This would depend if your dotcom is part of a L.L.C. or not. If the website is a part of an L.L.C. and the L.L.C. is entirely for the website then you'd be selling the entire L.L.C., if it's part of the L.L.C. along with other websites you'd be selling it as an asset. Either way the IRS will have the final say if the actual website is a hobby or a business; which will effect how it's taxed.

It all depends on the contract. Most times, when you sell a dotcom business, the buyer is buying the rights to all inventions and ideas as well as the corporate entity and all assetts, including the domain name. They will most likely give key employees the 'golden handcuffs' and the upper management usually gets what is called a parachute. Golden handcuffs are contracts for the employees where they get a big bonus if they work for the new company for a certain time period. A parachute is basically the same as getting a bonus but also getting laid off.

I'm not 100% certain but I've read that when a domain changes ownership the majority of the rankings and traffic drops out. If your looking to buy into the .com business you may want to check out sources like SEOmoz.org. Daniel I.

DanielIT wrote: I'm not 100% certain but I've read that when a domain changes ownership the majority of the rankings and traffic drops out. If your looking to buy into the .com business you may want to check out sources like SEOmoz.org. Daniel I. Good thing your not 100% certain because you're 100% wrong. I've personally bought and sold quite a few websites and NEVER seen a drop in organic search rankings due to simply changing registrar information or web hosting accounts. This issue only happens because people don't properly transfer the domain and web content. They end up having a 24-72 hour downtime which can 'for a short time' effect organic search results (aka SERPs).

yes, it's the site architecture, links and content that count. the other thing that you do sometimes have is if the site is down for a while and a SE tries to reference it during that time, the site can lose some of it's 'age' which can affect rankings.

Is it including website, or domain only?

If you do your work with your site name and if you are selling it then actually your selling your complete business. Because your site name gets you the business. People know because of your site name. But if your company name is different from website name then I think you can launch a new site with the same entity name. I hope this will help you.

If the dotcom is the entity then I think you sell both as one because they are one and the same.