I have a forum that I'm not interested in selling (ever), but I'd like to know how much it is worth in terms of sell-able value. video game genre 40k members 100+ new registrations/day 200-400 online at any given time (never less than 200, maxed at 800) ~$30/day income 8-13k unique visits/day I know that based on 1 year's income, it'd be worth about $11,000. But what about memberships? I get a ton of organic SE traffic, and a lot of new memberships. All members have confirmed, unique email addresses. I would think that each registered user would add to the value of the site, but in which way and how much? By this time next year, I'm projected to have just over 100,000 registered members. If the revenue doesn't change (hypothetically), what would the value of the site be with 60,000 more members?
You could evaluate it like a business. Selling price is usually a mutiple (depends on industry) of EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization).
Right. I understand that, but I'm talking about the equation for calculating the value of a forum. $0.25 per user? $0.50 per user? $1.00 per user? per active user? value of a confirmed email address? value per thousand indexed pages? value per unique visitor/day?
This is your problem, right here. Video games change so rapidly, the only way your forum can maintain its value is if it's about a genre rather than individual games. Or if it's about individual games, they make up a series that is in constant development and is unlikely to get shelved in the near future. You will get depreciation of your members, as email addresses get removed and members lose interest. So it might help if you can track inactive members: how many of those 40K members have not logged in within the last 6 months, for instance?
Its very active. Its actually more like a general community. Its almost 2 years old, and the traffic keeps increasing. The details of my forum really isnt the purpose of this post. I'm simply asking how someone would go about determining the value of a forum.
well I am not in the business of selling forums, but I don't think there is a set mark that is the norm. You just have to play the field and see how much you can squeeze out of it. Maybe someone who has sold their forums can enlighten you further.
All I'm seeing is the inline banner mod- nothing on the forum index for ads? ...and all the ads I saw are giving PSA's- you need to fix that if you intend to be profitable. I'm usually inclined to look at income generated when placing a value on forums.
And I'm saying that you need to factor the topic of the forum in, to determine its value. A forum about an evergreen subject will hold its value better, and perhaps be worth more to a buyer, than a forum about something ephemeral.
if your forum has chance to maintain its users and growth, I think that reasonable price is 24*(Monthly_earnings - Monthly_expenses). So somewhere 20*30*24$ = 14400$.
The worth of something like this is so subjective - a person who is interested in video games and has projects or ideas to promote using the forum as a platform would pay a much higher price than someone who isn't. It's generally seen that forums don't follow the monthly revenue valuation at all. You'd take into account the growth of the forum, potential if monetized correctly (I'm not sure how to evaluate a website such as video games) and then what it's currently earning. By the way, how are you currently monetizing the forum?