Need Advice for Website Purchase

Hello,

im new to the website purchasing game but have been interested for quite some time. I've come by an interesting site and wanted some advice. Bid ends soon but i'd appreciate knowledge for future reference.

The seller has $40K previous sales, 100% rating, 11 transactions.
Site itself has been up for 4 years, solid earnings, lowish viewership. Its blog-based. Selling at ~ 5x monthly profits.

I assume the reason for the low multiple is because the niche is somewhat hard. On the other hand, the seller didnt optimize too much for his articles and just wrote whatever he wanted.

All earnings from ad, extremely passive which is why im interested. Would just buy articles with proper SEO research, earn my money back in ~ 6 months.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

PS: How do you find out if the site has bad backlinks? Is this even possible?

Run the domain through Ahrefs and Majestic. Manually look at the back links.

senzu said:

Run the domain through Ahrefs and Majestic. Manually look at the back links.

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Thanks Senzu!
I've ran it thru. The CF/TF ratio is good but i'm not sure what constitutes a high number...both metrics are in the 30's.

Solid earning but sell for 5X monthly? ummmmm

TF is good, but just looking at metrics won't help much. I would go through each link, or at least each referring domain and see if the site linking back is a legit site, or if it's junk.

xxaxle said:

Selling at ~ 5x monthly profits

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I don't know, but selling a profitable site for 5x its monthly earning is a red flag.

T2tkid said:

I don't know, but selling a profitable site for 5x its monthly earning is a red flag.

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The bid eventually went up to $8K which was close to 10x. I regret purchasing the site but didnt have the cash or experience to properly evaluate. Will share the next prospect with you.. hopefully its as good as this one was :/

Any tips on valuation techniques would greatly be appreciated !

Update: The person rejected the $8K bid and is still selling.. How does one confirm or verify ad payments? He said one sources is from CJ and the other is just through email.. he said he would send me paypal receipt emails... Is there a more concrete way to confirm?

He sent me is GA link which checks out.. 1-2K unique views and $950 / month in profits. Any suggestions?

CJ is ads? I thought that's an affiliate network. Seems like the blogs are selling something (ebook, courses?)

Yes part of the revenue is from free ad credits and the other portions is from a directory listing service. I've never purchased a site and this is a huge investment for me. If the revenues are legit tho.. Seems like a good investment.

Site content and viewership checkout