Domaining Diva

It takes a lot of hard work to get your website to the point where it is profitable and has a lot of traffic. You might want to cash in on all that time and money you’ve spent, but you want to get the most out of your investment. Before you list, make sure you do any housecleaning that needs to be done. Any broken links or glitches that you’ve been putting off… now is the time to fix those. Make sure you do all the SEO and everything is in good shape.

The Auction Listing

Why can some sellers get big money for their sites and some get barely noticed at all? It’s important that you create a site that offers value, but it’s not always the quality of the website to blame. Your listing headline and copy can make the difference between getting the price you want for your site or having it sink into Flippa oblivion.

With too many listings, the biggest mistake I see, other than a boring headline is not enough information about the website. Potential buyers want data. They want to know everything about the website and they want screenshots to prove it. They also want access to Google Analytics.

When writing up your listing, include everything including traffic, revenue, costs to maintain the site, outsourcing costs if any, how much content it has and whether or not it is unique content, whether or not it has a list, the number of back links, social media accounts, special programming or design, etc. Don’t leave anything out. Highlight the most important information in the headline. Grab their attention with revenue or high traffic figures if you have it, PageRank, etc.

You want to build trust with potential buyers and providing accurate data on your website will help to do that. Make sure that you break down all of your revenue streams by the source of the revenue and the revenue history. Go back as far as you can. The longer the site has been earning, the more you will get for your site.

Promote Your Auction

If you have a blog or website that is related, mention your auction. Some of your readers may be interested in the auction. Same with a list. Put your auction in your signature file if it’s allowed on forums that you participate in. I do this on the Warrior Forum. You can also get additional exposure with the Featured listing on Flippa. I don’t recommend doing this until the last couple of days of the auction, since most people hold off on bidding until then. You will get a lot more views doing this. If you have a Twitter account, tweet about your auction or mention it on your Facebook or Google Plus page. If the site you’re selling gets good traffic, put the link on that site too to let your visitors know the site is for sale.

You’ll get a lot more attention by getting your auction on the “Most Active” page on Flippa. You can do this by accepting all the very low bids. The more bids you get, the higher up on the Most Active site you’ll be.

Pay attention to your auction while it is listed. Answer any questions potential buyers might have and don’t take a lot of time doing it. An interested buyer may lose interest if his questions go unanswered for too long. Give accurate, detailed answers. Don’t be evasive. Good communication with potential buyers will help to build trust and help you get the most for your website.

Paypal is so convenient and so many people use it, that it is very tempting to buy and sell websites using Paypal. Sellers have to be very careful when using Paypal to sell websites. Paypal does not support the sale of digital goods, and a website is a digital good that is downloaded after payment. All a dishonest buyer needs to do after the domain and site has been transferred is to file a Paypal dispute saying “Item not received” and often, Paypal will decide the dispute to the buyer’s advantage. That leaves you, the seller, without a website, domain and without the payment for your site. Occasionally, with enough documentation, Paypal will decide in the seller’s favor, but that’s not the norm and is very risky to rely on that happening.

What can you do to reduce the risk of using Paypal for selling websites? Since the issue with Paypal is digital goods vs physical goods, turn your website into a physical good. Get your buyer’s address and send the site to him via Certified Mail on CD. He has to sign for it and you have proof of delivery.

Another thing I’ve done for a larger sale is to put it in the listing that the domain will be held by me (pointing at the buyer’s nameservers) for 60 days if Paypal payment is used. If they dispute the transaction, just point the nameservers back to your own host and you haven’t lost your site or your domain. After 60 days, they cannot file a dispute in Paypal so it is safe then to transfer the domain to them.

One final thing that helps when you need to win a Paypal dispute over a website sale is to have a sale contract for the transaction. I use the one that Flippa sells and just fill in the details of the transaction. It’s not as good as one an attorney would draw up for you, but it’s good enough. I actually won a Paypal dispute where the buyer tried to say that they did not authorize the transaction and I escalated it to a claim and submitted all of my emails and pms plus the website contract to Paypal. That was enough proof for them to decide in my favor.

For large transactions, it is best to use an escrow service to handle the transaction. A couple of good ones that I’ve used are Escrow.com and Safefunds.com. Both will provide you with a much safer transaction, however, Safefunds.com does it a lot cheaper than Escrow.com. When using a escrow service, I always stipulate that buyer and seller with split the escrow fee. Both of us are being protected, so why should the seller take on all of the costs of that protection? Using Escrow.com’s premium service over their standard service literally doubles your fees for escrow.

Although I’ve taken a risk numerous times and accepted Paypal for transactions of around $2,500, I recommend against doing that. To be safe, use an escrow service for transactions of $1,000 or more. You can use it for smaller transactions too if you want to and with Safefunds cheaper fees, there’s really no reason not to.