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Ten top tips to prepare your site for sale



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1. Get your facts together. Buyers like to see traffic stats if you have them. If you claim a certain level of earnings it's quite normal for them to ask to see proof of that too. Claiming any special relationship with a particular partner? Or an exclusive deal with a certain merchant? Be prepared to be called on that.

2. You can put as much factual information as you're willing to disclose on a new page/folder on your site. (Tip: You may want to block search engines from accessing and indexing this information) It's very useful to have one single place to which you can send all prospective buyers. It saves compiling lengthy replies each time one of them sends you an email. Some sellers even choose to password protect this folder to allow access to only those parties who've submitted completed Non Disclosure Agreements.

3. House-keeping helps. You can remove non-working scripts, forms and pages, tidy up design issues etc. Stored some personal photos on the site? Remove them. Having a custom 404, favicon, .htaccess file with a redirect between the www and non-www versions of your site etc give the appearance that you dot your Is and cross your Ts. But don't make any changes to the WHOIS as buyers prefer to do that themselves. Bear in mind, also, that too many changes to the design or content of the site just prior to sale may make buyers suspicious. They will also be cautious that all the changes may cause the site to lose rankings with search engines.

4. Be familiar with the kind of website tools buyers are running on your site as part of their due-diligence, and run them yourself. A Xenu test, for example, will tell if you have a major problem with links on your site. Catch issues like these before buyers make them public for you in forum threads. Run a few Google searches for your site name and your own personal name as these, too, are things buyers are likely to do. Notice anything abnormal? A complaint about you in a forum is at the top of the SERPs? You have time to sort it out now before potential buyers see this and it blows your chances of a sale.

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