What Would You Pay for this Blog?

[TrentBrownrigg]

I'm contemplating buying a blog that is for sale right now but I am a tight ass and have a really hard time parting with my money. I'm not sure if the asking price is reasonable or not so I wanted to see what you guys think. What would you pay for a blog with the following credentials assuming you have money and are looking to buy...

PR: 3 (with at least one internal PR4 and several PR3)
Age: Almost a year
Monthly uniques: Not sure yet but I assume at least 10,000
Monthy total visitors: 26,000
Inbound links: 28,000
Google indexed pages: 300
Alexa: 66,000
Technorati: 21,000
Compete: 135,000
Google rankings: Top 30 for Make Money Online
Email list: 200
Earnings per month: 650

(I rounded off all the numbers in case you are wondering why they are all even)

Also, here's what some of those crappy free online site valuation tools said it's worth...

DnScoop: $11,536
ebizvaluations: $11,960
yourwebsitevalue: $23,066
cubestat: $32,900

It's also in the Top 50 on both the digitalproductreporter (formerly 45n5) top MMO blog list and the deanhunt top MMO blog list.


Any idea just off the top of your heads how much you would pay for a blog like this?

[Tel]

I'm probably an even tighter ass when it comes to spending money online! The numbers look good, but then they look good through an Internet marketer's eyes.

An Alexa of 66k tells me that the blog gets a lot of its visitors from other IM'ers which means lots of (useless) social traffic, less from the SE's.

I think to put a price on any blog/website from my own perspective, I'd have to know where it sits on Google (one day, maybe Bing, but not yet!) for each of its main keywords, what kind of traffic it should be getting from that placement, then balance that against the competitiveness of the niche. To me No1 or No2 SERPs placement in a strong niche is more valuable than visitor stats which can be easily boosted by social traffic. PR3 isn't worth anything to me as its not enough to give strong links to my other sites. Also I'd want to know where the inbound links are coming from, their strength, anchors and likelihood of them remaining up once I'd bought the site.

The age of the domain is a big minus point. I get the impression the site was built up purely for flipping, because if it really is earning $650 a month after such a short period of time, I certainly wouldn't sell it!

And if any of that is faked, it could be a lemon.

[TrentBrownrigg]

Thanks for your insight Terry, I do appreciate it.

I haven't looked really deep into the rankings but two I know of for sure are these...

Make Money Online - Top 30
Make Money Blogging - Top 15 (sometimes top 10)

I know neither of those probably do much for it in terms of traffic but it does show promise being that high for MMO.

Some of the inbound links are pretty strong, at least a first glance. I saw shoemoney, carlocab, and a few other top blogs. In fact, I actually exchanged home page links with this same blog earlier this year from my main site that I just sold.

It definitely gets a lot of social traffic, that's obvious, but I think it has potential to get SE traffic as well since it already has some good rankings. Plus, I think being so well known in the MMO blogosphere increases the chances of getting more backlinks.

I skimmed through the first 30 posts or so last night and they are actually well written and high quality. Looks like he posts around 2-3 times per week and puts time into his posts.

By the way... He's selling it for about 7 months earnings, which is very low by site flipping standards. Usually you sell at site at 10-24 times the monthly earnings depending on several factors.

I don't know, I'm still on the fence about it.

[Tel]

That'd put it at less than $5k, so if the earnings are genuine, you should recoup your outlay in 6 months if you kept building it up.

I forgot to mention the domain name itself - too early in the morning! If its got MMO keywords in there or is brandable its a plus and you could always sell it for a profit down the line.

[korprit]

i have seen the 10-24x earnings mentioned over and over again...but NEVER seen it with real sales (successfully). the flippers i talked to in the past all went for 4-6 as the golden number. less and they felt ripped, more and no one would buy as it was too risky that the buyer would be able to successfully take over the site with a new owner/author.

[TrentBrownrigg]

[korprit]

the flippers i knew and talked too would never have sold something that earned 500$ a month ;)

they were consistently building and selling sites that were 2-3 months old for ~4-500$ and occasionally a grand or two. anything that actually earned 200 or more, they would hang onto

[Tel]

That makes a lot of sense.

In fact I can't see any reason to sell a site that is actually making decent money unless you really need a big injection of cash fast...

... or you already have so many of them that you are getting sick and tired of sipping cocktails on your $million private yacht aimlessly floating around somewhere in the Caribbean and want to sell everything, give it to charity and go live in a monastery in Tibet...