Buying Established Sites
I love creating new web sites but in recent months I have also started buying established ones from other people. It is working out quite well. I am pleased by the results. Case in point: Instead of TV. I bought this site about 3 months ago. The subject matter fits nicely with my other projects and the major drawing point for me was the list that came with it (around 900 subscribers) and 25 messages in an autoresponder. I went into it thinking that this would be a good site for me to “flip”. It was already great but perhaps not a big priority for the seller so I knew I could make it even better with a little time.
First I did a redesign…nothing fancy. I just wanted to give it a “family” feel. Here is the old:
And here is the new:
Looks good eh? I went through it and changed affiliate links and generally did some tweaking. I left Adsense in place but this week I am removing most of it. I would like to highlight the affiliate products I am promoting on each page instead. I also deleted a few of the autoresponder messages and added a half dozen of my own, using recycled content from another site. I really like how responsive this list is! They email me back to let me know what they think and I had some pretty decent Amazon conversions last month. I have already had over 300 new subscribers just since I took the site over.
This site has shown me the importance of fully using autoresponders for online business and list management. I can’t wait to build upon my other ones…which are pitiful in comparision to the volume and content of the tv list.
I might just start buying established sites more often too.
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August 16th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Tiffany,
Where do you find listed established sites for sale. What are your tips for this.
Sommer’s last blog post..Green Talk Radio and Me
August 16th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Sommer,
SitePoint has a buy/sell forum. I have sold a half dozen there. I have only ever bought from friends though.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Yes, thanks. I’ve found this. Appreciate it. How about appraising website and knowing what to sell for?
Sommer’s last blog post..Green Talk Radio and Me
August 16th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Well….that is a toughie. A lot of info is needed. You need to cosider unique visitors, monthly income, how easy the income can be transferred to new owner, how long it will take to get their money back, etc. MOST web site buyers don’t want to wait more than 1.5 years to get all their investment back. Other factors are how big the list is, if the content is orginal or if it appears on other sites too, how much content there is, how many RSS subs, etc. Page rank and technorati rank are also helpful. Visit Sitepoint and see what some are selling for.
I have sold sites for as little as $150 and as much as…well a nice 4 figure number that paid for a new car.
August 17th, 2008 at 5:35 am
Impressive. I saw John Cow was only selling his site for $35,000. That suprised me, I thought it would be worth more.
Thanks for the great information and sharing your personal stuff, that is very nice of you. I’ve been reading about this for awhile and watching site pro and other sites. Then you wrote this article and finally I found someone I felt I could ask. I saw the NY Times article on flipping website.
What is your opinion on a appraisal?
Sommer’s last blog post..Green Talk Radio and Me
August 17th, 2008 at 6:36 am
I am not familiar with John Cow’s blog but he would have a unique selling problem….when you brand your name…like John Cow…how can someone else step in and be John Cow ya know? If that is his name…I always thought he was ripping on John Chow.
http://www.johnchow.com/
But by that figure I would guess he would have to be making at least 2500 a month in revenue to be able to sell it for that price.
Community, design, good content,etc is all good but most people who buy web sites want moola plain and simple. Sites have to be bringing it in to cover their investment. Unless you sell to someone who is a bigger fish in your existing niche and they want to take what you started and run with it, then it might be valued higher.
Treehugger.com sold for millions last year but of course they had something like 35,000 readers and millions of page views each day. But I really doubt they were bringing in enough money to warrant that price (they couldn’t pay their writers)….but Disovery saw an opp to get in on the green niche because they had plans for later…aka Discovery Green.
I have always used the monthly income times 18 months as a rule to guide me. If a site is making $1000 a month than I can sell the site for $18,000ish.
I have bought sites that were making nothing though if I knew I could turn them around…or flip them or if they had big lists.
August 19th, 2008 at 6:28 am
What about media companies buying sites or blogs but keeping the blogger.I was doing some reading and heard of this too. What’s your thoughts. I saw a problogger article on it when I was reading about flipping websites.
Sommer’s last blog post..Pretend Play Gone Green
August 19th, 2008 at 7:14 am
I would imagine they would pay even less initially because you would be getting a share of future profits….whatever they may be. I wouldn’t do it unless I was getting some serious moola because I wouldn’t want to be doing most of the work while they get most of the profits. I have written for two different media companies and I didn’t think the pay was worth it. BUT if you have a blog that has nice traffic but doesn’t really make that much money then that would be a good option. They could help take it to new levels.
August 19th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Yeah, I was reading about this and everyone has a different opinion. I was reading about what writers get paid for media sites and so forth. It’s all over the board. I had never heard of any of this until I read your post and started reading and researching. One idea led me to another post and so forth.
Sommer’s last blog post..The Safe Sippy: Take Two
August 19th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Its hard for a media company to pay writers what they are worth. I took two paid writing gigs this month and got $125 for each post. Most media companies pay single digits per post if that.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Tiffany,
Wow the site looks great. What a total makeover with just a few changes. You do a great job at flipping sites.
Also your comments above give great information. Thanks so much.