When to reject an offer to buy your website

A good friend of mine contacted me recently to let me know that he has had someone come to him and offer to buy his website. I have been working with this friend for some time now and he has always wondered when would someone come asking about his site.

He had seen me get one offer after another on my websites and was waiting for the same thing to happen since he was following the principles about running a website that people will want to buy. Well it finally happened. He called me up to get my advice on whether I thought the deal was a good one and whether he should take the deal.

This brings me to the purpose of this post. When do you say no to an offer? I mean the allure of getting 5 or even 6 figures for a piece of intangible digital property is very hard to overcome. If you have read my story “Striking Internet Oil” then you know that I was faced with this same issue.

I had a site that I knew had a ton of potential. I had made good progress and within one week two different people contacted me to buy my website. I thought it was strange that they both contacted me at the same time. They both gave me good 5 figure offers for the site but due to my stubbornness or my knowledge of the industry I knew I could make a lot more money if I just improved the site a little. So I turned down both offers and went to work improving. I increased the traffic and revenue on the site and within a few months one of those companies came back and offered a good 6 figure offer. Now was the time to sell.

There was another instance where I was running a different website and the site was rocking. On some days the site was making $1000 all automated income. I got an offer to buy the website. I thought, “why would I give up this amazing income for one lump sum?” So I declined the offer. The guy kept harassing me and eventually I decided to sell the site. 3 days before the deal was going to go down all of the rankings dropped on the site. I still to this day don’t know why I lost the rankings. Needless to say the guy backed out of the deal. If I would have taken the offer when he first made it I wouldn’t have lost high 6 figures.

The point is when someone makes you an offer that you can live with, even if it isn’t the best offer in the world, you take it. You just never know if or when things will change. With so few barriers to entry in the internet world, money talks. Don’t be greedy. Take a good offer when it comes.

What is a good offer? That is something you have to decide but consider this: If you run a website that you are only putting a couple of hours of your time into a week, isn’t a 10 month revenue multiple a good deal? I know this is a subjective thing where we are dealing with time and emotional investments that are hard to let go or put a price on but to quote Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail” it’s not personal, it’s business. Cut those emotional attachments and move on with your life with a thicker wallet.