Site Selling - Site Buying Glossary

The terms you are likely to come across when you buy or sell a website or business

Any webmaster related term is likely to be of interest to site buyers and sellers... but there are numerous other glossaries for the general webmaster demographic. Please use one of those if the term you are looking for is not here - list at the bottom of this page.

Alexa: Alexa.com is a company that tracks a site's popularity More

Amortisation: A procedure that gradually reduces the book value of an asset through periodic charges to income

BIN: Buy It Now or the offer price at which a seller is willing to terminate the auction and sell a site. Not all auctions have a BIN price

Cash Flow: Breakdown of changes in cash balance resulting from business activities. In-flows are balanced against out-flows to determine level of solvency

Compete: Compete.com is a ranking site like Alexa

Database: Often used to mean the list of subscribers to the site's newsletters but could also refer to database of forum posts or other material

DCF: Discounted Cash Flow is an asset valuation method of reducing future income to a present value (covered in more detail elsewhere on this site). See NPV

Dedicated Hosting: One client to a server (more)

Digital Point: One of the main website-for-sale forums. More here.

DMOZ: A web directory in which a listing is highly valued by some buyers and which powered the descriptions of SERPs listings: DMOZ

DNS: Domain Name Servers. When a site's file are moved to the buyer's server (or hosting company) the buyer typically logs into his domain control and updates the DNS to point visitors to the new location the domain is hosted.

DP: See Digital Point

Dropship: A business model where the site owner sells goods but a third party takes care of the fulfillment (packing and delivering)

EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization

Equity: Ownership in a business or the value of one's stake in a business. Usually quoted in stocks, shares or percentages or cash

Escrow: A fee-based service that protects a buyer and seller in a sale transaction. Typically, the buyer remits the funds to the escrow company who hold the funds till the buyer confirms receipt and satisfaction with the goods. The escrow then releases the funds to the seller.

Exclusivity Agreement: One that requires the selling company to negotiate exclusively with one party and to commit for a pre-defined period of time to not solicitor any other investors.

Fake Page Rank: See Page Rank

Flipping: See Website Flipping

GA: See Google Analytics

Grandfathered: Some older sites got listed in places like the Yahoo Directory before they started charging an annual fees. Those early entrants have "grandfathered" listings and don't need to pay to retain their place in the directory

Google Analytics: A traffic stats program from Google. It's free to post the GA code on a site and this code serves as an alternate to the usual server stats. It's often more trusted by sellers than stats from other free providers

Gross Profit: Profit before deduction of costs and expenses

Incentivized Site: See PTC

MMO: Abbreviation for Make Money Online.

Multiple: Generally used to mean multiple of monthly earnings. Sale prices of sites are often measured as a multiple of earnings/profit.

Name Pros: One of the main website-for-sale forums. More here.

NDA: Non-Disclosure Agreement (free sample NDA)

Net Present Value: The present value of current + future income streams less the initial investment

Net Profit: Profit after deduction of costs and expenses

Non Compete: An agreement signed by the seller agreeing to not to work for any competitor companies or otherwise compete within a certain time period

No shop, No solicitation: See Exclusivity Agreement

NPV: See Net Present Value

ODP: See DMOZ

Page Rank: Google's numerical value (1-10) given to pages  based on the quantity and quality of incoming links they've got vs the outgoing links on the page. It is easily faked and the PR displayed on the toolbar is not always accurate.

PTC: Paid to Click. An online business model where visitors are paid to complete certain actions such as viewing pages, completing surveys or clicking ads.

Reg: Short for domain registration.

Reserve Price: The price below which the seller won't sell his site. The reserve price is often kept secret by the seller

Revenue: Usually used to indicate turnover/ total sales

RSS Signups: people who've signed up to a blog's feed (quoted as an asset when blogs are sold)

Site Flipping: See Website Flipping

Sitepoint: One of the main website-for-sale forums. More here.

SP: See Sitepoint

Technorati: A ranking site, like Alexa. Technorati ranks are sometimes quoted in sales listings

Turnkey: A site shell without a developed business: You can "Turn the key and start trading immediately". They often contain no more than a domain, a design and sometimes a script or two.

Website Flipping: The buying of websites with the intention of selling them quickly on to make a profit.

Webmaster glossaries:

Webmaster glossary | Another one | Our own light-hearted take

WFH: Abbreviation for Work From Home or Work From Home Business.