First opportunity on a Website flip. I need help from my fellow BHW so I don't get screwed

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codfordinner

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Hey guys, definitely need your help and advice!

So I've got my first opportunity to purchase a website and flip it.

Here's the situation, I have NO prior experience to this, I don't even know the safe way to pay and receive it.
However, here's where I am at.

It is a animal niche website.
It ranks organically, and receives 30 K unique visitors monthly.
She's terrible at monetizing it, and only receives $50 monthly from adsense.

First question:

Is this a normal amount to make from 30 K visitors a month from adsense?

Second, I am going to get view access to her analytics and verify her traffic.
Can you guys give me some tips of what I should be checking for?

I know I should get off my arse and use the search function, but I would appreciate some straight to the point replies, troll replies aside.

Thanks.
 
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Be sure to use Escrow for the transaction, it allows you to check out the product before releasing funds. We used this on my first Flippa deal and everything went smoothly.
 
Thanks for the replies.

So she has 30 K unique visitors monthly, 75 % organic from google rankings.
She hasn't done any SEO herself, page rank 1, and makes $50 / month from adsense.

I offered $550 as a lowball and she said no way.
How can I more appropriately estimate the value of her site?
I can't pay her based on what I think I can make it earn, I need to pay her based on what it currently earns.

Fact is, the site makes $50 a month...
 
I think it's a ratio of 3 times the revenue. If she has turned it down then maybe she knows more than she's letting on. If she is making a limited amount and still turns down an offer then she knows the value of the potential.
codfordinner said:
Thanks for the replies.

So she has 30 K unique visitors monthly, 75 % organic from google rankings.
She hasn't done any SEO herself, page rank 1, and makes $50 / month from adsense.

I offered $550 as a lowball and she said no way.
How can I more appropriately estimate the value of her site?
I can't pay her based on what I think I can make it earn, I need to pay her based on what it currently earns.

Fact is, the site makes $50 a month...
Click to expand...
 
Offer here a thousand. It's a fair offer. You both know you have something valuable. If it ranks with no see then imagine what it could turn into with proper seo. It takes money to make money. Find her price and go from there.
 
Could anybody with a lot of knowledge in this field chime in about their opinion on the value of this site?
And if they need more details to make a better estimate I'll get those details.
 
Thanks for the replies.

So she has 30 K unique visitors monthly, 75 % organic from google rankings.
She hasn't done any SEO herself, page rank 1, and makes $50 / month from adsense.

I offered $550 as a lowball and she said no way.
How can I more appropriately estimate the value of her site?
I can't pay her based on what I think I can make it earn, I need to pay her based on what it currently earns.

Fact is, the site makes $50 a month...
Click to expand...
I had 8,000 views today which got me $8 (wow,huh?) but my traffic is mostly 3rd world countries so that's reasonable. So, comparing my and her UVs numbers we are pretty much the same. The best thing you can do is to improve ad placement nad hope for the best.

About your $550 price. People tend to value their sites on a couple of levels, not just 6 months or 12 months income. They are emotionally attached (I witnessed this many times when I contact people to buy their domains/sites). So, in her eyes this site looks like something big, but in the eyes of everyone else this is just a random niche site not earning much. I remember offering $10,000 to a woman that have 10-15 years old ugly HTML site about a destination in North America. She rejected that, and I bet her site wasnt earning shit, especially because it looked like she wasnt monetizing it any way except one old commercial for some local site (site was dead by the way but she forgot to remove the ad).

So, she worked on this site for years, she is not earning anything but she dont want to sell it for $10,000
 
She's considering my $1200 offer.
I have an idea to make bank on it. I just still don't have a clue how to properly assess the value and don't know if I am overpaying.
-__-
 
codfordinner said:
She's considering my $1200 offer.
I have an idea to make bank on it. I just still don't have a clue how to properly assess the value and don't know if I am overpaying.
-__-
Click to expand...
If she's willing to consider $1200, then sentimental value is out of the question. Your initial offer was simply too low.

I don't have the full picture, but I assume she knows her site can be monetized better, but doesn't do it in order to keep getting loyal visitors / more views. This is another factor that inflates the value of a website, it's not just stable income.

Besides, if the site is old enough, $550 is low ball even for a $50/month website.

I don't think it's a good idea to go from $550 to $1200, so you might indeed be overpaying, but if you truly know how to monetize better, you might both be happy at the end of this :)
 
If its been earning $50/month consistently for 6 months or more, than $1200 is a fair price. It sounds like a winning proposition for you.
 
Windmill said:
If its been earning $50/month consistently for 6 months or more, than $1200 is a fair price. It sounds like a winning proposition for you.
Click to expand...

I notice on Flippa these sites earning $50 / month aren't selling for much at all.
What's the difference?
 
without mitigating factors that would be 50x12months 600 times 2-3 years multiple on an investment. that's a 1200-1800 valuation. Other things matter too of course like pixles placed from retargetting email optins on site potential for seo where on semrush it's close to hitting higher cpc with minimal work. She probably doesn't know that though. In general since it's unused emotionally it's low so i bet around 1k would be fair. At worst in about 22 months you'd break even, at best you scale it with seo and social traffic and cpa as well and make over 1k a month quick.
 
codfordinner said:
I notice on Flippa these sites earning $50 / month aren't selling for much at all.
What's the difference?
Click to expand...

It makes more sense financially when you factor in labor to deal with one or two sites taking in several hundred dollars a month rather than many sites making just $50 a month.

Labor includes searching for websites to buy, doing the buying process (transferring everything), then maintaiming the site.

You can't even outsource the work because the ratio of the cost to do it compared to the net revenue is too low. Even if you outsource overseas.

People who are serious about investing in websites tend to invest more money into it. $50 a month just isn't worth it even if it only took an hour or two a month to manage it.
 
Last edited:
doesn't sound worth it. how much would you have to do to "monitize it better"
 
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