Sold a Million Dollar Website. AMA

Also, another question is how many pieces of content do you publish before you start marketing a new site? 15? 20? 50? I've always thought it looked odd to market a website before the homepage is even filled up with content, seems 1/2 done. just curious, thanks!
 
Also, another question is how many pieces of content do you publish before you start marketing a new site? 15? 20? 50? I've always thought it looked odd to market a website before the homepage is even filled up with content, seems 1/2 done. just curious, thanks!
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I like to have about 20 + articles before launching, since you're building your brand socially, the majority of your traffic will visit via inner page/post, so be sure to capture them there with monetization or lowering the bounce rate.
 
Hey Tavin, congrats on your success man!

I have a couple questions for you.

1. For your content team, do you ever offer them an equity % in the site for an extra incentive, or do you just pay them on a per-word basis?

2. For creating content that you think could go viral....do you just brainstorm potential topics that you think will be interesting, or do you look at competitors and see which of their posts had the most shares/likes?

3. Do you create a new team for each site you create, that has knowledge or expertise in that specific niche. Or do you have the same team that works on all your sites? And just curious, but how many VAs or employees do you have to pull all of this off?
 
Awesome responses, thanks Tavin.

(Also, I was just giving you shit with my last comment, wasn't a serious statement - more an admission of how I would personally spend the next two weeks after selling a 1M site).

Last 2 General Q's:

1. How important are newsletters in monetizing your traffic? I've seen success with cold-conversions from aff links on articles etc, but never really experimented with monetizing the backend of an informational site.

1b. Would you say that monetized newsletter/auto-responder sequences are something that potential buyers find very appealing?​

1c. How much effort do you put into your newsletters?
​
(obviously, these things depend on niche, so let's use "self-improvement" as an example).

2. Have you flipped a site that had a product (info-product, subscription-based product, etc...) attached to it?

2b. If so, do you think it's an important selling point, or actually a potential liability?​

Thanks for your time.
 
Tavin said:
2. I know they're flexible, but I wanted them to work their ass off for us. So I agreed to their full % (10%), and it was worth it. They worked very hard, and never quit. The sale was filled with many high points, and low points. It was a very long 6 month period. I couldn't have done it without them. Thomas the owner of FEI is very knowledgeable, and I never once felt like I had to explain anything to him. He gets it. His broker team is very professional and knowledgeable as well.
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For the little that it's worth, can confirm this. He's a very, very good guy to work with.
 
Hey Tavin, congrats on your success man!

I have a couple questions for you.

1. For your content team, do you ever offer them an equity % in the site for an extra incentive, or do you just pay them on a per-word basis?

2. For creating content that you think could go viral....do you just brainstorm potential topics that you think will be interesting, or do you look at competitors and see which of their posts had the most shares/likes?

3. Do you create a new team for each site you create, that has knowledge or expertise in that specific niche. Or do you have the same team that works on all your sites? And just curious, but how many VAs or employees do you have to pull all of this off?
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1. Majority of the time I offer to pay them a weekly amount to write/manage their content on site through CMS/Wordpress, so everything is hand's off for me. I come in later and will fix anything I see wrong. I offer some people equity, but it's usually when they're contributing in a much heavier fashion. I rarely pay per word anymore. I want someone to be a part of the brand, an outside writer wont know your audience well.

2. It's a strong mix of both. I like to curate content ideas from other articles i've seen do well, or even curate ideas from places like reddit, etc. The best articles always seem to be original, but i've also had some monsters from copying/rewriting others.

3. I create a new team for each site, but sometimes that team will have familiar resources (writer, etc.). My VA team stays constant, but each site usually has someone that is unique to the site/project that has some sort of subject matter expertise.

The sites sold above had 4 employees/workers + 2 full time VAs


Last 2 General Q's:

1. How important are newsletters in monetizing your traffic? I've seen success with cold-conversions from aff links on articles etc, but never really experimented with monetizing the backend of an informational site.

1b. Would you say that monetized newsletter/auto-responder sequences are something that potential buyers find very appealing?

1c. How much effort do you put into your newsletters?
(obviously, these things depend on niche, so let's use "self-improvement" as an example).

2. Have you flipped a site that had a product (info-product, subscription-based product, etc...) attached to it?

2b. If so, do you think it's an important selling point, or actually a potential liability?
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1. I'm a novice when it comes to newsletters. I built a big list with the sites sold above, but only would mail out once a month. I left a lot on the table. I would say the best monetization that came from the newsletter was for the Tshirt shop.

1b. Of course. Buyers are interested in every monetization method that doesn't involve Organic Search.

1c. Very little, but there is big value in having a list. I just didn't take advantage of it on this project.

2. Not yet, but i'm going to be listing one very soon. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.
 
Thanks for the reply! In the spirit of keeping this going, I have some additional questions that have been weighing heavy on my mind:

1. Leveraging the power of social seems to be a huge part of your success. Do you have any general (or specific) tips for quickly gaining and maintaining large followings?

2. Obviously FB is the main social platform everyone thinks of when you talk about exposure engines, etc. But are there any other social platforms (Pinterest, Twitter, etc) you think marketers should focus heavily on for their Big Brands? What has been your experience with these platforms as far as creating initial traffic explosions to your sites?

3. You claim monetizating social traffic is a completely different beast than profiting off of organic traffic. Could you share with us some general tips for monetizing social? Is this just a matter of optimizing ad CTR? I'm really interested how you pull this off considering you don't put a huge emphasis on capturing emails and converting users on the backend.

Thanks in advance!
 
1. Leveraging the power of social seems to be a huge part of your success. Do you have any general (or specific) tips for quickly gaining and maintaining large followings?

2. Obviously FB is the main social platform everyone thinks of when you talk about exposure engines, etc. But are there any other social platforms (Pinterest, Twitter, etc) you think marketers should focus heavily on for their Big Brands? What has been your experience with these platforms as far as creating initial traffic explosions to your sites?

3. You claim monetizating social traffic is a completely different beast than profiting off of organic traffic. Could you share with us some general tips for monetizing social? Is this just a matter of optimizing ad CTR? I'm really interested how you pull this off considering you don't put a huge emphasis on capturing emails and converting users on the backend.
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1. People are followers, and it's tough to gain social traction, without others seeing social validation. To get over this startup hurdle, i'll advertise in cheap english speaking countries, to build up 5k+ likes. From there i'll switch over to advertising to high quality english speaking (US/Canada/UK/AUS). I also like to build seeder pages that are related to the niche and can be used to send traffic to the main BF page and the site itself.

2. If your site is female related (example: DIY or Crafts), then obviously pinterest is huge. I've seen some DIY sites get hundreds of thousands of hits from pinterest alone. To take advantage of pinterest traffic, you would want to deploy a post/image slider so you can maximize pageviews on your site. The more pageviews, more impressions = Higher payout from CPM ads.

3. It took a long time to finally figure out how to monetize social traffic without pissing off the readers. I think the solution 100% depends on your audience/demo, but like stated above the mixture that worked on this site for social monetization was Taboola/In-Image Ads(Vibrant Media)/Adsense. I've noticed sites like Viralnova are doing similar ,and even performing arbitrage buy purchasing traffic from Taboola as well. From here it was a game of optimizing CTR with placement/color.
 
Congrats on the success! And thank you for your answers to everyones questions. It's always good to see successful IM'ers

Cheers to a great 2015!
 
Hey Tavin,

Can you talk a bit more about those seeder pages....Are you getting followers in the same way you're getting them for your brand page? What kind of content/info are you including on the seed page? Are they well designed? How do you push visitors from the seed page to your brand page in a subtle way?



Tavin said:
1. People are followers, and it's tough to gain social traction, without others seeing social validation. To get over this startup hurdle, i'll advertise in cheap english speaking countries, to build up 5k+ likes. From there i'll switch over to advertising to high quality english speaking (US/Canada/UK/AUS). I also like to build seeder pages that are related to the niche and can be used to send traffic to the main BF page and the site itself.
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Can you talk a bit more about those seeder pages....Are you getting followers in the same way you're getting them for your brand page? What kind of content/info are you including on the seed page? Are they well designed? How do you push visitors from the seed page to your brand page in a subtle way?
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In regards to the seeder pages, i'm much more liberal with content and the people engaging the content being posted are less critical. These pages are mainly used to get niche focused, relevant eyeballs on the content. It's hard to not succeed when you can direct thousands of niche targeted eyes on your product in minutes. (Product being content in this example)

From there you have your brand page. This page is much more potent for your content, and the audience is much more critical of anything posted. You also have Brand Champions that will share anything you post or buy anything you offer, because they love the brand. These fans can't really be bought. You have to use the seeder pages to share content from the main brand page and you will organically build up that fanbase over time from the feeder pages. You also need to do a good job of capturing possible fans on your website with multiple call to actions items for social. You have to make sure your content delivers.

This is the biggest difference between buzzfeed and viralnova imo. Buzzfeed has lasting power because their content actually delivers, where viralnova is more so a play on high CTR featured images and spicy titles.
 
Tavin said:
In regards to the seeder pages, i'm much more liberal with content and the people engaging the content being posted are less critical. These pages are mainly used to get niche focused, relevant eyeballs on the content. It's hard to not succeed when you can direct thousands of niche targeted eyes on your product in minutes. (Product being content in this example)

From there you have your brand page. This page is much more potent for your content, and the audience is much more critical of anything posted. You also have Brand Champions that will share anything you post or buy anything you offer, because they love the brand. These fans can't really be bought. You have to use the seeder pages to share content from the main brand page and you will organically build up that fanbase over time from the feeder pages. You also need to do a good job of capturing possible fans on your website with multiple call to actions items for social. You have to make sure your content delivers.

This is the biggest difference between buzzfeed and viralnova imo. Buzzfeed has lasting power because their content actually delivers, where viralnova is more so a play on high CTR featured images and spicy titles.
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Really good stuff, man.
So, seeder fan pages will be something like:

Fan Page 1: Dog toys
Fan Page 2: Dog training
Fan Page 3: Dogs vs Cats

and your brand page will be:

Brand Page: Tavin's Blue Dog Snuggies

You'll post general dog related content on the fan pages, and share Tavin's Blue Dog Snuggies content within those pages intermittently....and the traffic will flow?
 
stackcash said:
Really good stuff, man.
So, seeder fan pages will be something like:

Fan Page 1: Dog toys
Fan Page 2: Dog training
Fan Page 3: Dogs vs Cats

and your brand page will be:

Brand Page: Tavin's Blue Dog Snuggies

You'll post general dog related content on the fan pages, and share Tavin's Blue Dog Snuggies content within those pages intermittently....and the traffic will flow?
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I would imagine the seeder page's theme/title would look something like, "Dogs are Better Than Cats" or "Dog Lovers Unite!"

You post funny memes and cute videos as content. You gain fans to your seeder page by posting funny pictures/memes on related, popular pages' comments sections (racking up likes for exposure + leaking fans) and also promoting paid posts by targeting the fans of those same pages (using 3rd party software).

Obviously, not an expert, so Tavin would have to clarify or verify I'm somewhat on the money.
 
Capital said:
and also promoting paid posts by targeting the fans of those same pages (using 3rd party software).
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And if possible target some fans with opposing views to stir up controversy. People love to share things they have commented on or when they feel attacked. So in this case you would also target a few cat lover pages with a post about how dogs are better than cats.
 
I love the concept of these "Seeder Pages". It's like a social PBN where the equity isn't in link juice but in traffic, and you're warming and qualifying it as you go. It's beautiful, my niggromps.
 
Really good stuff, man.
So, seeder fan pages will be something like:

Fan Page 1: Dog toys
Fan Page 2: Dog training
Fan Page 3: Dogs vs Cats

and your brand page will be:

Brand Page: Tavin's Blue Dog Snuggies

You'll post general dog related content on the fan pages, and share Tavin's Blue Dog Snuggies content within those pages intermittently....and the traffic will flow?
Click to expand...

I would imagine the seeder page's theme/title would look something like, "Dogs are Better Than Cats" or "Dog Lovers Unite!"

You post funny memes and cute videos as content. You gain fans to your seeder page by posting funny pictures/memes on related, popular pages' comments sections (racking up likes for exposure + leaking fans) and also promoting paid posts by targeting the fans of those same pages (using 3rd party software).

Obviously, not an expert, so Tavin would have to clarify or verify I'm somewhat on the money.
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This is correct. The seeder page could be something like "I freaking love dogs" or "Dog owners rock", you could even break it down further into Labs, collies, etc.

These would all be used to seed/gain likes/build brand equity for the brand page for your ecomm pet store or petco affiliate shop :wink:

It's much easier, cheaper to gain a massive amount of real quality fans on the seeder pages, then it is on the brand page itself.

All the while like hobbster said above, your building equity through traffic, real brand equity. You're also building high quality social signals. I've noticed more and more articles ranking purely on social metrics (engagements = likes, shares, comments) with ZERO built backlinks.

If you're not rooting your "authority brand" in social media, then it's not an authority brand. Your SEO won't last. Your Brand won't last.
 
"If you're not rooting your "authority brand" in social media, then it's not an authority brand. Your SEO won't last. Your Brand won't last."

This is a gold point. I am learning this hardcore right now with my branding efforts for my authority site. As soon as I started to mentally treat it like a 'movement', all of the microdecisions I was making day to day started to have a better effect on the overall metrics of the site.
 
Hey Tavin, crossposting from my own thread, what would you expect to get out of a site with the following stats? I've been looking on flippa and the monthly multiples people are getting are all over the place. Would you use a reserve for a small site like this?

blog in the style of designtaxi.com / designboom.com

Month: Oct '14 / Nov / Dec
================
Pageviews: 130,367 / 130,538 / 148,622
Organic: 17,088 / 17,483 / 16,813
Adsense: $346.58 / 340.83 / 422.24
Expense: $25 per month

Current Followers, Branded Accounts (all organically grown, real followers)
=================
Facebook: 732 (up from 354 on Nov. 6)
Pinterest: 3639 (up from 2482 on Oct. 1)
Google+: 1664
Twitter: 7846 (up from 4366 on Oct. 1)
Tumblr: 16654 (up from 10833 on Oct. 1)

1577 posts all unique of around 100-150 words.
Moz homepage: PA 35, mR 4.2, DA 30
Inner page links from huffington post, io9, bored panda

60% US traffic, with UK, Australia, Canada the next 3.
 
Just stumbled across this thread, thanks for the shout out and some others mentioning they had worked with me/my team.

I was the broker on this deal. Was great to get this sold for Tavin.

If anyone has any questions regarding selling a site/valuation let me know. Always happy to help.
 
Thomas Smale said:
Just stumbled across this thread, thanks for the shout out and some others mentioning they had worked with me/my team.

I was the broker on this deal. Was great to get this sold for Tavin.

If anyone has any questions regarding selling a site/valuation let me know. Always happy to help.
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How did you find actually a customer? Where did you look?

Why did you think the customer paid such a high price?

Appreciate your reply!
 
algospider said:
How did you find actually a customer? Where did you look?

Why did you think the customer paid such a high price?

Appreciate your reply!
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Buyer was already on our list. We've spent years growing it and building relationships with buyers.

The buyer paid a fair multiple. I think both parties got a good deal.
 
Wow! I love this thread. Extremely insightful!

@Tavin
As I read, it took you 6 month from the start of the website to the sell, right?
How fast do you think could you do a project like that? Which factors determine the time it would take?

Muchos gracias for your reply!
 
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