Need advice on selling my online business

bwworks

Hi everyone,

What can I do to sell my small online business (selling own digital product to clients). I just do not understand where I need to go and try to find serious buyers. The project is not big, I'm looking to sell for £xx,xxx.

What's the easiest way to find buyers without brokers?

Thanks for any tips.

Emmia

If your business is small, does it actually have any value to a buyer? Why would they buy your business rather than set up themselves for free to do the same thing?

Does your digital product rely on your skills to create/maintain? Someone without those skills or skills to your level may struggle to continue it.

bwworks

My projects can easily bring from £2000-2500 per month.
There is absolutely no limit to how many licenses you can sell.

Free? It's impossible.

As a developer, I created project that sells a product and licenses to clients. It has own site, admin panel, clients panel, affiliate program for partners and much more.

The user buys a license, downloads and installs the software on domain and gets a completely personal ready-made business project/site.

It can be easily managed through its own admin panel, so special knowledge is not required. It is necessary to engage in promotion and there is very good potential for growth and a relevant niche.

That's why I think I'm selling it at a completely symbolic price, because I'm now focused on a larger project. 
And I'm sure the new owner will be very happy with the purchase, I don't think there are many similar projects on sale now.

martindow

Perhaps you could sell it to one of your customers?  If they are running profitably and know how it works, they could well be interested in paying you some money.

I imagine that you will need a contract drawn up so that you completely pass over the responsibilities and liabilities to the new owner.

Hoenir

bwworks said:

My projects can easily bring from £2000-2500 per month.
There is absolutely no limit to how many licenses you can sell.

Then why sell it now ? If the target market is that big.  

How much do you spend on marketing the product? 

Emmia

bwworks said:

My projects can easily bring from £2000-2500 per month.
There is absolutely no limit to how many licenses you can sell.

Free? It's impossible.

As a developer, I created project that sells a product and licenses to clients. It has own site, admin panel, clients panel, affiliate program for partners and much more.

The user buys a license, downloads and installs the software on domain and gets a completely personal ready-made business project/site.

It can be easily managed through its own admin panel, so special knowledge is not required. It is necessary to engage in promotion and there is very good potential for growth and a relevant niche.

That's why I think I'm selling it at a completely symbolic price, because I'm now focused on a larger project. 
And I'm sure the new owner will be very happy with the purchase, I don't think there are many similar projects on sale now.

£2,000 - £2,500 a month is basically minimum wage, so I'm not sure it's that attractive as an opportunity in some respects. You can earn that flipping burgers or stacking shelves, with paid annual leave, pension and NI contributions.

DullGreyGuy

bwworks said:

My projects can easily bring from £2000-2500 per month.
There is absolutely no limit to how many licenses you can sell.

Free? It's impossible.

As a developer, I created project that sells a product and licenses to clients. It has own site, admin panel, clients panel, affiliate program for partners and much more.

The user buys a license, downloads and installs the software on domain and gets a completely personal ready-made business project/site.

It can be easily managed through its own admin panel, so special knowledge is not required. It is necessary to engage in promotion and there is very good potential for growth and a relevant niche.

That's why I think I'm selling it at a completely symbolic price, because I'm now focused on a larger project. 
And I'm sure the new owner will be very happy with the purchase, I don't think there are many similar projects on sale now.

Your choice of terminology is not making it very easy to understand exactly what the proposition is... it sounds like you are selling a turnkey website solution, like lets say a specialist version of Wordpress (yes appreciate WP is an open source CMS)?

So income is purely licence fees? Or is there an initial up front cost and then lower annual licence fees? How many clients do you have today? What percentage signed up in the last 12 months -v- more than 12 months ago?

You're generating circa £27k in revenue, what's your EBITDA on that? 

Have you customised and incorporated other packages into your code? Eg for licence management or all your own code?

£27k revenue is a nice thing for a self run project that you've built yourself but is very small for a business to buy. Any sensible business would want the source code reviewed, you probably wouldnt want to give them the source code before they buy it meaning they need to employ a third party to do so, the last time I did that the escrow company were charging a minimum fee of £30,000.

Until understanding more about the business its hard to say a potential value but would agree with others, selling it to one of your existing customers may be your best option. At the right price they may be willing to overlook the overheads of maintaining the code and enhancements/bug fixes etc and pay more than its really worth.

bwworks

DullGreyGuy said:

Your choice of terminology is not making it very easy to understand exactly what the proposition is... it sounds like you are selling a turnkey website solution

yes, exactly

DullGreyGuy said:

Have you customised and incorporated other packages into your code? Eg for licence management or all your own code?

100% own code.

btw, all time net profit from the sales more than £300k. 

DullGreyGuy

bwworks said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Your choice of terminology is not making it very easy to understand exactly what the proposition is... it sounds like you are selling a turnkey website solution

yes, exactly

DullGreyGuy said:

Have you customised and incorporated other packages into your code? Eg for licence management or all your own code?

100% own code.

btw, all time net profit from the sales more than £300k. 

All time is no interest, last 3-5 years on a year by year basis to see stability and direction of travel is more important. My reverse telephone number lookup website made about £50k in all time, but that was over 15 years so no hope of someone wanting it. 

100% own code will most likely reduce the interest and price, means it all has to be checked and maintained going forward. Whilst some may think "build" is better than "customise" the general consensus in business for a long time has been customise is a lot better. 

Were I potential buyer I'd certainly be concerned how good the solutions cyber defences are, what's in the licence mechanism that stops a customer reselling the code they downloaded etc. Some of those could have been relatively easily addressed by pointing to off the shelf solutions that are known and trusted in handling these matters but build your own adds more due diligence up front and more maintenance going forward. 

bwworks

DullGreyGuy said:

All time is no interest, last 3-5 years on a year by year basis to see stability and direction of travel is more important. My reverse telephone number lookup website made about £50k in all time, but that was over 15 years so no hope of someone wanting it. 

100% own code will most likely reduce the interest and price, means it all has to be checked and maintained going forward. Whilst some may think "build" is better than "customise" the general consensus in business for a long time has been customise is a lot better. 

Were I potential buyer I'd certainly be concerned how good the solutions cyber defences are, what's in the licence mechanism that stops a customer reselling the code they downloaded etc. Some of those could have been relatively easily addressed by pointing to off the shelf solutions that are known and trusted in handling these matters but build your own adds more due diligence up front and more maintenance going forward. 

You are somehow pessimistic about everything.

I am not going to prove anything to you, if the interestingly voiced income for 5 years and information about your projects do not interest me, sorry

Emmia

bwworks said:

DullGreyGuy said:

All time is no interest, last 3-5 years on a year by year basis to see stability and direction of travel is more important. My reverse telephone number lookup website made about £50k in all time, but that was over 15 years so no hope of someone wanting it. 

100% own code will most likely reduce the interest and price, means it all has to be checked and maintained going forward. Whilst some may think "build" is better than "customise" the general consensus in business for a long time has been customise is a lot better. 

Were I potential buyer I'd certainly be concerned how good the solutions cyber defences are, what's in the licence mechanism that stops a customer reselling the code they downloaded etc. Some of those could have been relatively easily addressed by pointing to off the shelf solutions that are known and trusted in handling these matters but build your own adds more due diligence up front and more maintenance going forward. 

You are somehow pessimistic about everything.

I am not going to prove anything to you, if the interestingly voiced income for 5 years and information about your projects do not interest me, sorry

If it's such a great business why don't you carry on with it, or employ someone to do it?