Selling your website and wondering where to sell it online?
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by: Tim Corbeil
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Word Count: 1088
WebsiteBids: a potential place to sell your website!
As the owner of the web based business, I sell basic websites and offer extended services to my customers should they require them. My biggest problem has been marketing my product. I needed to find areas on the web where I could list my websites and be seen by many “potential” buyers. Sites like eBay, Sitepoint, Digitalpoint and DealaSite are some of the sites I have found during my search efforts. These sites offer some promising results, however, they all have their downfalls which I will elaborate on.
Open forum style website listings:
DigitalPoint offers a forum section where you can list your website for sale by way of forum threads. To be eligible to start a thread in the said section, you must serve a minimum forum participation requirement. Once met, you are free to list as you please! Your thread will be seen by many and the forum is always busy. One downfall: The forum is extremely busy to the point where your thread is off to the second page in a matter of several minutes and the second page is considered “old news”. The site rules state: “Please do NOT bump your thread or you will receive a minor infraction”. I received one the other day when I simply wanted to clarify my listing to avoid confusion and that clarification was flagged as an infraction. Selling a website on DigitalPoint works if you happen to have the right audience at the time you list your auction.
SitePoint offers a similar forum in their marketplace. One major difference from DigitalPoint to SitePoint is that auction listings are a paid service ($10.00/listing). In my opinion, with a paying service, there is more quality in the sites that are listed for sale. In other words, auction listings that are listed are websites that have value, establishment and worthiness. But just as DigitalPoint, SitePoint is a rather busy site too, where your listing will find itself going from the first page to the second page rather quickly causing your chances of selling your website to diminish. In my case however, paying the auction listing fee for a dozen sites that are new, will become expensive rather quickly. And given that my listings will be seen anywhere from half a day to a day on the first page, if they don’t sell in that time frame, I highly doubt they would sell at all. While considering the value at which I sell my websites, paying the site listing fee is simply not economical.
Auction style listings:
eBay, a well established site and community, has been around for a long time. I have and currently use eBay to auction off websites and must say, with the websites that I sell, eBay works well for me. “Well” being relative as it could be “better”. The listing fees are within reason but in my experience, considering the virtual nature of a website, I don’t believe the viewing audience for potential buyers is all that it could be. I have had websites listed for 10 days and by the tenth day, the traffic counter was rather low. In fact, rather disappointing at times. Another factor is that the site offers many different topic listings where someone could easily get lost when surfing for a particular item. The reason I say this is because I once tested looking for an auction listing I listed. I did a search, went from page to page in the topic I listed my auction in and was not able to find my own listing given the “time remaining” reference left in my auction.
DealaSite is not a bad site. The best thing about DealaSite is that listings are free! Another good point is that you are required to input specific details when listing your website for auction. This eliminates many unnecessary questions from potential buyers. I use DealaSite to sell websites and I have had “some” success in the service. One downfall to point out is that there is no enforcement for bidders who place bids and change their mind once the auction has completed. It’s happened to me several times where I contacted the highest bidder to complete a sale only to find out the bidder is no longer interested. It is not the end of the world but it is somewhat frustrating as other potential bidders are not bidding due to a “false” high bid set in place. If you are looking for a free service, it is one of the better “free” services out there for selling a website.
WebsiteBids:
Considering the drawbacks to the above services, I came up with an idea in hopes to help others, like me, who are serious about selling their website(s). I recently launched a new auction website called WebsiteBids where the site’s sole purpose is to auction off websites. The site is new to the web and being so, I have set forth many promotional offers to attract customers to the site and encourage them to make use of the service. Every site ever launched had to start somewhere so I urge you not to shut out the service due to it being “new”, but rather to consider the site’s potential benefits it may provide a few years down the road. One of our current promotions, for example, is for new users to register and create an authentic auction of a website they are selling, free of charge, while in return, that user will get endless credit applied to their account. (Yes the listing fees are currently free to allow a client base to grow, but will not always be and you will be one of the first 50 individuals to never have to pay for an auction listing! ) Should your business revolve around selling websites, WebsiteBids also offers stores (similar to eBay) for you to make use of to increase viewing traffic. Lastly, and as indicated above, the site listing fees are free however, the site will eventually charge a small listing fee as a means to pay for maintenance, bandwidth, hosting fees and support personnel.
I sincerely want to thank you for reading my article. I welcome everyone to the website and encourage you to help me populate it in the efforts to build a fine community of people with similar interests!
Kindest regards,
Tim Corbeil
www.websitebids.net
About the Author
Tim Corbeil; webmaster of several sites such as TCnetspace.com & WebsiteBids.net
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