Affiliate marketing can be a great business if done right. However, you may want to exit a successful affiliate business for various reasons. Abandoning the business is not an option, especially considering how much work you have put into it. If your affiliate websites and business are successful, you will not have a hard time finding a buyer. There are several things to keep in mind and pitfalls to avoid when selling an affiliate website. This article is meant to help streamline the process for you.
Increase the Site’s Profitability
You should give yourself 12-24 months to sell the website. At this time, you should increase activities that increase the website’s profitability. Profitability is crucial for buyers and investors and if you have high profitability for the year or two before a sale, you stand to get a better price for the website. Some things you can do include improving SEO to increase traffic, building your email list, improving conversions, and using social media to attract more customers.
Get Your Financials in Order
Your finances are another crucial part of the sale. Ideally, you should start getting your finances in order about six months to a year before starting to look for prospects. Getting your finances in order entails creating profit and loss statements, ensuring your taxes are in order, and taking care of all documentation that has to do with money and accounting.
When doing this, also think about the assets you want to transfer to the new owner. Besides the website, they may also want your brand assets and email lists. Other assets include software licenses and patents and contractor documentation.
Find Out What Your Website is Worth
Before you start looking for prospects, it is important to find out how much your website is worth. There are several derivatives used to come up with this number. The first one is content production. Here, you have to think about how much content you have, how engaging it is, and how well it addresses your audience’s needs.
The second is its link profile. Links are a crucial ranking metric for Google and other search engines. The more links you have, the higher you rank and the more traffic you get. Considering how crucial traffic is to an affiliate website, we can extrapolate that a website with lots of backlinks will be more valuable.
The third is your site’s age. Site age matters because a website that has been around for a long time and that has shown strong profitability and potential for growth will be much more valuable to an investor.
Lastly, you need to consider owner involvement. Very few investors want to buy an affiliate website that becomes a second job for them. They are looking for one that gives them great results with as little work as possible.
Find a Buyer
To find a buyer you can reach out to investors directly, which is a great option if your website is highly profitable or list your website in an online marketplace. You can check online to find platforms where investors looking for affiliate websites congregate. These sales often close faster, but you might not get the amount you are looking for.
Online marketplaces are a better option because they make your website visible to lots of people. Additionally, many of these platforms let people bid on your website which means you end up getting a lot more for it. Do note these platforms take commissions for each sale, which is usually 10 to 30% of the final closing price.
Selling your affiliate website is not an easy decision to make. Whatever your reasons may be, you will find it much easier to do so if you follow the tips we have discussed above.
