There was an interesting post on Sitepoint that illustrated how few sites are actually being sold in the Sitepoint marketplace. The poster asked the question "What does and doesn't sell?". I think this is an interesting question so I thought I'd give my ideas on the subject here.

What Websites Don't Sell

After frequenting the Sitepoint Marketplace for a period of time, you'll begin to see the same old sites up for sale not getting sold. The sites that I've noticed fall into the following loose categories:

Sites Whose Sellers Are Looking For Recompense

Typically, the seller ignores their site's current performance and looks solely for some kind of recompense for their expenses. Maybe they invested $10,000 in development for the site that they would like back (from you!). Maybe they spent the last few years building up good quality content. All this is pretty much irrelevant to the buyer who is looking to buy a website that generates a profit. Unless, of course, the buyer sees potential in the site. Maybe the site could funnel visitors to other cash spewing sites they own. But this is rare. And the value here has less to do with the site for sale and more to do with the buyer's own sites.

Unreasonable Minimum Bids

Some sites are good and are worthy of consideration. They make a profit, look good and are in a niche that looks like it will endure. But the minimum bid on the auction is way too high and bears no relation to the value you see in the site. I've seen some sellers reduce their minimum bid substantially after potential bidders have voiced their dissatisfaction. The minimum bid was based more on what the seller would like to see transferred to their paypal account than how much value they thought their site really had. Seeing the minimum bid reduced by such a big margin alerts you to the fact that the seller just hasn't sat down and valued their site in a reasonable way. Which is fair enough. Either people will bid or they won't.

The Website Isn't A Business - It's A Job

I saw an auction recently for a SEO "business". The seller wanted a large amount of money for a site that was basically a lead capture mechanism. Once the customer agreed for SEO work to be done by the site owner they would have to do that work before they saw any revenue. It wasn't the site that was making the money, it was the site owner's work. That's called a job. The site is merely a way to get work. So in buying this site you are merely buying the chance of getting work. You aren't even buying definite, preprepared work. But since when did you have to buy work anyway? What kind of kookie world was that seller living in? For Chrissakes.

There's more but I just have to nip out to get rid of this vitriol. I know, let's talk about something nice:

What Websites Do Sell

This is the easy part. I'm very much biased by my own experiences so maybe this heading should read "what websites I would buy"! Anyway, sites with the following qualities are attractive:

Evergreen Content

Once written, leave alone. A site around such a subject as parenting might have 'evergreen content'. It's not something that is going to become too outdated. Whereas a site providing information about iphone unlocking solutions has an expiry date.

Passive Adsense Income

What a gift! You buy a site, and it makes money whilst you sleep. You don't need to change any content and it accumulates dollars. There's no customer service you have to manage, no shipping of goods sold, no maintenance of business relationships etc. If it's evergreen content that is driving your passive adsense revenue, all the better.

Masses Of Traffic

Though you don't always need masses of traffic to make your site a success, the fact that it has makes it a better candidate for the would be buyer. Of course there are different kinds of traffic (organic search, pay per click, bought advertising on other sites etc) and that will be the subject for examination another time.

Not Monetised

And I mean genuinely not monetised. I don't mean stick adsense on the site, discover it doesn't work and then take it off. In contrast, that is trying and failing to monetise. I mean if the site owner deliberately didn't monetise at any point. This doesn't necessarily mean that the site will be a good buy. What it does mean is that there is the potential for other rival bidders to undervalue the site. This is advantageous to you if this new acquisition could complement your existing portfolio of sites. Or perhaps you have previous experience of successfully monetising sites like this one.

High PR

Whatever you opinion on the value of Google's Pagerank in their ranking algorithm, there is no denying that buyers do consider a high pagerank to be a bonus and will pay extra to get it. There was a PR9 site on Sitepoint recently that received a Buy It Now offer of $300,000 before the owner decided to raise the BIN to $450,000. Call me cynical, but I don't think the bidder was interested in the site's content!