Teenager turns down £8.5million to sell his website

Maybe he has other plans, let's just wait and see

 

well u kno how many backlinks he gained and how much publicity he got just because of not selling it ... Adds more to the ranking ... now he will recieve higher offer ... and will sell it

 

Sell and move-on ... daft kid ... great link-bait though!

 

Exactly
If he turned down the offer there must a reason behind it he might be learn lot more then that per year

 

Or he won't...Im amazed how hard it is for people to grasp the fact that not everyone sells their company when a bunch of money is dumped at their feet. There are tons of examples of people holding on to things despite everyone else saying they are insane for not selling out.

Instead of selling it he can expand it by continuing to offer new services etc. The market he has a hold of is a hugely sought after one and very profitable over the long term.

I would be willing to bet that if the news that Google was offered a couple of million in 1997 was posted in this forum (or any webmaster forum), people would have lined up for miles saying they were stupid for not taking the money and running.

 

You are a good comedian.

Ads would be just one thing, demographic data, data mining, lists etc. are another few...

I'll say again, go read Venture Beat.

And if your understanding of a hit is 1/4 of a visit, I guess you are 7 and got a "my first website" kit by Fisher Price from Santa last Christmas. Your statistical analysis is plain wrong and makes you look like... Well, let's leave it at at that shall we?

Enjoy your day!

 

I don't see how they valued a website which makes around £2.5k a month in advertising revenue at £8.5 million, it's simply not worth that much money.

I'd never heard of it either, for what it's worth...

Personally, I would have sold it at - that figure equates to over 28 YEARS earnings at the current rate and would have given him plenty of money to invest in new projects.

Great linkbait I agree, but who's to say the potential buyers won't find something better to spend their money on instead if the guy is holding out for more cash?

 

Ponzi Scheme.

 

The kid is smart. Why sell it now when it likely will be worth far, far more in just a few years time? I wonder if he needs some friends... I'll volunteer!

 

YouTube was making massive losses and sold for $1.65 Billion. Try work that one out. Digg was valued and offered some $60 million when it was making a loss. Egg online banking was making a loss yet CitiCorp laid down a few million. Examples everywhere.

It's not about what money it makes right now...

 

Its scary how almost nobody gets it. In the real world (outside of DP) there are more factors to value then 12x monthly earnings

Thanks for the random comment!

 

I agree there are loads of examples and we had all these crazy valuations before the big bust in 2000.

Taking that kid's site as an example - the UK is a comparitively small market and I had never heard of that site - today's news is tomorrow's chip paper and I think he should have sold if that was a realistic offer.

On his own he may not be able to improve it's earnings, especially if he is fannying about in Comet for minimum wage during his free time as well - and with an offer equating to 28 years earnings at the current level he may live to regret not selling when he had the chance.

Sometimes these are once in a lifetime offers...

 

excuse me, lets go back and check whos the little baby kid here, shall we?
8.5 million brithish pounds is 12 million dollars.
I'm sure no one will really be interested in his website after the sun article. Who are those lifeless assh*les that will write on their blogs or websites about a stupid kid rejecting 8.5 million pounds and more importantly WHF will visit his website for that? - Mauby everyone that may read such article but only too see whats the talk about and never visit again.
And yeah i'm sure, infact i KNOW about the /hitsvisits/uniques/new visits is like i said it is. Hah i can make my website have 50.000 visits monthly just by me visiting everyday for 2 hours and clicking my website, without the need of anuone else visiting it!
So in 12 months i'll have 600.000 hits all by myself clicking. Writing this i think the numbr may well be 1/5 not 1/4 but i'll leave it as 1/4.
And WTF is venture beat, if i don't know it it means it doesent mean anything and i wont read it now or ever.

And if he has good visits now in the near future he may have very little visits heavent you thought of that? Chances like that don't happen very often. And for 8.5 million pounds he could have taken it and make another website and give google 1 million to advertise him and he will gain even more visits on the new website that he is geting now.

 

I do "get it", but there are valuations, and there are valuations.

This kid was offered over 28 YEARS earnings at current level - crazy, crazy offer - are you telling me you wouldn't have bit their hand off if you were offered that?

 

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns (”profits”) to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business, named after Charles Ponzi.

 

Sorry, I think my maths is out - i think he was actually offered 283 YEARS earnings at current level...

I am sure someone will correct me...

 

http://technorati.com/search/Nick+Coates

450 Results...

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=Nick+Coates&btnG=Search+Blogs

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,078 for Nick Coates.

Still laughing my ass off... Show me where you get this magic 1 in 4 formula from...

Attitude is altitude as they say... I doubt you'll ever see the bigger picture.

Dude, how hard is this to grasp.

1. Before the whole world gets to hear about this, someone offers £8.5 million.
2. AFTER the whole world gets to hear about it, it's worth MORE than £8.5 million.

AM I TALKING A LANGUAGE YOU DON'T GET?

 

That is a one time offer and i'm sure the next year that website won't even exist beacose of no visits. Yeah...

Man those are all same people that read those blogs; people like you who will read the same story on 20 different blogs and still search for more. The rest of us 80% people won't even notice it even if it pop'ed-up on our monitor in full screen!

If you can't get it i'll explain simple:
some1 offered a stupid kid 8.5 million punds, he rejected it, he won't get another offer, END OF STORY.
Conclusion: Gifts don't fall from the sky every day~!

 

First of all, those are his earnings and I can guarantee whoever made the offer could care less about present day earnings. They are obviously after a market share and I would be willing to bet they would make more then 10 times that right away by monetizing the site differently.

In fact the owner could probably make more himself but there are many examples of sites with huge amounts of potential profit that don't completely monetize the site but instead stay true to what they created it for in the first place.

Earnings mean nothing in this case.

Thanks for another random comment (You know you don't get part of that 8.5 million as rev share just for posting in this thread, right?)

 

Sigh...

Oh well, I guess it's all very complicated for those who advertise they're up for reputation manipulation. And those who struggle to pay the $5 hosting bill so they go for a free one, plastered with ads.

Ditch the negativity and maybe stuff will fall from the skies for you too on a daily basis.