Its great to see lots of selling and buying of sites going on, well unless those people are all getting out of the business, but hey at least the sites aren't going to waste. But you have to wonder what some people are thinking when they sell their site for way more than its worth.

4 years ago you could probably sell a solid site for monthly income x 10-12, but nowdays in a more uncertian atmosphere there are many more factors to be considered and usually you will earn much less than you would have years ago.

Firstly why is the site being sold? This has a major impact on what you can ask for... because a site that has been around for 5 years but keeps getting dropped down the serps and losing traffic isn't going to be worth as much as a site with much more upside potential. Eg linklists in general would be worth much less than blogs if they had the same earnings for that year (they have had a Serps hiding this year).

Secondly what is the site worth ?

Well there are a few things which can contribute value to a site.

- Licenced pic and video content. (is the licence transferable?)

- Design work : while you wont get full value back, the design work is worth a little something

- Scripts : Like design, don't expect the scripts to be worth as much as you bought them for (are they transferable?)

- Submitters : For sites that rely on submitters will you have them still submitting when ownership changes ? If so thats worth something

- Traffic & profit : This is a huge area which I will go into below.

Now you can have a site with heaps of content, submitters, great design and no traffic .... and unforunately for you its not going to be worth that much. Traffic and profit really is the essential ingredient in a sites worth..

These days you are roughly looking at monthly profit times 3-5 for an average stable site. Of course proof of income and traffic would be needed, otherwise you are looking at a whole lot less. Also the nature of the site needs to be taken into account ...

- Are you buying a paysite with 100 recurring members already and traffic coming in? If so thats going to be worth much more than buying an affiliate site with a monthly income that requires a lot of maintenance and pushing.

- How much maintenance does the site require?

Generally you want to be able to recover your investment without hundreds of hours of work in 4-5 months. If it looks like the site needs a major overhaul or a lot of work done to it then its simply not worth monthly income x 4-5..... more monthly income x2-3 max

Now .. many sites I see being sold have virtually no traffic or income. They might make a sale a month, or get a mere 100 surfers a day. These sites are worth very little, and if someone is trying to farm them off for anything over $1-200 then there better be something special. Things to look for are

- is it a good domain name
- is the layout and design good, enabling you to easily tweak it to get it working
- maybe they are just promoting the wrong sponsors. Some high traffic sites have terrible ratios because the sponsor choice / marketing is woefull.

When dealing with sites that have poor traffic/sales you are speculating. It helps to know how to sell in the niche of the site, because then you can get an idea of how good the site could do. No use buying someone's rotten potato.

What is traffic worth ?

Well if you are buying a SE portal then it's traffic would be worth more. If you are buying a fake tgp then the traffic would be worth next to nothing. If you are buying a fake tgp that trades and jerks traffic around ... then even if it does 10k a day ... its probably worth next to nothing unless it is pulling in sales.

Before this becomes a war and piece thread, some words of caution.

Do you have the time to do what is needed on the site?
Be careful with sites that do few sales a month. They are unstable and often overpriced.
Don't take people's claims as honest. Most people will inflate traffic and sales by 20-50%, and usually ask at least 50% too much for their site.


Lastly .. I estimate that at least 50% of people who are selling their site have no intention of letting it go for what its really worth. If the sale never gets closed then don't sweat it.