How I Grew and Sold a 7 Digit Website

Hey everyone!

So if you haven’t heard the news, I officially closed escrow on the sale of  insuranceblogbychris.com on June 12th!!

This site has been my main source of income for about 10 years!

(I sold 4 other insurance sites, to be exact, but the majority of my income was derived from IBBC.)

A lot of friends, family, and insurance agents have asked me questions like:

• why did you sell?
• how much did you sell for?
• how did you value it?
• how did you get started?

So I decided instead of answering all these emails and Facebook comments individually, I would post a few quick videos giving you my answers.

So here you go!

What a 7 Digit Website Looks Like & Why I Sold

In this video I’ll show you:

• key statistics and keywords I ranked for that made my site valuable (1:00)
• how I got started (3:37)
• why I sold (6:45)
• what I’ll be doing now (9:48)

How I Valued My Website & How Much It Sold For

To start, some of you have asked if I put the site up for bid on a site like Empire Flippers or FE International.

No, I didn’t.

Here’s how it went down…

FIRST:

I caught wind of my old friends over at TermLife2Go Selling their site.  I had heard it sold for a 7 digit amount, so I wondered if my site, although smaller, might also be worth 7 digits.

It wasn’t so much the money, though.  TermLife2Go’s sale mostly just planted a seed in my head that I may finally be willing to sell.  The site was 10 years old now.  I’ve authored or helped author hundreds of articles.  I thought I might be ready.

I mentioned to a few friends that I’d be interested in selling and apparently that’s all it took.

I got an email offer from the eventual buyer and right out of the gate, they made me a legitimate offer without even speaking to me.  I could tell this wasn’t a spam email.  They had spent a considerable amount of time on my site and were serious.

So I spoke to them and spoke to a handful of other people I knew would be interested.

One big factor was the buyer was willing to make an all cash offer, rather than a payment over several years.  That was important to me as I’ve heard horror stories (including from my own partner at Huntley Wealth, Kim Ely) of people who sold their business and didn’t get paid.

I found that without taking my site out to bid, I had several companies interested in buying it.  Many of them were willing to improve on my eventual buyer’s bid, but they weren’t offering all of it up front, so I didn’t go with any of them.

Still, I wanted to be sure I was getting a fair deal, so besides the handful of companies I spoke to, I wanted to research what my website was worth.

So I did some google searching and didn’t find too much help putting a value to website.

I found some of the common advice like:

• 3 to 6 times earnings
• use comps
• use the price tools at Empire Flippers

But honestly I only knew of 1 comp, and the earnings was also a hard gauge because we doubled our traffic in late 2017, so our 2017 earnings weren’t really a great indicator of our value.  And the Empire Flippers estimate was way lower than what I knew my site was worth, so that wasn’t much help.

So I relied on the advice of some sage counsel, and also used Ahrefs as a tool.  You can see everything I used to value my website in the video below.

Here’s a quick guide:

• How I valued the site (0:00)
• How much it sold for and its true value to me (6:10)

How I Got Started (And YOU Can Too!)

A lot of friends ask me how I got started online, and if they should get a website.

YES!

I don’t care if you’re a teacher, a student, a contractor, blue collar or white collar… I think everyone should have a website and can make money online.

In this video, I share how it all began for me and give some useful beginner tips.

Video guide:

• Why everyone should have a website (0:00)
• How anyone can start a site quickly and easily (1:40)
• Simple content strategy for beginners (6:06)

Here are some of the tools I referenced in the video above:

• How to Set up and Website (and Write Your First Article) in Less than 10 Minutes using Siteground
• Beginners’ Guide to WordPress
• Siteground Review (2018)

Advanced Techniques I Used to Double My Traffic Before I Sold

This section is for my internet marketing nerd friends who eat and breathe this stuff.

Here are some advanced tips I used the year before I sold IBBC to more than double its traffic (and value!)

Here are a couple tools I mentioned in the video:

• Ahrefs
• Thrive Architect – this is a must have plugin if you’re a website owner.  It seriously helps me make awesome power pages (beautifully) without the help of a developer.  Super easy to use.

Your Turn

What did I miss when it came to selling my website?

What tools would you use to value a site and how would you have grown your site differently prior to selling?

Let me know in the comments!