Up Fuel I just had my first significant liquidity event by selling a website with help from the folks at Founders Investment Banking. The website I sold is Netbook Reviews and one of several authority style websites I own, (or in this case – used to own). I can’t share the exact details of the sale or the purchase price due to the various documents I signed but I will say that this sale reaffirms my belief that getting fired from my day job was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I’m very excited about the sale, but I’m even more excited by the opportunities I have moving forward now that I’ve had a chance to prove myself with this first big sale:
Here Is The Official Press Release
I’ll be writing a follow up blog post to describe how and why I used investment bankers to sell this website, but I would first like to publicly thank Shoemoney and specifically the reputation that surrounds his Elite Retreat event for even getting my foot in the door. I’d also like to thank some other great friends for the advice I received prior to entering any discussions as well as some advice during the sales process including Shane Pike and David Adams from Escalate Media. Last but not least I’d like to also thank Zane, Brad, Frank, Stephanie and the rest of the team at Founders Investment Banking.
Founders is behind a bunch of other big sales like the notable $14.9 Million sale of Bankaholic.com and if they needed another person to vouch for their awesomeness I’m happy to toss my opinion out there as well.
What’s Next?
This is the first of the two cool announcements I alluded to last week. Today’s announcement is more about me but the next announcement will be more for all of you, my readers. I am shooting for a December 1st launch date of the new project but the one thing I will say is that if you’re not earning at least $1,000 a month online this will be great for you and the best part of all is that it will be completely free ;). If you want in be sure to sign up for my newsletter list here.
Congratulations Chris! Well deserved!
Can I ask how long you’ve been working on Netbook Reviews sitefor?
Congrats, man! Founders is awesome.
Thanks Brandon! Yah I’m ready to get going to the next one. ๐
congrats on the sale, nice looking site you got there
Thanks so much!
That’s awesome, Chris! Congrats Man.
Thanks Wes!
I am very surprised that one of my biggest rival is sold.:) But congrats Chris!
Thanks Mehmet, I’ll follow up with you via email as well.
Great going man!
I am seriously considering a blog in similar lines (Amazon affiliate based on reviews). Tell me if that is a good idea?
And one more thing, your Blog Services link on the top menu doesn’t work. What gives? Hopeall’s well.
Good luck and God bless
Thanks Momekh, I actually removed the Blog Services because despite the fact that I was offering the set up for only $1 if they bought hosting through my affiliate link no one took me up on it. So I’ve removed it and I’m not going to bother trying to make it work anyway since I want to spend more time on my own projects. I will continue to offer the consulting though but I prefer to work with people already running online businesses that can more than afford my prices ๐
Thats great to hear!
One question though if your allowed to answer it, how much did you purchase it for from the beginning/or did you get it from a domain registrar for only 7-10 dollars?
Hey Dino,
Trust me I’d love to share all of this info because quite frankly a blog post titled something like “I Just Sold A Website For $X” would be spread around much further than what I’ve listed above. So in a round about way I’m saying that I can’t share that info unfortunately.
Chris,
Congratulations! ๐ VERY well deserved success and thanks for sharing.
All the best,
Ian
Thanks Ian, we need to talk again sometime soon. I’d be interested in hearing how things are going with you besides just what you share on your blog ๐
Nice work Chris! Sounds like this is setting a nice precedent for future projects…
Thanks Devin. Yes I’m very excited about the new opportunities to make even more money online now that I have a sale under my belt through an investment banker.
nice Chris, about time;X
Congrats man. Wow a PR5 with that many links? I don’t know how you do it but that’s awesome. Pretty old site too.
Thanks Browie, yes part of my business strategy is to build larger authority style websites (such as this one) to stabilize income as well as mini sites for extra cash but a little higher risk.
Hey Chris:
I knew that you owned that website for a while and am surprised that you sold it! I’m sure you must have gotten a “smokin” price for it for you to sell it!! Congrats, and enjoy your free time now that the site is off your hands!
Hey Spencer,
Thanks and I’m excited for future projects now that I have some more capital freed up. Are you free some time to chat? We really should try and meet up sometime since you’re in the same area as me (well a few hours out I suppose).
Chris
well done Chris! it’s great to hear how you’re doing in your regular newsletters. I like what you did with the netbook site and how everything is linking to amazon within the post.
does the site have to be earning a decent income already or can it just have a lot of traffic/members before it is considered saleable?
again, well done (for being fired! ๐
I can’t really get into specifics, but let’s just say most investment bankers won’t bother with most of the sites that are typically sold on Flippa.com ๐
Congrats on the sale of this site Chris! That’s a great looking netbook site. I like the way it’s laid out, the monetization and the ‘carrot’ to opt-in — very nicely done :). There’s a lot to be said in favor of operating in multiple niches and this sale (even though you can’t give out details on the numbers involved) is saying a lot. Would love to see you do a post on building/managing/growing multiple niche sites or blogs.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Ray
Thanks Ray, yah I’m working on a new free project for this blog that will take up a bit of my time but then I plan to do a whole lot more blog posts coming up as well.
Your blog is great. I am at my maternity leave and have been working online from home for one year. It is a good way to earn good money, but it took me some time until I found a legit online job. For me it was surveys online, but you need to be careful because there are a lot of fake sites.
Hi Chris
This is great, have you also little sister site with it(dailynetbookdeals.com)????
Congrats
Abhishek Saini
Chris,
I’ve been following the blog for a while now and I’m glad that you were able to sell the site, but what’s the point of this post?
I’m not trying to be rude or insensitive, but what’s the point in making this particular post when you can’t answer any questions about the site, the sale of it, nor how much you made from the sale?
You had to know that there would be a ton of questions about the entire process.
I’d have much more appreciated you simply waiting until you could say something about the process and then created the ๏ฟฝI Just Sold A Website For $X๏ฟฝ post that you mentioned before, detailing how you did it and how someone else can do it just like you did. It would have been informative and provided real value to your regular readers, such as myself.
Then I would have linked the heck out of it, because it’s something that I’m genuinely interested in.
But I digress. Not trying to be a party pooper, but when I say the title of the post, I was really hoping for a lot more.
Congrats on the sale and I hope that you have many more to come.
Chris
Hey Chris,
Thanks for asking the question I was expecting to get. I guess part of the reason why I wanted to share it is because for people that are “in the know” when you sell a website through an investment banker it’s much more of a big deal than if you just make something small like a $20k Flippa.com website sale.
The reason why I posted the update is because I know lots of people subscribe to the FoundersIB.com newsletter to get updates from their sales and to see who was behind them etc. so I wanted to post an update on my blog to make sure people knew they were in the right spot that came from there etc.
I’ll planned to look through my contract again to determine if I can say exact amounts or give a range etc. as I mentioned at the start of this post that I plan to write a more detailed explanation as to the how’s / why’s. I just wanted to get something up because I knew the press release was going live.
Chris,
Great! Now I’m “That Guy”! You know, the annoying one? LOL!
Anyway, wasn’t trying to be a jerk at all and I really look forward to when you can provide more details on the transaction. I’m sure a lot of folks will learn from it!
Thanks!
Chris
No worries lol. I’ve been talking to the buyer to see if I can share the range it was sold for. I will update as necessary…
Cool man, sounds like you can say goodbye to making websites as you now can just start buying up sites like crazy. That’s what I would do at least in your position except I am in the mid four figures with my online income so I need it to live and pay rent!
I have spent lost of time crying about the money I lost just because I was born too late. Just imagine how rich you could be if you bought domain names with the most common names?! And now it is a problem to get a good domain name, unless you can afford to pay lots of money for a website or even a single domain name…
Congrats on the sale! I need to read your blog more often! You are gonna be having a very happy holiday this year I assume? Keep it up, you’ve got me motivated again.
Thanks again John! Yes, I’m very pleased with this year’s results but not so eager to pay my taxes. ๐
Congratulations Chris!
It is nice to hear histories like yours and I love to learn from experienced people like you.
Wow. Can’t believe Bankaholic sold for $15m. That guy use to be on the same webmaster forum that I use to frequent and he use to buy links there, and this was only three years ago. His traffic stats are nothing amazing it seems (going by Alexa),so the buyer must have paid for the search terms he was getting and the ability of the buyer to utilise them to drive sales to their main products.
We know banking and investments is an incredibly valuable niche though given the incredible amount of money generated by the industry. So lot of the value they placed on it was what they can do with it rather than what it was already doing.
Exactly. He was selling leads to Bankrate.com and they saw the quality they got coming in and figured why not just buy it? So they did ๐
Congrats, is this kind of success stories that keeps my dream of becoming a full time website flipper.
Making money from financial decisions can be mentally draining to many wannabes intially because peopleare overcome by alot of jargon and ultimately he or she need to read up up in depth, especially on the forms of investments they are interested to invest in. Because in the end, people have much to lose in terms of money, confidence, and sometimes in difficult situations, their careers and family when their investments fail. Therefore it is very important for individuals who are looking to make money from investments to be careful and take care to make financial decisions in moderation especially in the beginning stage. I’ll advise anyone who reads this to be careful in whatever investments you make Good luck, and may you be prosperous!
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