Hello
This time I want to talk about a topic that most of us avoid to spend much thoughts on (at least I did until a few month ago). Our death.
Most people don’t die of old age.
What would happen to your online business if you would suddenly die (e.g. car accident)?
How are your dear websites (income streams) to be handled or transferred to your loved ones?
What can you do to ensure that your future website earnings transition safely and smoothly to them after you have passed away and never had the chance to tell them?
Did you even tell them?
After spending quite some thoughts on this topic I wrote a document listing all my properties, logins and important information regarding my projects so that they at least can be accessed and transfered.
I am not sure where to store it yet because these are very sensitive information. I most likely will burn them on a DVD and store them in my parents safe.
My parents are not very computer savvy so it will be difficult for them to keep the projects running for a long time.
My brother could take care of them if he wanted to.
But with that document they can at least sell them for a very nice sum if they don’t want to continue them.
How do you handle your online business in case of your death?
What are your thoughts on this topic?
admin
I'm no worried about death and what happens after mine, because I don't have children to take of, I have only family members and girlfriend who already deal with their needs by themselves.
I'm more worried about having an accident which will leave me with memory problems, because even simple things such as finding where I've put my private file with all login and passwords, let alone remembering all those datas, could be impossible after a coma or such a head trauma.
I know I've seen on the web already companies who, for a fee, have it all planned for you. See this post from Mashable: 7 Resources for Handling Digital Life After Death
But I'm not interested in letting something after I die apart from my bank accounts, I don't want to do anything to plan that, by the way I don't believe in any religious fairy tales, so I see death as simply the way it was before I was born: like nothing matters.. :-)
- work you do on your own
- work you delegate
You should also list these two things in the document for the "new owners".
My forum which I don't really consider a business because I barely make enough money to pay the bills, was left without an admin with no warning. I went into the hospital not thinking I might not come out so I made no prior arrangements.
No one had my passwords and only my sister even knew I had a forum but she wasn't a regular user.
After about a week of me not being online one of the mods who had my cell phone number called to see what was up and my sister answered and explained the situation.
He posted about my condition online and the other mods tried to figure out what they had to do. I had just paid the hosting bill for the month but they new they had to do something.
At this point they thought I would just be in the hospital for a couple weeks. But weeks turned to months. They were able to contact the web host and the web host accepted paypal payments from them on my behalf for a couple of months (they did a donation drive on the site to raise money for hosting fees).
However no one knew that my vBulletin license (it was leased at the time) was due to expire. When it did vBulletin sent a "shut down notice" to my host because it looked like I was using vBulletin without paying, which technically I was. So my host had to pull the plug on my domain.
One of my more "technically savy" users got my sisters permission was was successfully able to "hack" my main email account and from that found info for another account and finally he found a bunch of emails from an angry vBulletin...
He, along with the mods, did some more fundraising and purchased a vBulletin lifetime license and they were able to get my forum back up.
They all ran it for the months I wasn't online, the guy who hacked the accounts gave himself admin rights so he could do the big things while my team of mods kept order.
It was about 6 months before I was barely able to use a laptop and my sister sat with me in the hospital and I was able to see a massive "get well Joe" thread that was stickied on my forum.
I said "hello" to everyone but it was still another 3 months before I was online regularly again.
Had that guy not been able to get into my email accounts it's likely my site would have been deleted- though I'm sure someone else would have opened up their own forum it wouldn't have been "mine" anymore.
So yes, you should definitely at least brief a friend or family member on your online activities and provide them with passwords or an account they can access in case you are ever incapacitated.
My daughter also runs her own internet business, monetised with Adsense, so it's logical that she should get the business to do what she chooses with.
My two sons get a fair share of what's left. I think the hardest thing will be for the executors to put a value on the existing websites/business - as this seems to vary at present from 1 to 2 x annual income.
Am anticipating with domains becoming scarcer that the value of a good domain name will increase, as will a good site earning income.