How to Sell an Email List with Your Website

The following guest post was kindly penned by Allison Reynolds, a veteran niche internet marketer and Flippa customer. She is currently working on creating an online reality TV show about internet marketing called The Reality Challenge.

So you have a website for sale with an email list and you’re wondering whether it’s worth including that list in the sale on Flippa. The answer is – absolutely. Creating a list for your existing website is like having a house and building an extension onto it. The house gains in value and the buyers have more to find attractive about the property. In this article, we’ll teach you how to sell an email list with your website.

What’s This Sell an Email List Thing?

Email lists (mailing lists, or just lists for short) are created by having a field on your site into which people have entered an email address so they can get extra information from you. Things like newsletters, upgrade and product information, free offers, are all reasons why people will submit their email.

There are many email list hosting/management services available that will store those email addresses and give you an interface to email out whatever it is you want to mail. The most reputable ones will force you to create double opt-in lists (where the person requests they go on the list by adding an email, and then confirms by clicking on a link in a follow up email). Double opt-in lists should be considered the cream of the quality crop when you see it mentioned in a Flippa sale; these people have indicated they definitely want to get email from that source.

Selling Points for Lists

Buyers will be looking for several things to rate how valuable the list is so make sure you highlight any and all of the following:

• Have these people bought something in the past from you (easier to sell to again)
• On average how long people stay on the list (longer usually indicates better quality content and offers to keep them there)
• Recent sign up figures (looking for continued growth)

Most list service providers will have reports and graphs that you can add to a Flippa listing to back up your figures.

Of course the logical things that you will also need to add are how many people are on your list, how long you have been building it for, what product/content you are providing to the list and how you make revenue from it.

If you aren’t making revenue from it because “it’s just a newsletter” then add a list of suggestion on how the new owner will be able to make some cash from the list itself.

I would suggest the following as quick ways to add potential earnings to your Flippa listing:

• Advertising space on newsletter
• Affiliate links
• JV with niche product owner

How Do I Transfer a List When I have Sold It?

There are two ways to move lists to the new owner. Firstly they can join your service and you can transfer from your account to theirs. Or you can export your list as a .CSV file or similar and they can import into their own service.

I use AWeber as my list service provider and the process could not be simpler to initiate a transfer to another account.

AWeber perform their transfers using their internal support staff to ensure that no spam lists are being passed around from one account to another, and that the list is not being stolen by a hacker.

You will need to provide help(at)aweber.com the following details

• Your AWeber account details
• The name of the list that needs to move
• The buyer’s login name
• The last 4 digits of their credit card that they use on their account

Once you have provided that info, then AWeber move quickly to do the transfer. Make sure you do all this after you have received the funds from the new owner for the sale or notification the funds are being held in escrow.

Like any sale, communication is the key. Keep the buyer in the loop as you perform the transfer so they can see progress and give you positive feedback.