Amazon affiliate websites are more than just a marketplace for you. It’s a way for you to create value.
But it could be even more valuable if you’re willing to flip it for profit.
Not sure where to begin? This step-by-step guide will help you get started.
Assess Your Analytics and Income
The first step in selling any site isn’t posting a listing or getting your domain in order. The first step is knowing what your site is worth.
The trick, of course, is that a website doesn’t have a set value, per say. It has a range of value. There are two main factors that determine this range:
- Revenue
- Generated traffic
The higher your monthly revenue and traffic, the higher your site value will be.
That said, this evaluation isn’t cut and dry. Even if you’ve owned a domain for some time and it generates a lot of traffic, you may not be able to sell it quite as high as you think. There are a few reasons for this:
- Your domain isn’t a .com (.com sites demand higher asking prices)
- Your domain name is too long (shorter, easier to learn domains sell higher)
- Your domain name has hyphens, symbols, or lots of words (domain names without these are usually valued higher, especially if they’re one word)
- Your domain name is difficult to spell or contains an uncommon spelling or abbreviation
These factors relate to how discoverable your site is. A simple domain name like simpledomain.com is much easier for searchers to locate than s1mpledmn.com (and even if users stumble upon the latter site, they’re less likely to trust it).
Knowing Your Affiliate Site’s Worth
Knowing the process of valuing your site helps you figure out the ropes, but again, it won’t give you an exact value.
You see, the fact that you’re selling an affiliate site will affect the site’s value. Generally, affiliate sites and content-based sites get lower valuations than subscription-based sites or membership sites.
The reason behind this is simple: affiliate and content-based sites rely on organic search traffic, whereas subscription or membership sites have a built-in method of recurring income.
That doesn’t mean your affiliate site can’t fetch a high value, it just means that you should be prepared to consider the nature of the site as part of the valuation.
Posting Your Site for Sale
Once you know the value range for your site and your analytics performance from one month to the next, you’re ready to post your site for sale.
Decide How You’d Like to Sell
As you prepare to post your site for sale, you first need to consider how you’d like to sell the site.
You could, for example, sell your domain name on a domain marketplace. A few popular ones include:
- GoDaddy Auction
- eBay Marketplace
- NamePros Forum
- NameCheap Marketplace
- Sedo Marketplace
You can also sell your site through a website broker. There are three good ones worth investigating:
- Flippa
- FE International
- Empire Flippers
Or other Flippa alternatives.
The most reputable of the three is FE International, which handles most of the sales process for you, including legal documentation, buyer interaction, and marketing your listing.
They’ve brokered massive site sales going up to six figures, so they know their way around a site sale.
Their commission rates will vary depending on the site, but large sites can generally plan for a fee somewhere in the family of 15%.
But otherwise, you won’t need to pay them until they make the sale (they don’t charge you to list on their site) which means they’re highly motivated to make a good sale for you.
The Sale
Once you have your site listed, it’s time to prepare for the sale. In many ways, this process is like preparing a house for a showing—everything should be tidy and well-arranged, easy for the customer to look around and envision what they could do with it.
Here are the three steps of the sale process to keep in mind.
Optimizing Your Site for Sale
Just as you would prepare a house for sale, you need to prepare your site for sale. And when it comes to a site sale, that means optimizing your listing.
If you think you can just list your URL and make a sale tomorrow, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. You need to entice buyers. Show them the value your site offers.
For example: what’s your monthly traffic? What’s your monthly revenue? How old is the domain? How good is your domain authority?
All of these factors will tell the buyer how the site will perform when it’s in their hands. The current value will help predict future value, and that will help you justify your asking price to a buyer who will try to negotiate you down.
Select an Escrow Service
In preparation for your site sale, you should also hire an escrow service to help manage the transaction.
This is a way of safeguarding your sale against a scam. They’ll hold the payment for you and process the funds to ensure that the site doesn’t pass out of your hands until you’ve been paid for your product.
Some sites have built-in escrow services that make your life easier.
You can also hire an external escrow service. Most site flippers turn to escrow.com, but safefunds.com also offers great options in terms of buyer and seller funding options. Which one is best for you depends on your priorities.
For example, escrow.com only allows PayPal transfers and credit card purchases, and there’s a transaction limit of $5,000. Safefunds.com, on the other hand, is better for sellers, as it allows sellers to withdraw funds through a wire transfer or by check, and both options are cheaper than Escrow.com’s options.
Transferring the Domain
Once you’ve selected your escrow service, negotiated with the buyer, and settled on a price, it’s time for the magic moment: transferring your domain.
The exact details depend on the broker you use, but generally, you’ll provide an authorization code to your escrow service to start the process. Once they’ve verified the buyer’s payment, you’ll transfer the funds from escrow and your buyer will receive your domain.
Make sure to check how long your funds must stay in escrow before you try to withdraw them.
Flipping Affiliate Websites, Made Easy
Amazon affiliate websites can be a great way to generate value. But if you’re ready to trade in your site and start a new investment, you can make a good amount of cash on your site—if you know what you’re doing.
The key throughout this process is to be thorough. Imagine you’re selling a house. You wouldn’t sell to just anyone. You want to make sure that the buyer is reliable and they’re going to offer you what your site is worth.
And you need to show them that your site is worth their investment.
If you can manage that, you’re ready to sell your site and explore a whole new one.
Author: Benjamin Shepardson is the founder of NoStop Content. With an extensive career in digital marketing and web development, Ben’s knowledge of the industry has enabled small businesses to scale and grow through well-crafted content and strategy.
