Have a look through the listings on flippa.com and you will see a number of sellers answering this question in their sales letter. It does tend to happen more often in the lower end  of flippa town.

If you haven’t already, I suggest you do read some of these listings, as the answers to “Why am I selling?” are often hysterical. People selling sites that they threw together yesterday, onto a cookie cutter site built on PLR, tend to give the best answers.

My all time favourite goes something like this;

“This (that I made 2 hours ago) site has the POTENTIAL (no chance in hell) to earn you $1000′s a month”

Then followed with;

“We (we always makes you sound like you’re a big business) research and then make these sites so you can make money fast”

then the kicker;

“I am (ooops we are) selling this site to fund my other big projects that make me money”

Yes, I am taking the piss here, but people write this stuff.

It’s ok to sell a website for money, in fact it’s encouraged.

My take on it all, is that I think people understand why you are selling a website. The problem might be when people sell a site too cheaply.

You will see this tine and time again on flippa, where a seller claims a site is making X amount a month and then only asks for the equivalent of one month’s income for the site.

This raises eyebrows, rings alarm bells and casts a cloud over the listing.

I like the selling websites / real estate analogy.

If you were selling a rental property for the equivelant of one month’s rent, I’d like to buy it, but it would raise questions as to why so cheap?

If you are selling websites that are earning an income, at the very least, you want one years income for it.

Just like a property, a good earning website is an appreciating asset that is worth more than just the “rent” it generates.

Things like domain age, number and quality of links, traffic, content, PR, ranking etc… all combined with income, contribute to valuing the asset that is your site.

If you can show a potential buyer why your site is worth the asking price, you’ll never have to answer

“Why am I selling?” again……