Buying and Selling Qs?

MGDesigns

Just me being nosey again :baby:

How much approx do full sites sell for?
What is the most expensive site you've purchased?
Was it worth the money spent?
Have you ever been ripped off?
What is the cheapest?

Have you ever found yourself completely redesigning from scratch for any reason?

Nuvo

It's hard to put an estimate on GENERIC SITE 101 since the price you can expect to sell a site for is based on the site itself.
If you have a site that's getting good traffic, that will increase the selling price.
If you've got a site with a desirable URL, that could make the domain valuable, but not always the site using it.
Sites with fully built backends don't always sell well as some people will want to rip things down and change code, or even start again if they feel like it or have trouble understanding the code it's using.

DevDreams was selling for a decent amount for the kind of site it is \ was, but that's because it not only had traffic, but had a good domain and came with everything running.
Python could have sold it for less if he hadn't included the scripts running the site (I'm assuming this included vB licencing).

tony

it goes off various things as nuvo says.
traffic,
income,
PageRank,
members,
content,
age,
SE position
where visitors come from

etc etc

daboss

i've sold a site for usd 800 (a site that sells a script that i wrote) - the highest so far...

the least is usd 200 (a mini content site)

DeluxeNames

daboss wrote: »

i've sold a site for usd 800 (a site that sells a script that i wrote) - the highest so far...
the least is usd 200 (a mini content site)

That's a nice price for a site Daboss

Moddy, here's the weirdest thing about selling a stie. Sometimes, someone can get more from selling a domain then if they sell the domain with a site. It must be psychological because I don't understand it really.

When you have a site up, people base their offers on 6 months or 12 months of revenue and almost forgot about the domain.
When you sell just the domain, it seems that people start dream of all the things they can do with the domain and sometimes are willing to pay as much or more.

daboss

DeluxeNames wrote: »

That's a nice price for a site Daboss

Moddy, here's the weirdest thing about selling a stie. Sometimes, someone can get more from selling a domain then if they sell the domain with a site. It must be psychological because I don't understand it really.

When you have a site up, people base their offers on 6 months or 12 months of revenue and almost forgot about the domain.
When you sell just the domain, it seems that people start dream of all the things they can do with the domain and sometimes are willing to pay as much or more.

i always think that this is not right... what if the site contains 100 pages of good and unique/original content and runs adsense. however, since the marketing of the site isn't great and the owner sucks at seo, it doesn't bring in much revenue - say only $10 a month. does it mean that the site is only worth $100-$120?

Nuvo

Actually, that would depend on the buyer.
If the buyers are aiming to buy up sites with high traffic and high revenue, they aren't going to pay a lot for a site that doesn't get as many users as it could.
It's worth remembering that not everyone has the skills to do SEO and not everyone is going to go and hire some web developer to do it for them.

If the buyer is looking for a small scale project that can be worked on, improved and then unleashed, they may be willing to offer more in the hope that once the site has made a name for itself, they will make some of the money back through adverts and other services.

If you look at MySpace and Facebook, the guys behind Facebook turned down a multi-million dollar buy out offer in the hopes of getting something like $2bn USD for it, but they haven't got a buyer and MySpace sold for over $500 million at around the same time to News Corporation (who own FOX & The Sun).
Expecting some massive offer isn't always the best idea, especially when you're not the most popular site in your field (while popular, Facebook is more aimed at students while MySpace is aimed at anyone and offers more customization despite it's overall poor build quality).

DeluxeNames

Nuvo wrote: »

the guys behind Facebook turned down a multi-million dollar buy out offer in the hopes of getting something like $2bn USD for it, but they haven't got a buyer and MySpace sold for over $500 million at around the same time

That story always makes me laugh so hard. I can't believe that FaceBook turned down such a nice offer.

Moddy or whoever is shopping for sites, NEVER believe the traffic stats without verifying it unless you really trust the seller. There are so many ways to ramp up traffic temporarily until the site is sold and then, bam, traffic goes to nothing. Webmasters will often have thier own sites feeding in until after the sale.

In fact, I wouldn't even trust the revenue statements because there are ways to get your friends to buy from you or buy from your self or just plain falsify the records until after the sale.

If you figure the site will get half the traffic and half the revenue claimed, then you won't be dissapointed and might be suprised if the claims are true. Too many dishonest sellers out there.

Always ask yourself, if the site is really doning this good, why on earth would the owner be selling?