How I Lost $223,000 Selling a Website - DON'T DO THIS

what's up you guys this is professor ron with one hour professor.com and today i'm here to tell you how i was able to lose 223 000 by selling a website i know that's not clickbait i wish it were click bait i wish that this wasn't true i wish that i didn't even have to make this video but i do because it happened it's a good learning experience and it's something that i feel like you guys just kind of had to hear because it's a pretty crazy story how this all worked out and i know i don't usually do videos this way but it's just something that i have to tell you guys because it's like wow i i so you know i had sold you know to kind of get into the story here i had sold my biggest site that had literally helped me buy the house that you see that i'm standing in uh it's helped support my family it's something that um has been near and dear to me since i started it years ago and it has really helped me grow my entire online business to what it is today it always provided that revenue stream it was old faithful right it was like the thing that was there that just wasn't uh wasn't bending it was always there for me it was awesome so i created this site i had done really well with it my income reports you can look it's always it's website one so if you go to onenoteprofessor.com into the income reports you can see website one that is the particular site that i'm referring to here and you can see the graphs and how well it was doing over time but anyway it was time to sell that site and people are probably wondering why did you want to sell the site i wanted to sell the site because it over the years some competition has has snuck in and just in general that particular site it started to kind of fall in traffic not not like you know off a cliff fall and just not worth anything anymore but it wasn't making as much as it was before and the traffic was dropping and there was some competition so it needed a lot of work and that's fine right sometimes with sites i build them they need work i revise them and then they go back to where they were this site i didn't have the time or even the the willingness to go back and do all the work because there was a lot of content and quite frankly i had worked on the site for so long i was kind of like i'm just i'm just over it like it's a great site it's done a lot of great things but i'm just kind of over and i don't want to work on anymore i don't want to have a team workout anymore i just want to let it go so i decided i made the decision at that point that hey it's not like it had fallen off a cliff and wasn't worth anything anymore right it was doing still pretty well compared to how it was in the past the past it did better but it's still doing pretty well so i thought okay i'm gonna list this thing and i'm gonna try to sell it so at that point i listened on one of the online marketplaces to sell uh websites i put it up there and i had i didn't even put a buy it now type price on it because i didn't really know how much it would really fetch because i had never sold a site this big before right so i put it up there and i thought okay let's see how much it sells for honestly i was hoping for like maybe 350 000 at the time which is a crazy amount of money i never thought i'd be here i just want to say anyone that's considering creating websites or maybe you're in the midst of it keep going because some crazy things can happen but anyway i was like all right i don't know what to list this as because i've never done this before i had some experts kind of talk to me and say oh you should do this and i thought you know what i'm just going to kind of let it be and and see where it goes uh and i did put a a half to hit amount so basically a number like a reserve price right to where it had to hit like if you're familiar with ebay oh it has to hit this amount that was 350 000 for me and in the beginning i was like that's fine i don't really know where it should be or what's gonna happen uh i wasn't really comfortable with selling for 350 i didn't think it would go that low but i also didn't really know how high it would go so it was like a minimum right um and even then if it was like if it went for that i'll be like you know it was i would have wrestled with it so anyway went through the whole process everything up and then at the end of the day what ended up happening was somebody had come in after i had a crazy amount of discussions with other people somebody had come in and they offered five hundred thousand dollars five hundred thousand half a million dollars they actually offered a little bit less than that it was like i don't remember what it was like four or ninety or something something like that and i was like look it needs to be five because how cool is that like half a million dollars right to be able to dream up something in your head build it and then sell it for half a million inc incredible right so at the end of the day that was it and we agreed okay and he was like yeah i'll buy it for that uh and the cooler thing too is that he didn't need to do financing it was all cash so it was like literally you know we'll turn the dial and it'll be in your hands and then you'll just give me all the money it was awesome so is it great this is amazing 500 000 we're both happy it's gonna be great so this is where the story gets weird uh and this is how i lost 223 000 uh what ended up happening was we're going through the process of transitioning all the assets over okay and for those that haven't sold a site before what i mean is you know when you when you buy site or when you sell a site you have to transition assets over to make it so that the person actually owns it and a big part of this is transitioning over the different partnerships that you have and all the different monetization platforms so like for instance we transferred over an ezoic account okay that's an example so we transferred it over he got a hold of it he put it up it started making money so he said okay yeah this this revenue stream is valid and we had to do that a bunch of different times with a bunch of different partners but here's where things really didn't go well so i transferred over most the partnerships no problem and it was just various affiliate things and things like that and then the display ads right transferring them all over not having a problem and then there was one particular partner that was a it's about 40 to 50 of the revenue monthly that's what it was at right that's how much it was making so a significant chunk of the revenue is for from this one partner okay and i had worked with this partner for years and everything was fine well they had kind of delayed things and they weren't really moving quickly on the whole transition but i was like whatever they'll get to it and i'm working on all these other ones when they're all done i turn to this one this is one of two partnerships that we have to transfer over to finish the wholesale the site right i went to them and i said hey i really need to get this kind of move in here because the new person is buying the site and they need it so that they can we can finalize the sale i'm working with them and then they started um asking like questions like questions that were and it's hard to explain this in great detail without giving the site away so i can't go into great detail about it but basically they were asking questions on things that i literally could not answer for various reasons okay things that i couldn't answer and when i originally had partnered with them they had these similar questions and i explained at the time i can't really answer these because of xyz right so they started asking these questions and i said well you guys already know we i can't really answer these questions because it's not really feasible there's not a way for me to do it but you know we've been working for however many i think was like four years or so together uh we've never had problems this one particular question or issue hasn't popped up so things were okay right as a partnership just we had had a smooth partnership what ended up happening was and i'll still never understand to this day they decided that even though we had worked together for four years never had problems they wanted to stop our partnership right then and there they were like i'm going to start stop the partnership which hurt because i knew right then wow the valuation right how much this site is worth is really going to get hammered here because this particular partner accounted for 40 to 50 of the revenue every month so you know i'm dealing with that i'm like this is going to be terrible because of that but then they went a step further and said we're actually going to reduce the data that we allow you to have as well because there was it's hard to explain how but they allowed me to use some of their data on my site you know again complicated to explain but basically not only were they killing my valuation they also basically said hey we're gonna turn off the data source uh it was an api we're gonna turn off the api and um that's gonna happen within the next couple hours and i'm sitting there like why why is this happening like why me what was me blah blah blah and i'm all upset about it for good reason because i literally didn't do anything wrong we never had a problem and then all of a sudden at the final hour they just said uh you know what we're done with this and they literally flipped the switch two hours later um not only was the the money gone from the valuation right uh but the entire site not all of it but parts of it were not functioning anymore which was a big problem because now my site isn't functioning as it should and if google sees that my site isn't functioning as good you know as the way that it has in the past i could lose my rankings so now i'm really panicking and you could maybe you could feel my panic that i had i mean i was like losing sleep didn't know what to do i hired uh basically i had to act quick right so what i did was is i hired two different development teams to help me put another partner in place of the partner that just completely ramrodded me for no reason whatsoever right uh and i was like i said losing sleep took about 36 hours the site um we got the new partner in place and things were fixed now the site was functional right now in that time while that was all going on i had pretty much lost lost hope of selling the site because you know it was 500 000 based on this criteria and then this partner dropped out which was 40 50 of the revenue which was like oh my god this is unbelievable they dropped out so now i'm like all right well that's it i'm not selling the site anymore and i went to the buyer and i said hey you know we can transfer assets back because we were already almost done it's like we could transfer assets back blah blah lucky for me this person and i'm very grateful for this said no no are you not interested in selling the site anymore and i was like what you're still interested in buying it because if it were me i'd probably be like no i'm not buying this thing now but he was like yes i'm still interested by which is amazing so him and i talked we redid the entire evaluation okay we reduced the valuation because that one partner who just totally dropped me for no reason uh you know we had to reduce it because of that which is understandable he can't be like well i'm not going to pay 500 000 if it's not going to make the amount of revenue which makes sense so we dropped it and then i got a new partner in there which like i had mentioned and that had raised it a little bit right so we basically came to a middle ground at this point to where it was supposed to be a 500 000 sale based on everything it ended up dropping down to 277 000 so that's how i lost 223 thousand dollars while selling a site which if you're asking ron does that still bother you oh yeah oh yeah it still bothers me i mean look at the end of the day 277 thousand dollars for a site it's an incredible amount of money it's life-changing money but 500 000 is more life-changing right and it was really tough because my wife and i had already talked it was almost like hitting a mini lottery that like i had built right like it was so cool to think like wow i did this and now we can do this little that kind of stopped so i'm not crying over it but that's how i ended up selling a site at 277 now from those that are wondering how do i feel about it now reflecting back right like like how do i sleep at night how do i deal with this so here's the thing um i know some people are gonna say okay well well you know you could have very easily gotten a different partner in there or or multiple partners in there i can't give away too much about the data and such but the way that this was structured i literally couldn't do that it had to be one partner i couldn't choose more than one partner okay that's the first thing second thing is that this particular partner that i partnered with in the first place that was with me for years and we never had a problem but they decided to back out the last minute they were the also the most profitable partner okay because i tested the other partners before so because they're the most profitable partner it didn't really make any sense for me to go to another partner because i would have just made less money over time so i went with the partner that paid the most which makes sense um and then three this was one that really helped me kind of get over this i had always kind of subscribed to the idea that you always control your own destiny right like all this and that and i don't mean to get all like religious or you know um theoretical on you but at the end of the day you can prepare yourself you could do as much as you can you can set everything up and and try to have contingencies and be ready for it but sometimes you guys are just not in control and i've come to terms with the fact that i'm not always in control so that has helped me greatly in understanding like hey you know i am a believer everything happens for a reason this happened i don't i i don't understand why i don't know why i lost 223 000 but maybe it was to humble me i i won't say that i was just you know throwing it in everyone's face but like i'm rich because that's not at all how i am as i mean if you were to see me on the street you'd be like oh hey rubble i would not act like a guy who sold the site for even this much i would you would have no idea so i'm just not the type of person but at the end of the day i was feeling pretty good about it and maybe this was just a reminder hey you're not always in control it sucked but yeah you're not always in control and then the fourth thing this was actually the biggest one pointed out by my wife she had mentioned she's like ron this all happened and i know this was tough and she dealt with and i mean there were some sleepless nights there guys um like literally sleepless nights especially while i was stressing about the site getting fixed but she pointed out she said you know this is tough but at the end of the day you didn't do anything wrong which really helped me understand like hey this pretty much was unavoidable because it's not like our partnership was in flux or something bad had recently happened or anything they literally came out of nowhere with us and we're just like no you know what we're not doing that anymore and for a day there i was like why me why you know and i was all upset about it but sometimes these things just happen and it can make you mad and it can get frustrating etc but you just have to like like my the way i do things like this when i have a bad situation happen in business and all this stuff i take a day or two to feel pity be sad eat like crap sleep do whatever i want maybe for maybe for two days usually just a day and i just let it all absorb i feel all the pain i bring it in and i just i let it all happen to me right and then afterwards you know i i realize i can't just sit there and be upset about this anymore like it's not doing anything so i basically came to terms with it and said well it is what it is there's not much i can do and i just kept moving forward right and i think that's kind of the whole thing to understand here is that with with online business business in general like some people maybe get hit by google algorithm update or or amazon reduces their commissions right these things happen okay you can try as much as you want to prepare for them and have a contingency plan right and do these things to make it so that when they happen it hurts less but at the end of the day sometimes these things are unavoidable so for anybody out there that's struggling with these types of things i don't know if you've ever lost 223 000 on a website sales i'm sure some people have uh but just understand that sometimes those things happen and when you take it just deal with it internalize it and then realize like wallowing and being upset in your own self-pity isn't gonna help anything so you just gotta keep moving forward so yeah that's pretty much my story on how i sold a site and i was able to make 277 000 which was amazing amount of money my wife and i are trying to move locations now we're in illinois we're trying to go to arizona we're trying to do some amazing things with our life we're really really excited but i also lost 223 000 but you won't hear me cry about it you won't hear me say oh wait wait wait it just is what it is i've come to terms with it and it is what it is because at the end of the day guys it's only money and really i think at this point that i'm going to be able to do this again anyway that's kind of the thing is i have a lot more confidence now that i was able to get to that level i'm like wow i could do this again so i'm kind of like it wasn't a life once in a lifetime thing it was a big thing and it's difficult to do but i think i can do it again too so anyway guys i hope that you enjoyed this video i know it's a little different kind of a story time video but that's my story and how i lost 223 000 if you have any questions comments i'd love to hear from you uh leave them in below uh below this video that'd be awesome also if you haven't please make sure that you like this video so that other people can see it and also subscribe to my channel so you are part of my community and otherwise guys as always thank you so much for being part of the community and i will see you in the next one

Channel: OneHourProfessor

Views: 1,304

Keywords: how to make money online, make money online, how to earn money online, online business, make money from home, OneHourProfessor, sell a website, sell a blog, how to sell a website, selling a website, selling a blog, how to sell a blog, website selling, blog selling

Id: 0bctA3wRRjc

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021