Should I sell my website or keep it?

This is my first attempt at SEO so I'm not sure if I should continue putting money in this site or sell it. I already had an offer from somebody interested in purchasing the site.

I have this blog I started back in October in a dating niche it gets about a 100 uniques every week, has had 1700 clicks since. It has a pagerank of 2 currently. I've made $20 in adsense and $55 through affiliate sign ups. I have 23 registered users. So far including the design, content and link building I've spent probably about $350-$400.

I created this blog from the data I got from my PPC conversions. Since last June I've made $20K (gross) in this niche through PPC on Yahoo (can't get any traffic from google). The keywords that convert the most, I created this blog based on that data.

When I do a search in google for the phrase that brings most of my conversions in PPC and the phrase I'm trying to rank for I get 1,730,000 results. I checked through 20 pages and I couldn't find my site. My site is about 5 months old and I heard that my site could be "sandboxed".

To try and rank for that particular phrase I'm going to need more content so far I have 30 keyword rich quality posts. I'm also going to need to do more link building. When I go to Yahoo's site explorer and type in my domain I get, 349 inlinks and 48 pages. When I check the site that's at #1 for this phrase they have: 612 inlinks and 1,380 pages.

It's going to cost me about $300 a month to keep this project going for content and link building. The content is top quality, I've only had 3 blog comments and they've been positive and want more content. For link building I'm going to go with article submits instead of directory submits since I heard people are saying that directory submits don't weigh as much anymore with Google.

For link building I'm deciding between these 2 packages:

" High quality unique 550-600 word article on a niche of your choice. In the article resource box we will include two URL's of your choice.

This option includes distribution to 4026 websites, 67,968 people plus distribution to an additional 40,000+ website publishers.

This option also includes a unique 300-400 word "Press Release" about your website. You can include three URL's of your choice in the Press Release. It will be distributed to various media outlets such as Google News, MSN News plus many syndicated outlets."

Or this package which costs twice as much:

"We will write ( 5 ) high quality unique 550-600 word articles on a niche of your choice. In the article resource box we will include two URL's of your choice.

This option includes distribution to 4026 websites, 67,968 people plus distribution to an additional 40,000+ website publishers."

The reason I'm not sure if I should continue this is since I don't make that much money, I make enough to get by but, I'm not ballin by any means. I'm worried that I'm going to end up putting money into this site and either I'm not going to rank (my content writer says that she's confident with link building and the content that I can gain solid ground in the SERPs). Or that, I won't make any money from the blog (users not signing up to the affiliate links). Out of 1700 uniques I've only made $75 that doesn't sound too good, which is a total of 6 people signing up from the affiliate banners. 6 people signing up out of 1700 uniques is that a .35% conversion rate? That's for uniques, I've had 5342 page loads. On PPC my conversion rate from last June is 1:8 - 12.5% conversion rate?

So what would you do? Take the risk, and continue putting money into this site since this is a dating niche? I have concrete data from my PPC campaigns and the blog was created around converting keywords. I would think if I'm making money from PPC in this niche that there's no reason I shouldn't make any money through SEO if the content is good and I'm ranking for keywords. It's just my conversion rate so far is horrible, maybe SEO is different than PPC and I need much more traffic?

Or should I leave the site as it is until October (a year after the blog was created) and see if it comes out of the sandbox? If not, then continue working on the site?

Or would you try to sell it for a high price?

If you think I should continue working on the site. Based on the backlink data I got from the site that's at #1 for this phrase which link building package would you advice? Would you just go with directory submits instead? I'm trying to lower my costs as much as possible.


Any advice would be appreciated.


Thanks

 

I think alot of your decision lies in the ROI. What is your projected income over the next 12 months if you continue to work at the optimization coupled with the increased amount of money your going to invest in the site versus the offer that has been made to you to sel the site today.

 

Keep it a few more months to see if it is sandboxed

 

I'm not sure how I'm going to figure out the ROI for this site, I know my ROI on PPC is about 100%. I got somebody that was interested but, they didn't offer a price they wanted me to make an offer and I'm not sure what to offer. I was hoping for $2K (based on the potential and my PPC earnings in this niche) but, I doubt I would get that much with the site as it is.

I suppose if I can't make money with the site, and if I do all this work it can only improve the site and make the value go up and I can sell it in the future.

 

If the price is there for you, take it. If you think theres still improvement you can do and make it worth more keep it and wait (it won't hurt anything)

 

"This option includes distribution to 4026 websites, 67,968 people plus distribution to an additional 40,000+ website publishers."

I wouldn't count on getting any more then 40 - 50 links from this. Article sites are generally so low quality and with most of the content being duplicate it has very little benefit from the engines. Last time i checked there were only around 560 non niche article dashboard sites, is there another good article platform for distribution too. I've also been receiving emails from various editors that their currently so overloaded with articles syndications from India and the surrounding countries that it is taking weeks to approve articles.

In the IT field there are a lot of places that will post your articles, but for a niche dating site? Someone please correct me on this one, I'd love to get some additional article syndication / link building tactics

 

Why would you pay somebody else to write and submit articles?

You can write them yourself and pay $5 to have them submitted, or do it yourself if you have time.

 

Recheck your ROI then Desire whether keep or let it go, On myopinion you know what to do.

 

I would say wait with the site, and keep working on it.
If it doesnt work, you can still sell it for more

 

If you are happy with what they offer sell it. If not wait for another 6 months. It's good that you are trying to lower your costs as much as possible, but if you decide to keep it continue putting money into the site.