Advice -recieved offer for domain purchase

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momba12

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Hey guys Im just wondering if anyone has had any experience with this.

I recently received an interest from someone wanting to buy one of my domains. Its actually one of my best ones that makes fairly decent adsense money among other offers I have on there.

The contact came through the whois gaurd so they have no clue who I am.

No price has been mentioned but my site does pull down on avg over 1k a month from adsense alone. And I just started some fairly large campaigns on it to rank for more KWs.

How would you guys handle that situation? Any one have any experience with this?

Many thanks in advance for any insight.
 
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If the revenue is stable, you may ask 12 months revenue for it.

Anyway, if the site is 100% whitehat, i wouldn't sell. It makes you more money in the longer run.
 
Thanks for the quick response. Yah its a total WH site. Ofcourse its being nuked for serps but thats as far as from white as it goes.

Its got a ton more potential, it has about 27k or more indexed on G, however it makes the majority of the money from only 3 or 4 articles! lol Go figure.

Anyway thanks for the response, I was wondering if it was some sort of scam or something.
 
If you're worried about it being a scam set up payment through escrow or something like that so you don't get ripped off. However if you're putting in a big push to rank for some keywords I would maybe hold out, if you can get it to be marking 1500-2000/mo you can get a lot more trying to sell it down the road
 
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Tell him $20k and see what he says. Its always worth seeing what people are willing to pay. Know when to hold em and when to fold em.
 
At least field an offer from him. It can't hurt to hear what he'd pay, and the worst case is, you say no.

Who knows, maybe he's willing to pay some astronomical price for it.
 
As you said, there was no offer of money on the table so really at this point it's all just 'up in the air'...

As blackhatuser said you should be able to get 12-18 months of revenue combined on everything you can prove. Hopefully you can back up your adsense and all other earning from your reports.

If they are smart they will also want to see something such as Google Analytics to prove traffic and where it is coming from to avoid you just paying to throw junk traffic at it.

The reason why someone WOULD want to sell a domain that they personally planned to keep would be if the income source could dry up. With Adsense you could break a rule and Google boots your account. Now you have no income and no proof to try and sell with it.

If your site is of a topic that could go away. A particular kids toy or a movie... this kind of traffic could last a couple of years and then it will die down fast. Best to sell BEFORE the downturn.

Good luck to you!
 
Thanks for the replies guys, I actually have some big plans for my baby. Ive nurtured her from just a little seedling to the brat she is today lol. I have visions of what she can be as an adult. I think Ill go ahead and throw out a big figure and see what they say lol. Problem is I really would feel bad letting it go. Ive put a lot of time into it.
 
I feel ya... I have a site that actually makes me do some manual labor to update the content on the sight that I would rather not do and the site only makes me $200/mo with adsense and maybe another $200 a YEAR with a few Clickbank items ... BUT....

I once went 2 years straight without every updating or even looking at the site on a web browser and I still got my deposits from Google every month. If someone came and offered me $10k for a site that makes me $2.4k a year...

I would have a hard time with it since I have had the site for 9 years now and the niche is timeless so it will continue on for another 9 years.
 
My advice,
You don't name a price, else you might loose some money on the table.
If he has sent you a mail from gmail, yahoo or something like that ask him to send you a mail from his official email so that you know he is serious about buying your domain.
Also, tell him that you are already earning revenue on this domain and have no idea to sell it, but if you get any good offers, you would be willing to sell it. This will make him to come up with him price.
You can go from there.

All the best
 
As a buyer, I don't even play with people who give me the "make me an offer" game. If you can't put a price on the table, I walk away. All that tells me is that the person is hoping you will give them more than it's worth.. If I am interested enough to field a reply, which isn't often, I lowball the hell out of them to try and open them up to a counter offer in their expected range. Anyone who has been around buying and selling for a few years has seen this a million times and it's newb style haggling. Just put on asking price, and if they are serious about acquiring your domain they will go from there. the same could be said about people contacting you asking how much you want I suppose, in terms of them hoping you don't know what your domain is worth, but I feel it's in the owner's hands to set the price.

If someone contacts you directly about the sale of a domain and you are genuinely interested in the possibility of making a sale, don't play the stupid "make me an offer" game. Set a price you would be happy to accept, up it a little bit, and outright tell them what you want. I'd say ask for 18 months proven revenue, and if you settle for 12 months proven revenue as the sale price, good deal all around. Know what you want and go for it, don't tip toe around things. If you're up front and the buyer is still tiptoeing around, they aren't that serious either, and you should walk away.

Same goes for people selling domains/sites on forums, if they don't have a price in mind, screw em.
 
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dirtbag said:
As a buyer, I don't even play with people who give me the "make me an offer" game. If you can't put a price on the table, I walk away. All that tells me is that the person is hoping you will give them more than it's worth.. If I am interested enough to field a reply, which isn't often, I lowball the hell out of them to try and open them up to a counter offer in their expected range. Anyone who has been around buying and selling for a few years has seen this a million times and it's newb style haggling. Just put on asking price, and if they are serious about acquiring your domain they will go from there. the same could be said about people contacting you asking how much you want I suppose, in terms of them hoping you don't know what your domain is worth, but I feel it's in the owner's hands to set the price.

If someone contacts you directly about the sale of a domain and you are genuinely interested in the possibility of making a sale, don't play the stupid "make me an offer" game. Set a price you would be happy to accept, up it a little bit, and outright tell them what you want. I'd say ask for 18 months proven revenue, and if you settle for 12 months proven revenue as the sale price, good deal all around. Know what you want and go for it, don't tip toe around things. If you're up front and the buyer is still tiptoeing around, they aren't that serious either, and you should walk away.

Same goes for people selling domains/sites on forums, if they don't have a price in mind, screw em.
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You buy sites based off of revenue or profit?
 
pixelgrinder said:
You buy sites based off of revenue or profit?
Click to expand...

I have yes. If I feel that the revenue is stable and sustainable. Or better yet, improvable. As a buyer I like to use proven revenue as a means for bringing the price down. You see, everyone who builds a site thinks it's worth a million dollars when it comes time to sell. I generally have a price range in mind before the negotiation even begins. Usually it's far below what the seller expects to get. You get a lot of people who have built up a PR3 blog, got a little traffic coming to it, maybe made a sale or two, and suddenly they think it's worth a fortune. I like to see the proven revenue when I'm buying. If I see a site is semi-established, and is making a small revenue, I can then decide on whether or not I can improve upon the sales coming from the existing traffic, as well as use what is already in place to build more traffic. It saves a lot of effort that goes into the initial launch of new sites. I like poorly monetized sites when it comes buying time. Especially in niches that I know or work in already. I've got a lot of people down to 6 months of proven revenue before.

Now if I were looking at buying a site that has a proven strong revenue. $1000/month. I'd want some very very detailed statistics and would expect to see a proven revenue of at least 6 months, and I'd likely only make on offer based on how long that proven revenue has been stable. If February was a one off month for you and you made $1000, wheras January was $100, you can bet your ass I wouldn't offer you 12 months value at $1000/month. Standard buying practice that I've seen as a buyer and seller has generally been 12months (give or take a few) of proven revenue on a site that has shown at least 6 months of stable income. When it comes to adult affiliate sites it always seemed like they went a little lower, down to as little as 6 months of proven revenue.

That's strictly from my experiences in buying/selling, and what I've seen take place over the last 7-8 years in terms of site sales. Of course as a seller I always try to steer the sale away from proven revenue, as I only ever sold the nonproductive sites in my network. Then I focus on the potential or the PR, or whatever I feel is the best selling point. There's no set rules to buying and selling sites, when it comes down to it, a site or domain is worth whatever a person is willing to pay for it. Maybe you'll find the right sucker to buy at far above value. Generally speaking though, the 12-18 months of proven revenue is pretty widely accepted as a means of valuing an established site for a fair sale.
 
in this case, I will ask at least 12 month revenue. So, make such an offer and see what happens
 
Who is the buyer? (PM me if you don't feel comfortable disclosing here). If I don't already know them I can do some research for you.

If they approached you cold, you should ask way more than 12x. I advise my clients to ask around 3 year's net income if they are approached by a buyer. If they are proactively looking to sell, then that's a different matter, but with a motivated buyer you should be able to get a decent price.
 
meathead1234 said:
Who is the buyer? (PM me if you don't feel comfortable disclosing here). If I don't already know them I can do some research for you.

If they approached you cold, you should ask way more than 12x. I advise my clients to ask around 3 year's net income if they are approached by a buyer. If they are proactively looking to sell, then that's a different matter, but with a motivated buyer you should be able to get a decent price.
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Thanks for the reply. Actually the email came through Whois with a gmail account. It stated they had a client interested in the site. My thoughts on it are, why a gmail account and why not contact me through my actual website first? However, I did notice a rash of hits from whois type sites on my website previously.

I have not sent back a response to this person because I believe I can ramp this site up 10x what it is now.
 
momba12 said:
Thanks for the reply. Actually the email came through Whois with a gmail account. It stated they had a client interested in the site. My thoughts on it are, why a gmail account and why not contact me through my actual website first? However, I did notice a rash of hits from whois type sites on my website previously.

I have not sent back a response to this person because I believe I can ramp this site up 10x what it is now.
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Lol. Was it Latonas by any chance?
 
momba12 said:
Actually its a generic John with a bunch of numbers and @gmail, looks like it was generated to tell you the truth, looking closer.
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You should reply. These can be legit sometimes. Lots of serious buyers hire people to email sites all day and see what they can buy.

There are also a bunch of scams.

A scam going round right now is as follows:

- You get an email saying they have someone interested in your site
- They get you to sign a broker agreement with them with an exclusivity for 6 months
- Their "buyer" mysteriously vanishes
- They very rarely actually sell your site. Just have a bunch listed and get lucky every now and then.

Pretty lame move, but some brokers are desperate these days :)
 
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