Sell My Site

[john beale]

I havent made a success of my online store, http://www.discountbabygoods.co.uk unable to attract buyers even though my ebay store is doing almost okay.
I have Catalog V7 and want to get somthing back by selling the business as a going concern how do I sell the Actinic based part of this?
I only have a licence key not the CD and I would want to back up the site and transfer it to the buyers PC, in another forum I read that even transfering it to another of your own PC's means buying another licence? is this true if its only changing hands not running on multiple computers?
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
John

[fleetwood]

I'm not trying to be funny here, but why would someone realistically want to buy your business as a going concern, when it is not a sucesss, by your own admission?
You may want to give you marketing stratedgy a little more thought.
Having used Actinic to run a store, I don't think you can then sell on the product, under the licensing agreement, and the business itself does not sound like it has any intrinsic value.
Best to be realistic.

[pinbrook]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Martin here.

There is very little to sell. Assuming you were to sell the site, there is next to no stock to go with it, and no customer base.

You've got loads of products marked out of stock and lots of stuff comes direct from the manufacturer.

So all you've actually got to sell is a website with zero customisation (ie straight out of the box), and a domain name.

Martin quite rightly says that once Actinic has been used for a live site you can't sell it on for someone to use to create their own site. You can only sell it as the babysite at the same url.

I must admit when I looked at your front page I wasn't filled with customer confidence, this line is abit contradictory "All of our products are new, we do not deal in refurbished or returned stock.
Mothercare goods are end of line or overstock and not (to the best of our knowledge) returns."

The list of links underneath is quite unprofessional, after all you should really be aiming to keep visitors on your site rather than offer them the opportunity to go else where.

Sorry to sound so negative, but if it is of any use resale value is often calculated as a multiple of turnover, you have said there is little traffic on the site therefore this might give you an indication of sale value and saleability. Although whether there is a market for websites is still to be established - yours or others.

[Jan]

You need to contact Actinic sales and tell them of your plans, they will be able to advise you on what you can and can't do. My understanding of it is that you can't sell your license - but you can sell it as part of your business, providing it is used to run the same shop.

Your site looks ok to me, Anything Pink is a great section :-)

You have a product called Embriodered Cellular Blanket - does it have a ribbon edge, like these http://www.mothercare.com/invt/lz2590&bklist=

Regards,

[john beale]

Thank you all for your trouble in replying, however, Jo and Martin you didnt answer the questions asked, which were how do I sell the site and how do I back it up to transfer to another persons PC, Perhaps you could answer those questions instead of sniping.
I have taken note of your views and have deleted the offsite links and product description.
As for marketing, we have tried most things, we ran several expensive google adwords campaigns in several countries (yes we do have an international customer base) we found that of people viewing the adverts only 5% clicked on them and sales from this were near zero.
As for value, well yes there is a lot of out of stock items, there are also many hidden items and even whole sections, it was a huge site and created when we had a highstreet shop and had more storage, now that we have taken the decision to sell we have run down the stock and will continue to do so but there is enough to give someone a good varied product line to begin with plus a customer base and excellent supplier contacts.
The site itself represents a lot of hard work and expense, and (regardless of price) it does have a value to someone who has ambitions to sell similar items online and there are plenty of those people around.
We already have one serious enquirey for the site but its the mechanics of selling it and transfering it over that I need help with please.

[fleetwood]

Sorry John, but sniping was not my aim - I was merely questioning the value of the business as a going concern. As Jo had pointed out, the design looks pretty standard (the same as could be achieved straight out of the box), which would not really add any value over the price of buying the software as new, and I would find it hard to attribute any value to a business which is not achieveing any significant turnover, unless you hold some marketable leverage (exclusive buying or selling contracts, a marketable trademark, an active customer database of purchasing customers etc).

There have been a few questions on the forum regarding the value of a business lately, and I guess I mistakenly added you to that list.

Its good to hear that you have an interested buyer, and I wish you luck in realising a fair value.

The actual mechanics of transferring the site and ownership to a new owner are best conducted via Actinic sales, who will advise how you can transfer over the license, within terms.

[pinbrook]

Like Martin, my comments were not written as snipes, but as someone who has been working within the ecommerce field since 1997. Maybe I misread what you were asking for in your initial post.

There have been posts in this forum asking about the value of a website where website owner has perceived the value of the site to be indicative of the amount of work they have put into it, this of course does not necessarily have any real bearing on the true value and what someone is prepared to buy it for. I was trying to point out that your website alone didn't have a great deal of value as it was pretty well out of the box with product input, something that can be acheived in an afternoon.

It is the value of the business which is the crucial factor.

Selling a website is a topic that is raised in the forum from time to time, often with heated responses. It would be interesting to hear from people who have sucessfully sold web businesses to see how the sale compares with the sale of a more traditional business.

One thing we are all agreed with is the transfer of license has to be discussed with actinic. The mechanics are to install the software on the purchasers Pc (from the CD and to patch it to the same level as your copy) and then export a snapshot from your PC and import a snapshot to the new PC