Zillow’s closing stock price went ‘down’ to $33.20,  almost $14 to what they wanted. They got a cool $70 million for it, $20 million more than what they were hoping.  Not bad for a real estate related IPO.

By now, everyone is chimed in with how excited Wall St. is with internet stocks, specifically those that are leading the ‘social’ bandwagon; starting with Google’s failed $6 billion offer to Groupon, LinkedIn’s warm reception and Facebooks’s massive valuation — are you kidding me, $100 billion?!

No, I’m not here to debate about another Tech Bubble, though it’s worth mentioning Frank Quattrone recently baptized LinkedIn as “..the Netscape of its era.” to which he made clear, the 1995, pre-bubble Netscape.

But this got me thinking, what can I do to give me the best chance to sell my real estate site? Here are the factors that I think will help (and that I’ll be likely working on):

  • Do you own your real estate niche online? Be it as big as Washington, DC or as quaint as Napa, or even in the hot-then-frigid-cold Reno real estate. Can you show potential buyers if indeed, you are dominating? Start tracking results and leads.  (Note to self.)
  • Who are your potential buyers? I’d love for my parent broker company to buy me off someday.  I like my mother and believe in their vision. But…
  • Will they? Why will they spend five to six figures to buy you out? What’s in it for them? I’m actually hitting this in  my stubborn head in my next round of improvement for my sites.

In general, I’m thinking of ways that would make my site simply unattainable for potential buyers.  Meaning, when they look at my site, I want them to say things like:

“Man, that Joe guy did something real special here,”

“Whow, Joe gets a solid $50,000 yearly revenue off the site, “

“It’ll cost too much to build something like Joe’s and I don’t even know where to start,”

“Even if we spend the same amount of money and hire talent, his site (and links) is already 4 years aged.”

What would you do in your site if you new you were going to sell 4 years from now? What’s your high target price? Realistic price range? Who will be your potential buyers? (No seriously, I want to know…)