7 Year Old Car Forum - How Much Is It Worth

http://www.tbirdforum.com is the nets #1 classic thunderbird resource website.

I established the site back in 2000 so it's just about 7 years old.

So Far this month it has brought in $16.30 in adsense. Adsense was only just put on the website this month.

18,228 uniques visited tbirdforum.com in 2006.

This site has been a hobby and a labor of love for me over the last 7 years.

I'm looking for someone to buy it and keep running it.

Threads: 2,377, Posts: 8,067, Members: 3,002

I'm thinking of selling so I'm entertaiing offers...

I own the license for the vbulletin on the site and its all current and the sw is all up to date - vbadvanced portal is on it too and that is all current and up to date as well.

 

Forum value is all about traffic. Unfortunately 18K uniques/year isn't very much traffic. Your best bet is to get a full 30 days of adsense data and then try to sell for maybe 8-10 months revenue.

How many new members sign up per week?

 

So, why sell it? I hope you find a T-Bird fan to take it over. Watch out for the lowball offers; there is value in your domain's age.

 

Im thinking of selling because you just never know - someone out there may be looking for something just like this. 7 years old for a website is great, i know that, it has a loyal base that visit when they have problems with their classic car. Many members help each other with information.

10 months of adsense for this site would not be even close to acceptable... thanks for your input.

in the last 30 days there have been 53 new members - at least 1 a day with some days 4 to 6 signups.

 

Well, that is true. Its a PR3 despite the minimal traffic.

 

Very interested, I run a network of automotive sites. PM me when you have a chance...

Keep in mind that there are many more variables to consider when entertaining offers: AdSense and other revenue on the plus side.... Licensing, hosting, maintenance, expansion and promotional costs on the minus side.

With automotive forums, a good rule of thumb is 2 years' projected income minus expenses, plus whatever the buyer wants to throw in to make it "worthwhile".

 

If it is your passion, I'd rather see you keep it, because I doubt you're going to find somebody that cares as much about the subject as you do and I doubly doubt you'll find somebody willing to pay you what you think it is worth. Unfortunately sentimental or "blood, sweat and tears" value doesn't mean much here..most folks on this site are buying sites as a way to make money.

I am not trying to discourage you, I'm an automotive hobbist too and run a couple of car forums myself, but I'm just sharing my observations about valuing sites like yours. It would also be worth more with a well designed theme/graphics set.

 

lmao... 8-10 months revenue wont even cover the costs of the vBulletin license.

The domain is nice and old, but the way I see it, more time will need to be spent in banning spammers and cleaning up spam, and the Adsense earnings (even with proper ad integration) probably wouldn't even cover the cost of the time involved in doing this.

The amount of posts and activity in general just seems very low for such an old site. I would value it at close to $1,000 maximum. Good luck.

 

PM SENT.....

 

I also run couple of Automotive websites and i have recently added a forum onto one of them. I am interested in adding this to my collection however i am afraid that i will not be able to offer a lot for this. I am also willing to run an advertising campaign with you if you are interested. Contact me with your MSN and i will chat with you in detail. If you dont have MSN we can talk via PMs too

 

I agree with spdude. If you are offered $1000, take it if you are just tired of running the site. On the other hand, you could increase traffic/membership/revenue in a number of ways. I'd suggest doing that, and then coming back to sell it. It really is expensive to promote a forum and that is why dead or very inactive forums aren't worth anything IMO.

 

I like the topic. Shame you haven't gotten too far with the community though. If you come up with a price, let me know.

 

Let google adsense run for a few more weeks as Chris suggested.

 

PM's All Sent

 

Look to get about $1.5K at least. Good domain name.

 

Nice forum, I wish you luck! I run some automotive sites as well and I also suggest keeping it; maybe get some of the regulars to be moderators to minimize your labor.

 

LOL - Nothing like contacting someone and inquiriung about buying their site, then see them come here and post 'whats it worth' -- LOL Sorry I didnt think it was worth the $3k you asked for - but good luck.

 

Joey - you seem like a nice guy that runs a few great forums yourself but your comments are out of line - peace...

 

The trouble with selling proper and established forums is that admins often look for a value based on the amount of hard work and effort they put in to build and maintain such a site.

But that's not how you value a business product - it'll get priced on issues such as existing value by monetisation, potential for further monetisation, market demand, etc.

The one thing that adds extra value here is the older domain name - but aside from that, a community with 8k posts and only 18k uniques a year is pretty small.

New sign-ups isn't a good indicator - likely many of these are Russian automated sign-ups, unless you are actively banning their known domain names.

Overall, it's always sad to feel you have to sell a forum - but you also have to accept that if you're inviting market forces to set a value on such an asset, this may not agree with with personal appraisal or value.

2c.

 

If I were to purchase the forum, I would pay somewhere in the range of $1200 to $2000, with the high price only coming through the site's potential. Yet, the age of the domain is a factor to consider which should push the price up into the middle range which would be around $1600.

I already have two automotive blogs, so I'll pass on this sale. I hope that you can find a worthy buyer.