I have a site that has made 3k-4k per month on adsense. It has been consistant for 4 months before we did some optimization it averaged 2k per month. What can I sell the site for it has a few thousand active users that use a free service that we offer. If I give out too much info the niches will be exploited so just curious to what it would sell for. Also only about 50% of the site is fully been updated so the income could grow If there is a place for this post let me know I couldn't find one. vcff
It depends. Usually its your monthly revenue x 10 or 12. But buyers will look at other factors as well to determine the price.
Taking a look at Shoemoney's post and a different approach would be made Shoemoney wrote: I really can't tell what formula you should apply for making an estmation since above example would mean you would sell the site for 40 x 3 or 4K. So this would mean $120.000 or $160.000. That is a lot of money and before the site would be making profit you have 40 months before it would be making profit...depending of course if the adsense monthly profits stay the same. Is the revenue of the site totally based on Adsense revenue? What is it worth to you and why do you want it of your hands?
Of course if the price was right I would sell it. At this point yes adsense is the only revenue maker although I put some related affiliates on the site and made and extra 500 that month and this was before the retooling. The page ecpm never drops below 85.00 and it is usually around 130 -140 the site averages around 2-3k uniques with a 13-20% click through rate.
I would prob. let it go for 60k so I can focus on other projects that require capital. This is just one of 10 or so sites I own. I have many ideas and this was a fun site to learn with. This is prob. not the place for posting a site for sale so thanks for the replies.
things to consider: 1. content. is it controversial or offensive in any way. 2. are you violating any adsense TOS 3. age of the domain and the site 4. SE rankings.. where does your traffic come from 5. long term stability - is it just a trend that will fade out? 6. your SEO practices - any gray or black hat that could potentially get you booted I've had sites that made $500-1,000/month in adsense for 5-6 months and one day drop off the SE and make less than $1/day. So there really are many more issues at hand than just how much it has been making.
Edz, thats a random statement to proove a point not to be used as a measure to find out value of a website.
Shoemoney doesn't want to sell any sites. He's very successful at running sites, but 40X monthly net isn't what general sites are selling for. I doubt he has sold a high earning site for anywhere close to that, and he might not even take 100X - but that isn't a realistic number for anyone who is genuinely trying to sell a site. A larger percentage of sites sell for 8 - 12 times net, but of course there are exceptions. I have never sold a site, and I wouldn't sell for 8 - 12X net, but I would take 40X in a second. Even brick and mortar stores don't normally sell for a multiple anywhere close to that. If you had a branded name, or blog with substaintial traffic, it could be valued using another type of model and might even exceed 40X earnings, but that's not why it is being purchased. A good earning site selling for a multiple of 40X would be in the millions which rules out most buyers, and the buyers with that type of money aren't stupid. If you follow the various forums where sites are sold, you will see many that don't sell for 12X net. A buyer at 12X is even assuming a fair amount of risk for a normal site. You are looking at over 3 1/2 years to get a return on your investment, and that's a very long time for a website. Sure, earning could increase, but your site could drop out of the rankings, competition could cut your earnings, advertising revenue could be drop, a hot sector (like ringtones ) could go cold, many many unknowns. I personally pay more for a site that isn't ranked in the top 5, because rankings in a hot sector can drop with a simple algorithim shift. I've had sites that have ranked number #1 for over 5 years drop out of the top 100 with no changes.
Here is an idea to help you calculate the value: Take your monthly revenues - $3-4k, Figure out your monthly direct costs (hosting, advertising if any) - whatever you pay for that is related to the site. Next, figure out your opportunity costs -- how many hours are you putting into this to maintain it? You will have to assign a value to those hours. Do you know how much you would have to pay someone if you hired them to do this? Keep in mind, not only would you have to pay them an hourly wage or salary, but you would have to factor in other costs such as office space/computer or whatever is required to maintain your website. So, then you have an estimate of how much profit your site is actually making per month. Next, you will have to make projections. Figure out the levers of your business, and project your future growth: a) Where does your traffic come from? How stable is the flow of traffic? do you have a deal with the source of traffic? Or is it based on high search engine rankings that could disappear without reason? b) What is the growth rate looking like for your niche? Is it something in which interest is going to fade (like about y2k bugs) -- or is it something that is projected to become more popular? c) What operational commitments are required for growth? If you don't spend marketing hours, you have to estimate labor-hours on writing content, getting links, or however you drive your traffic? From what it sounds like you have an avg of $3.5k / month in revenues. Here is what I'm estimating as a mock financial statement: Revenues $3,500 Marketing $100 (?) Hosting $40 (?) Hours @ $12/hour estimated 80 hours / month, $960 Profit = $2,400 Risk of venture / monthly Discount rate ~ 20% Value = $12,000 Now, this is from a buyer's perspective. I wouldn't want to pay more than $12k for that type of site given my assumptions. My real question for you is, if you're able to make this site get $3-4k/month, can you keep figuring out ways to expand it? It sounds like you are optimized in terms of your AdSense, but maybe there are other things you can do... Initiate campaigns to get repeat visitors... figure out an overlapping area of content you can expand into... start a newsletter if you don't have one... What would happen if you put less time into it? Would you still be able to reap the rewards? What if you hired someone offsite to update it for you for the $960/month? I'm sure you could find plenty of willing people who would work for $12/hour from home from their own computer.
inv wrote: I know inv i didn't say it was to be taken litarely,(like i said i really can't tell...) i just posted it because the thread reminded me of SM's post and how other view these kind of situations. I think everyone has a certain view on the value of such a website, i think yo-yo and tennisadam made some really good points and since the OP can not or want to give out more information it's really hard to tell. Making 3 to 4K every month is that bad if you also considder that you might be able to expand with such a website since there are quite alot of ads being clicked if you offer those products your self for sale on the website? (when possible)....$$$
As I already said, a branded site with a lot of visitors would be valued using another type of model. It wasn't sold based on the current income. The vast majority of people do not own a branded site of that caliber so trying to use it as a comparison isn't relevant. Take away the name and vistor base, and only value it base on net revenue and it wouldn't have sold for a fraction of what it did. There have been sites losing money that have sold for millions, but that doesn't mean you should ask millions for a site losing money. You have to look at apples to apples and not use some obsure example that is far outside the norm. Any business broker can show you a list of businesses that make six figures and are selling for 1X to 3X (1 to 1 1/2 is the norm) annual net, plus inventory, if substaintial. If you are talking about a site without a premium domain name, or large established base of users - rather a standard, easily duplicated site that is just good at producing ad revenue, you will never get 40X net for it.
So what? It makes no difference there is way more factors then simple multiplying the earning by numbers. From what this user posted nobody can give a valid point and comparing it to other sales is impossible. One reason is because we dont know what site it is, and also what market it is in which is huge difference. Although probably in this case since the user only mentions profit as the main selling profit I am assuming its value is only in that and not too much in other factors. Well established websites you cant compare for profit only as potencial outwieghts current profit status. Myspace sold for around 580$ million which is a unknown number of years in advance of just profit, and I say it was a very good buy as the potencial is huge and the people who know how to make money of loyal users know what I mean.