I own a network of subreddits and have recently been approached with an offer for one of them.
Since I cut ties with many of the old partners who profited from the sub, I have no real reason to keep it. Regardless, I want to make sure I am maximizing the value I receive.
Has anyone sold a subreddit before? If so, how did you determine a fair price?
There’s no specific formula for pricing but here’s what I did and still do with my some of my subs:
Since you own a network of subs, I’d guess that you already know some of the best ways to monetise them.
Estimate or calculate how much you make or would make in a month if you went with the best monetisation strategy for that particular sub you want to sell. This is important because you can use it as your main selling point. You’d then be able to present the buyer the opportunity to make xxxx $ a month if he follows your blueprint.
You could then multiply the monthly amount that the subreddits produces by a fair amount. I usually do between 12 and 32 as a multiplier. This will depend on many factors and some of them may be niche specific so I can’t give a any recommendations here. Generally, if a subreddit is on an upwards growth trend, then I’d definitely go towards the higher end of that multiplier spectrum.
Subreddits can and should be seen as a business. You want to sell a business, a money making community, not just a number of subscribers on a screen.
Also bear in mind that certain subreddits are more valuable to certain individuals than an average guy who just wants to fllip them for profit. If you can, try and find out what the buyer wants to do with it and if possible reverse engineer his monetisation plan to estimate how much he could earn.
One more thing:
If I somehow can’t find any direct and efficient way to monetise my sub or to sell it, I think of it as a karma farm.
Medium/big subreddits can be very useful even if they can’t be monetised directly. You can basically use them to sell karma boosting or to boost your own accounts if you want. I personally have a friend who ages and sells accounts with karma and I get a % for helping him farm that karma in my subreddits (not much, but it’s still enough to make them worth keeping).
I could go much much deeper into this, but I’m sure you got the point. Good luck
