As a member of Investors Club, you have access to a marketplace full of listings. Regardless of whether you have a Free or Premium membership, you can browse listings, contact sellers, place offers, and complete acquisitions.
Setting up a buyer’s account takes just a few minutes and once you’ve found the right business, we’ve made it easy to complete the purchase quickly and efficiently.
With Investors Club there are no long wait times so your new investment starts paying off from day one.
Let’s take a look at the process of purchasing a website — just head over to the marketplace to get started by hitting the “listings” link (illustrated below).
Step 1. Browse the Marketplace
The Investors Club marketplace was built with members in mind. Here you can see a brief overview of each business and filter by asset type, monetization method, acquisition channels, and more. You can also filter to see listings for certain price ranges, monthly revenue/profit, and multiple.
With our in-depth due diligence reports available to all VIP members, analyzing a website can now be done easier than ever.
Each listing comes complete with a thorough analysis on everything from the financials and site traffic to spam signals, content and opportunities for growth, giving you all the information needed to make the right decision.
We’ve written more about making the most of our due diligence features here so for this post let’s assume you’ve done your research and found the site you want to acquire.
Now that you’re confident in your decision, it’s time to talk $$$.
Step 2. Negotiate
All listings have an asking price that is set by the seller, however, buyers also have the option to negotiate.
If you’re going down this route we recommend sending a message to the seller first with the lower offer explaining your reason behind it.
This is because sellers have the option to accept, counter or reject offers that differ from the asking price, and knowing why the price was offered can be helpful during this process.
When you’re ready to take the plunge, use the contact form on the listing page to reach the seller.
Step 3. Offer Accepted, Time to Pay
Once the seller has accepted your offer, the two of you can work out the details to complete the transaction. This includes completing an Asset Purchase Agreement with all the details of the sale.
We recommend using an escrow service, but that’s a decision you and the seller will need to make. Escrow protects both parties, so it’s usually in everyone’s best interest.
If you decide to use an escrow service, you’ll transfer the money into an escrow account. Once the money is verified by the escrow service provider, the seller will begin transferring the assets to you.
Step 4. Transferring all assets
The transfer process can take anywhere from a few days up to a week depending on the size and complexity of the business and includes:
- Domain migration
- Site admin credentials
- Hosting migration
- Analytics admin access
- Ad account transfer (optional)
- Affiliate account transfer (optional)
- Full site testing
Once the transfer is complete and you’ve had the time to inspect the assets and make sure that everything is as expected, you can release payment from the escrow account and it will be sent to the seller.
Congratulations, your acquisition is complete!
Step 5. You’re in Charge Now
Once the transfer process is complete, you’re in control.
Many sellers offer a window of support to help new owners but this should be discussed ahead of time and included in the APA.
If you haven’t set up an Investors Club account already, we’ve written more about it in part one of our buyers guide series, available here.
New listings go live on our marketplace every day so there’s never been a better time to find your next investment.
Hannah Beazley
Hannah is a content marketing specialist at Investors Club and a freelance copywriter. When she's not busy behind the keyboard, you'll find her baking her signature salted caramel brownies or trying to sink that elusive hole-in-one.
Comments (2)
Warren Saevitzon
May 7, 2023 at 2:52 pmHello. Thanks for the informative article. Just a quick question:
You say that “As part of our service to buyers, we offer a free 14 day inspection period for each site. During this time we monitor the earnings to ensure that they’re within 70% of the average revenue when the site was valued.”
My question is what happens if the revenue is below 70% of the average revenue?
Elena
May 28, 2023 at 5:01 pmHey Warren,
When this happens, the buyer gets to decide what to do. They can decide to go ahead with their original offer, make a new offer, or not continue with the purchase.