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

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

Many sellers approach us to sell their internet businesses on a daily basis because of our strong website presence and our growing reputation online. We typically turn away approximately 80% of the seller inquiries currently because their businesses don't meet our criteria to represent and list. We have set our bar high, so we only sell the best qulaity website businesses with excellent fundamentals and strong bottom lines.

Because of our expertise, exposure, marketing and contacts all of our clients recognize the value in retaining us as their website business broker to sell their internet companies. On occassion, sellers question us on the clause in the brokers agreement that stipulates that we will have an exclusive listing arrangement for their business. Some sellers feel that they will have better luck selling the business using multiple brokers as well as directly selling themselves. Our clients are provided with the following reasons for the necessity of an exclusive contract, and this generally satisfies 99% of the sellers who acquiesce to this agreement.

The first thing to understand is that websiteproperties.com already has tremendous exposure in the search engines for major targeted keyword searches that attracts qualified buyers in droves. A few examples of these are: website(s) for sale , website business(es) , website business(es) for sale , internet business(es) for sale , online business(es) for sale , internet businesses, buy a website business, buy a website , etc. In addition, we have thousands of qualified double opt in buyers who subscribe to our new internet business alert emails so they are notified of the latest established and profitable website business we are selling. Furthermore, we aggressively promote each listing in multiple business for sale portals in the internet business sections and these listings funnel back to our website as well creating even more exposure. In essence, we literally "carpet bomb" the web in a strategically targeted method that presents our client's web businesses with maximum exposure to quality business traffic. Therefore, there is no need to engage another broker to list the site additionally and create confusion from potential overlap in the market. In fact, we do work with other brokers, many whom are subscribers, and offer co-brokering deals with them if they have pre-qualified buyers interested in our listings. So you get the best of both worlds.

As for sellers wanting to keep buyers that approach them directly off the table, this presents exposure to our firm because we invest a lot of time, energy and money on all listings. In addition, it is better to have all prospects filter through to your broker who is more experienced at presenting the business attributes and defending the asking price as well as creating more of a scarcity element where multiple buyers are interested. It will lead to a higher selling price because of the skills and experience of the broker. Not to mention, the time, energy and finese it requires to negotiate a deal and close it can be a major source of frustration and distraction to a seller going it alone. This can have a negative impact on the business for sale - like a loss of positioning, sales revenues etc - which can put pressure on the selling price or kill a deal altogether.

We have on a few occassions approached sellers already in the market that were actively selling their sites on their own to see if they want us to broker their website. We generally do this when we identiufy the business opportunity as meeting our criteria, but also because we appraise the business more than the seller is listing for and aware of the true market value. These situations often lead to a non exclusive agreement. However, because our experience with these buyers has often lead to problems of non respect, rogue listings, lack of communication and even different listing prices propagated by the seller, we have decided to avoid these deals in the future. Most of the time the attitude and behavior of the seller causes the deals to crash as well. It seems as though the disregard for this formality is a precurser to disrespect, unethical business practices, and ultimate failure to close a fair deal.

So this blog entry serves both as a practical explaination of why business brokers need the exclusivity but also as an opportunity to express our company's philosophy and future approach to working with clients. When there is mutual respect and confidence in our services demonstrated by a seller working with us according to our parameters, which have been established and tested over seven years, historically these client's experience quicker closings with higher selling prices and greater overall satisfaction.

We look forward to many years of serving the cream of the internet business community and professionally assisting them in realizing their goals of selling their website business.

 David Fairley

President

www.websiteproperties.com