SEF ... The Search Engine Forums

The following advice was compiled by magicstar a valued contributor to this forum. You can read the complete text on his [website]

1. Choose your forums wisely.

-Forums each have a unique "culture", and certain types of sites are generally listed in each.
-Most fora have fairly basic rules but one or two insist that if you're listing your site with them you can't list it elsewhere.
-Read each forum's rules on what is allowed or not.

2. Register in your chosen Fora
-Consider registering a new name if you're already a member - Old names may generate respect - or ridicule - depending on how you used the nick.
-It may be wise to build up a double digit post count by participating in a few threads and making a few useful contributions. Choose the threads and comments carefully as buyers may be using them to judge the type of person you are.

3. Plan the title of your post.
-Probably THE most important part of your sales process! Why? Potential buyers don't always read every thread - they scan through the titles and selectively choose which threads to visit.
-Make a list of the top three USPs (unique selling points) and try to abbreviate them into the title.

Example of bad titles:

- Buy my site (doesn't give the buyer a reason to read your thread)
- FANTASTIC SITE, GREAT PRICE, SEE THIS NOW (all caps is immature)
- mydomainname.com (so what? What about your domain.com?)
- musthaveurl.com (Unless you've drop-caught a domain like microsoft.com don't waste title space)
- Site 4 sale: $5,000 (Abbrv. are OK as long as they R not txt talk)
- Site 4 sale: $5,000 (Apart from weeding out low budget buyers this title is useless)

Examples of well thought out titles:

- Proxy site, 2K daily uniques, $36K profit lat year, PR6, 3 yrs old
- Adsense site, unique football content, $40 per day stable earnings
- Tech site with 6 DMOZ listings, 8 years old, PR7, low BIN (BIN = Buy It Now price)

4. Plan your post carefully!
-Provide as much information as you can without overloading potential buyers.
-If a forum has a specific format for the post - use it. Regular users of the forum will be used to the layout and style. Save time by composing the post in an HTML editor and pasting it into the new-thread form.
-Your post needs to include:

- A brief introduction that summarises your offering.
- A brief description of the site/business, how it works, how much it makes and other pertinent information.
- Some fora request specfic information - make sure you provide the information that is asked for.

-Make sure it is easy to read by using titles, sub titles, bold, italics, paragraphs, images, graphs, colour etc.
-Spell check and spell check again. Shoddy presentation puts buyers off.

How much do you disclose? That's up to you.

5. Plan your post out carefully!

You need to consider how to present the information required without overloading potential buyers - many fora have a specific format that you need to follow. It is usually best to stick to that format as regular users of the forum are used to the layout and style.

Time Saving Tip: Composing your post and compiling information in an HTML or text editor will allow you to copy and paste relevant parts for each format.

Information Essentials:
- Don't lose your buyer! You've gone through a lot of trouble to attract potential buyers to your thread and you can't afford to lose them now. Have a brief introduction that summarises your offering.

Describe your offering:
-What is the site or business?
-How does it work?
-What kind of time committment or skills are required?
-What kind of traffic does it receive?
-Is it listed in search engines?
-Does it utilize any popular programs or scripts that someone already familiar with them could easily use on your site?
-How much money does it make? Is this through advertising, product sales?
-Other pertinent information. You do not need to post a 10,000 word memorandum of sale. If you've exceeded 2,000 words you're probably saying too much for a thread.

Tip: Using the usual presentation tools like titles, sub titles, bold, italics, paragraphs, images, graphs, colour etc make your post easy to read. Spell check and spell check again. Shoddy presentation puts buyers off.

How much do you disclose? That's up to you. However, you'll need to be prepared for free-loaders pumping you for information on how you attract traffic, how you make your profit, who your secret drop-ship merchants are etc. They'll invariably pretend to be interested in buying your site and you'll have no way of knowing for certain whether they are genuine buyers or tarts. Again, it's up to you how much you disclose in the open thread, how much more you provide freely via PM (Private Message), and how much you disclose only on completion of a Non Disclosure Agreement.

6. Be prepared for brickbats.
Interested buyers have incentive to rubbish your offering because it depresses the price and saves them money. They may find genuine faults/issues/problems and blow them out of proportion, they may invent problems or plant seeds of doubt by hinting that your site seems to violate someone else's intellectual property. If there's some secret you're hiding it may come out and ruin your thread - and possibly chances at a sale! So, if it was used to host adult content untill about three weeks ago, or it was banned by Adsense, or you have been taken to court because the domain name violates someone else's trademark... for goodness sake disclose it yourself before someone else does. Honesty is an excellent policy to adopt when selling a site.

7. Start your thread when you know you're going to have time to answer questions, reply to PMs promptly etc.
-Be warned that this could take up a lot of your time. Some buyers want information from your traffic stats that you may have to extract manually, others may want you to compile a breakdown of earnings info etc. Even answering questions in the thread itself can sometimes be quite time consuming.



(more points to be added..)



[ Message was edited by: Sinoed 08/03/2006 06:01 pm ]