10 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling on Zipprr
Zipprr allows website owners to buy and sell existing websites. As with any marketplace, successfully selling your site on Zipprr requires avoiding some common mistakes made by sellers.
Pricing your site incorrectly, having a poor listing, failing to prepare your site and legal documents, refusing reasonable offers, and not tying up loose ends can all damage your ability to sell your site at the highest possible price.
This post will dive into 10 of the most common mistakes sellers make when listing their website for sale on Zipprr. We’ll provide tips to help you avoid these missteps, ultimately leading to better offers, faster sales, and happier buyers. Let’s get started!
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Mistake 1 - Unrealistic Valuation
One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is overvaluing their website, establishing an unrealistic asking price that is out of sync with actual market value. This stems from overestimating the site’s worth and turns off potential buyers quickly.
When your asking price seems ridiculously high for what the site is, you’ll get no takers except for bottom feeders looking for a steal. Even if you get initial inquiries, once buyers dig into the data, the price will seem absurd and kill the deal.
To avoid this mistake:
- Objectively assess your site’s value by looking at traffic, revenue, profitability, assets, brand equity, and other tangible details. Don’t inflate what these are worth.
- Research the selling price of comparable sites to get a sense of real-world market value based on factors like niche, traffic, revenue, etc.
- Use site valuation tools like Zipprr’s calculator to get an estimated value based on the data you input. This provides a data-driven starting point.
- Consider consulting experienced website brokers to get an objective third-party valuation. They know how to accurately price sites.
- List your site on the lower end of your valuation range. Overpricing leads to no watchers or offers. Underpricing attracts lots of interest you can build off.
Asking an outlandishly high price is one of the fastest ways to ensure your site sits idle with no buyers. Be realistic about its true market value to generate interest and serious offers.
Mistake 2 - Poor Listing Quality
Another mistake sellers make is creating a poor-quality listing with limited details, bad photos, typos, and other red flags. Low-effort listings reflect badly on the site for sale.
Ask yourself if you would feel confident buying the site based solely on the sparse listing details provided. If not, you need to improve the quality substantially.
Follow these tips:
- Write an informative, detailed overview of the site. Don’t just say “popular blog in the WordPress niche”. Provide traffic stats, revenue data, assets, specifics of content, and operations.
- Showcase the site with plenty of high-quality, professional-looking images and screenshots. These visuals bring the listing to life.
- Proofread carefully to avoid typos, grammatical errors, and inconsistencies that look sloppy and convey poor attention to detail.
- Be accurate and transparent with all data provided. Inflated or misleading stats raise red flags.
- Highlight notable assets, opportunities, and advantages to get buyers excited to learn more.
You want your Zipprr listing to look polished, and detail-oriented, and highlight the site’s value clearly. A quality listing attracts buyers, while a poor one repels them. Put in the effort.
Mistake 3 - Lack of Website Preparation
Failing to properly prepare your site before listing it for sale is a big mistake. Just like staging a home before selling, you need to optimize the site to fetch top dollar.
Ideally, you want to provide buyers with a “turnkey” site that is primed for takeover with minimal issues. Don’t get lazy here.
Steps to prepare your site:
- Work through any existing bugs, glitches, or errors so all site functionality works properly. Fix any broken links, plugins, etc.
- Improve site speed by optimizing images, eliminating bloat in code, implementing caching, and assessing other speed best practices.
- Clean up the site’s content by organizing pages/posts, deleting or consolidating weak content, and standardizing SEO titles/metadata.
- Consider updating the design if it looks dated. A dated look projects neglect and risks turning off buyers. Even simple changes like updating the logo can modernize the design.
- Cancel or transfer any subscriptions, tools, or software applicable to operating the site so the new owner starts with a clean slate.
- Structure your site files, documentation, data, etc. so it’s easy for buyers to evaluate and migrate assets.
Taking the time to fix issues and optimize your site before listing demonstrates attention to detail and increases perceived value. Don’t take shortcuts.
Mistake 4 - Missing Data and Analytics
Data is power. Failing to provide key site data and analytics with your listing severely weakens the perceived value in the eyes of buyers.
Serious buyers want to see stats and reports to assess traffic, revenue, engagement metrics, demographics, traffic sources, and other indicators of value.
Being vague or failing to share these details is a big red flag. It suggests you have something to hide.
To strengthen your listing, be sure to provide:
- Google Analytics reports showing overall traffic and growth trends, engagement metrics, acquisition channels, etc.
- Earnings reports and financial statements show revenue and profitability over time.
- Ad performance metrics if monetizing through PPC ads.
- Social media insights showing followers and engagement on connected profiles.
- Contact lists and subscriber data – e.g. Mailchimp lists.
- Cloud hosting usage and bandwidth metrics indicating traffic.
- Screenshots of organic traffic rankings and keyword data.
The more detailed data you can provide, the better. It builds confidence in the accuracy of your listing and helps justify your valuation. Buyers want reassurance through data.
Mistake 5 - Not Preparing Legal Documents
Failing to properly handle legal and compliance aspects of your site looks very bad to prospective buyers. It raises concerns about safety and liability.
Make sure you have any required legal pages, policies, and documents prepared including:
- Privacy policy – details how user data is handled.
- Terms and conditions – rules for using the site.
- DMCA policy – how copyright violations are handled.
- Disclosure policies – terms for affiliates, paid content, etc.
- Earnings disclaimers – if applicable.
- Incorporation documents – if legally registered as a business entity.
These policies demonstrate your site was set up properly and lower future risks. Don’t leave buyers exposed after the acquisition.
Mistake 6 - Inaccessible Code and Assets
As a site owner selling on Zipprr, it’s essential you have full access to all of the code, data, accounts, and digital assets tied to running the website.
However, sometimes sellers fail to maintain proper access. The consequences of limited access include:
- Unable to provide source code for the site build because you lost the files or developer account login. This prevents buyers from inspecting the quality of the code.
- Lack of login access to DNS settings, hosting account, databases, analytics, etc. Buyers can’t fully analyze these or prepare for a smooth migration.
- Don’t own or have rights to images, videos, content, etc. on the site. This causes licensing issues.
- No access to social media or advertising accounts leaving buyers unable to manage those assets.
- Can’t transfer ownership of the critical domain, SSL certificates, API keys, and other digital assets.
Failing to tie up these loose ends signals poor site management and hurts your credibility. Make sure you have full administrative access before listing your site.
Mistake 7 - Unresponsive Communication
Once you list your site for sale, prospective buyers will have questions – pricing, operations, growth potential, transition plans, etc. Failing to respond quickly and clearly to buyer inquiries kills deals fast.
Being slow to return messages or emails, providing vague or terse responses, and generally seeming uninterested conveys to buyers that you’ll be a pain to work with.
Follow these communication tips:
- Check for buyer messages and inquiries daily and respond promptly. Don’t make people wait days.
- Be friendly and eager to provide helpful information. Show excitement to move the sales process forward.
- Answer questions thoroughly with specifics. Don’t give flaky answers that leave buyers still wondering.
- If there are gaps in your knowledge, be transparent rather than guessing. Follow up once you have researched the answers.
- Proactively reach out if you haven’t heard from a buyer shortly after the initial messages. Strike while interest is hot.
- Avoid communicating infrequently via email alone. Request to also call or video chat so communication is fluid.
Show buyers you are an attentive, responsive partner committed to a smooth sale process through regular communication. This builds trust quickly.
Mistake 8 - Refusing Reasonable Offers
Knowing when to compromise on price and ultimately accept an offer is challenging. Refusing reasonable offers while holding out for more money is shortsighted.
Just because an offer comes in below your asking price doesn’t inherently make it a “lowball” offer. The market ultimately determines true valuation.
Tips for negotiating properly:
- Set your asking price slightly below the actual market value to build in room for negotiation. Starting too high restricts bargaining room.
- Respond to offers professionally. Don’t get emotional or accusatory. Calmly justify your pricing and terms.
- Provide counteroffers rather than outright rejections. Nudge buyers closer through back-and-forth negotiation.
- Assess offers objectively. Don’t get fixated on hypothetical “dream offers”. Focus on buyers at the table.
- Recognize when the incremental value of waiting longer for a higher offer isn’t worth lost time and site deterioration.
- Let go of sunk costs bias. Don’t get stuck on recouping investments that are irrelevant to current market value.
Playing hardball with offers and refusing to negotiate reasonably often leads sites to sit unsold perpetually. Know when to compromise to complete the deal.
Mistake 9 - Not Using Escrow Services
When selling a website independently, handling the transfer of money directly from buyers comes with immense risk. Instead, relying on trusted third-party escrow services like Zipprr’s to facilitate the transaction securely is essential.
Escrow provides benefits such as:
- Funds are held by the escrow provider until all terms of sale are satisfied. This protects both buyers and sellers.
- Greatly reduces the risks of payments getting tied up or reversed through fraudulent credit card transactions.
- Escrow team oversees and mediates the process if any disputes arise between parties.
- Encourages follow-through by both parties since funds are already set aside through escrow.
- Smoother experience than awkwardly handling credit card and wire transactions independently with someone you don’t know well.
- Offers much greater transparency. Both buyer and seller can confirm escrow status.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can bypass escrow to save on fees. The security and protection for high-dollar transactions are absolutely worth it.
Mistake 10 - Leaving Loose Ends
The last key mistake sellers make far too often is failing to tie up loose ends prior to transferring their site to a new owner. Handing over an unfinished, sloppy transition damages your reputation.
Be sure you handle key items such as:
- Migrating the domain registration account fully to the buyer so they have 100% ownership.
- Transferring hosting services and relevant logins to the buyer or their account.
- Providing all licenses to plugins, themes, software, or other premium tools used on the site.
- Sharing login credentials to analytics, social accounts, API integrations, etc.
- Completing paperwork thoroughly – contracts, sales orders, tax info, etc.
- Following up post-sale if any issues pop up and providing support as reasonably needed to make the transition smooth.
- Asking the buyer for feedback on the process so you can improve for future sales.
Dot your i’s and cross your t’s for key technical, administrative, and legal aspects of the ownership transfer. This level of diligence reflects highly on you.
Conclusion
Selling your website successfully on a marketplace like Zipprr requires avoiding common mistakes like bad pricing, poor preparation, lack of access to assets, refusing to negotiate, and more.
However, you stand to gain top value for your hard work by accurately valuing your site through data, presenting it in the best light possible, satisfying due diligence requirements, negotiating fairly, and tying up loose ends after the sale.
Follow the tips in this guide during the sales process to maximize your chances of selling your site quickly and profitably on Zipprr. The little things make a big difference.
With some prudence and professionalism, you can hand off your valuable website asset to a new owner seamlessly while getting paid fair market value. Approach your Zipprr sale carefully and you increase the odds substantially of a mutually beneficial deal.
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