I think people who put you down as the guy without a real job are secretly envious. 9/5 in a cubicle with a boss hovering over your shoulder is no fun at all. Not to mention meetings about what to talk in the next meetings...

However, the one positive thing is you are surrounded with people, you can make friends, attend happy hours, etc. But if you end up changing jobs, usually you'll see that most of these people won't stay in your life either.

Anyway, I'd keep your sites, and continue being my own boss, but maybe find a local pub if you miss hanging out with people. Try not to develop a problem with alcohol though ;)

When I was a corporate drone, I used to be secretly envious of freelancers, people who are their own boss and have their own business.

I think people who put you down as the guy without a real job are secretly envious. 9/5 in a cubicle with a boss hovering over your shoulder is no fun at all. Not to mention meetings about what to talk in the next meetings.

No, they really believe it. I got offered a job (a good one too - lots of influence, although with a third world salary). I turned it down because I thought (still do) that my site has growth potential that needs work to exploit, and my prospective boss asked whether I could not do that in my spare time.

People in general assume I have lots of spare time. I even got investigated by the police because one of my neighbours had complained I was suspicious because I appeared to have an income without going out to work.

I even got investigated by the police because one of my neighbours had complained I was suspicious

I hear that, mine think I'm an assassin.

If I'm ever made to consider a return to the cubicle farm I watch Office Space again, that fixes it for me every time.

Dick

Working on your own gives you the freedom and independence which makes up for the hard work you do. Personally I can never go back to 9/5 job working for somebody, even if it paid millions.

I even got investigated by the police because one of my neighbours had complained I was suspicious because I appeared to have an income without going out to work.

I'm sorry but what the hell? Never heard that one before. There are a lot of people working at home: writers, students, translators, coders, graphic designers, people with home based businesses, etc. Do you live in the US? Someone needs to be sued.

I was offered a good job too but declined it, I prefer to freelance (my personal web sites are part time projects as of yet). I'd rather have half a salary and work on my own than someone bossing me around.

Time and freedom are undervalued. Money is overvalued.

/actually every client is a little boss, but it's not the same.

.. heck I was a car dealer for many years..

Why not write a car buying guide and publish it on your website.
Sell it either via own shopping cart or use something like clickbank where you also have the possibility to sell via affiliates.
Promote your site from within the ebook for getting additional visitors.
Although you have to sit in front of your computer again to write the book, it is an onetime effort and you could improve your earning - work once, earn many :)
Or if you do not want to write your own book, check out the offers available on clickbank (car buying and insurance).
Good luck - and please, do not sell!

thanks in advance as I have no real idea where to start "valuing" my site for sell.

The most complete website valuation guide on the Internet is at Sitepoint - it covers all the mechanics of valuation and analyses what different types of sites sell for in the marketplace. Try sitepoint website valuation in Google. Some sites less for 10x years income, others for less than 2 months' income, and there are good reasons for that disparity.

There is no such thing as a "proper valuation". Various people here may come up with various multiples as a fair value. All estimates are worthless unless they come from people with the money and intent to buy your site.

People quoting 3 years, 5 years and 10 years of income as fair value are, strangely, not actively buying all those quality sites out there selling for less than 2x. A webmaster can put whatever price he wants on his own site but there's no transaction till a buyer agrees that price.

Re: Alexa ranking. It's not a definite measure of anything but it's a useful comparative tool to add to the hundred others available to assess and do due diligence on sites. To the OP: you don't get a higher Alexa by getting more links.

Any valuation "tool" that doesn't explain how it arrived at its figure is not worth using. They are link baits, not serious tools.

YeildBuild makes an important point: savvy buyers score you less if a large percentage of your traffic is from SERPs. It's higher risk to them and they are consequently less motivated to bid higher.

It is not worth selling a website that makes real money. I don't even sell a website that makes $100 a month. Unfortunately, buyers don't value websites because of the underlying risks. But for me if I pay five bucks a month on a website that brings in $100 without doing any work at all, it is an awesome deal.

In all seriousness, I actually turned down an offer of $400K during the first web bubble.

Glad I did too, the site has made WAY more money than that over the years.

Had they offered double the amount, site be gone :)

I still think a decent evergreen info site might survive, and pay, pretty for at least 2 - 3 years even on auto-pilot.

So why sell for less than 2 - 3 years gross?

Not in the US: I am sure it would not happen in any developed economy - sorry, I thought people would know that from the mention of a third world salary. There are a number of people around here who have jobs that are free of normal office hours (most of the ones I know are British rather than locals though...), but none I know of who stay work entirely from home.

That said, I think it is true that many people in the UK do tend to think that working from home must be an easy option and not quite a real job.

ken_b, exactly. Consider how long a book can keep selling for - I can think of books on subjects ranging from physics to investment that are still in print after 40 or fifty years. If your content is going to lose value after an year or two, it is not evergreen! If it is not going to lose value it should attract organic links and maintain its position.

oddsod, if I can find quality evergreen sites that match the sort of criteria ken_b and I are talking about I will happily pay several years revenue for them. Most content sites I see for sale are going to need a lot of work to sustain, and are therefore selling a quite a high profit multiple (once you deduct the value of the work you will need to put in).

I can't believe a site ranking 600,000 is making that much money. Alexa (despite what some people claim) is still fairly accurate. All my sites have rankings that are pretty much in line with what they should be.

But if you are making this much, a fairly typical buying price would be 12-18 months income. But I do know some buyers who pay up to 36 months income if the site high-quality and runs itself and the buyer sees the potential to increase income by making a few changes.

Can't believe someone said 3 months income. The seller would have to be a bit too desperate in that case. Why would anyone want to sell a site making $2000 a month doing nothing for $6000, which they can make in only 3 months. The way I see it is like renting out a property, it earns you steady income every month without much invovement (although in the case of websites, some require a more work than others).

Yeah 'Automotive Site' we go from 550,000 to currently 666,000 in Alexa.

But I just went back into our Google Analytics (That has been there for 3 years+) and compared the past couple years to now and not much difference at all. Good I guess, considering all I do is put up a few new pages each month or either "tweak" a few pages.

My whole thing is I can do "More" of what I need to do in my life right now "lump summed" versus this money every month.

As far as making some changes to make it better, that's possible as of right now we do not charge for auto listings so there's an untapped revenue stream. Plus I have started an area for Auto Parts that uses ebays Rover system but I only got completed like 3 Makes and haven't even opened that to traffic. So there's 2 minimal work outlets to explore.

If I keep it I plan on doing those 2 things. But simply put I don't actually have to do anything to it to make that money.

THANKS for everyone's thought on this as I do have an idea of what all should be looked at to value my site.

As it stands when the time comes and I have all the verifying information in place I plan to sell it for 40-45K
That would give a prospective ROI after around 2 years. With of course the potential to shorten that time by exploring the above mentioned 2 areas.

Also is this things I should be collecting and showing along with Adsense screens?

This is the traffic comparison for the last 3 years..
[img221.imageshack.us...]

To me it shows a "steady" go of things.

That SPIKE at the first of the years is of course TAX TIME everyone goes there looking for cars with tax money (we usually do around $3,000 then) all the other time is the above quoted 1,800-2,000

[edited by: JStubblefield at 1:04 am (utc) on June 20, 2009]

Going back to your original statement;

So it makes over $20,000 per year since 2005.

My math:

20,000 Gross annual income
-1,200 estimated annual hosting fees
--------
18,800 Net gross operating income (EBIT)
-45% Federal taxes (assuming buyer is in USA)
________
$10,340 Net Income

My assumptions estimate the net income at a little over 10K annually or $861.67 per month.

Of course there may be other cost of doing business expenses I'm not aware of.

There should also be value in your content assuming it is original, software (purchased), inventory, and possibly goodwill.

Goodwill assumes that your site is well known and popular in your niche. Most small operators ignore (never heard of it) goodwill. Goodwill is technically an intangible asset. If you value a company like DuPont and assume that tomorrow they are unable to turn a profit, the company itself still has value or Goodwill. Goodwill is basically the recognized name or ability to make money.

Assuming it doesn't take you a boat load of time keep the site up.. I would definitely keep it. My site makes only a little more than yours and pays mortgage, utilities and health insurance. It also allows me to buy insurance (at least in Maryland) because it makes me a business owner.

If it is taking you time consider hiring a kid to keep it up.

Ps. send me a message and I'll tell you a hosting company that charges 1/10th what you are paying. I've been with them since 2000.

Last idea. Take a $100,000 loan out to do what you want and let the website pay for it.

Goodwill is basically the recognized name or ability to make money

This is a common misconception. You are confusing brand value with goodwill. Goodwill is an accouting number to make the books balance

Goodwill is basically the recognized name or ability to make money

This is a common misconception. You are confusing brand value with goodwill. Goodwill is an accouting number to make the books balance

LOL, why not! I agree

[en.wikipedia.org...]

40-50k minimum

I've had two companies approach me about buying our site in the last three months. One is a company that specializing in such acquisitions.

The site's not for sale, but the right price would be in the 4 to 5 times our annual net.

Note: what the buyer will pay in income tax should never be factored into the selling price equation. Some folks may have enough write offs to not pay a dime of taxes on the 2k/month. Plus tax brackets vary widely by state and country.

So don't let a buyer use tax amounts as part of their calculation when determining a value for your site. Stick to gross minus expenses (which includes cost of having someone run the site)

This is a great thread!

I personally would pay a lot less for an organic, click revenue based site because the engines change their algorithms every few months and the site could be dropped tomorrow because of past or present blackhat SEO tactics. With an ecommerce site you have a customer base established and if it got dropped tomorrow you could still use advertising to maintain sales. with ad-based sites it is unlikely you could swallow PPC to get click-revenue.

Simon, OK so a site could lose because of an algo change, on the other hand the site could gain because of an algo change. The thing about algo changes is that for every loser there has to be a winner.

Of course that assumes if a site has used black hat SEO, the risk is definitely one way. It boils down to this: how sure can a buyer be that a site has bot used black hat SEO? What they can do to verify it?

It's worth whatever someone will pay you for it. Finding a buyer is likely to be harder than agreeing on the valuation.

However, even more important than that is planning how to structure the sale so that you don't give a big gob of money to the IRS. Entire books have been written about this -- and for good reason. It's complicated.

You should talk to your accountant about this before going any further with it. You have to know what sales structure is best for you before making any other decisions.

(p.s., Getting a mortgage these days relies more on how steady your income is rather than whether you have some spare cash sitting in a bank somewhere).

Well, I had PM'd the OP with a suggestion (and an offer ;) ) but it boils down to this: do it like the big boys, and structure the deal with payouts based on continuing performance. That way everybody wants the site to continue to be profitable.

jhood, true, but it is still worth discussing so people can decide:

1) How much should I be willing to sell my site for?
2) How much should I be willing to pay for that site?

RonS, how does the seller verify how the site continues to perform?

graeme_p -I can verify with 4 years of google analytics and adsense.

Further up I put a link to a screenshot comparing 2007 to 2008 and 2008 to 2009.

Also, since the site has around 600+ pages (mostly handmade) I did that new thing with adsense where you set the SIZE of the ad font site-wide. wow, that does work. (Took it all to "medium"). mid- 13% CTR yesterday. (Closed out the day at $80+) I usually float around 8%-11% CTR.

I will follow up with some stats of this at weeks end on the FONT SIZE thread on here, comparing the increase and hopefully it sticks.

Graeme_p, I guess when you get into bed with someone, you have to be willing to undress.

You'd have to give access to the books/account in some manner.

I was wondering about using the "revenue share" thing that Google had, but when I looked it up it seemed that it was some sort of an API and I didn't have time to investigate it.

Anyone using it?

Self edit: On second thought, perhaps I'll start a new thread on that.

RonS I guess you could also show 1099 forms for the last few years.. I know mine show that it's definitely from google. Or of course give them access but that can be tricky.

I had envisioned (call me crazy) but if someone wanted to pay XX,000 for a site they would be also willing to actually meet in person. Then everything could be gone over with both present. Of course, it seems like that would be after much communication and trust gained online/via telephone.

I know my "baby" of 9 years I am not going to just DUMP it on someone. But that's just me and pride talking, some people may dump sites and I guess that's fine too.