As with any type of business, website design or development agency owners may choose to shut down their agency. Whether you are retiring, you don’t like working in the industry anymore, or your agency is not generating the amount of revenue that you were expecting, shutting down the business altogether can be the right choice. When it comes to the agency model, though, the agency owner should first take some steps to ensure that their clients are not left out to dry before their business is completely shut down. One of those considerations is ensuring that your clients still have access to and can manage their website policies. In this article, we will discuss how agency owners who are shutting down their agency can make sure that their clients are taken care of from a website policy perspective.
Before we get into the topic of how to make sure that your clients still have access to their policies, we do want to note that if you are considering shutting down your agency, you should consider selling your agency instead. There are plenty of agency owners whose business model includes purchasing the book of business (i.e. clients and projects) from other agencies who otherwise may want to shut down their business. This is a win-win-win situation – you would earn money for building your book of business over the years, the purchasing agency would obtain new clients, and your clients would have someone help them with their website.
Table of Contents
Why do clients still need access to policies if you are shutting down your agency?
Clients get their policies and consent solution set up because they want to protect their business against fines and lawsuits. If your agency owns the website policies and then shuts down without a plan to transfer those policies to your clients, then the policies and consent solution will no longer work, which can increase your client’s compliance risks. Agencies that leave their clients without a plan for their policies also put undue stress on the client. For example, the client may visit their website’s Privacy Policy page and see a 404 error, causing that client to have to scramble and figure out what to do for their policies without any notice.
If you are planning on shutting down your agency, the best course of action is to have a plan to inform your clients of the fact that your agency is shutting down and how the client can ensure that they retain their website policies.
Scenario 1: Affiliate program
If you have been using the Termageddon affiliate program, where the client pays us directly, uses your promo code to purchase and then you receive commissions on each sale, the transition is very easy. In this case, the client owns their Termageddon account and the policies associated with that account so no transfer of policies to the client is necessary.
The sole consideration in this case is whether you would still like to receive commissions from Termageddon on any client subscription renewals. If you are shutting down your agency, you will also most likely shut down your email or the email associated with the agency’s PayPal account. If you would still like Termageddon to pay you subscriptions for any renewals, you will need to update your PayPal email in your promoter dashboard to ensure that we can still send those commissions to you. You can do so by following the steps below:
- Log in at policies.termageddon.com;
- Click “Promoter Dashboard” at the top of the page;
- Click “Payouts”;
- Next to PayPal, click “Change” and update your email address.
Scenario 2: Reseller program
If you have been using the Termageddon reseller program, where you pay Termageddon directly and then bill the client for the license, you and your client will need to take a few simple steps to ensure that the client obtains ownership of the license and the associated policies. The good news is that once these steps are taken, we can easily transfer the license to the client’s account so that they retain access to their license and their website continues to display the policies and the consent solution.
Step 1: You will need to ask your client to register for a Termageddon account and purchase a new subscription. You can send them the following instructions on how to do so:
1. If you do not have a Termageddon account, you will need to register for a Termageddon account and verify your email.
2. In their dashboard, in the top right corner, click your profile (initials), then click “Billing”.
3. Click ‘buy license’. You will then follow the steps to add your payment information and purchase a single license subscription. Be sure to select “Only purchase license credit”
4. You do not need to go through the policy setup process as Termageddon will transfer your existing license from my account to your account;
5.Please let me know when you have completed these steps and I can let Termageddon know to transfer your license to your account.
Step 2: Submit a license transfer request. Please submit this form so that we know that we need to transfer the license from your account to your client’s account: https://termageddon.com/license-transfer-request/.
Step 3: We will CC both you and your client to let you know that the transfer has been completed. That’s it!
Final Thought
Taking these steps will ensure that your client has access to their license, that they take over billing, and that the policies and consent solution remain on their website when you shut down your agency. It will also ensure that the client is not stressed about their compliance and that there are no bad surprises for the client.
