jerxs

I have a couple sites that I have built up nicely, that are receiving a decent bit of traffic, for niche based content sites. Anyway I want to sell a couple of these sites because Ive just lost interest in them.

The one site that I am selling is the first site I build, because of this its in pretty bad shape, Its a static site based off a DW template I put together and is monetized like shit, though the site is getting around 100,000 uniques per month.

So with that being said how do you go about estimating what a website is worth, I know allot of people look at revenue only, which in my case would just not work, the site is far from being optimized to its full potential. Ive heard other people say that they base a sites worth from unique traffic only. Is there any formula I can use to get a rough idea of what my sites are worth before trying to sell?

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jerxs

ha ha ha ha, check this out, I think I found my answer in an Ezine article, heres a quote from it!

Wow Im going to be a fucking millionare!

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moratraffic

I saw that same article before too when trying to appraise my site and I thought the same thing. That is a crazy amount! Now, if we could just find the person to pay that.

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Kurt Maine

When I used to browse the web hosting forums a lot, there was a lot of buy outs going on. The usual formula for the price of hosting sites was assets (what the design and framework you built is worth to you) + 3 years of revenue at your current monthly average.

I'm not sure how well that translates to whatever niche you're in, but perhaps it'll give you an idea.

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Mike

Your site is worth whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. I know that sound dickish, but it's true. That being said...

1. Figure out what your average monthly revenue is and if it has been steady for 6 + months, then you can probably figure revenue into the price. 10 - 12 months worth.

2. You are getting a ton of uniques per month, that alone is worth something. How much? Hard for me to say.

3. I assume the domain is more than a year old, so that also has some value.

4. The amount of unique content will also add additional value ($) to the equation.

If you were willing to post a URL, it would help people evaluate it and give you a rough idea what to ask for it.

Good Luck Jer!

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Sledneck

Well do it this way then: calculate how much it would be worth if it was fully monetized and multiply by 10 or something?

mrbounce

the subject of the site matters hugely in its value. you definately cannot gauge a sites value simply by looking at the monthly uniques.

wrstroud

I know this site is probably crap, but its cool to check out: h ttp://www.dnscoop.com/ Run your domain through it and see what it says.

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SeoDave

There is no set formula for estimating the value of a website which will work with 100% certainty. As others in the thread have pointed out, there are a few benchmarks which you can use, but even using these will not give you an accurate figure. The truth is that the law of supply and demand is in full effect on the internet as it is anywhere else. Mike is right: you'll get for it what any sucker is willing to pay. Rather than figure out what the "market" deems as its worth, why don't you decide what you're willing to part with it for?

You could also do some research into sites that do have sales of sites similar to yours and see what the going rate seems to be for your niche/traffic/revenue. The value of any site to a potential investor would definitely be a combination of these 3 factors. Is your niche profitable? I would pay high $XX,XXX+ for 100K+ targeted visitors in a mortgage niche (some people would pay way way more). I would probably pay low $X,XXX for 100K monthly visitors to a site about the special olympics. Also, the origination of your traffic is of high importance. Does most of your traffic come from the US or another first-world country or do you get most of your visitors from third-world countries? What I'm saying is that the QUALITY of your traffic is important. What avenues does your traffic arrive at your site through? Do you have thousands of backlinks and high PR or do you receive most of your traffic through one or 2 internet portals? How steady is your traffic - have you been getting 100K uniques for many months or did you just recently start getting that many?

As you can see, there are so many questions to be asked that the only true way to find out your website's worth is to A) Determine its worth to you or B) Determine its market value by placing it on the market and seeing what it will sell for. I'm willing to look at your site and give you my best estimate, but in all reality that's all that anyone can do. They can ESTIMATE the value of your site and from there you can determine what you are willing to part with the site for.

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jerxs

Thanks for the great information, There are a hell of allot of things to take into consideration here.

Mike you are absolutely right, as with anything else, something is only worth as much as the next guy is willing to pay you for it.

I dont think those tools are accurate, though I ran one of my sites through that I will be selling and it estimated its value at $13,059.

SEO Dave I will shoot you a PM

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Mike

LOL!! That DNScoop is funny stuff!

Now, it may not be worth $16 million (sorry Jon, couldn't resist ), but it's certainly worth more than $13,261

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SeoDave

That DNScoop tool was all over the place for me. It way overestimated the value of some of my sites and WAY underestimated one. Telling me that a site that I make a couple hundred off per MONTH was only worth $87. Heh, I think I'll keep it if that's what it would sell for. ;-)

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bgmacaw

I think DNScoop places a lot of weight on Alexa in determining the worth of a site. Great if you're in a niche where you get a lot of Alexa traffic but not so great otherwise.

Unarmed Gunman

Your best bet is to actually put it up for sale on Sitepoint or similar and see how high the bidding takes it. Fair Market Value. Be prepared to delete a bunch of bullshit comments from ninnies, but it should give you a good idea what it is worth. Just set a high reserve on it if you don't actually want to sell it.

Your best offers will come through PM, and not actual bids, so it will be hard to tell if they are serious without actually selling, but it should give you an idea.

Shoot me a PM with the url, I might be interested in 100K, depending on the niche.

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Jon

Sounds like the guy who wrote that also consulted to the people who offered the $16M bid for WF and it's parent company haha. Funny too because so many people thought I was bragging about it, when really I thought it was a joke at first, and when I found out they were serious, I thought it was even more peculiar because they had such a high valuation and only had access to public data, so it's like they were just taking a random number they thought it may take to get me to sell, and go from there, but I wasn't going to have any of that. Ah well..

If you want to sell your sites, take your sales and profit numbers of your last 6 months (10 months if the traffic is all viral, word of mouth, or natural and valuable), also take into consideration the domain names, how unique the software or content is. Then factor in a range of the lowest to the highest amount you'd settle for, and start at 3/4 of the way to the higher end of it and just be ready to negotiate from there. Not very hard to do.

Ah yeah.. also figure out and factor in the value of your competitors and try to get a feel for the potential buyers. If you value you it at $5k and everyone else values those types of sites at $1k, you may have to hold out for a buyer, or if time is a big factor, where waiting it out can hurt you, then you may want to settle for something a bit less like $3k or $2500.

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