Selling websites is a tricky business because surprisingly, up until recently, not many people valued them as tangible business assets. Instead, they thought that something which could fit on the size of a CD couldn’t actually be worth a great deal…

These days, websites are amongst some of the most valuable business assets a company can possess. Many companies wouldn’t even exist without their website. Think Google… Websites valued at anything from a nothing at all to billions of dollars!

When it comes to knowing your website’s value, how do you calculate it? Do you workout the time you’ve spent in hours developing it? Do you base its value on how many visitors it gets? It’s actually very complicated, and it depends on a number of factors. One rule of thumb is the more valuable a site is the more difficult it is to value!

Looking at the monthly profits is an important aspect of figuring how much your website is worth. One of the best rough calculations you can do in order to get a rough appraisal is to calculate the monthly profits for the past three months, then multiply by three + the age of your site. i.e. if my website generates $10,000 a month in profit and is 4 years old then I’d want to sell for $10,000 *(3+4) = $70,000.

But that’s just a general metric. It’s important to take into account other factors such as how many daily visitors you get. Chances are you’ve not went to great lengths to monetize your site, in which case, you can ask more based on the monthly visits. A good way to calculate is to add $1 for every hundred visitors your site gets, but remember to work this out based on an average over a reasonable period of time so you’re not basing you’re sites value on inaccurate information.

One of the other most important aspects of selling a site is its domain name. Usually domain names have separate value and it’s important to get a domain appraisal before you start to sell. In some cases, the domain can be worth more than the website, so take this into account when selling.

Ordinarily speaking, domain names need to be aged i.e. a few years old and they also need to have quality extensions. This means .com .net and .org. If your site is based on a .info domain then this will reduce how much you can ask, because .info domains and other ‘novelty’ domains are neither valuable nor attractive.

But the bottom line in selling a website for sale on the internet is that it is only ever worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. Don’t think because you spent 1,000 hours working on it that a site is worth $5,000 dollars because whilst it may very well be worth that much, it could also be worth less or alternatively more.

Don’t make the mistake of selling yourself short, and most importantly, don’t try to sell your site for more than it’s worth. If you can’t get a good price, hold on to it for a bit longer, because someone will buy it, eventually.

If you’ve done a bit of research into website flipping then you have probably already found out a whole load of conflicting views and information. The reality is that website flipping is profitable, it works and most importantly – you can flip anything if you can prove to the world it’s worthwhile.

With so much bad information out there, knowing exactly what’s worthwhile and what’s not can be a difficult process. The golden rule for website flipping is that traffic = value. This could mean that single page web sites which are keyword optimized and receive a lot of traffic are actually profitable to sell!

Micro-sites are actually incredibly effective ways to flip websites. Whilst people think that flipping small sites is for small-timers, some of the best website flippers are the ones that are smart enough to do the research beforehand, find an extremely profitable niche and then exploit the search engines by building a site that is laser-targeted, keyword rich and search-engine friendly.

Micro-sites really are the site flippers secret weapon and this is because they make extremely profitable Google AdSense landing pages which when advertised on places such as SitePoint really does get a lot of interest. Especially when you can show that they are already profitable. Let’s face it, anyone would be mad not to buy a website that is already making a fully automated, passive income.

Creating the perfect micro site is all about impact. This means your template for the page needs to be more attractive than normal, because when it comes to building smaller websites, there is limited space for content. You need to fill the gap with an attractive layout and good presentation.

These days, you’d be surprised to hear that a lot of micro sites are actually ran using the ever popular blogging platform and pseudo-content management system, WordPress.

WordPress is a great way to build a micro-site for flipping because it instantly makes site management a piece of cake. Add to the fact that it’s also natively search engine friendly, and you have the perfect platform to build micro-sites that are ready to flip.

When it comes to selling a micro-site it’s all about profit. You need to show to potential buyers that with next to no work, they can have a profitable site which will make them regular money. There are two main types of directly profitable sites; the first are Adsense ready type sites which are designed to get traffic and send visitors through to AdSense, and the second is to create an internet-marketing style micro ste.

There are countless ways to build micro sites and it really does depend on what you envisage as being most profitable. If your experience lies in affiliate marketing, then chances are you can make a potentially profitable marketing site quickly.

When it comes to building micro-sites the secret is to think about your seller and build a site they’d be interested in. Before you start, take a look on popular places to sell so that you know exactly what type of site is profitable and most importantly, how much they’re selling for. Micro sites can be extremely profitable, just make sure to do your research beforehand!