Posts tagged "businesses for sale"

On the eve of turkey day and a well deserved long weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to give thanks for the business I find myself engaged in currently. As a website business broker I spend my days conversing with website owners wanting to sell their internet businesses and budding internet entrepreneurs looking for the next deal. I get to interact with a very interesting cross section of people and generally have very stimulating conversations.

I am thankful for the opportunity I am presented with daily to offer advice and help people achieve both financial success and financial freedom from both sides. Many new buyers looking to start out on their own, away from corporate America after 20 years, get the thrill of finally owning and building their own business that they can operate from their home in their pajamas instead of commuting to a skyscraper in their suit and tie!

I get to assist sellers who have worked hard developing and building great fundamentally solid website businesses that are attractive to many buyers. I get to celebrate their joy and new found freedom after a deal is closed and often maintain long term relationships with these clients often participating in their future business deals. 

I am thankful for working with a dedicated, intelligent and fun staff and partners who know the value of team work, customer service, loyalty and excellence! They make it easy to enjoy my company, manage its growth and celebrate its successes too!

To know that the deals we broker are fair and balanced and are a win win win for all parties, including websiteproperties.com, is a great feeling. I truely am blessed doing what I love and helping people achieve their dreams and goals and building great relationships along the way.

So, I will enjoy my time off over this festive holiday, but undoubtly I will find time to creep back online to read and answer some emails because when you do what you love, it is not work.

Happy and safe Thanksgiving to all my readers, clients and prospective buyers who visit an read my blog.

David Fairley

President,

www.websiteproperties.com

The year that is passing may not have many fond memories for a lot of people, but for those who have invested in an online business for sale or have sold one, it wasn't such a rough ride! In fact, now that the shock and awe has passed there is an air of optimism among internet investors and website owners. 2009 is setting up to be a great year for internet entrepreneurs. Sales offline dove by several points while online sales remained positive or flat for the most part. With more layoffs and uncertainty in the workforce more people are turning to the internet for opportunities to supplement their income or take matters into their own hands.

Overall we have seen a lot of activity in the last 6 weeks of this year and expect a surge in the new year as people follow their new years resolutions to take action. There are plenty of excellent website opportunities available so saavy buyers can cherry pick the best internet businesses. There are still a lot of buyers sitting on cash reserves too that are willing to make all cash offers but at more aggressive multiples. However, 2009 may be the year of a higher percentage of owner financing deals and as a larger percentage of the selling price because interest rates are not providing much incentive for sellers to stash their cash in a bank or CD. Other deals will likely get structured with earn outs and upside potentials built in so the risks and the rewards are spread evenly between buyers and sellers.

 In the end, the best deals are always fair and balanced where all sides are happy and feel comfortable. We at www.Websiteproperties.com will continue to strive towards fair and balanced deals for our clients while respecting our qualified buyers who subscribe to our opportunity alerts. In addition, we will strive towards representing and listing only the best, most fundamentally solid web-based businesses on the market, so buyers know they can rely on us to present exceptional and exciting online business opportunities.

 From all of us at Website Properties, have a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

David Fairley

President

I spent the morning with my children watching the historic inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama. As a Canadian living in the US, having two American born children and 3 weeks away from becoming naturalized, I am proud this day that I am going to become a US citizen myself in a few weeks. It really is exciting to see a leader that has inspired a nation divided and a world looking for true leadership and a future of hope.

As entrepreneurs we know what it means to take responsibility, to take action and be eternally optimistic. The innate ability of entrepreneurs to hold a vision through to its fruition is the back bone of a great country and the core of the truth that all men and women have the opportunity to realize any dream they may embrace.

Let us take this new found energy and optimism of the moment and make a difference ourselves in our world through our own efforts to make ourselves, our families, our communities and our businesses thrive anew. The opportunities in this country and around the world are wide open - especially via the internet - which allows us to connect globally. There has never been a better time in history to embrace your dream and take action than now. Let this inspiration of historical importance motivate you in all your endeavors - whether it is building your empire online and acquiring more websites for sale,  starting out with your first of many internet businesses, or selling your website for sale and focusing on other dreams - take action and make your world and the world in general a richer, healthier,  more joyful and free place.

 To a great year and a great new beginning. We look forward to working with you in making your vision unfold and your dreams come to fruition.

 David Fairley

President, www.websiteproperties.com

The most common question posed by sellers when considering working with a website business broker like us is "how long will it take to sell my internet business for sale?" Not having a crystal ball to extract the exact date and time, we usually provide our potential clients with - a standard time to complete a sale and close is 4 - 6 months on average. Going into more detail with sellers about their website business fundamentals, financial history and trends, internet business model, and online niche typically gives us a better picture of the anticipated timeframe that a 'potential' sale may transpire.

Ultimately, we explain to our clients or potential sellers that the website should be compelling and attractive itself to garner a lot of interest and get offers quickly. If it has great financials - strong growth, good profit margins, more than 3 years history, etc it is going to be very appealing to the pool of savvy buyers searching for quality sites currently. The greater the fundamentals pertinent to internet businesses, such as large monthly unique visitors, excellent search engine positioning, large customer database, good domain name, etc, the more appealing and attractive the business opportunity will be perceived.

The business model - ie ecommerce, dropship, recurring monthly membership, afiliate or pay per click passive sites - will also be important features of the website business opportunity. The niche the website operates in also determines interest as well. The biggest single determining factor is likely asking price in the end though. A site priced out of the acceptable fair market range will sit for a longer time and not sell or get offers on it. Just like the real estate market, internet business opportunities need to be fairly priced so all parties feel like winners.

In the end, our job as website business broker specialists is to facilitate the process by getting excellent exposure for our clients website businesses. We accomplish this by our excellent organic search engine positioning for dozens of major keyword phrases like websites for sale, by listing the opportunities in multiple business for sale portals and by emailing our subscribers our newest listings. We can and do get the opportunities in front of a large majority of internet business buyers, but the business ultimately sells itself. Consequently, we are very particular about what clients we engage and list. They must have all or most of the qualities of a financially solid, fundamentally strong online businesses if we are going to represent and sell them.

If we like the internet business and would like to own it, we pretty much know it is going to be a site that some other buyer will want to acquire too! In summary, some of the best opportunities sell within the first month of a listing not including due diligence and closing and the majority of our listings close in 3 - 6 months.

David Fairley

President, www.websiteproperties.com

Even though we are diligent in screening and reviewing our clients, their business financials and fundamentals prior to engaging them and listing their internet businesses for sale, occassionally we have some website businesses that precipitately descend in their traffic, revenues and other fundamentals during the course of selling their business.

Sometimes, as in quarter 4 of 2008, it was due to an overall sharp down turn that most businesses suffered a setback. However, many times it has to do more with how the seller is operating their business, or has been running it prior to contacting us to sell.

The most common reason for business revenue atrophy seems to be correlated with the seller's dip in focus, passion about their business or just laziness! Once their mind is taken off their website business and they are not actively working on evolving or improving it, many online businesses start to decay - some slowly and others rapidly. Too many sellers, especially ones that have created what are termed as passive revenue websites - such as a niche content site that serves up adsense ads or affiliate links that they earn commissions - sit back in cruise mode and don't continue to push the envelope and continue with their content and link building to improve their search engine positioning or even dominance.

We always counsel our clients to continue working their internet business for sale as if they were planning on keeping it and striving to hit the next elevated traffic and revenue targets. Websites for sale that show progressive earnings and traffic growth are always more attractive to buyers and sell for larger multiples in the end.

Recently, we have experienced a few listings where our clients have pretty much dropped the ball and let their online business's atrophy to the point where we can no longer get behind the opportunity and continue selling it for them in good conscience - even at a fire sale. Consequently, when it hits this tipping point, it is time for us to jettison the business listing from our current websites for sale page and file it in archives where it will rust along with other sites that met the same fate because of their truant owners that inevitably were trying to dump their business before it started the downward inertia.

To preserve our websites reputation of presenting quality internet business for sale opportunities, we regularly assess our inventory and have taken to culling the sites that no longer measure up to our standards or our educated and savvy buyers' standards who subscribe to our buyer alerts or regularly visit our website and who count on us to deliver a quality product and service.

David Fairley

Founder & President