What's involved in selling a side project / business?
Hey everyone, I was curious about what actually goes into selling a side project / business for those who may have done it? I'm more so curious about how the assets are transferred rather than how buyers are actually found.
My high level guess is something along the lines of:
- Find a buyer
- Agree on the sale price
- Use Escrow (is this normally how its done?) to hand assets over
- Complete the sale
In terms of assets handing to Escrow, what would that normally involve? The code, domain, DB, and maybe some other assets?
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Hey Ryan, you might like this new youtube show called Deal or Bust.
Hackers come on and sell their side projects live to buyers.
Episode last week featured RightMessage.com developer Brennan Dunn (Hit $26k in MRR). Got a deal live for $600k.
In the recording, you'll see the buyers chatting about the asset, how to value it/transfer etc. Let me know if you want link and I can email it over to you. (It's on my Youtube channel)
That sounds awesome! I'll definite check it out, thanks.
Your high level bullet list is missing one important point - agree on what assets are actually going to be transferred. Both parties should be signing an agreement that explicitly states what you are transferring. The domain, the code, the database, the email inboxes, the product roadmap, etc.
Only with a specific and agreed list like that can you actually complete a transfer of assets.
As for Escrow, I assume you're using a capital E to refer to Escrow.com - I have used this service a couple of times and in my experience it only handles escrow of the actual domain name that you are transferring. Everything else like source code or design assets etc you have to handle separately.
There is no hard & fast rule while flipping your project, it's all about trust between you and the buyer but you can put your source code, domain and hosting service credentials in escrow!
Before making any deal with buyer checking his background will be helpful, just see how many successful deals he had already done in past(if possible).
But instead of using escrow, You can create milestones for the buyer like X amount of payment after moving hosting service, X amount of payment for transferring of domain name etc...
That way you can lower the risks and back everything up if something gone wrong!
That's really helpful, thanks! Is something like throwing together a quick sale agreement usually helpful even if its more an informal sale?
Nah, I don't believe that much in sale agreement, but yeah spending few pennies on it will be totally meaningful if both of you are from same country!
Check out flippa.com