When people hear that I buy websites for a living, they start to ask. “Yea, but why would sellers sell a profitable website that is making them money every single month? Surely they would hang onto it an keep collecting the cash themselves?”
And you know what, they have a point. Although if you look at it from the seller’s perspective, when the business is doing well and making a decent profit, it is the perfect time to sell a business to get the most you can for it.
Which could be one reason sellers sell a profitable website, but in saying that there are many more reasons and I am going to share with you some of the most common ones in this post.
Passion has diminished
A lot of the time sellers sell a profitable website is because they are just not into it as much as they were when they first started. They probably put a lot of blood sweat and tears into building a profitable website whilst their passion for the business was strong. But like a lot of people these days where our attention spans as diminishing, everything gets old or we want to move onto something else. Which causes sellers to sell their business if they feel they no longer want to be apart of it anymore.
No Time
I hear this a lot from sellers, that they have no time to keep running the business and although I believe it to be true. I also think this has a lot to do with the amount of passion the owner may or may not have for the business.
You see many people always get busy in their lives and the last thing on their list is always the least important, or one in which they don’t care for all that much anymore. And that can simply be a profitable website to some people, so the only logical decision would be to sell the business before it collects too many cobwebs and allow another owner to take full advantage of it as the seller cashes out.
Need the money
This is probably the most common case where sellers sell a profitable website and I have talked to many sellers that have been in this boat. One guy told me he wanted to sell his website to pay for his wedding, another younger website owner even told me he want the money to go to college. Imagine that, selling an already profitable business so you can go to school!
So as you can see there can be many things that come along in people’s lives where they may (desperately or not) need the money. Which one way to be able to get that money is by selling something of value that they own, in this case a profitable website business.
Raising Funds
There are a few website owners out there who build up website businesses and bring them to very profitable state and then sell them off. From there they use the cash to invest in another bigger start up and continue to do the same. Other website sellers may only sell profitable websites because they need to raise the funds for another types of investment, whether it be a new house, trading in the stock market, building an offline business and sometimes they may even need to raise funds for surgery or health reasons.
Can’t take the business any further
These type of sellers are my all time favorite, those website owners who have built up a website with so much zest and passion for it but don’t have the experience to take it to the next level. They really see the potential in the business but just can’t take it there themselves, which is why they decide to sell it on to someone who can. And that really is a great reason to buy an online business. To take it out of the hands from someone who has put their all into it and then start building it up with the knowledge and experience you have or are learning.
However, I really must warn you!
Even though this is a list is of some legitimate reasons sellers may sell a profitable website. You too need to remember that even though a seller may share with you a story like one of these. Sometimes the real reasons are completely un-know, some reasons are the ones in which the sellers don’t particularly want to share with us.
Which is why we as buyers, or investors should I say. Absolutely need to conduct our own due diligence to ensure the business is still a safe investment no matter what reasons the sellers tell us they are selling. Always cover your but!
