This presentation is from Affiliate Summit West 2017 (January 15-17, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada). Session description: Will use examples from various sites we have grown in value by 5x in a year with actionable advice to help people with websites of all sizes increase how much they could be sold for.

1. How To 5x The Value of Your
Online Business
Chuck Mullins
Founder
CashForYourSite.com
Chuck@CashForYourSite.com

2. What is The Value of Your Business?
Whatever someone is willing to pay for it!
In reality your business is worth 2-3.5x your
annual net profit. This number can vary
greatly depending on things like business
model, size, age, growth, work load, capital
requirements, etc.

3. How To Increase The Value of
Your Online Business
• Increase Profit
• Get a higher multiple

4. How To Increase Profit
• Ask for more money
• Evaluate you current offers/affiliates
• Titles and Descriptions Matter
• Identify objections and address them
• Increase site speed and add https

5. Ask For More Money
Affiliate
Contact your merchants and ask for a higher payout
Merchants
Price test your products and services

6. Evaluate Your Current Offers/Affiliates
Affiliates
Use tools like SpyFu and SEMrush to identify your competitors and
see what offers they are promoting.
Merchants
Measure the value of each affiliate separately, and compensate them
accordingly. Look at your Google Analytics, and play around with
attribution models - specifically first and last in methods. If an affiliate
is primarily sending clicks last in, measure their effect on conversion
rates (impulse buyers, value shoppers, etc.). If an affiliate is primarily
first in, leverage commission rules within your network to make sure
they're compensated!

7. Titles and Descriptions Matter
Use Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) to
identify underperforming rankings based on click-
through rate.
Keyword 1 - Ranking 1st - Click through rate 43%
Keyword 2 - Ranking 1st - Click through rate 27%
Keyword 3 - Ranking 1st - Click through rate 13%
Why are the click through rates so different?

8. Identify Objections and Address Them
People often won’t take the action we want because of a
rational or even irrational objection.
Identify Objections
•Surveys
•Polls
•User Testing
Overcome Objections
•Trust Seals – SafeSiteCertified.org, PrivacyVerified.org, VerifiedSeller.org
•Testimonials – “I was afraid of side effects, but …”
•Address objections head-on “We Value Privacy and Will Never Spam You”

9. Increase Site Speed and Add HTTPS
• Switch to a fast and reliable webhost
• Test your site with Google Page Speed Insights
• Test your site with webpagetest.org
• Add caching to your website
• Use a Content Deliver Network (CDN)
• Buy and SSL and add site wide HTTPS

10. How Do You Get Someone To Pay More For Your
Business?

Find a strategic buyer

Choose the right broker for your type and size of business

Remove single points of failure

Sell on Terms

Clean up your books and document everything

Time your Sale

Front load one-time expenses

Show a path for growth

11. How Do You Find A Strategic Buyers
Affiliates:
•Who are you promoting?
•Who would be interested in seeing you no longer
promote them?
•Competitors who could leverage your audience and/or
relationships

12. How Do You Find A Strategic Buyers
Merchants:
•Competitors
•Complimentary businesses
•Business that can leverage your audience and/or
relationships

13. Choose The Right Broker
• Brokers Specialize in different types of businesses and are
able to allocate and leverage resources accordingly. This
could be based on the business model, the value, or
numerous other things.
• Picking the wrong broker can have disastrous effects.
When trying to purchase a site I had a broker tell me I
was asking to many questions for this “small” $25k deal
and that it wasn’t worth his time.

14. Remove Single Points of Failure
Having a single point of failure is never a good thing.
• You should diversify both your traffic sources and your income
streams.
• Create Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
• Remove yourself from the operations of the business as much as
you can by automating what you can and outsourcing the rest

15. Sell On Terms
To maximize the amount of money someone will be willing to pay you,
you need to de-risk the sale as much as possible. This can be
accomplished allowing the purchaser to buy on terms.
•Hold Back
•Seller Financing
Warning! By de-risking the business for the buyer through terms, you
are in effect absorbing the risk. Unlike many other assets, a new owner
can completely destroy an online business if they don’t now what they
are doing.

16. Clean Up Your Books
and Document Everything
• Have a clean detailed Profit & Loss (P&L) statement that
matches your bank accounts, merchant accounts, and
tax returns.
• Keep a detailed list of work you have done on the site. This
should include things like what was done, the page(s) it was done
to, and the date.
• Add annotations to your Google Analytics of the changes you
make. This can help track down the causes of traffic fluctuations

17. Time Your Sale
• If your business is growing at a significant rate, hold on to it
as long as you can and sell it before the growth completely
stops.
• If your business is in decline and you don’t think you can
turn it around, time is working against you. Sell is as
quickly as you can. Each additional month of declining
sales further reduces the value of your business.

18. Front Load One-time Expenses
One-time expenses aren’t supposed to be counted against
you, but the reality is, they are.
Buyers generally value a company based on the trailing
twelve months’ (TTM) P&L. The sooner you pay for things
the sooner they fall off your TTM P&L.
Try not to drag one-time expense across multiple months or
they start looking like ongoing expenses.

19. Tools

(P) - Centurica.com - Due Diligence Services $149 to $549+

(F/P) - SpyFu.com

(F/P) - Moz.com & Moz.com/researchtools/ose

(F/P) - SEMRush.com

(F/P) - Majestic.com

(F/P) - ahrefs.com

(F/P) - Screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

(F/P) - Deepcrawl.com

(F/P) - ScrapeBox.com
F = Free P = Paid

20. Tools

(F/P) - DomainTools.com

(F/P) - DomainIQ.com

(F/P) - SameID.net

(F/P) - ReverseInternet.com

(F) - Archive.org

(F) - Alexa.com

(F/P) - Compete.com

(F/P) - CopyScape.com

(F) - BuiltWith.com

(F) - State Business Websites - Example: kepler.sos.ca.gov
F = Free P = Paid

21. Tools

(F) - Google Trends

(F) - TradeMarkia.com

(F) - SocialMention.com

(F/P) - ReverseInternet.com

(F) - SpyonWeb.com

(F/P) - KeyWordSpy.com

(F) - SeoMastering.com

(F) - YouGetSignal.com

(F) - BannedCheck.com

(F) - Facebook.com / Linkedin.com / Twitter.com / etc.
F = Free P = Paid

22. Bonus Tool Slide
• (P) - Hubstaff.com – Time Tracking Tool for out sourced labor
• (P) - BaseCamp.com - Project Management
• (F/P) - Trello.com - Project Management
• (F/P) - MainWP.com – WordPress Plugin to Manage Multiple Sites
• (P) - DepositPhotos.com - Cheap Stock Photos
• (P) - SafeSiteCertified.org - Trust Seals to Increase Conversion Rates
• (P) - DigitalMarketer.com – Boost Traffic, Conversion, & Engagement
• (P) - AppSumo.com - Offers Amazing Discounts on Great Tools
• (F/P) - Buzzsumo.com - Lists Top Social Media Posts
• (P) - TextBroker.com - Inexpensive Quality Writers
• (F/P) - UptimeRobot.com - Monitor Site Uptime/Downtime
• (P) - Optimizepress.com – Easily Create WordPress Landing Pages
• (F) - Google Docs - Collaborative Document Editing
• (P) - TechSmiths.com - "Camtasia" Screen Capture Videos & Tutorials
• (P) - FreedomVoice.com - Vanity 8XX Numbers, Auto Attendant, Mailboxes ...
F = Free P = Paid

23. How To 5x The Value of Your
Online Business
Chuck Mullins
Founder
CashForYourSite.com
Chuck@CashForYourSite.com