Develop the Business or Sell?

I currently have 2 websites which can be tied to one another to create a business however I am at the point where I need to decide if I have the time or talent to continue due to other work commitments.

Website 1: This is my core site (dubaiinvestorslist.com) and I use it to attract clients to invest in my marketing email services. I have 250,000 International Property leads which I market to these clients. So far the site is making a profit each month as the cost of my service is approximately $500 per mail campaign.


Website 2: This is a site (theinvestorslink.com) with a great domain and is used as a landing page for my email campaigns. However this domain could be used to create many different business lines.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has suggestions on how to monetize both sites more effectively. I did try to sell my core site on Flippa but the response was poor as I valued the site at 24 months average earnings. The important component is the 250,000 database of International property buyers and prospects – which in itself is worth a fair bit in the right hands.

 

Well, my first questions would center around your knowledge, skills, and experience. You need to objectively analyze whether you will be able to take the business to the next level or if you have the resources to supplant any deficiencies, in this regards. If the honest answer is NO; then you should sell the websites. If the answer is YES, then there are more questions to ask:

1. How does developing or selling the business fit into my ultimate career/business/life goals?

2. What are the economics timelines for both approaches (e.g., with a sale, you probably get a sum immediately which could be invested in a bank or another, more promising business opportunity; but consider whether you actually have another exciting opportunity to invest in.) Since you have revenue history, you should be able to extrapolate that out a bit to what you could be earning if you seriously focused on the business. Map out both timelines, side-by-side and determine which is better for you and whether either simply does not work for you (e.g., developing the business may require negative cash flow for a while; or the capital gains taxes on the sale of the business will hurt you this year, etc.)

There are other important considerations, but I would start with these two and see if you are getting a strong indication of one choice or the other. If not, we may have to look at some other issues.

 

Thanks for the detailed note:

1. Developing the site would take me a bit longer than I am willing to put into it.

2. The site in my hands brings in about 1/3 of what another owner with other websites could make - especially with the website / database component. My current traffic is only around 8 visitors per day - so if another owner created back links and other marketing initiatives the opportunity becomes significantly more valuable. The website does get good qualified traffic though.... but my cost to provide email blasts pushes a lot of clients away.

 

So, it sounds like you have made a decision to sell the site. These days, the going rate seems to be about 1x annual revenues for a website but that does not mean that some sites do not sell for more than that.

 

These type of sites will be very hard to sell for even a somewhat decent amount. The vast majority of site buyers will not consider them, as running them would require some special skills and experience with mailing and leadgen. Additionally, from a buyer's perspective, it's hard to verify your revenues here and they are quite volatile as the traffic is rather low. But more importantly these type of sites are easy to build and don't require much capital. Anyone can setup that site, buy the database and set up some email campaign. There are no long standing assets attached to it, like a significant seo weight and quality backlinks and content etc, or a product.

It's best for you to either keep them and keep doing what you have, or try to to offer them directly to some of your competitors, as only they would be able to see the value in it.