Any anons who buy and/or sell websites who can help me understand what my next move should be here?
I started a website in January w/ the intention if it being an affiliate marketing site. I have since realized upkeep is too tiresome for this concept & to get to a worthwhile ROI I'd have to put in way too much work, so I've all but abandoned it in favor of a couple of other sites.
Now the site is just over 2 months old, it has been increasing in traffic though traffic is still low bc I don't have enough valuable content (I get like 20-40 visitors/day - pic related is the search console from 12/31/18).
I have gotten it approved from every major affiliate site and since monetizing in February have made ~$40 so I guess it'll generate somewhere in the ballpark of $40-100/mo over the next 3-6 months or so without putting any more work in.
I spent ~$150 to get it started w/ domain, hosting, and wordpress theme costs.
My questions:
-Could I even sell this and get a decent profit (~$500-1000 would be fine)? -Is now the time to sell it? I know at least now I could paint a picture of it having a lot of potential, but I don't know if traffic will continue to grow organically from here or if it'll start to flatline and if I wait it'll be harder to sell it -Should I sell it or is there a possibility this becomes something that actually makes me decent money (would like ~$200-500/mo without having to put more time in) based on its current trajectory?
> so I guess it'll generate somewhere in the ballpark of $40-100/mo over the next 3-6 months >Could I even sell this and get a decent profit (~$500-1000 would be fine)?
If you want to sell it you need to sell it below value, not over value, the person who is buying it is trying to make money.
you can probably sell it for 250 - 300$ you would already be in profit since you only spent 150$ making it.
Brayden Price
What’s the website? might be interested.
Xavier Brown
I understand that though I guess the assumption I'm making is someone might want to take it and put more time/money into it to drive more revenue and keep the site running longer term... not just buy it for those 3-6 months and then kill it.
As it's an assumption, I might be totally off base... do people usually just buy websites expecting to not do anything to them and let them run their course? And if so, how would someone really evaluate what that "course" would be?
Other question I forgot - where is the best place to sell a site? I was looking at Flippa but it's so expensive.
Josiah Phillips
>$150 profit What about the hours that OP spent on the project? Are they valued at $0?
Grayson Hill
It's a review site where I've capitalized on products which are popular but do not have reviews easily found online for SEO.
The main problem I've run into are there are a LOT of those products but each of them gets relatively little search volume. If I was going to build a huge repository I would include other similar products which do have reviews but still get good search volume (and I actually started doing this recently) but even then the search volume isn't huge for those.... so the site really would require a shitload of content to drive very high traffic I think.
Second issue - for many of the companies the products are seasonal or really more annual, so after a year the products may or may not get phased out and if so the content would become irrelevant.
I did start writing some listicles which have high search volume but I'm ranking low for those currently (like 50-80 depending on the listicle) which I think could also be solved for with a lot more content which would drive traffic and domain authority... but again.. content content content.
I just don't have the time to put in and the niche isn't really exciting to me so it's not like it's a passion project where I don't mind doing it, it feels like work.
I do think there's potential if someone wanted to take the time to just write content all day for like a month or so for it to drive tens of thousands of visitors/month, but again there's upkeep involved even after that.
There is probably also a much better way to monetize than I'm doing it right now, I have no idea what I'm doing there.. just been throwing amazon ads everywhere and linking out recommendations for the pages that have the most amount of traffic.
Anyway just trying to be up front, don't want to sell it to someone on here without them being fully aware what they're getting themselves into.
I'll answer other questions if you have them but not giving away the niche/vertical at this point.
Colton Richardson
Yea I mean, my time based on my salary is going to be a lot more valuable than whatever I'll get for this to begin with, so I'm looking at it more of as a lesson learned where that has value to it as well, though I'd like to at the very least get all my $$ back on it (which I think I could do without selling, which is why I want to profit from a sale).
Definitely the right way to look at it in general, though.
Dominic Stewart
You're actually thinking about this wrong OP. If you want to make a lot of money then keep the website and sell the idea. Make up some youtube videos where you show others how to make a successful website. You can show them this website and how you already started making money in the first month. Monetize the youtube videos. Continue building the website and releasing monthly videos showing the increasing volume. More followers, more money.
Or if you want I'll buy the website from you.
Michael Miller
Someone might put more time/money into it but you can't sell him his own unrealized profit. If there's profit at all. When pricing a website you need to look at what it earns and negotiate with that person, otherwise it won't sell.
Clearly his work is valued at 150$ since that's his profit. Or are you a socialist fag that believes the labour theory of value kek. You will never make it with that mentality.
James Williams
There's no such thing as "value". Someone might spend the same amount of time and effort making a comparable website and get 100x traffic and revenue you get. Time & effort ≠ value. How many people that use your site is the value. Don't listen to this joker.
Eli Brooks
I said based on my salary, which is how most people value their time financially since they know they can get that amount of money per hour at the very least. Additionally, businesses valuate at multipliers of revenue or gross profit based on a number of variables, only one of those inputs being how much that revenue or gross profit is. You'd have to be braindead to sell any profitable business for a 1x or less (which is what you're advising), and this is a profitable business, even if the profits are low. You have some very cocky/arrogant sounding responses for someone that has a very inexperienced & limited view of business.
I'm a busy guy. I have multiple hobbies & businesses, work a full time salaried job, have a family, take care of my house, etc. The goal of this was to create a few passive income streams, and this website doesn't feel like it's going to be long term viable for that, so I'm abandoning it and I'm sure it will eventually die completely (that is, stop being profitable) unless it is maintained.
While you might be totally right about the Youtube video etc. thing, that's just work I'd have to put in that I frankly don't want to, so it's not a viable solution for me.
Robert Thomas
You're valuing based on effort instead of results. We're talking about a website that made you 40 bucks this month papo, not a "business" i spent your months revenue on breakfast this morning.
"You have some very cocky/arrogant sounding responses for someone that has a very inexperienced & limited view of business."
I probably have more experience than you my friend. You're calculating and comparing everything to your wage. You have an employee mindset.
Carter Williams
>Considering "wage" to mean "employee" You have the employee mindset. A wage is how much you earn, regardless of how you earn it.
I'm not even going to bother responding to the rest of your inane statements, it's obvious to me at this point you're not a person who can bring value to this conversation.
Jordan Collins
HOw do you monetise with this affiliate stuff? I have almost the opposite problem to you: I have a few websites generating thousands of visitors a day (all organic search) but I only monetise through Adsense
Maybe we can do a deal OP, I’ll boost your traffic you boost my profitability
Sebastian Russell
How do i have an employee mindset ? Stop being stupid, we all know what is ment by wage.
Go sell your website that made 40$ in a month for 1000$ The only person buying that is someone that is even stupider than you.
Anthony White
Try flippa
Owen Nguyen
i am earning between $500-800 per month in ad revenue from a site that i have created on one weekend in 2012. i wrote 5 articles and then abandoned the site up to this day kek, i only changed the template once to make it responsive lol. you doing it wrong if you think maintainance is needed lmao
OP - If you really want to unload the site, just list it on Flippa. Don't expect a huge payout.
If I was a complete asshole, I'd try to buy your site because I can see you are demoralized about it due to the slow growth and need for additional content. I'll be 100% honest with you. The first 6 months are the hardest. The fact that you are indexed and ranking for some terms is a huge plus. I don't know how topical/timely your reviews are - but I disagree that the site would likely die if left untouched for a few months. That's not typically how organic site growth works. With a little direction - you could import ALL of the products/services/CPA offers that you have access to, into a mysql database and using PHP you could create thousands of pages of content in a matter of a couple hours. The key then would be to slow drip the additional content at a rate of 2-3 per week. The key is, pulling snippets of content from a range of sources in an automated way, so that it forms "unique content" that you didn't have to spend time writing.
You should stick with it a bit longer. Even if you don't want to go the mysql/php (wide net strategy) - you should utilize the google keyword tool to better focus the time you are spending on higher volume items that are still relatively low competition. Additionally - look for NEW BRANDED OFFERS, where you can rank organically for a brand that was just created, this is the lowest hanging fruit out there - and they typically do big buys on social, which drives people to search their brand in Google/Bing/Yahoo.
Stick with it fren, you are on the right track... I've seen so many organic SEO charts like that go parabolic when you least expect it. It's a snowball effect once you get it going, no larp.
google isnt going to index duplicate content from a product feed. spun content is so 2013 as well, these days you gonna need quality content to ensure a good CTR, bounce rate, pass manual reviews, and all that shit. besides that i mostly agree
Asher Johnson
i would love to disclose that but i don't want more competition in my vertical, i want to keep it low maintainance. other than that AMA about SEO and affiliate biz.
