Emer­gency Cash Tip #21: Sell Un­prof­itable Parts of Your Business

If you al­ready have an In­ter­net busi­ness, but parts of it aren’t per­form­ing par­tic­u­larly well, then it may be a good idea to sell off the un­prof­itable parts.

Con­sol­i­date every­thing that is work­ing; and move for­ward with a new model.

These un­prof­itable sec­tions of your in­ter­net busi­ness might in­clude web­sites that are poorly mon­e­tized; or prod­ucts that don’t seem to sell very well.

What­ever the case may be, con­sider sell­ing it on a fo­rum like SitePoint.

If you have monthly rev­enue data (from Ad­Sense or Pay­Pal records), this will be helpful.

Even if the site doesn’t sell well for you, that doesn’t mean it can’t for some­one else.

This is some­thing that is im­por­tant to high­light when mak­ing the sale.

Point out the pos­i­tives about the site (such as its daily unique vis­i­tor counts); and then men­tion how this can po­ten­tially make more money if mon­e­tized better.

One good thing about sell­ing your un­prof­itable sites is that you can usu­ally get some­thing like 7-10 months worth of profit from the sale.

Even if your site was mak­ing a mea­ger $100/mo, this could trans­late into an im­me­di­ate sale for $700-1000.

As far as e-books, re­ports, and un­prof­itable in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty go, con­sider sell­ing them on forums.

Do what­ever you need to in or­der to make the most from them—whether it be sell­ing the mas­ter re­sale rights; or sim­ply sell­ing them to many peo­ple with a re­stric­tive license.