fact, a lot of good blogs and websites will fail to sell because of warning signs picked up by the brain in the listing, not because of the site itself.

If you are aware of these simple factors, you can prevent your sale getting killed before it starts. There is nothing worse than building a good website with potential saleability only to have it compromised by the listing.

Not a replacement for value

I have to add that these techniques are not a replacement for a valuable site that turns in regular daily profit. You can’t learn these brain techniques to convince people that a useless site is useful. What you can do, however, is add that extra 2% that might push someone over the line in a bidding war or give your profitable site more credibility than you might have otherwise.

How the dopamine cells affect your sale

Inside

Photo: Andrew Mason

Now that I have given the little introduction and forewarning I can start to get in to the scientific juice of article. Please forgive me if the science is not 100% accurate here; I’m a marketer, not a scientist. And I’d be more than happy to be schooled by someone with a Phd.

The “Oh shit!” response
I once watched a talk given by the famous neuro-scientist Jonah Lehrer where he talked about an British Commander in the Iraq war who was in charge of a fleet of massive aircraft carriers. Everyday he would watch the blips representing jets on the sonar heading towards his ship and everyday he would hear the pilots radio in and inform the carrier of their imminent arrival.

One day, however, the blips didn’t radio in. They just moved towards the ship. Heart rates started to rise because the only other thing that looks like jets on a sonar are Silkworm missiles. The Commander had to make a decision; shoot down the blips and hope they were Silkworm missiles, or risk getting the whole carrier with thousands of crewmen blown out of the water. It could just be his pilots having radio troubles, or it could be the enemy. He had just seconds to decide.

He shot them down.

The ensuing recovery mission discovered that they were in fact missiles. The Commander had saved the day. But how did he know? Was it a lucky guess? Actually, a psychologist studied months and months of sonar tapes and found that the Silkworm missiles entered the screen at a slightly different interval. The Commander’s brain had signaled the “Oh shit!” response not based on luck or guess work but based on thousands of recorded data items. The instinct was logical.

How this applies to your Flippa listing
After hearing this story I got to thinking about selling a website or a product and realized that this neurological response is engaged more often that we like to think. The average webmaster visits hundreds of websites per week and interacts with tens of different products.

All of that web browsing is data for the brain; experience it can draw on to make split second decisions about whether to proceed. And it doesn’t matter whether you have a really good website for sale, you can make people feel uneasy or even totally miss getting noticed by the way you structure your listing and your title.

Tactics to please the brain of your potential buyers

So what can you do to make sure the dopamine cells of your potential buyers react in a positive way? What can you do to ensure they feel happy, safe and excited by your listing? In the same way, what can you do to stop them getting a bad feeling as the Commander did with the Silkworm missiles?

1. Emphasize benefits over features
Don’t be fooled, some website buys are impulse buys. Even the big ones. I once sold a small blog for $5,000 in five minutes after a guy emailed me saying he just decided he wanted to be a blogger and didn’t want to do the ground work. The blog wasn’t even earning that much. Given that, you need to emphasize the benefits over the features.

Sure, you need tell them how much it earns, what the traffic levels are, etc. but you also need to tell them what the website will do for them. How will it change their life? How will it improve their prospects of becoming rich and happy? If you can get someone interested in the benefits of a sale you will hold their attention for longer. This is the only reason people buy Porches and Ferraris; the become part of an elite group and that is more important to the brain than driving a well built car.

A Toyota is also a well built car.

2. Use scarcity to encourage action
The human brain is structured in to prevent loss. We hate to lose food, money and sexual partners. It is an evolutionary thing that has helped us in many important ways. The same goes for website sales. People do not want to miss out on opportunities or potential earnings. And the way you can make them feel more interested in the sale is to make it seem scarce.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say there is a website that ranks number one on Google in the extremely competitive dog training niche. You could open your listing with the phrase:

PR4 Dog Training Blog that ranks number one on Google

Or you could use something that makes the user feel like this is a rare opportunity that they need to act on by saying something like:

Rare Buy: Dog Training Blog that ranks #1 on Google in near impossible niche

I don’t know about you but when I see words like “rare” and “impossible” I start to pay attention. And that’s all you want to do at this stage, get attention. Characters like hash signs also do well in this respect because they are less common characters and they take up less room than their wordy equivalents.

It is important to note that you must never lie in a listing. Never make anything up and don’t exaggerate things. It is perfectly fine to generate interest and excitement but never do it at the expense of your credibility. I talk about this a lot in my article on how to increase conversions – you have to appear trustworthy at every stage of the transaction. If someone realizes that a claim you have made is untrustworthy the “Oh shit!” response will fire right away.

3. Use friendship and rewards
As I have already hinted at, people love to be part of a group. In fact, most of what we do in life is because we want to fit in to a group like a social circle, family, sporting team, etc. So when you sell a website you should remember that people love to feel part of a group or make a friend. It makes them feel safe and the dopamine cells will fire meaning that they will also feel happy and eager to please.

Some ways you can do this are:

  • Give ongoing support after the sale
    My last sale was clinched on the agreement that I would stick around for six months and help the guy run the site. It helped ease his fears that it would totally over run his life. No skin off my nose and I made a good friend.
  • Get industry friends to comment on your listing
    One powerful way to make someone feel like part of a community and provide social proof is to ask another player in the industry to comment on your listing talking about how nice a guy you are and how they would be happy to answer any questions potential buyers have.
  • Answer questions to actually answer their questions
    When I browse Flippa listings I am often surprised at how often people answer comments with a view to justify their own ineptness or mistakes as opposed to actually answer the person’s questions. If you have put up an incorrect screen shot you should admit your mistake and apologize instead of trying to talk your way out of it. If a buyer thinks your price is too high try and figure out why they think that instead of telling them why they are wrong. If people are on the defense they won’t open their wallets.

Rewards like making a friend or scoring six months free support will tell a buyer’s dopamine cells that they are on a right path. If you can provide these little treats at problem points on your listing, in your comments, etc. then you will be much more likely to get people interested.

What gets your brain fired up?

I would really like to open up the comments and find out what makes your brain cell’s fire up. What makes you uncertain? What makes you feel happy, safe, excited and interested? How often are you put off by a listing that just makes you feel a little uneasy? Please leave a comment and let us know.

The Blog Tyrant is a 25 year old guy from Australia who has sold several blogs for large sums of money and writes about how you can do the same. Get his free ebook on capturing 120% more emails overnight and follow him on Twitter or Facebook today.