How much is my forum worth?

Good morning/afternoon/evening,

I began my forum over two years ago and it's done nothing but grow since then. I just entered college and am now occupied with other things. Not saying i'm neglecting the site, I still watch over and contribute to it frequently. However, I believe it may be better off in someone elses hands.

I was wondering if someone could give me a rough estimate on how much I should expect/ask for for the forum. I know forums have a high market value due to the difficulty and time-investing work that's needed in order for it to be where it is. Because of this, I don't believe posting revenue is even important. I want to know how much the site costs .

We just reached over 500,000 posts about a month ago and we are now listed at Big-Boards.com

Members: 28,882
Posts: 511,201
Threads: 33,240
~10 new users/day

However, I am in no rush of selling this site. I'm just looking to budget my future :-D

Thanks,

Kyle

 

A rough idea of traffic and revenue would be critical info if I were to purchace your forum...people want the facts. They want to see proof of the site's potential.

 

3,000-4,000 uniques/day steadily. This can spike to 6,000-9,000 depending on the day and season.

I don't run adsense on the site because it just pisses me off. The revenue is $300/month only coming from companies I offer cheap banner positions to cover $90 hosting.

 

Based on that, I'd say between $2,000 and $8,000. You can really strengthen your position if you do better with the revenues, most buyers look primarily at revenues when buying.

 

Yea i see why people would. But I believe the database alone, 28,000+ user database for a niche sport is worth more than that in my opinion. And of course the site shouldn't be sold to just anyone. If a company sees it's advantages I"m sure they'd be will to throw down much more than that

 

This is partially true. Potential revenue would still depend a good bit on the type of niche sport. Advertisers for, say, water polo, would be willing to pay significantly less for a banner spot than, say, football. Don't quote me on that, just making a conditional statement. Price would depend on a few factors. The database itself has some inherent value yes. But, how many of these users are "active"? Do their email addresses still actually work? How many threads/posts per day? Do you have good SERPS? These are all factors that come into play. You can have a site that has 30,000 members but only 1,000 of them use the site regularly with little to no search engine results which would significantly reduce the amount of money an advertiser would be willing to pay. The usual rule of thumb for buying sites is that people are willing to pay 12 times monthly revenue. In your case, that is $3,600. So someone seeing some potential may be willing to give you upwards of $7,000 to $8,000 as noted above. I think his numbers are right on the "money".

 

it's about 3k-5k €