Ask Me Anything [AMA] - After Liquidation I Cleared $500k on a Site I Built From Scratch

[Ryuzaki]

Some of you may have noticed I became less active on the forum lately, and this was because I've been embroiled in months of negotiations, due diligence, transfers, inspection periods, and finally the resolution to liquidating a site.

Graphs & What Not

(the graphs above do not include the liquidation earnings or month)​

The Quick Background
This was a site I built by hand. I registered the domain, wrote probably 200 of the articles at least, designed the theme, and built most of the links myself until that ball started rolling on its own through SERP exposure.

The site had a lot of ups and downs and was a mixture of a decent vertical to be in and was a passion project. The problem was I lost my passion for it when the hobby became work, and it turned out that while it was a decent vertical, it wasn't the easiest or best. It required expert level content and a lot of work regarding images and all of the extra stuff that went on with publishing.

This site struggled a couple of times, once with a tech SEO issue that took a year to solve. There were all kinds of ups and downs. Amazon cut rates TWICE during my time with the site, meaning that part of the revenue got cut to 1/4th ultimately. I eventually pivoted into the display ads route which helped out quite a bit, but by then the damage was done. I didn't care any more and barely touched it for two years (and you can see it starting to decay in the graphs below). Ultimately I realized I'd better sell it, especially since I have so many other irons in the fire.

I had been entertaining the idea of selling this site for about 6 months. I'd had 13 prior very serious offers but the timing was never right. And as soon as I made a firm commitment to sell, I had a company reach out with an offer. That's how it went down, and probably for the best since it didn't offer me time to waffle back and forth about it. I'm glad it's out of my hands now, even though it was my baby that I was emotionally attached to for a while. I was too precious about it for a long time which hurt the growth.

The nice thing is I've already replaced the income with a newer project that I could sell now for well over what I sold this one for, and it's showing no signs of slowing down. And with my other projects and businesses, things are really looking up in general. I've learned a lot since I started this site 8 years ago, especially about operating slim and refined and reaching scale. And a lot of that has to do with the foundation and saying no to certain concepts or even niches or verticals.

Some Stats

• Current age: 8 years
• I built it up to being over DR50 mostly by hand
• It cleared just under 15,000,000 pageviews
• The RPMs ranged month-to-month between $20 and $35
• Had 313 posts published by the end (pruned nearly 150 at one point)
• My total ROI of all expenses vs. revenues was 2,727%
• Operation profit: $265,000
• Liquidation profit: $247,775
• Total profit: $512,000

Years down the line after I had solved all the issues, suffered all the revenue cuts, and moved into display ads, up to before the sale, the site earned a rounded $265,000 in profit, largely weighted towards the last 2 years. Then I liquidated for $250,000 minus escrow fees I used in negotiations.

I recognize this isn't the biggest deal in history, but who doesn't love an AMA? I'm going to set back the right amount for the taxman, get some improvements done on my home, and save some back for a rainy day, and deploy the rest strategically over time to grow my current projects. I'm not going to splurge on anything but maybe a chinese takeout or even (gasp) going to the buffet! Frugal is as frugal does.

Ask Me Anything
I'm planning on taking a 2 week break starting tomorrow. This will be my first vacation (staycation!) in over a decade. The grind is endless. I better take this time while I can justify it.

So I'll be popping in frequently to answer any questions as they arise. I'm happy to go into as much depth as I can without breaking my NDA. Happy to field questions about coding themes, building sites, publishing processes, negotiating, valuations, when and why to sell, link building, whatever!

 

[secretagentdad]

Had 313 posts published by the end (pruned nearly 150 at one point)
What happened after you pruned?
Any notes on the timing of what ever happened?

What was the biggest keyword volume wise?
Did you have a couple of big number 1s or was it a large distribution of first page rankings?

Did you see any brand traction as a result of just existing? Did google ever give you any discovery, also ask or related keyword brand tail pushes? If so how long did that take? was it related to when your content came out?

You have any notable exposure channels other than organic? Any break out media attention or consistent social traffic?

How aggressive was ad placement and can you name any networks used?

 

[Potatoe]

I've learned a lot since I started this site 8 years ago, especially about operating slim and refined and reaching scale.

This is what I'm most interested in, could you please elaborate on this?

 

[breedingsuccess]

1. Were you posting after the January 2021 revenue spike or did you never post again?
2. Did it have the potential to grow? Meaning had you already tapped that niche to the max?
3. Do you think the burnout was due to you not taking vacations for a decade or it's just from the sheer volume of work (where you could get burned out vacations or not)?
4. What would you do differently if you were starting this site all over again & knowing that you would sell it?

 

[infotech]

what was the seo issue?

 

[larcha]

Great work Ryu. Probably a nice relief once the entire liquidation process was complete.

Few questions from me:

1. What links did you primarily focus on building?
2. How much did you spend on link building (per link)? If free, how did you approach outreach?
3. In your journey, you mentioned the initial rank decay right away once you sent links, but then achieved the snippet for that main keyword. Do you think you only achieved the snippet because of the links?
4. To grow the site further (with a goal of doubling the income), can you speak to how you would have approached additional investment in content vs. links?

 

[Upsilon]

what was the seo issue?

Not Ryuzaki but I am sure he refers to this:

https://www.buildersociety.com/thre...-seo-sites-with-the-kitchen-sink-method.5607/

 

[Ryuzaki]

While hunting for images I've already shared to help address question below, I came across some more I'll post here and at the top of other posts of mine just for fun:

Had 313 posts published by the end (pruned nearly 150 at one point)
What happened after you pruned?
Any notes on the timing of what ever happened?

The backstory is I had a problem with the site. You can see the early and long plateau early on in the traffic. When I was developing and going through my Kitchen Sink SEO Method, I uncovered every possible stone, no matter how small, to fix everything and anything. It was at the end that I discovered the true problem.

It all related to bad indexation. The 150 posts I pruned weren't necessarily low quality but they were short and didn't fit the direction the site was going. Deleting them allowed me to strip out a lot of categories and focus my efforts. I do think removing them helped boost my overall Panda score which got me out of this penalty I had.

But the true problem was I had... I can't recall, I think it was over 700 blank pages indexed. I created this neat affiliate link redirect system where I can change a destination link in one spot and that would propagate across the site, since I'd use the same link in many different posts. It kept me from having to change them everywhere, and instead just change it in one spot.

I set them up to be nofollow on the front end and to send HTTP headers as noindex and nofollow too. But at some point when mindlessly tinkering I had set the redirect sub-folder to 'disallow' in the robots.txt. So Google could no longer crawl them and see that they were noindex.

I described it at the time as Google's job being to walk down a hallway and there's endless doors on both sides. They peek in and then slap a label on the door so they know what's behind the door. With disallow, the doors were locked so they couldn't see what was behind it, but they still knew a door was there. And they're really just indexing the doorways and not the rooms themselves in some cases. So what they did was indexed a blank page and since they couldn't even get the title tag they labeled the door with the anchor text I used. And thus I ended up with 700+ blank pages indexed.

This is the process of how it proceeds in getting that crap out of the index. The trick to get posts out of the index fast is to upload temporary sitemaps and submit them to Search Console, and once enough URLs drop out from that sitemap, strip those and re-upload again. This keeps them crawling:

It takes a long time, as you can see, but it works. And here were the results:

​

So yes, if you're having an indexation quality issue (Panda), this can help DRASTICALLY. At this point I was already mentally done with the site and the excitement didn't come back.

What was the biggest keyword volume wise?
Did you have a couple of big number 1s or was it a large distribution of first page rankings?

My biggest and most successful was 233,000 volume. I had #1 for a long time and then remained top 5 for the rest of the time after competitors copied me.

Side story: I had one competitor copy every single post I put up for a few categories that matched their site like a week after I'd post. So I ended up plundering their entire site and cut their traffic in half. There's a thread on the forum asking about this in general right now, I need to share the story there (there's not much more to it, really).

I'd say it was 80/20. The top 20 posts pulled 80% of the views. The distribution wouldn't have been so heavily weighted if I had time for more content and wasn't as good at on-page. I was able to sneak up in some nice SERPs due to experience and the power of the domain, and I did that instead of spraying out lots of content. I wouldn't do the same (and don't on my new project) if the content wasn't such an annoyance to develop.

Did you see any brand traction as a result of just existing? Did google ever give you any discovery, also ask or related keyword brand tail pushes? If so how long did that take? was it related to when your content came out?

I did, but it wasn't a result of just existing. I'm an actual expert in the field. I ended up having links from nearly every brand in the industry, including brands every single one of us here knows and many use. Those were editorial links. I got free links from every forum too thanks to being used as references. I got links from all the big newspapers and magazine sites too, as a result of having a lot of SERP exposure.

Yeah, I got quite a bit of Discover traffic. I don't know about People Also Ask or auto-fill suggestions or any of that. But I did get discover out the wazoo. Freshness definitely plays a role in Discover but I found a way to re-trigger freshness without changing the content, so I had even years-old posts sucking down Discover traffic. I shared that on the forum too, as I was deconstructing what it took to be fresh. Still works, but requires some coding and front-end skills.

You have any notable exposure channels other than organic? Any break out media attention or consistent social traffic?

I had every social media and video site (plus more but I won't be specific, I have a post-sale NDA and can't have the site figured out. I didn't receive a ton of social media traffic of my own accord because I didn't work it that hard but I'd go viral on Facebook and #1'd Reddit on /r/all many times. The traffic isn't that valuable so I let it happen naturally.

I had tons of invites for podcasts, interviews, and of course guest posts. I didn't take many of them as it became overwhelming. I did do some guest posting though.

How aggressive was ad placement and can you name any networks used?

"Very". I mentioned the other day on the forum that the IAB and Google and Better Ad Standards have done research on what's acceptable before it hurts user experience and SERP positioning. And I pushed it to the max. I did this with Mediavine, who gives you full control over every little variable.

This is what I'm most interested in, could you please elaborate on this?

Scaling comes down to accepting your position in a business. To use the E-Myth jargon, many of us want to be the Technicians. We want to work in the business and must at the start. We learn to code, design, write, promote, etc. But eventually if you want to grow you have to become the Managers, and then we hire for those roles too and we become the Entrepreneurs (the thinkers who do the big picture stuff).

Part of working your way out of being a Technician is to document your entire workflow so you can train people. You should have it done in such a step-by-step way with text and video and images that a high school kid can produce the same results as a PhD candidate.

I did that and created an entire website to store my training documents. I also coded a bot to do 95% of my Quality Assurance work for me so I can still act as manager to some degree. On a newer site I have a guy from Turkey knocking it out of the park, even with the language barrier, because the training site is so simple to understand, and then he works through checklists on Trello.

It's all about documentation, operating procedures, organization, quality assurance, and workflow designs. I'm all set up and of course you start finding you need to re-order part of the workflow and refine things as you let go of more parts, which is where I'm at now.

Scale isn't just about large amounts of "whatever". It's about ensuring consistency in production and in quality. Once you nail that, that's when you can open the flood gates. It's a pendulum that swings back and forth, but notches upwards as you go. You can reach "scale" fast if you keep the quality and price low. But if you want to maintain quality it's going to take time and money. That's the pendulum swing.

You can ONLY choose two of the three corners of the triangle. I chose the bottom two because I believe it will pay off in the end, rather than racing towards a flip (which can work but you can really get screwed if the landscape changes on you, which happens constantly in SEO):

​

Were you posting after the January 2021 revenue spike or did you never post again?

I posted a little bit. Maybe 15 articles that year and then no more. I did manage to add more revenue during that time but you could ultimately say I never posted again. This did come up in the sale. I'll talk more about that whole process if anybody wants to ask. I don't want to type a novel if not prompted.

Did it have the potential to grow? Meaning had you already tapped that niche to the max?

It has crazy potential to grow. I had 5 more categories lined up to roll out and I hadn't even remotely finished any of the existing ones. This is an entire vertical, so it can go on forever. I'll explain why I didn't push it in the next answer.

Do you think the burnout was due to you not taking vacations for a decade or it's just from the sheer volume of work (where you could get burned out vacations or not)?

It wasn't burnout. What happened was during the time this site was struggling, I did 3 things:

• I developed and worked the Kitchen Sink Method.
• I started a new big site where scale would be a part of the game.
• I started a smaller, contained site on a juicy domain I had.

So after I finished the Kitchen Sink work as a last hail mary to fix the site, I immediately built out the next big site and wrote maybe 25 posts and then cooked up a unique design. When that was done I did the same for the smaller, contained site. I immediately abandoned it due to competition levels despite the juicy domain.

So really I was just casting nets to see what fish I could pull in. The new big site was immediately apparent that I was on to something and I went full force into it.

It's been in existence for 2 years and already has as much content as this liquidated site, makes more money, and is on track to probably triple in value by the end of next year. I'll hit 500 posts by the end of this year if not more, and 1,000 by the end of the next year if not more. Then I'll figure out how to bang out 1,000 posts a year if not more. It's likely going to be my BIG one where I can ride off into the sunset and start doing things I want to be doing rather than focusing on money.

Let me continue this discussion in the next answer:

What would you do differently if you were starting this site all over again & knowing that you would sell it?

I just described my newer project just above. That's what I'd do. Part of the reason I quit working on the site BESIDES the fact that it had this technical Panda penalty, was that my new site was getting twice the RPMs for half the effort or less. So that's already a 4x multiplier on ROI. I'd say it's more like a 5x or 6x multiplier once you also consider the cost of expert content (myself or paying for it).

So even though I'd recovered the site and it was bringing in a decent revenue stream, it made no sense to keep working on it. I think by holding it for two years (I've not done the math) that I still profited more than if I had sold it soon after the recovery. The timing worked out just right, but I was starting to feel swamped by too many open loops. I never burned out, though. Just moved on to greener pastures. My main fear was that it would decay to nothing sooner than 3 years, or I could exit for 3 years worth of money and let someone else keep it alive. It's an immaculate site. I just didn't have it in me and didn't want to deploy the resources.

The CORE changes between what I did then and what I'm doing now changed because I had been wiped out for the 2nd time in my career (like back to ground zero without much cash in my war chest) was to start with 3 things in mind:

1. Simplicity
2. Zero Friction
3. Scale

I was being real cute on this liquidated site, which only added friction. On the new project it was all about "how can everything be streamlined and how can I have a head start without cutting corners so that I can reach scale?" That minimalist approach extended to the theme I designed, the templates for the content, everything. I'm talking about this site, by the way. Basically I wanted a Minimum Viable Product that wasn't Minimum or just Viable. It was a Minimalist Complete Product.

Anywhere I could strip out friction I did. The thoughts were along the lines of "How can I have a nice theme visually that loads at a perfect page speed score but doesn't suffer an user satisfaction?" Mainly being "what can I strip out?".

"What kind of content templates can be set up in such a way that it's a matter of repetition instead thinking, so everyone involved can run it on a conveyer belt through the compartmentalization of labor?" A quick aside is that people read business books and all that, but I got a LOT out of reading about the people that literally moved us to new ages on the planet. The internet is currently the new Information Age and all that but the production of content operates waaay back in the Adam Smith times of when they were first working out how to start the Industrial Age. Those kind of books helped me really understand how to make this work better.

It's led to me reaching the same point this liquidated site reached, but instead of 6 years I did it in 2 years with zero signs of slowing down. I know that I overthink and haven't invented anything new, but I do fear the majority of people are doing zero thinking and that's why gurus can make so much cash off the spoonfeeders.

Other things are stuff like starting with a very qualified, expired, juicy domain to shortcut some link building needs. Creating Photoshop templates. Having writers do things that make it easier for the formatters. Having formatters do things that make it easier for the imagers. Coding scripts so quality assurance time is cut by 95%. And so forth. Just reducing friction everywhere.

what was the seo issue?

I addressed this above regarding the indexation of blank pages, content pruning, and Kitchen Sink stuff. Thanks for asking.

What links did you primarily focus on building?

What you see in the crash course's off-page SEO day lays out the plan. On new sites I recommend worrying less about quality and more about quantity. This is the web, and you need to get interconnected into the web.

So you want to set up all your social profiles, video profiles, music profiles, graphic design profiles (and flesh all this stuff out). You want to pop into relevant forums and drop links, blog comment, and all that easy stuff. This is worth doing on a brand new domain and you can hire it all out. But I do recommend it.

I didn't do ALL of this, but much of it, on my new project. You can leap frog the need for some of this stuff if you're already juicy enough. The game has evolved some and the value of a lot of this has dropped, especially with Google trying not to index profiles that don't matter, etc. But at the same time they're now wanting to crawl nofollow links and considering it a suggestion, so being tied into the web and having crawl points into your site is still good. Dofollow is obviously king, though.

After that basic "spreading my wings and leaving the nest" stuff, you'll want to move into the real needle movers which are dofollow editorial links inside the main content of articles. And that's basically where you'll stay. Once you get enough exposure and traffic, the forum and social media links will happen for you.

To get the needle movers, it's not just guest posting or buying links. The best links you'll ever earn will come from marketing and getting a lot of eyeballs on high quality content. You want to do that wherever these retarded journalists are getting their scoops from, like Facebook, Reddit, etc. Sometimes it's a funnel, too. Like promoting a Youtube video you made to skirt around moderators who won't let you promote your own site, etc.

The basic truth is and always has been this: "Do the journalists job for them and then make sure they see it". Meaning your posts need to form conclusions and guide thoughts and all that so they write the titles you want and the story you want and it plays out like a narrative that keeps the reader excited. And then those stories spread and you get links to those links and more to your article. It'll cascade if you do it right. It's how I became like DR55 largely by hand.

How much did you spend on link building (per link)? If free, how did you approach outreach?

For this project, I didn't buy many links. I did spend a good 6 months (or more?) or more with Steve Brownlie and Garrett's outreach work. Times have changed and I was getting the homie deal, so I was probably spending $100 - $150 a link there. Much less per link really because my content was so good they were able to deliver me gobs of freebies and all the links ended up spreading and getting me more links. It's talked about in that thread to some degree, if I recall.

I didn't do any outreach myself. Didn't need to. People came to me and I'd work out deals with them. Once you're at least DR30 you won't stop getting emails. I deleted probably 20 guest post pitches a day, all the way to the day the site was finally sold.

But a quick tip is if you want to reach out and not do guest post trades, save a list of every domain that reaches out to you, and then pull their referring domains. Those are going to largely be sites that accept guest posts. Your success rate will be way higher than trying to scrape Google for targets.

In your journey, you mentioned the initial rank decay right away once you sent links, but then achieved the snippet for that main keyword. Do you think you only achieved the snippet because of the links?

This happens very often on newly published posts. We used to call it the honeymoon period. It's when Google pushes you up so they can gather some user metrics for the post.

That whole snippet thing was part of the last push of content I did. I figured out a template for a set of keywords with medium-to-high volume and Google loved what I was doing. So I'd publish and hit them with a single exact match dofollow link just to cram it up Google's butt (I did buy links for this, maybe 20 niche edits of low quality). That's all I did. But the main thing was they loved the content and formatting.

That's something I talked about too. Somewhere on the forum during this time period. Google doesn't want to index 100 versions of the same rewritten article. If you bring new information formatted in a different way, they love it because they know the users will love it. It's easy street if you can figure it out for a cluster of keywords. The links played little role in this. I just did that to hopefully increase the success rate, since you won't go from #30 to having the snippet, but you can go from #10 to #1 like that.

To grow the site further (with a goal of doubling the income), can you speak to how you would have approached additional investment in content vs. links?

Since the site was well above DR50, I'd have published my ass off. My DR score was high enough that I was qualified for any keyword I wanted in the industry. So it was a matter of spraying content. But there was so much friction in publishing that I didn't pull the trigger at that point. Like I mentioned above, my new project had probably a 6x multiplier on ROI for publishing, so it made sense to spend my time there.

 

[bernard]

Congrats Ryu it's well deserved, I hope you can make that money matter in your life.

 

[aussiefly]

Man that's awesome Ryu that you got that liquidation event at the end.

How long did it take for the honeymoon period to end? I've had keyword that jumped to the top 10 then dropped out of the serps completely before coming back and doing the dance on and off. The content is high quality so i'm surprised that the odd one has dropped out completely.

Hopefully in 2 years i'll be able to post my own liquidation event!

 

[illmasterj]

Congrats @Ryuzaki.

You had 2 new projects, 1 big and 1 in a tighter niche. The tight niche site was built on a juicy domain, but I don't believe the big site was.

I've tried to read between the lines but don't believe I see it here.

Given your experiences to date, would you launch a new project on a fresh domain in 2022?

 

[DanSkippy]

Congrats @Ryuzaki with the sale!

Enjoy your short break, and I trust for the next one you would add at least another zero to the total making it a couple of cool M's.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Another fun image from one of the times I hit #1 on /r/all on Reddit. This was my live traffic record:

Did you have a couple of big number 1s or was it a large distribution of first page rankings?

I found an old thread I made here talking about this question and found exact numbers for you from that time period: Overview of Traffic Expectations for Aged Authority Site (Graphs)

​

The top 10 posts did 50% of the traffic (with #1 doing 18%) and the rest (300 posts or so) did 50%.

​

Same data but in a different visual form. Top to bottom is the highest earning post and on down.

​

How long did it take for the honeymoon period to end? I've had keyword that jumped to the top 10 then dropped out of the serps completely before coming back and doing the dance on and off. The content is high quality so i'm surprised that the odd one has dropped out completely.

It depends on your site's power level and the trust levels and if you meet expectations. If you do meet expectations you'll stick around (but never quite as high). If you don't meet expectations you're going to drop and have to earn your way up over time.

​

Higher trust sites (links, age, topical relevancy) stop going through this song and dance eventually. But when it does happen you can expect to pop in high for maybe a few days to a week and then dropping is pretty typical. I've not seen it happen to me but I hear from a LOT of people about posts dropping entirely out of the top 100 and I've even seen them drop out of the index entirely. And again, depending on trust, this can last for months, especially since Google is getting more selective about what they index now from newer sites.

You had 2 new projects, 1 big and 1 in a tighter niche. The tight niche site was built on a juicy domain, but I don't believe the big site was. Given your experiences to date, would you launch a new project on a fresh domain in 2022?

Both sites were built on juicy domains. I'll likely never start another SEO project on a fresh domain. I'm not that attached to the brand names (but it has to be brandable of course) any more, just the revenue.

And if you have the means to acquire a good domain, there's zero reason not to, just a bunch of reasons to do it. It doesn't seem to skip you through any "sandbox" period any more but you'll buy a lot of links you couldn't acquire otherwise for way cheaper than they'd cost you otherwise.

So you're basically just front-loading a bunch of link building and then waiting the usual wait to get full credit for them. It's a great time to pound away at the content instead of both the content and links, which can be overwhelming.

Enjoy your short break, and I trust for the next one you would add at least another zero to the total making it a couple of cool M's.

That's the idea but at the same time deals get way more finicky at that level, and the expected structured payout deals are really goofy, because they're contingent upon the site continuing to perform and that puts all the pressure on you, meanwhile the buyer could do something really stupid and tank the traffic. And while they won't do this on purpose, it'll keep them from having to pay you out the rest of the way.

All of the risk keeps getting pushed back onto the seller even though they assumed all the risk already. I don't like it and don't think it's fair.

You're also going to skate with somewhere between 3 years and 4 years worth of revenue probably at this level if it's your typical SEO style project. So the question becomes "can it hold out for another 3-4 years?" Because then you broke even on the would-be sale and you still own the asset. And even if it decays by 50% revenue you're still in a better spot.

It's tricky but I know this much: "Rich people sell. Wealthy people hold." At that level you wouldn't do what I did, which was ignore the site for 2 years. You'd continue having your team work on it, so it's much less likely to decay in earnings substantially or at all, it's more likely to grow. Unless you have a very good reason to sell, it's more sensible, I think, to work you way out of the business by paying salaries and just continue collecting the cash flow.

 

[bernard]

@Ryuzaki Do you feel a loss of sense of purpose, like your metaphorical child has left your house.

I sometimes look at the site I sold and see how the buyers haven't treated it with love and then I yearn for it to come back lol.

 

[freshpeppermint]

"I created this neat affiliate link redirect system where I can change a destination link in one spot and that would propagate across the site, since I'd use the same link in many different posts. It kept me from having to change them everywhere, and instead just change it in one spot."

Isn't this just prettylinks/Affiliate LInks manager plugin on Wordpress? Also doesn't amazon not allow this??

"I also coded a bot to do 95% of my Quality Assurance work for me so I can still act as manager to some degree. "

What does this bot do? Can you say what it does and each of the Quality things it checks for?

Also you said you had some guy doing checklist on Trello and you have SOPs and stuff. Do you think you would ever sell the SOP's?

Also you mentioned, "Once you're at least DR30 you won't stop getting emails." This apply to you getting organically DR 30 right? Or will I get these if I paid some guy to rig ahrefs & moz into high DA/DR assuming I start picking up/getting traffic?

Also, I noticed on all your case studies you go for like X amount of articles each month or something. Assuming you have the money to fund the entire 200-300 articles, should one just do that instead?

"My biggest and most successful was 233,000 volume. I had #1 for a long time and then remained top 5 for the rest of the time after competitors copied me."

Did you plan out this keyword? Like you know how you find a keyword and then you send it to your writer to write about it. You found a 233,000 volume article and created article on it? Or you just wrote up an articlee on a random good keyword that ended up having 233,000 volume keyword and then maybe you optimized it??

This site, what was the majority of the SV of the keywords you went for? like what range? 10 - 100? 100 - 1000?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@Ryuzaki Do you feel a loss of sense of purpose, like your metaphorical child has left your house.

Not at all. I lost my attachment to the site well before it was recovered, simply because it was such a pain in the ass while being under the algorithmic throttling. It was for the best because it led me to evolve to where everything is much slicker, streamlined, and faster to earn.

It probably doesn't hurt that I'm many years into many other projects, so it's not like I ended up having "empty nest syndrome". I've got more to work on than I can really handle still. That didn't change by selling this site because I wasn't actively working on it anyways. But having that open loop now closed does help psychologically.

Isn't this just prettylinks/Affiliate LInks manager plugin on Wordpress? Also doesn't amazon not allow this??

No, it's not, but it's similar. Those work through your database and are slower. Mine doesn't and is faster. Does any of that matter? Probably not. It didn't take me long to put together (less than a couple hours) and since it will be used on many projects, those speed savings and whatever minor improvement to conversion rates and less database bloat will have been worth the time. If I was going to use it once, it would have been a waste of time to make. But since that problem is solved and done better than all the plugins and I'll use it endlessly now, it's worth the couple of hours of coding.

What does this bot do? Can you say what it does and each of the Quality things it checks for?

I paste in the URL and type in the keyword, and press "go".

It logs into my sites and scrapes the draft previews, scrambles all the content and displays it in a way that has or so I can quickly see that some requirements were met.

It tells me all the meta data like title tag, meta description, first and last paragraph, highlights the keyword everywhere.

It tells me exactly how many outbound links exist of each type: internal, external, affiliate. It also lists them and the anchor texts and the <a rel> attributes.

It tells me how many images there are. It shows them to me smaller. It tells me their width and height, their CSS classes, their alt texts.

It tells me how many headers of each type there are and then lists them out to me in order.

There's a lot more but I don't want to give away the keys to the kingdom. That's the basics of the on-page stuff. But essentially it strips out crap I don't need to see, displays stuff you can't see otherwise, rearranges data so I can check it all real fast, and checks most of it for me with the green or red symbols.

Also you said you had some guy doing checklist on Trello and you have SOPs and stuff. Do you think you would ever sell the SOP's?

No, I wouldn't sell the proprietary SOP's. Everyone needs to develop their own SOP's. This isn't really McDonalds where every website works the same. But I do suggest everyone run their operations like McDonalds.

I now have a super streamlined theme that all of my sites will use, and content templates and workflows and image sizes and all that that will work specifically for this theme. So my SOP's will work for any of my own sites. They won't work for yours.

Could you just tweak them to fit your site? Probably. But the exercise of developing them will help you in learning how to manage the workers. Otherwise you're just buying into a turn-key operation and we all know how that goes. Everyone pretty much gives away their money and never earns a dime, mainly because they didn't graduate to this level. You have to change internally for any of this to work out, you can't buy your way into it.

Also you mentioned, "Once you're at least DR30 you won't stop getting emails." This apply to you getting organically DR 30 right? Or will I get these if I paid some guy to rig ahrefs & moz into high DA/DR assuming I start picking up/getting traffic?

I don't mean DR specifically. I really just mean "being juicy enough to have enough SERP exposure". Everyone is scraping Google for keywords related to their sites, pulling down outbound links from sites, pulling in referring links from sites, etc. The more links and rankings you have, the more you get hammered by outreach attempts.

Rigging Ahrefs & Moz is 100% a complete waste of time and makes it so those tools are no longer useful to you. And people are going to get wise to checking the referring domains and seeing that all the referring domains are exit intent redirects from Google sites and ad platforms. Doing this to yourself means you're either shooting yourself in the foot willingly or you're gearing up to scam people. I hope you'll just avoid it altogether.

Also, I noticed on all your case studies you go for like X amount of articles each month or something. Assuming you have the money to fund the entire 200-300 articles, should one just do that instead?

Like I mentioned above, reaching scale doesn't happen in spurts. That's not scale, that's a spurt. Scale requires consistency. A factory with a bunch of machines on a conveyer belt that are punching out pieces of bubble gum (something with endless demand) don't create a billion pieces of gum and then shut down and hope they sell. There's endless demand.

They aim for X per Hour amounts of gum so they're constantly not only filling the demand but staying in sync with their workers, their shippers, their distributors, the demand of each local store out there, accounts receivable and accounts payable, etc.

Scale is about increasing output but it has to be done consistently so the stress on each piece of the operation (internal and external) is predictable, steady, and thus manageable.

The problem is, you could have paid for 300 articles for product reviews and then Google releases the Product Reviews update and none of that content is worth much without going back and meeting the new demands of the algorithm.

Or you can trickle that out so you're flexible and can pivot on the fly without wasting a bunch of money up front on something that can immediately become a dud. Of course this isn't the case with evergreen content, but think about this:

If you pay for 300 articles, you have a ton of writers, formatters, editors, imagers, publishers, interlinkers, or however you set up your workflow. You have these guys slamming it. And then suddenly you don't have any work for them again. So they quit or you fire them. Now you get to re-hire and re-train for the next spurt of content. Waste of time and money. That's if you even get them to join the team since they know after the spurt there will be a long period of zero work for them to do.

Consistency has to come first, then you increase your output by increasing the team size. Scale isn't just an increased output. It's doing it at a steady rate that the entire division of labor can manage that also keeps them satisfied and not stressed.

Big spurts equal big burnout for everyone involved. I'm sure you've heard the Aesop fable about the Tortoise and the Hare. The spurters are the Hares who end up burnt out, sitting there watching the Turtles surpass them and crawl off into the sunset. The turtles also end up pushing out 300 a month because they ironed out the kinks. The Hare does 300 in a year and then fails to do ANYTHING else. I've seen it a million times.

Did you plan out this keyword? Like you know how you find a keyword and then you send it to your writer to write about it. You found a 233,000 volume article and created article on it? Or you just wrote up an articlee on a random good keyword that ended up having 233,000 volume keyword and then maybe you optimized it??

I found the keyword and wrote the article. It was probably 10,000 words and full of dozens of images. I did meticulous on-page, and this was the article I had Steve & Garrett (mentioned before) do the outreach for.

I'm not sure what you're asking, but it sounds like you're wanting to know if I was flippant about it and barely cared and it just happened by accident. It did not. It was very strategic and expensive, and it earned an healthy ROI and still does.

No, it wasn't a random keyword that just happened to have a quarter million volume that I just happened to rank for and then I optimized it afterwards. Nobody ranks for giant keywords like that. You're up against killers and you will get killed before you're even out of the gates doing that (killed by your own hand).

This site, what was the majority of the SV of the keywords you went for? like what range? 10 - 100? 100 - 1000?

I worked in batches as my domain became stronger, only after testing my success levels in the next range. I shared the process in the case study thread, actually.

I started in the 100-500 range, eventually went to the 1,000-5,000 range, and by the end was going for big boys. I just opened the spreadsheet, let me find some bigger ranges of ones I successfully ranked #1 for at some point:

• 17,000
• 18,000
• 99,000
• 22,000
• 43,000
• 233,000
• 67,000

There's plenty more that hit page 1 but I didn't give them any extra pushes. At that point I was kind of in a mindstate where I knew I wanted to hit scale so I was still working on pushing out more content at lower volumes and lower competition, and once these bigger ones hit an ROI I didn't bother trying to keep them locked in at the top. Probably left money on the table. This was all before I realized there was the technical SEO problem, or I'd have spent those years developing all the systems needed to work the site like it should have been.

What I'm doing now on other projects is consistently pushing out content for various levels of volume (testing as I go), and not worrying about how any one of them performs. I just check the overall trends and as long as the ROI is there, I'm going to keep pushing. Evergreen content won't decay as bad as something that deserves freshness, so the game becomes about casting as many nets as possible.

I'll also not abandon the lower volume keywords as I feel I can graduate to higher volume ones, because those are the bread and butter. My throughput will increase so I can manage to hit every "tier" of volume as everything grows.

Funnily enough I'm #4 for a KD54 single-word keyword with 241,000 volume that I didn't even mean to target. I'm going after a long-tail. So things are looking up in terms of working higher volume terms on my newest project.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

So, you got a $250,000. Let's say $100,000 goes to the tax man. $150,000 is left. Great work exiting but, if I were you, I would't put that capital into more sites. I'd put that capital into VTSAX or SCHB or a rental property. $150,000 is enough to buy a rental property. That way, your income stream is diversified and you don't have to worry if your SEO method gets penalized or the Internet goes down or whatever. Same with putting it into a broad core index fund like VTSAX or SCHB. They say that the average millionaire has 7 income streams (not sure if it is a fact or just a saying, most likely the latter), and you should diversify your income stream.

A $150,000 rental property where I'm from is a nice 1,000 sq ft 2 bedroom 2 bathroom place that goes for $1,000/month easily. You're looking at $6,000/year revenue after management fees and taxes etc. That's a 4% return but it's stable. Also, rents rise and the value of the house rises too. IMO the Internet is super volatile so if your main source of Income is from that, you should diversify with something that's super stable. It's good portfolio management. Just my 2 cents.

Otherwise, great job. Inspiring.

 

[Potatoe]

diversified

This is amazing! You know that he just bought a gorgeous home, right?

Which I'd imagine is a fairly decent chunk of one's assets, and your advice to diversify with the proceeds from the sale is to... buy more property, presumably in the same city? For the sake of... diversification?? For 4%, as interest rates are starting to pop? Are you a serious person? He could get those returns just by making mortgage payments on his home, with 0% extra risk, 0 extra work.

Instead of re-investing it back into growing his business that he actively works on everyday, which is getting a fuckload higher return than 4%... Hello????

I'm know I'm taking the bait here, but just for the sake of the tens of thousands of other people who will eventually read this thread.

Ah yes, the diversification of getting a fat stack of cash and sinking it all into 1 type of non-liquid asset, in 1 building, on 1 street corner, in 1 city, in 1 economy, in 1 country, when that's already the asset class that he's probably most highly invested in (not counting his remaining sites and businesses). Why are we talking about investing for income as if he's heading into retirement? This is a young, fertile, strapping young man in his prime. It's time for growth.

At least with the index funds, the money is liquid and it's spread out across 1 whole country, so I'll give you that.

But I don't think Ryuzaki called into Scuffed Suze Orman, not sure why you felt the need to hijack an AMA with amateur financial advice when you have absolutely no clue about his overall situation. If you'd even consider giving advice based on little more info than "Guy has 250k", that alone is hard proof that you shouldn't be doing it.

You're just super horny to talk about real estate (and that's fine! I'm interested in it too!), and were looking for any opportunity to shoe-horn it into a discussion, but why not just go start a thread about real estate investing instead of hi-hacking a super high effort, on-topic AMA? This is an ask me anything, not a soapbox for you to clumsily try to tie in whatever topic is on your mind.

Pardon me, just trying to find the person who asked...

 

[Philip J. Fry]

This is amazing! You know that he just bought a gorgeous home, right?

Which I'd imagine is a fairly decent chunk of one's assets, and your advice to diversify with the proceeds from the sale is to... buy more property, presumably in the same city? For the sake of... diversification?? For 4%, as interest rates are starting to pop? Are you a serious person? He could get those returns just by making mortgage payments on his home, with 0% extra risk, 0 extra work.

Instead of re-investing it back into growing his business that he actively works on everyday, which is getting a fuckload higher return than 4%... Hello????

I'm know I'm taking the bait here, but just for the sake of the tens of thousands of other people who will eventually read this thread.

Ah yes, the diversification of getting a fat stack of cash and sinking it all into 1 type of non-liquid asset, in 1 building, on 1 street corner, in 1 city, in 1 economy, in 1 country, when that's already the asset class that he's probably most highly invested in (not counting his remaining sites and businesses). Why are we talking about investing for income as if he's heading into retirement? This is a young, fertile, strapping young man in his prime. It's time for growth.

At least with the index funds, the money is liquid and it's spread out across 1 whole country, so I'll give you that.

But I don't think Ryuzaki called into Scuffed Suze Orman, not sure why you felt the need to hijack an AMA with amateur financial advice when you have absolutely no clue about his overall situation. If you'd even consider giving advice based on little more info than "Guy has 250k", that alone is hard proof that you shouldn't be doing it.

You're just super horny to talk about real estate (and that's fine! I'm interested in it too!), and were looking for any opportunity to shoe-horn it into a discussion, but why not just go start a thread about real estate investing instead of hi-hacking a super high effort, on-topic AMA? This is an ask me anything, not a soapbox for you to clumsily try to tie in whatever topic is on your mind.

Pardon me, just trying to find the person who asked...

I didn't know that he *just* bought a house and, sure, maybe real estate is not the best investment vehicle for him; but, as someone who did sold sites, I wouldn't take all the proceed and use it as starting capital for a new business or new businesses. Again, he has a chance of losing the starting capital if the business doesn't become feasible. Sure, real estate might have low returns but it won't go to 0. Starting capital in a new business can. As someone who has lost 5 digits in starting capital over the years, I know better now. Using the windfall as starting capital is better than using the windfall for consumption, but I'd put a good percentage of it into investments -- ones that won't go to 0 and are proven to give a steady return. Sure, maybe a broad market index fund is better for him but, like you, I have no idea what his portfolio is composed of.

Anyways, looks like you're very eager to get results. Good for you. I have some wealth and I'd rather not lose it and add more to it over time. No need to rush things anymore.

 

[Samwise89]

What can you tell us about how selling a site goes from start to finish? Like the things you listed:

• Raising the Valuation
• Finding a Buyer
• Negotiations
• Due Diligence
• Asset Transfers
• Inspections
• Getting Paid

Thanks and congratulations. I'm hoping I'm not too far behind you. Your answer will probably make a perfect playbook for me as a first time flipper.

 

[aussiefly]

Ryu, you said that the negotiations went on for quite a while in the background.

What was the biggest issue/stumbling block that you had to negotiate around with the buyer?

And, if you went through the building a site, and sales process again, what would you do differently from day-1 with a future potential liquidation event in mind.

Cheers Mate

 

[MinstrelJunkie]

Massive congratulations Ryu! That's a great chunk of cash. Few questions from me:

• How is your work drive post-sale? Are you much more driven with new projects now that you're down an income stream? Not to mention the time and mental space free with the sale complete
• Is this your first sale of the size? Will it change the way you operate at all? I.e. how big you want future projects to go.
• You said you had 13 prior offers, where were these coming from? Only ever received 1 piece of outreach from a potential buyer. Did you actively advertise at all?

 

[Ryuzaki]

So, you got a $250,000. Let's say $100,000 goes to the tax man. $150,000 is left.

As a heads up in general to readers, even at the highest income tiers you should be paying capital gains tax rates on these kind of deals which shouldn't be more than 20% + 3% for being penalized for earning even more than the highest tier on the chart. But yeah, definitely not 40% or taxed at normal income rates, and even better if you don't have state income tax...

if I were you, I would't put that capital into more sites. I'd put that capital into VTSAX or SCHB or a rental property.

I've thought about what you've said in the past and I'm just not that risk averse. Everything pales in comparison to the ROI we can get from building sites. Roth IRA's, real estate... everything. Even if I'm risk averse, the way I build projects and pace out the expenses and growth is very safe with whopping returns. Over a decade ago I even cashed out my 401k because it couldn't get me 1000%+ returns.

Your real estate example of 4% returns is tiny but safe (and it under-sells the benefit since the renters are building your equity for you too). It's def a good move which you can then offload at retirement time. I respect everyone's risk profiles and it's definitely something I've considered. I think people move into the next stage of "wealth protection" way too early, though.

I feel decently diversified at the moment, but there's a LOT of improvement that needs to happen there, for sure. I've got a many irons in many different fires, with some not quite blazing the way they could but they can quickly be activated if need be. The reason they aren't is because I chase the low risk / low time / high ROI activities.

What can you tell us about how selling a site goes from start to finish? Like the things you listed:

• Raising the Valuation
• Finding a Buyer
• Negotiations
• Due Diligence
• Asset Transfers
• Inspections
• Getting Paid

Thanks and congratulations. I'm hoping I'm not too far behind you. Your answer will probably make a perfect playbook for me as a first time flipper.

This could be a novel, so I'll try to keep it compact... probably won't happen!

Raising the Valuation​

I would think of valuations like this, in this current market, despite the gassed up nonsense some brokerages are trying to pull (I break down why 50x and higher valuations are nonsense for these types of websites in that linked post). Anyways, think of it like this as your baseline:

• Baseline: 36x
• Low: 26-33x
• High: 38-40x

Baselines sites are ones that have steady traffic but they aren't growing or shrinking. The income is steady, the monetization opportunities are maxed, and that buyer can't immediately squeeze more money out of it. The only way to break even faster than 36 months is to legitimately do the work and grow the site.

Low sites are ones where the traffic is in decline and the seller is obviously trying to escape and cash out while the getting is good. The buyer will justify a lower multiple and then rake you over the coals with an even lower one because they can.

High sites have an upwards trajectory that isn't showing signs of slowing, with ways to increase the revenue immediately, and endless other growth opportunities that haven't been explored yet (keywords, social media, video platforms, products, etc.).

That's the multipliers, which multiply your monthly profit. You can't really finagle that number. People suggest you stop publishing content and stop paying for it before a sale to reduce expenses but that can backfire, because the seller will ask what happened and why. And if you do a structured payout deal, that may screw you out of a payment or two later.

Don't try to push them to the last 6 months (L6M) unless it's a really new site that's exploding upwards. If you can't get a good last 12 months (L12M) number on the books, then wait. Having a mature and stable (in the sense of it at least not decaying) project to sell is less risky for the buyers.

Your only real means of influencing the valuation is to increase profit (not reduce expenses other than maybe stop buying backlinks as much or reduce content publishing, but never stopping. Heads up that this will all be seen in the graphs if you keep good records and the buyer does their due diligence like they should and will). To finish that broken sentence, you can increase your profit legitimately or you can sweeten the deal to increase the multiplier by a point or two.

So how do you sweeten the deal and set them at ease to justify a higher multiple in negotiations?

• Keep meticulous records of every piece of revenue and expense
• Do some of their work for them by having graphs, tables, charts, and averages ready
• Provide proof of income with screenshots at first (and walk them through it with a screenshare later), provide read-only access to some revenue sources and Google Analytics and Search Console.
• Share your publishing schedule since day one, in a table and a chart. Consistency looks good for you in terms of the health of the site. Be ready to explain any bursts or pauses.
• Include any and all operating procedures (and media kits) you created for VA's, writers, developers, designers, and so forth. You'll want to provide their contact information, rates, salaries, and all that. They go with the project if the buyers wants them and you want more money. This also includes content briefs, unused keyword research, unexecuted ideas, etc.
• Have a perfectly organized master spreadsheet file with login data to your site, social media profiles, CDN, email providers, analytics, ad and aff networks, and so forth.
• Point out how killer your backlink profile is and provide screenshots from Ahrefs and Semrush and whoever else has metrics that make you look good. Even list them by highest DR first, with one list of dofollow and one list of nofollow. Make sure some good brand names are up in there.
• Have a story prepared for why you're selling. The truth is likely good enough. "I want the money to buy a house. I'm about to get married. I'm more excited about my new projects and I don't have time for this one but I want it to go into good hands and not just die a slow death."
• If you have a custom theme designed, make sure they know that. Site speed optimization? Whatever is special, point it out, but not if it requires a ton of maintenance and headaches. It will come out and you should mention it, but later on during negotiations.
• Give them access to your lifetime subscription API keys for plugins and anything else you can toss in the pot.

The spirit of all of that is to reduce friction for the buyer. Do as much of the work for them as you can for due diligence. You want to get them to the "yes" as quickly and painlessly as possible, and let them feel there's bonuses involved too. There's no real tricks involved that you can implement quickly in terms of raising revenue and cutting expenses (and the ones that do exist shouldn't be used, at this level the buyers are savvy).

Finding a Buyer​

At a certain point you should have zero issues finding a buyer. I had 13 buyers reach out before this final one did it at the right time. My goal was to start emailing those 13, and then to hit up other site owners in the same industry. If that failed, there was always paying a brokerage 15% to find a buyer (which I wanted to avoid). After that there's marketplaces you can list in. This won't be an issue for anyone at any level. We're not selling a bakery in a bad part of town, here. This is the leading edge of humanity and everyone wants in.

Negotiations​

A lot of the ammo you should be using in negotiations is in the "raising the valuation" section above. I want to talk about the crap you'll hear from the seller and how to fight against that.

Watch out for bait and switches. One that happened during this sale was "we'll offer you this range of multiples and since there's no broker you can keep the extra 15%". Then you get into a meeting with their CEO and C-suite on a conference call, looking at them in their big conference room, and suddenly the multiple range is 5 points lower and they think they should keep the 15%, even though there's no broker, because they have to do due diligence.

What you do then, and what I did, was raise a big fucking stink and let them see you pissed, get loud, and then walk away. Tell them that they can return to you if they want to be serious, and in the meantime you have other contacts you'll be reaching out to and that you're aware of all the brokerages and marketplaces and this site is getting sold. It can go to them if they want to be serious people.

I walked away twice actually because they kept trying to keep me at a lower multiple and I had to work them up over the course of a month and like 5 conference calls and phone calls. They tried to see if I'd cave after they "gave in" three times, etc. Don't give in. You know what's fair and what the site is worth. And the more time they waste, the more it gets harder for them to back out and waste the money on salaries and all the effort they're doing. Because at this point some due diligence will already be going on.

On thing I did to finally get them to agree on the fair valuation was to say that I'd pay the full escrow fee instead of splitting it. It didn't amount to much but it sweetened the deal for them. Look for opportunities like this if you need them. Anything that shows good grace and lowers the price emotionally (if negligibly in reality).

Another way they tried to play me was taking the concept of "seller discretionary income" (SDE) and calling it that but they were actually talking about "buyer discretionary future spending". Basically, your expenses will reduce your profit, and they have to trust that you're reporting real numbers (which is why you need meticulous records). But they might want to double your spend in order to recoup their purchase price faster than 36 months. And they tried to reduce the multiple based on that.

This was another time I got loud, red faced, and did some cussing. "Your future investment is your concern, and I'm not going to see a return on that so why should I be eating any of that expense?" Don't burn bridges or say things you can't take back. Never make it personal, but if you think it'll work like I felt it would in these cases, show some emotion even if you don't necessarily feel it. It's just another negotiation tactic and can cut off other nonsense before they even try it.

Basically, make sure your head is on straight and you're not being an excitable newb. They want you to have already told all your friends and family what you're going to sell the site for, and then pull the rug out from under you and get you to make a deal you wouldn't have otherwise in order to save face socially. They also want you to engage in the sunken cost fallacy and the foot in the door fallacy where there's no backing out, no matter how bad the deal gets.

Stick to your guns, know your stuff, don't put up with weasel shit, walk away if need be (and leave an opening but put the pressure on too, with a time crunch and fear of missing out), and create an honest deal for them. That's the goal, even if they want to be shitbags. You walk away happy, they walk away happy, everyones satisfied, there's no later litigation, and you can do business again in the future.

Due Diligence​

I already covered a lot of this in the "raising the valuation" section above, so I won't repeat too much of that. Basically, you want to have the most meticulous records ever, perfectly organized, and then simplify it for them with graphs.

Before you do anything here and provide any information, both parties need to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), meaning if they turn down the deal and then act on any of the information they gained access to, you can sue them to the high heavens.

You'll want to show proof that the records are legit. At this stage it'll suffice to (and you can do this before hand so you aren't panicking) take screenshots or video recordings of you going through historical payments and data of revenue sources. If you can give them read only access, do that and let them see it for themselves.

You will have to give them read only access to your Google Analytics (use this and not anything else) and Search Console. It's part of it, and screenshots won't suffice. Expect this, it's okay.

Basically, you need to give them time (a week should be plenty) to review the traffic data, traffic sources, and revenue sources simply to confirm everything is normal and fine.

If they're on the ball, be ready for them to bring up crap you forgot about and be ready to explain it (just be honest, no need to lie about anything). "Yeah, that week of zero traffic was when I accidentally removed the analytics tag but the revenue was still fine". "Yeah, my indexation got goofed up because I got hacked and they added 500 pages. I fixed it and found the security hole and closed that up." They'll figure out all kinds of issues from the past, since nobody wants to pass this much money around flippantly.

Unless you're being stupid and dishonest, this time period should be no problem. Just let them do their thing and then they'll say "okay, we're ready to sign the contract and fund the escrow account" Which leads to...

Asset Transfers​

Remember that master spreadsheet I talked about that has all of your logins and the URLs to them on one tab (and other tabs have your meticulous financial records, keyword research, and so forth)? Once you sign the contract, quickly change any of the passwords to any profiles if you need, and pass that master file over.

You'll also be passing over the database and websites files, or using a plugin to create a backup, or letting the hosting companies do it. In this case they wanted to open up a hosting account at the exact same company and have a direct copy of the server made so there'd be zero issues.

It went fine but there were some weird issues like fixing permalinks (just resaving them without changing, pretty typical of Wordpress) and having to uninstall and reinstall Yoast. Anything that interacts with the database might require you to "jiggle the handle". Otherwise it was fine.

Here's where things get funky, because unless you want this to take forever, you'll need to pass over the access to the revenue sources. They'll change Amazon Affiliate ID's and you'll notify your ad network that the site needs to be moved to the new owner's account...

But they aren't the new owners yet. So make sure your contract covers what happens if they back out. They'll need to pay the escrow fee and reimburse you for any income that accrues during this time.

The reason there's this overlap is because you also need to have an...

Inspection Period​

This is basically just like due diligence but instead of confirming all of the records, traffic, and revenue are legit, they're inspecting the website itself. The theme, the plugins, the content, seeing if you quickly added a bunch of backlinks to random pages for your friends (like a moron), etc.

And the main thing is to get the revenue streams switched over to their accounts and observe the money pouring in for a couple weeks. You can expect this to last a couple weeks, starting at the time the assets are transferred.

Be prepared to be available to answer questions, fix things that don't work right during the website installation, etc.

An example is my buyers changed the nameservers to the new server before they even confirmed that the site was working right, which it wasn't. So I spent like 5 hours trying to figure out why certain things were broken (since I coded the theme). I got nowhere, went outside to take a break, came back in and solved it in 5 minutes.

But the onus was on me, and in the contract they could back out if revenue dipped below 75% of the average, which was already close since we were in Q1 of ad revenue. So I couldn't afford to lose a full day of revenue. That was a stressful day. They weren't going to back out at this point but I didn't want to allow the option either.

You may need to hop into the escrow account and confirm that you've passed over the assets which starts the official timer since the escrow company is now mediating the deal.

The good news here is that if the time expires and they never accept the goods (officially within the escrow account) then they contractually have accepted the goods through inaction and the funds will be released to you.

Getting Paid​

Unless you're using a brokerage or a marketplace that handles the funds, you'll want to be using Escrow.com probably. Everyone is familiar with it and it's safe and secure and they do a great job. There's a small fee of like 2% I think. It'll be tiny.

What you'll be doing regardless is providing checking/savings account numbers and routing numbers. Quadruple check they're accurate, because the last thing you want is to be being patient and not counting your chickens yet, and finally when you're ready to celebrate, the money is in the aether because you screwed up your account numbers.

You'll need to wait about 48-72 hours from the point the deal is finished and escrow releases the funds, to them actually hitting your account. That sucks but you should be used to waiting at this point thanks to negotiations, due diligence, and the inspection period.

Ryu, you said that the negotiations went on for quite a while in the background.

What was the biggest issue/stumbling block that you had to negotiate around with the buyer?

The biggest issue was them trying everything in their power to bait and switch and justify a lower multiple.

• "You've monetized it so well, we can't squeeze another penny out of it." Tough titty.
• "Well, this traffic level isn't real, it's a covid bump." Nope, covid is over.
• "We plan to spend way more than you did." Okay, unless you're dumb, you'll make way more money, too.
• "We just don't know if we can acquire you for this much, we only have X in funding." Not my problem, get financing for the last bit.
• "Well, you want all cash and no structured payout, so we can lower the multiple." Lol, no.

It was crap like that every step of the way. Whatever they thought they might save by screwing me around was being wasted on salaries, because I didn't budge and they loved to waste time in meetings with me instead of working.

The way I dealt with it was continually walking away and telling them what my final number was. I did drop my number a tiny bit the 2nd time I walked away from the table. "Look, here's my final number that I'm reducing a bit for you, because I like you and I want you to have this site. I don't have to do this, but I am. But this means there's no more negotiations about it. You either come up to this number or we don't have a deal."

And the majority of the meetings after that was them incrementally coming up to my number and me not budging on it. I finally got it at the end. Don't accept any bullshit! There's endless buyers out there and they know it, even if they want you to think there's endless sites out there. They want your specific site.

And, if you went through the building a site, and sales process again, what would you do differently from day-1 with a future potential liquidation event in mind.

I've already done it. I started a new project 2 years ago that's already earning more than this one I just sold. And the truth is I didn't do anything different because this isn't my first site sale, so I was already in the mind state of "do everything and set up everything from the start with the intent of selling the project later."

That meant removing friction (keeping everything streamlined and simple) in terms of record keeping, organization, publishing, branding, so on and so forth. A big one is simply having a master spreadsheet you keep clean and organized with everything a buyer would need in it. Work out of it, too. Keep as much in there as you can (but don't be silly about it). It's just about having something to hand-off later. All the work is done, you don't have to go collecting data or having to justify your expenses. You don't have to provide receipts. Just dates, who the payment was to, what it was for, and the amount. It's all there from day one. Have graphs and tables that curate and crunch that data into monthly numbers, etc. It has to be organized to be worth anything.

Keep all of your various video, social media, music, whatever profiles branded similarly with randomized passwords, and store them in your master spreadsheet.

In terms of the website though, I did refine my method a bit more. I've designed my own custom theme that's a lot less involved. It has the appearance of niceness like a graphic designer was involved, but the code is very sleek and simple. There's nothing cute going on. I'm using as few templates as possible with as few custom functions and as few complicated Wordpress functions as possible. There's zero technical overhead and everything should stay fine as Wordpress itself updates. That's good for me and the future buyer.

The design is also built with page speed in mind. There's no optimization rounds to be done afterwards because it was done as it was created.

The same goes for the content. The content templates are designed to be simple enough for a dummy to follow. That's not to keep mistakes out, but to reduce friction so that it's streamlined and content can be published quickly and easily.

Everything about the site itself that ends up being good for you, the current site owner, in regards to reaching scale, ends up being good for the buyer. That usually means design minimalism, simple templates, and operating procedures.

Less complexity is the goal. That means fewer affiliate networks, if not just one, if any at all. That means using (and paying) one ad network and letting them manage the million ad exchanges and header bidding and waterfalls. It means starting with a juicy domain rather than a new one. It means identifying the one needle moving activity and figuring out how to push that to the limit and never stop doing it.

How is your work drive post-sale? Are you much more driven with new projects now that you're down an income stream? Not to mention the time and mental space free with the sale complete

My work drive is just fine. I'm a week into my "vacation" and have done some work every day. I just can't escape or leave money on the table. I don't really want to.

I'm excited about pushing my current "main" project a lot harder. I'm not concerned about it in terms of having dropped a revenue stream, but excited about it since I have one less open-loop in my head and more time to execute. Yeah, you nailed it. There's a freedom involved that's creating room for excitement.

Is this your first sale of the size? Will it change the way you operate at all? I.e. how big you want future projects to go.

I addressed the change in operations just above your first quote above. I didn't change much because I was already in the mind state of "how do I prepare a site for a sale from day one" having already sold websites in the past.

It does change my thoughts on how big I want future sites to grow. It's actually a dilemma because even at this "quarter milly" liquidation the buyers wanted to do a structured payout and the very first thing I said to them was "good timing, I do want to sell. But I want a lump sum payment without a structured payout."

My issue is that we, as the site builders and owners, take on all the risk. We shovel in our capital and our time, create the processes, hire and train the people, and so forth. We weather the ups and downs, the long SEO delays, and then when we want to sell the asset after we've gotten it stable and secure, the buyer then wants to further shift their risk back onto us. This is after we've already assumed all the risk the entire time.

That doesn't sit well with me, which is why I demanded a lump sum payment. With a structured payout, and they're all different, you might collect 50% upfront and then 25% three months later and 25% after another 3 months. So they pay you out across 6 months which leaves them with operating capital but also escape clauses.

If the site earns less than X amount during that 3 month period they don't have to pay you for that period. Meaning they have the asset, made some amount of money just not enough to cross a threshold, and now you're out 25% of the liquidation amount.

And you aren't in control of the asset. Obviously no buyer is going to risk tanking it on purpose and hoping to revive it to get out of paying you. But that doesn't mean they aren't incompetent in some way, or screw up the hosting or forget to pay the bill, etc. The contract will have a lot of this involved and save you from really stupid stuff, but everything is so complex that there's going to be a lot of wiggle room.

I'm not okay with the way the industry is handling this and I don't care if it's how it works in brick and mortar or any other Fortune 500 blah blah. It's bullshit for SEO.

So the answer is that I want to build much huger sites that are valued in the multiples of millions (mid 7 figures), especially since I'm building fewer sites anyways. But at that point I don't think I'll be selling them. Like I mentioned above "rich people sell, wealthy people hold" and if an SEO project is raking in $100k a month or more, it's probably a pretty safe bet. It's safe for 3 more years, anyways, even if it decays some, and you beat what you'd get by selling it, and then you can still sell it. Or take the "gamble" for another 3 years.

The higher you take things, the incentive to sell becomes much lower, because you've obviously built the infrastructure and have the cash flow and reserves to make it all work. Unless something very fundamental about the internet changes (GPT-3 content fucking it up for everyone and shifting the emphasis to video...) then I see no point in selling, in the current and foreseeable landscape.

You said you had 13 prior offers, where were these coming from? Only ever received 1 piece of outreach from a potential buyer. Did you actively advertise at all?

They came from companies in the same vertical, from marketplaces (someone from this very forum tried to buy the site at one point), from brokerages, and from entrepreneurs. I did zero advertising in terms of trying to secure a buyer. It was just an attractive asset.

What set it apart from sites earning even more money in different verticals was that I created a true resource with expert content that had a real reputation. It was getting links from all the big brands that everyone buys from in the vertical.

Even my own brother who works in this industry professionally would tell me every few months that one of his buddies would text him links to articles unknowingly from my site, or he'd have to search something and it was always my site popping up.

So I think it was respected in the industry and people knew about it and its reputation. Plus, early on in the case study thread I did I mentioned how, regarding the design "everyone is doing X so I'm going to do Y." Everything I did with the site made it stand out. It was the breath of fresh air as opposed to a sore thumb. A classic case of taking things from one industry and applying them to another.

 

[MrMedia]

Awesome thread. Congrats.

Just as a slight side note without derailing - if you are getting 4% return on cash in rental property something has gone badly wrong. I am guessing this calculated without leverage, ie. mortgage debt.

I'm up to 9 rental properties now all leveraged to the hilt and returns are 12-14% on cash, excluding property appreciation which is sitting at a cool 12% in a year.

If you are looking for somewhere to put exit cash I really would not rule out rental property.

 

[secretagentdad]

Now that is very very interesting to me.
You get a heck of a lot more page 2 traffic than I was expecting.
Guess this is cuz you have a lot of content on your sites.

Do you think that there could be value in doubling down getting number 1s out of performant rankings or some other kinda technical all in for the new owner?