What would be a fair price for my site?

efeezy

efeezy

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Oct 5, 2007
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I don't get too wrapped up in what's my site worth bullshit, but I have a guy who might be a player for one of my better money making sites. I'm just curious of a ballpark figure where I should be if he actually makes me a serious offer.

Here's some details.

Site is in the gaming niche, a little over a year old.
In that year it generated $30,019.00 in Adsense revenue.
PR2 with Alexa of 236,042
130 indexed pages.

Averages between 4000-6000 UV's per day, spikes to 8000 occasionally.
Approximately 175,000 pageviews per month.

Who knows, the guy could be a jack off, but if I had a number to work with, that would help me figure out if he is serious or not. Thanks.
 


It's not a lot of upkeep really. And I wasn't thinking of selling it unless I got a ridiculous offer. I just have no idea how to value a site based on it's traffic and income.
 
on forums like sitepoint etc I've always seen people recommending to sell for 8 - 10 times the monthly revenue of the website.

I don't know if this generic rule makes sense or if it would be smart for such an optimized website

I wouldn't sell it for that amount ( unless you foresee a drop in rankings )
 
there are people who sell their sites for a year or less in revenue...but I wouldn't do that (depending on the amount of work to keep it making money). I'd look for at least 3 years revenue...or in this case $90k.
 
+1 that 10 months rev is a good guideline for buying and selling most types of websites

So be looking in the $25k range like recommended above.
 
Thanks. That gives me a ballpark of where I would need to be. I don't think I'm going to sell it unless he comes back with some insane offer. I like having a site that can make $30K a year on auto pilot.
 
efeezy said:
I like having a site that can make $30K a year on auto pilot.
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That is the key. Its one thing for a site to make that kind of dough and require activity and another if it is full auto. I personally would be thinking in the ballpark of 24 to 36 months revenue.

If the dude is serious he may ask you to place his adsense pub id on the site as well as some sort of stat tracking code. Its not uncommon of a request to allow a serious buyer to test your site. If this is the case educate and protect yourself from scammers looking to make a quick buck. It is also not uncommon for the seller to require a fee during the tasting period kinda like escrow for buying property.
 
erect said:
I would, nothing in life (or the serps) is guaranteed. Besides, you know the niche and can be a direct competitor now.

10 months rev ... $25k
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This.

I purchased a site for $30k a while back which was about only 4* months rev. Well, just a few weeks after I took it over the payouts (Adsense/YPN) for the niche dropped dramatically and it got hit with dupe penalty from Google. I barely made the $ back before the traffic died off and the competition saturated the SERPs.

Waaaay too many variables involved with SEO that are out of your control to be putting a lot of money at risk. Just remember that Google can crank down that Adsense % in their favor at any moment to increase their revenue number.

NOTHING is "auto-pilot" for very long in this industry.
 
How do you know when to provide someone stats on your earnings and traffic?. With this guy who approached me, I didn't divulge any info other than, yes if the price was right, I might be interested in selling. What did you have in mind for an offer?

Haven't heard anything back yet, which I kind of expected, but I'd hate to just give out all of my info to some jerk weed who's just looking to see if it's a profitable niche so he can make a his own site and become my competition.
 
Sounds like the ball is in his court now so if he is a serious buyer he will get back to you with further questions. Obviously in order for him to come up with a serious offer you'll have to divulge some traffic and revenue information. I wouldn't give exact amounts at that time but just use ball park figures ($x,xxx in revenue per month or whatever). A rough estimate for traffic can always be found using Alexa, Quantcast and Comete.com's stats so giving out traffic stats really isn't giving away too much.

I've had lots of people randomly contact me for domains and sites I own over the years and the people who actually purchased anything were always quick to get back to me. You can kind of tell how serious they are just by the questions they ask.

Also, Google their email address or name they used and see if anything comes up. I Googled one guy's email/name who had contacted me and found out he was a big time porn webmaster so I knew he had the funds and was a serious buyer.
 
I would, nothing in life (or the serps) is guaranteed. Besides, you know the niche and can be a direct competitor now.
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True that.

Several years ago, I sold a site that was bringing me $40-42k/year of net profit ($120k/year gross revenue) for $65k. Took about 15 minutes of work per day to keep up. The only work on it I did was punching in the previous day's orders for the dropshipper.

The guy who bought the site from me had to take out a loan against his house to pay me.

The site had stable income for 3 years prior to the sale. But it was depending on free search engine traffic.

As (his) luck would have it, the site got dropped out of search engines and now doesn't bring shit.

I don't have access to the stats any more, but last time I checked, the site is basically ruined.

I'm guessing the guy is still paying out the loan for that purchase. My guess is he probably managed to pull out $20-30k of net income out of it until it collapsed, but not more than that.

I feel bad for him, but I knew stuff like that could happen any day.

That's one of the reasons I sold for only $65k. I just wanted a "no-strings-or-guarantees" agreement.

If I waited another yet before selling, I would end up with a burnt out site that's worth $200-300 at most.
 
200k pageivews/month, 200k+ alexa, PR2... Curious how you're pulling in $30k in adsense in the gaming niche. Payouts are notoriously low in that industry so you're CTR must be ridiculous. None of my business, I know, just thinking out loud.

In any case... it sounds like you've got a good thing going. I would be reluctant to sell unless you've got a need for the $30k or a project requiring financing - otherwise you can use that current success to leverage new sites and opportunities. If you need the money take it, otherwise I would hold out for something more than 12X monthly revenue.

But that's just me. Remember that holidays 2010 should have some pretty big "gaming" stuff announced like Project Natal and others - your revenue is likely to go up, especially if you can get some good CPA stuff going in addition to adsense. Although without knowing the specific details of your site content/philosophy, that's definitely reaching for concepts.
 
It's really up to you, it sounds like you have lots of skills when it comes to web sites. I think it's fair to charge based on workload, i.e. charge lower for static html pages and charge higher for pages that require flash and php. I did a simple website (static html with a little javascript navigation tree) and the company that I did it for gladly paid me $1500 for it, where I was going to charge like $200. In general, look at what professionals charge for services and try to charge a little lower. I think you'll find you can make good money making websites as long as you can keep finding work.
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Edwin, can you pm me the site name? Just want to review and see how you are able to pull out that much traffic wit alexa rank of $200k..

I'm fairly new to this site, however have a reputable profile on namepros (3k posts) & dnf (1k posts), pm me if you want to see that.
 
I've thought about this also for sites with very similar statistics in the same niche, The thing that always stops me is that every few months the income goes up a little more as the site progresses. Sure it could die in the serps ... but what if it takes a huge rise from something like being stumbled from a user uploading a new game they've made? I'd always look for at least 10 months and then maybe doubled depending on members, age of site, backlinks, etc.
 
Jhon Butcher said:
It's really up to you, it sounds like you have lots of skills when it comes to web sites. I think it's fair to charge based on workload, i.e. charge lower for static html pages and charge higher for pages that require flash and php. I did a simple website (static html with a little javascript navigation tree) and the company that I did it for gladly paid me $1500 for it, where I was going to charge like $200. In general, look at what professionals charge for services and try to charge a little lower. I think you'll find you can make good money making websites as long as you can keep finding work.
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You're confused. I'm not doing work building sites for others. I have a site that I was approached about selling. However I'm not going to sell it at the moment.

Soofi said:
Edwin, can you pm me the site name? Just want to review and see how you are able to pull out that much traffic wit alexa rank of $200k..
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I'm not sure who Edwin is, but if you're talking about me, I think I'll pass. I'm not really wanting to share my niche at this time. Thanks for asking.
 
efeezy said:
I'm not sure who Edwin is, but if you're talking about me, I think I'll pass. I'm not really wanting to share my niche at this time. Thanks for asking.
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sorry, i thought you were Edwin, and hey it's all good! you can pass ;)
 
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