IT site, $22,000 per year from Adsense, PR6, established 1999, self-running

I recently sold this IT site for full BIN and the transaction has gone through smoothly. Again, on behalf of the site's owners, I am now putting another (similar) site up for sale.

Now, sites of this calibre don't come along often. It's a technical site/ PC Help site that dates from 1999. It's got great quality content, some of it going back many, many years. The home page is PR6, the site has three DMOZ listings, four grandfathered listings in the Yahoo directory, 119 incoming links from .edu domains, and even 58 long standing wikipedia links - check all this. Total links according to Yahoo = 11,700.

Traffic
Adsense shows 2,275,000 page views for 2005 but real page views is slightly higher as not all pages have Adsense. Up to June 2005 the site was getting about 8K-10K page views a day but, as it wasn't being updated it lost some Google rankings in June 2005* and dropped from 8-10K to about 3-4K page views per day. That was in June 2005. Since then Adsense page views have been an average of 3700 per day. Most of the traffic comes from SEs.

*Also, part of the problem with losing the rankings last year in June was, I believe, the www vs non-www issue. This site didn't have a redirect from one to the other and, as we know, that causes problems with Google. It still doesn't have this apache redirect and the new owners can put one on ... or I'll do it for them. I have every confidence that a site of this calibre doesn't need much TLC to take it back to 10K page views a day. Several people every month write in to say how useful they found the information on the site - it's quality stuff (though a bit dated)

PR:
Home Page = PR6 (has been PR6 for a long, long time)
Other Pages = Many PR5 and PR4 pages. Some of these were PR6es too.
This search does not find ALL the pages with PR but should give you an idea that the total PR of this site is pretty respectable.

Earnings
All of 2005 it earned $22,000 from Adsense
Jan-June, 2006 it earned $11,100 from Adsense
Average earnings over last 18 months = $1840 per month from Adsense
Average earnings per Adsense click = In excess of $0.20
Expenditure = $10 per month for hosting
Advertising = $0 (The site has not been advertised. It was used as a feeder site for a company manufacturing PCs)
Bear in mind that the owners of the site were getting a lot of highly targeted visitors from here to their PC hardware company. Even an estimated 200 visitors a day at a min of $0.20 each is an additional $14,000 for the year. You may be able to sell that traffic to another PC manufacturer or send that traffic to Dell's affiliate program. But, either way, that traffic has value.
Total earnings for the last 12 months if you count the value of clicks to the owners' site = $22K + 14K = $36K

The earnings are fairly consistent from month to month. Full breakdowns and screenshots available to serious buyers - details at the bottom of this post.

Other news
Pages indexed by Google = 567
The home page title says "Friendly computer help...." and if you seach for that term this site comes up first in 184,000,000 entries. i.e. even though it lost some Google traffic last year Google still sees this site as respectable, reputable, and clean.

Time spent to run the site
Zero. Absolutely, positively nothing. Over a year ago there was some attempt to move some of the pages over to a new design but it was not completed. If the new owner moved the remaining pages over to the new design he'd likely see a surge in Adsense earnings. Someone added half a dozen articles (reviews of laptops) earlier this year. But they don't attract any significant traffic or earnings so are inconsequential from the POV of this sale.

Why is it being sold?
As you will see from the site it was used by a PC manufacturer to send traffic to their main site i.e. as a cheap way for them to get customers to visit them. That PC manufacturer is now not trading and has no need for this site (as you can verify). If you remove that PC manufacturer's ads you should have even more clicks to your Adsense account (at > $0.20 each)

Who does it suit?
It's very much a setup and forget site. I have every confidence that if you set it up properly on your server and leave it the site will continue earning you decent money for a long time after you've recovered your capital. However, I also believe that the best person for this site is someone technical who'll add some help type articles to the site to keep increasing the content and keeping it up to date. That should help it with search engines too as they like to see fresh content. If you have the time to migrate over the older pages to a new design, to delete the old affiliate program ads on there as they are not earning anything etc. I believe this site could comfortably generate in excess of $50K per year (it's already doing the equivalent of $36K).

Starting Price: $20,000
BIN: $45,000
(If you also count value of traffic sent to the PC hardware company then $45K is only 15 months' income)
Reserve: Not disclosed
Auction End: Not decided yet
Finance: No finance provided. All payment by escrow.com only

If you're interested I'd be glad to provide as much information as you need and spend as much time as you want answering questions, helping you judge whether this is the right investment for you etc. But I do want to restrict such detailed conversations to only those parties who are seriously interested rather than every kid who passes by here and posts "PM me the stats". If you believe this is an opportunity you want to explore please PM me with your email address and I'll send you a non-disclosure agreement. Simply sign it, provide your full postal address and return it to me and I'll be all yours. The buyer of the previous site I sold got a lot of benefit both before and after the sale from my expertise, advice, webmastering skills and familiarity with the site - we exchanged over 100 emails before and after the sale and he has my phone number to contact me for further help. I'll do the same for you.

Have any questions about this site/this sale? Please see above paragraph.

 

Hi,
usd 20 000 here. Offer valid only if the stats and proofs of revenue are consistent with what is stated above (which I do not doubt).
thanks
david

 

Thanks for your offer, David.

The stats and revenue are, of course, exactly as stated. Interested parties who contacted me about the NDA already have the proof. I'm also willing to provide interested parties full password access to the stats and Adsense account but it would have to be at my premises (just so I can make sure they don't click on any Adsense ads accidentally ). I am located just north of East London.

 

It's true that sites like this don't come along often. Good luck Merkersarl.

 

Merkersarl - just a quick question about this site, how is the content delivered? Is there some sort of cms powering it all, or is it a custom script? Or just flat files?

 

Yes, that's something I should have explained in the OP.

The content is all static. Some of the adverts etc., are SSI to allow for easy updating, but there are no custom scripts powering it and no CMS - just simple HTML pages.

 

Update: Stats etc have been posted online and everybody who was promised the links should have had them by now. Please contact me if you haven't.

 

So centreurope.org is winning it with $20,000?

 

Hello again,
any idea Merkersarl when does the auction ends ?
thanks
David

 

Give me URL.thank you

 

Its in the first post!!!!

 

I just spoke to Merkersarl - he hasn't decided the end date but he's looking at days/weeks rather than months/years.

 

good, thanks Foggy
david

 

Thanks, Foggy. And for your original comments wishing me luck

Everyone who has sent me their email address has got a reply from me and received full access to the traffic and Adsense stats.

Unfortunately, centreurope.org is not the winning bidder any more. I've had other bids via email all in excess of $25K. The highest bid is not far off BIN but I am awaiting confirmation of that one.

Thanks to everyone who was interested. Some of you have had a chance to do some due diligence checking on this site and can see that it is indeed a rare opportunity.

 

Hello again,
usd 30 000 here
thanks
david

 

Hi again, centreurope, and thanks for your bid. At present yours is the highest confirmed bid.

 

I had one bid a few hours ago at BIN and the full $45,000 was immediately been paid into escrow. I thank everyone for their interest and bids.

 

Good sale,
congratulations,
david

 

Thanks Thanks

 

Thanks for the continued PMs but the payment was released from Escrow. It's really sold now folk. Sorry.