I'm thinking of selling my web design business

**Milkerz** · 03-24-2011 04:09 AM

I have recently started a web design business, but due to other things coming up I can no longer commit to it.

Although recently starting, I have had two clients (well the second one is just being finished) that have both agreed to pay £40 a year on top of their fees to keep the site up and running.

I was just wondering what the process was with selling my business, can I just sell the site and customer details? Do I have to sell all of my assets with it or what?

I have no idea what anyone would want to bid for it, I had a load of business cards printed but I assume they are now useless considering they had my name and address on them.

Luke

**Gulltop306** · 03-24-2011 04:28 AM

Hello Luke,

If you are interested in selling your site/business I recommend Flippa.com. You will always find someone there to take over your business as long as the price is right.

Later,
Kyle

**stand856** · 03-24-2011 08:28 AM

What exactly are you selling, ie is the business registered? Are you selling the maintenance of the sites that the customers bought? Etc. Unless you have been in a business for a while anyone can open up a web design business without buying yours.

**ronrule** · 03-24-2011 10:29 AM

It doesn't seem like you really have anything to sell... you're the only employee, you have no assets and two liabilities.

**veikoh** · 03-24-2011 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by ronrule

It doesn't seem like you really have anything to sell... you're the only employee, you have no assets and two liabilities.

Disagree, he have two customers he wants to sell

**Gator** · 03-24-2011 11:35 AM

Two customers who already got their design and will be paying only 40 per year for hosting (which is not all profit). Not much.

**ronrule** · 03-24-2011 11:45 AM

Those are the liabilities (I'm assuming the money has already been collected, now someone else has to service those accounts?). If they haven't paid yet, then just find someone you can refer them to who will pay a commission and then walk away... you don't have anything else of value to sell.

**Milkerz** · 03-25-2011 05:06 AM

Look, I was only asking the question if it could be sold so I had some more money to put towards my new venture. I was not selling this at all because of its liabilities - it has a web hosting package worth around $400 dollars, two domain names as well as the £80 coming in each year.

The reason I was thinking of selling is because I have a new idea which is better suited to my skills, and thought someone might be able to make use of the assets I have that will just be sitting around now.

**Gator** · 03-25-2011 06:32 PM

Yeah but people are saying that you don't have much assets there. Ok how much would you like you sell your "business" for? 200$? For 200$ you can get those 2 or maybe even 4 customers for your brand new webdesign biz anyday... So not much point of buying your biz. At least thast my point of view. you don't have to agree

**BarbaraKParker** · 03-26-2011 04:15 AM

Web design business in anywhere and a lot of people can get it in a much more lesser price. If you really wanted to sell it, then you should give all information to the soon to be new owner. It is also essential if you will create a contract about this.

**veikoh** · 03-26-2011 06:53 AM

Originally Posted by Milkerz

Look, I was only asking the question if it could be sold so I had some more money to put towards my new venture. I was not selling this at all because of its liabilities - it has a web hosting package worth around $400 dollars, two domain names as well as the £80 coming in each year.

The reason I was thinking of selling is because I have a new idea which is better suited to my skills, and thought someone might be able to make use of the assets I have that will just be sitting around now.

I'm not sure, have you purchased your own server or what for $400? So what's the cost of managing it? You can rent dedicated servers as low as something $5 per month nowadays.
Why your customers are paying for you 40 pounds yearly for hosting if they could host it much less cost? What kind of traffic and databases are behind those sites?

**pcbres16** · 03-26-2011 08:31 AM

Instead of selling it, since it doesn't seem like you have much to sell here and it may be more of a hassel then what it is worth, why not see about hiring a high school or college intern who is into web design, computer science, etc. You could get a High School kid to almost do it for free and promise him/her a letter of rec for a college, etc that they are applying to. In return they will manage these accounts for you and you could just work on getting more accounts for the web design company or just essentially let the young adult run it while you go off to start something else.

Just an alt. thought of something you could do

**Gator** · 03-26-2011 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by veikoh

I'm not sure, have you purchased your own server or what for $400? So what's the cost of managing it? You can rent dedicated servers as low as something $5 per month nowadays.
Why your customers are paying for you 40 pounds yearly for hosting if they could host it much less cost? What kind of traffic and databases are behind those sites?

You can NOT rent dedicated server for 5$..
And 40/YEAR is good price for the customer for decent host, actually its on the cheaper end. Of course there are various 20$/YEAR hosts if you trust that kind of hosts. But real hosting I would say starts from 5$/month which makes 40GBP/year. So this is not expensive. This is normal. Actually you could charge your webdesign clients more.

**Milkerz** · 03-28-2011 03:29 AM

Originally Posted by veikoh

I'm not sure, have you purchased your own server or what for $400? So what's the cost of managing it? You can rent dedicated servers as low as something $5 per month nowadays.
Why your customers are paying for you 40 pounds yearly for hosting if they could host it much less cost? What kind of traffic and databases are behind those sites?

If you are renting dedicated servers for $5 a month then you have yourself way too good of a deal. My hosting cost something like $390 and lasts for 3 years, and has unlimited uploads, domain addons, well, unlimited everything really. It also has a valid $100 google adwords voucher and $25 voucher for bing and yahoo.

So yeah, my thinking behind the £40 charge a year (probably around $65 a year??) meant that I would only need like 2 or 3 businesses to sign up to break even over the 3 years in that particular area.

I dont really have the effort to get someone to run my business for me either considering I now don't have any time spare to help or guide, or anything really.

Luke

**veikoh** · 03-28-2011 05:49 AM

Originally Posted by Gator

You can NOT rent dedicated server for 5$..
And 40/YEAR is good price for the customer for decent host, actually its on the cheaper end. Of course there are various 20$/YEAR hosts if you trust that kind of hosts. But real hosting I would say starts from 5$/month which makes 40GBP/year. So this is not expensive. This is normal. Actually you could charge your webdesign clients more.

As far I remember I had once account for FFMPEG dedicated server which was $5.95 or something monthly. My idea was to sell Indie music and short clips to mobiles but didn't got much interest so I shut it down after a year online.
My other sites are running in feehostia free account (good customer service even) because I do not need SMTP and my traffic (few hundred visits per day)/disk space (purchased extra 10Mb recectly for $10) had been so far enough for me. So, have those websites so much traffic (hundreds of thousands daily visitors) and database hungry that we need such kind hosting for them?