The Good..

Buying and selling websites involves searching out existing websites for sale, purchasing them, improving them and reselling them for a quick profit.

For example, say you found a website selling pet supplies for $150. The website is a few months old, has a few backlinks, a trickle of visitors and is half-decent looking for the price - but nothing special. You spend the next 1-3 months working on the site - building links, adding content, improving the design, bring in more traffic - and maybe even make some money in the process. Let’s pretend after 2 months work the site starts to make a few sales a month for a total profit of $100 or so. Great! You decide to sell the site for 10x it’s monthly profit ($1000).

Doing the math, you paid $150 for the site, worked on it for 2 months and sold it for $1000 - achieving an ROI (Return on Investment) of just over 600% ..not a bad deal.

A Closer Look (The Bad)..

Achieving a 600% ROI in 2 months time sounds good on paper..but how many websites can you work on and complete each month? Not very many unless you scale your entire operation - and that takes time and money. If you’re time is at all limited you should be factoring the time spent on each website into your ROI as well. If you value your time at $20 an hour and you spent over 45 hours working on the website example in 2 months time, guess what - now your losing money!

The Ugly..

So you’ve gone ahead and sold your website for $1000 to someone on a forum. You keep an eye on the site for a while and the new owner seems to be doing a good job - he’s added automation to the site, saving himself time. He’s been doing a good job of monetizing and the site is doing well. You get distracted by other projects and the website - the 600% ROI website - slowly fades to a silent memory. Your pleased with the deal..

But wait! You wake up one morning and as you’re sipping your coffee you see the website you sold 6 months ago for $1000 being sold again. Only this time the buyer is asking $15,000 and there’s lots of interest - hell you’re even interested yourself. Lo and behold the new owner increased profits to $1500 a month for the last 5 months with little or no extra marketing. You brain is confused..little or no marketing, well that means..uhh..HE’S MAKING ALL THAT MONEY FROM MY WORK!

You see, all you had to do is hold on to the site for a while longer and watch it grow. Sure you might of had to spend some time here and there nurturing it, but the bulk of the work was already done - by you!

The Solution!

If you’re going to get into buying and selling websites you need to have a plan. I’ve personally sold sites in the past I wish I hadn’t and I’ve made some good sales as well. I’ve also kept sites I’ve bought that I had originally intended on reselling.

Instead of regretting my decision of selling each time - I mix it up.

The lure of quick cash when selling websites can be tempting, but don’t let it bite you in the ass. Evaluate each website you buy and maintain - is there long term growth potential here? Will this site be worth more in the future? Is this site stable enough to support itself for the next few years, or will the market dry up? How is this site earning money - are there multiple reliable income sources, or is there a single source of income?

If a website is still growing and doesn’t take up a lot of your time - it’s best to hang on to it. If a website is at a standstill but can fetch a decent dollar and you’re quite simply tired of updating it..well maybe it’s time to sell.

The main thing you should remember is that even if you bought a website with the intention to resell it, that doesn’t mean you have to stick to your original plan. Keep the site if its worth your while, and sell it only if you feel it’s the best return on your investment.

For another great article on whether or not you should flip your website, check out Flipping Websites Versus Building Your Internet Empire

Ryan S. Bombard