Hi everyone Hope this is the correct forum, please move me if not. I've had this brainwave all week about changing my life. So... I’m pondering on the sale price of a website and domain I own. I have no idea where to start with judging and in doing so making some sort of appraisal. The site does not make any money online, its simply an online brochure for an established business in London. One of the sales factors that Id like to use to help the sale is the sites rank with Alexa Web ranking people. Its probably ranked by others as well but I haven’t found those pages etc yet, or none that are of use to me anyhow. The Alexa rank is about 11.5 million. (avg 3 months) ..and from what I can work out that actually means far less than it sounds. The sites been live as an advert for about four years. Percentage of global internet users who visit this site. (reach) 1wk Avg - 0.000015% Alexa traffic rank (reach) 1wk Avg (3.3 million) But what does the ranking mean in terms of internet presence, is that position good, bad or pointless? Does it have any value? Thank you.
If you want, PM me the url and I'll tell you what I would pay for it. With no income it's hard to value a site. As for alexa, it's so easy to manipulate it's pointless.
Thanks for the offer guys... but showing you the site won't help you decide its value as all of the trade generated by the site is in the real world, not online. I also don't want to rock any boats...especially my customers boats... so as I'm just pondering for now.... I don't want to say it out load as yet. The website in question is just a well established online broacher offering a service.....last year it generated about £40k of work at a part time rate of about a 18 hours per week....those are rates I can work with and I'm used too. ...What I'm wondering is how to utilise its staying power (four years) and its ranking when it comes to sales pitch... If you search for my main business keywords it usually brings me up 1st, 2nd 3rd etc on a google search, on the first page. But that means little right? I beginning to think this is too vague for you guys to answer... Anyone point me in a starting direction? Thanks again Jay
Well... if it's an online brochure for a business, and you are selling only the "brochure" (the website) and not the business (that's located in London) - it probably isn't worth anything to anybody (expect the business owner).
Yes, obviously, and your quite right of course... I'll explain more.. The business is hiring my professional abilities in a specialised field, so I'm thinking, I can sell the website modernised to provide the contact details of a new owner ...basically I'm selling a customer stream to a professional in my field. The way I look at it, bit of a Luddite you may think.. Is have I got a high street shop front or a backstreet porter cabin....Is my premiss's (my advert to the world) in a good location or stuck on some estate in suburbia. I can obviously prove my 'take' rate by the amount of orders for work that I get through, and other methods. But I'd also like to add to those facts and figures, as positive sales pitch, the position of my main advert/brochure on the web. ?? Thanks
A buyer who knows what he is doing does not go by page rank as this is not a gaurantee that that site will land on page one. He goes by how many unique visitors you get, how much you make, if the visitors are looking at your other pages, and the design of the site.
Rankings don't matter a whit. What matters in income. I mean it's all fine and dandy to be tops of Google, but if you can show me that a website gets $1k a month just off banner ads, I'm more in love with that site than the fancy dancy site heading google that struggles to make $50 a month. Income, and the purchase of ongoing income streams is what is valuable. However, if I understand you right, and you're actually selling a business that provides a service. I would think that by contacting your competitors you could probably end up doing quite well for yourself. On the order of 24-36x monthly earnings. While if you're just promoting on a place like this or sitepoint, you're stuck in the world of 6-12x monthly earnings, and the reluctance of people to actually want to perform the service, which will deflate your price. My recommendation is to sell to your competitors therefore. HTH
Income and traffic, as others have stated, are what really determine the value of a website. A lot of big name companies use Alexa.com rankings to decide what websites to advertise on, but the rankings are meaningless in terms of determining true value of a website, especially if the website is over 100,000 rank.
hmm, not exactly sure where you are heading with this (maybe it's me )... but I basically think it boils down to this: "how valuable is your website to you, and how valuable it (honestly) would be for a potential buyer?" There's your figure. Hopefully.
Depends to the buyer really... Alexa ranking isn't accurate at all, so even if a buyer were to base it's decision on that, it wouldn't be accurate
If I read correctly you said the sites Alexa rank is 11,000,000 At that number you are not going to sell it to anyone but a complete newbie. Alexa is like golf the lower your number the more impressive. 11,000 rocks 11,000,000 is in the bottom of the heap. Hate to be so blunt but just wanted to save you some time.
So I guess it doesn't matter if that same bottom of the heap site has over 100,000 unique monthly hits, huh?
Yeh, pretty much so - or at least if the buyer sees no value for the traffic. (for example, unless it's something that Google can buy - like Youtube ) And... if site gets 100,000 unique monthly visitors, it's Alexa ranking probably won't be bottom of the heap...
Gee, ya think? There are, who knows how many webmasters out there whose sites aren't even indexed, and they advertise both on and offline, which brings them a lot of hits. And then throw in some word of mouth.... Man, I'm hungry! Time for some waffles.
Excuse me for taking so long to reply, I didn't have the subscribe tab on. Your responses are very useful guys, certainly from the different perspectives you've all described, you've all given me a clearer view of the active roll of the rankings statements. I feel slightly more empowered sales wise so thanks for that every one. I think you may have put one or several, too may zero's on that figure btw guys. ...I defiantly don't get that many hits...although as has been suggested I do get a lot of repeated visitors/customers, I don't advertise the site a all but reputation is a large part of the sites strategy. Thanks Fred... You've hit the nail on the head certainly, The tricky bit is remaining in control of the work quality if I'd where to go down a route like that ...as you've suggested, a rocky road indeed. I have thought about franchising and made some mediocre plans for that route too. Thanks for your thoughts. No, its probably me GP. Well it certainly has great value to a customer as I've been the receiver of its hits if you like, (I don't bother with dishonesty, I'm only deluding myself etc.) ...getting the customer to recognise that fact is slightly more tricky I'm finding... its value not me being dishonest. Cheers everyone good stuff. PS, I'm not sure I understand the golf scenario...the site has been gaining Alexa traffic ranking since it went live years ago... to me thats like spreading the word etc.
Well... can you tie it to pure dollar amounts the site will generate to somebody? They show pretty easily what's it worth...
Yeah, showing my books is easy enough, Its when the buyer then thinks about it and comes to the real conclusion that in fact all hes buying is a website, not a traditional shop premises, which is where services like mine are normally the acceptable place to trade from. So my buyers are far more used to that traditional market where the location of the shop is an important factor, I good customer base is all well and good (I can prove that bit with figures and such like) but if I can also prove the shop front (website) is on a busy street (A reasonable web foot print if you like) then thats very useful too. As has been suggested, working out the percentage of earnings against rankings will give me a value ...I'll see what comes out like. Cheers for the aid everyone.