Sold a site for $100,000+ ?

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85VicWagonGuy

New member
Feb 12, 2009
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Boston, MA
I'd like to speak with anyone who has sold an e-commerce site for $100K+ in the past year.

Did you hire a broker?
Capital gains tax?

I sold a small site in November 2008 for $4000, but I'm currently interested in selling a site that has generated over $1.4M in gross sales since 2006 and I need to be smart about this sale.
 


Though i have not sold one as such, i have spoken to people who have; the thing i would recommend is DO NOT us a site like flippa for something like this. good luck.
 
Feel free to reach out, I've done both sold and helped broker xxx,xxx level sites. ^ I wouldn't be afraid of Flippa at all actually, it will get the word out and people will contact you privately. If you have a good BS filter you should be fine with whatever you do, and don't be afraid to use a broker but don't go exclusive either - that 10-15% is well worth it sometimes, or can be a nightmare in the wrong hands.

N.
 
ncmedia said:
^ I wouldn't be afraid of Flippa at all actually, it will get the word out and people will contact you privately. If you have a good BS filter you should be fine with whatever you do, and don't be afraid to use a broker but don't go exclusive either - that 10-15% is well worth it sometimes, or can be a nightmare in the wrong hands.


N.
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Agreed.

I would definitely use Flippa. It's by far the best large marketplace to sell a site. Lots of eyeballs and deep pockets follow Flippa. Just realize you will have a bunch of tire kickers and people simply trying to pry info out of you to duplicate your business (use common sense when dealing with people and you'll be fine).

I've personally purchased a site for $30k there and know people that have found buyers for their sites that lead to mid $xxx,xxx sales.
 
Sold to a vendor for mid $xxx,xxx - usually get multiple of ebitda (5x is decent), or if you have customer records, create a dollar muliple, based on acquisition costs.

Yes, you will pay capital gain. No way around it.
 
I would just like to follow up on echoing flippa, because it can indeed be helpful. I know a guy that sold a site on there close to mid xxx,xxx after having answered the usual "how much is hosting" q's, so just get those over with fast

As someone else said, lots of deep pockets following flippa, but they don't post
 
"Just realize you will have a bunch of tire kickers and people simply trying to pry info out of you to duplicate your business."

;) Yes, I assumed as much. Thanks.
 
StingVeyron said:
Sold to a vendor for mid $xxx,xxx - usually get multiple of ebitda (5x is decent), or if you have customer records, create a dollar muliple, based on acquisition costs.

Yes, you will pay capital gain. No way around it.
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5x yearly commissions is 2x more than we were expecting. Ice cream's on us if we get 5x. Thanks for the encouragement.

We have all customer records.

We've been in this market with this merchant (in business for 20+ years) since 2001, but we launched a new site in 2006 that increased sales 7x within a few months... and never slowed down.

We've been in affiliate sales since 1997, building sites for clients for a share of revenue... but the client's always found a way to scuttle the ship. So in 2001 we went it alone and never looked back.

We currently specialize in sites selling 10K+ items and built a system for mass producing them from product feed files. This is where we want to focus 100% of our energy... so in addition to selling our current primary site, we're selling a 5 yr old video game repair site/business that started as a spin-off of the primary site.
 
the most important thing is to get this in front of the people who are most capable of buying it for a large sum and who would derive the most value from it.

For example, the recently auctioned BANS site and email list would have probably been worth the most to the PHPBay guys because they already have a top product in that niche. Therefore, the amount of money they could make off of that acquisition was probably higher than most anyone else.
 
Fastb said:
Have you talked to the merchant?

They might purchase the site themselves. If they don't want it they can at least send an email out to their other top producers letting them know the site is available.
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Exactly, this is who you want to focus on to start.
 
Fastb said:
Have you talked to the merchant?

They might purchase the site themselves. If they don't want it they can at least send an email out to their other top producers letting them know the site is available.
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1) Haven't discussed with the merchant yet. meeting with them soon. I'd rather come to the meeting with a few bids in hand.

2) We are the top producer, by a looooong shot. No other affiliate has sales to speak of.
 
85VicWagonGuy said:
1) Haven't discussed with the merchant yet. meeting with them soon. I'd rather come to the meeting with a few bids in hand.

Depending on what your commission structure is they could pay for their purchase of your website through not having to pay the affiliate percentage anymore, plus they have more control and don't have to worry about you switching the site to someone else.

If they say no on an outright purchase just contact your account manager and have him send your contact information to the number two and number three affiliates. They prolly wont be able to pony up as much as the company itself, but they might pay good money for the revenue stream and to find out just what you did to be the top gun.
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Uh so I'm confused is your site an e-Commerce site where you sell products and ship or dropship them or an affiliate site where you promote products for a seperate merchant that has an e-Commerce site. Those are two very different things with different valuations and ways to sell.
 
FastB,

Yes, they'd benefit in the long run by not paying my commissions anymore. And frankly, after 8 years they'd be in a position to hire my team to do SEO/PPC consulting for them full-time... which we've discussed. All conflict of interest would be gone.

They don't have an AM. I deal directly with the owner. Again, there are no other significant affiliates so I'd need to find an outside buyer if not the merchant himself.
 
We sell and drop ship... in simple terms. We maintain our own complete site with SSL and shopping cart. Then we auto-submit our orders (via a system we wrote) to the merchant, who processes the credit cards and ships the products.

The merchant couldn't find a programmer to develop a product feed, so we screen-scrape his site monthly to gather prices and new products. It's a process, but well worth it... and few affiliates on Earth are capable of this.
 
conv3rsion said:
the most important thing is to get this in front of the people who are most capable of buying it for a large sum and who would derive the most value from it.

For example, the recently auctioned BANS site and email list would have probably been worth the most to the PHPBay guys because they already have a top product in that niche. Therefore, the amount of money they could make off of that acquisition was probably higher than most anyone else.
Click to expand...

I did this to a couple of my sites a few years back, not in the 6 figure price range but the theory is the same.

Sold to my competitors who were more than happy to spend money to take out a competitor and take over the associated traffic and customer base, my previous customer email list alone would have paid the cost back within the year let alone the increased sales.
 
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