There’s been alot written about how to go about buying a website – here and elsewhere. Do you look at traffic? At revenue? At the potential – a fuzzy term if I ever heard of one.. and everyone has their own opinion about how to value a website.
I’ve bought and sold many websites and blogs in my time – including this very one. For me, it comes down to two simple things.
- The site’s income
- The potential that I see to grow that income
And other than some basics (i.e. is the site legally encumbered in any way, shape, or form), those are the core facets that I’m examining when I look at a site that we may consider purchasing.
Income is critical – because if I am going to expend capital, I have to be able to know that I can repay that initial capital and earn a decent rate of return for BlogMedia while doing so. Otherwise, our capital is better off sitting in an investment account earning a return until we do find such an opportunity.
What reminded me of this practice today is a writeup on TDH about the sale of College-Startup, a blog written by Ben Bleikamp, whom I consider a friend. College-Startup, which never earned more than $44 a month, was sold to David Krug for $1400 through an auction on Sitepoint.
With an income of around $44.00 each month, the most that I would have been willing to pay for the site was around $792 at the outside. This reflects 18 times monthly revenues – which is really my outside limit for purchasing a blog or a website.
Now others may be critical of this low dollar amount and say that the “design is worth more” and so on… but great design is only as good as the earning potential of a site.
Website auctions and blog sales often come with lots of emotional baggage that can drive decisions by both buyers and sellers – I would encourage both sides to put some hard thought into the numbers…
Because in the end, you have to pay the bills, and hopefully turn a profit.
