I'm selling one of my favorite niche websites.

Key Takeaways

good morning everybody it's Jim this morning I have something kind of unique and new for you the short story is I'm selling one of my niche websites and I'm offering it for sale to one of you guys for those of you who are interested in buying this is a pretty cool opportunity for those of you who are not and just want to know how a website is valued and a deep dive into one of my websites well then cool you're in the right place I hope you don't mind I'm just doing this on my cell phone this morning I just didn't have much time so this website is earning an average or type the site is knife up calm it's one of my favorite sites it kind of kills me that I'd I consider selling it we're trying to do something something kind of fun as a family and so I thought you know maybe I could get some extra money from this so I thought so it does pay me a little bit to be selling this one but but it'll be fun so let's look at the earnings from the website shall we I'm just gonna take you over here so here's an Excel document this shows really all the vital stats from the website so this is going back until January 2017 and the income from ads and affiliate during that time so the average monthly income if you take the 12-month average it's 5,200 dollars a month the six-month income is fifty four hundred dollars per month and then here we can see the traffic to the website it's been so steady just hovering right around that three hundred thirty thousand page views really four years and so that's really cool it's so hard to find a website that just has steady consistent traffic and so to me that's a major selling point of this website okay so that's kind of the income from the website let's jump straight to the valuation and then we'll get into a little bit of the details so valuation for the website with with it earning we'll take the lower of the two the five thousand two hundred sixty two dollars and forty six cents per month if we we can multiply that by anywhere between 28 and 40 to get a solid multiple for selling this website and that's just very general across the industry that's what you kind of see is a normal range for selling a website now if something's way down on a 28 times multiple side it means that there's a significant risk with the website for example it's very active it requires your full time job that's gonna definitely put it on the lower end of things if it takes that much work if the site is not very old you know the site's less than a year old yeah it's gonna be at the lower end of the multiple range because there's more risk we just don't have a long track record and then also just if the traffic is squirrely you know if it's way up one month way down one month etc that's gonna be at the lower end of the multiples at the higher end at the forty 40 times monthly earnings monthly net earnings that's where we'd see a site that's really well-established that has really solid traffic really passive and very diversified income streams so where does knife up fit in if I if you were to ask me if you own this website and you're asked me to value it I would probably value this at a thirty eight times maybe at thirty seven times multiple because it's it has very steady traffic but it doesn't like have a reputation in the industry because new you know these are it's very transactional people search stuff they find the website and so I wouldn't put it right at the forty but it's extremely passive extremely steady it has only two income sources which brings it down a little but it's also so passive so I would say a thirty seven thirty eight times multiple maybe thirty seven is probably a fair multiple I think for this just what I would say it would go for I'm actually gonna list this at a lower multiple I'm gonna list this at a thirty five times multiple and you know I'd be glad to hear any offers on it but frankly I'm not gonna be able to take I just wouldn't take much less for it because it's it's just a super solid site I'm not gonna be broken up about it if this doesn't sell so thirty-five times multiple of the 12-month average monthly earnings is $184,000 $184 and 76 cents so 184,000 I feel like that's actually a pretty good price for this because of its just so steady and everything so yes I'd be interested in hearing offers but no I'm not gonna sell this real low because that that's that's a fair multiple already I think frankly it could go for a 37 times multiple okay so that's kind of the vital statistics of the website let's jump into opportunities and threats so first the low hanging fruit the low hanging fruit on this website kind of makes me crazy because man this website is good enough that it could be your full-time job I mean it's earning fifty two hundred dollars a month and there's so much low-hanging fruit that you could double it I feel confident that I could double it in fairly short order but I've just been torn by so many different projects I've just never gotten to it so it's a cool opportunity for whoever does want to do it and if you don't if you just want to keep this as a passive site then that's what it's mo that's what it's valued at is as a passive site so you could really just buy this and sit it in your portfolio and I'd feel pretty confident that it's gonna pay for itself in about two and a half years but you never know what the future holds everything has a risk but anyway here's the low-hanging fruit okay ads I so no new content has been added in the last two years don't go by the dates sometimes that things are published I did some things to try to make Google hopefully you rank it a little bit more and not show those older dates but really only two articles have been written in the last two years and those are the two most recent one than my wife wrote and one that I wrote just in the last couple weeks one of them was from yesterday and the reason that we're doing that is because I got an email from the ads broker I think it's been about three weeks ago that they said hey have you noticed that the CPMs you're getting the amount the amount of earnings you get for every thousand page views the website is way lower on this site than your other sites and I was like yes I have why is that and they said well yeah it's just because we showed it to the premium ads buyers and they just they wanted their products to be associated with a fresh site and so they just want you to write some new content and then we think your CPM so we're going to go way up just like your other sites and I thought oh okay well that's major low-hanging fruit so what they suggested is to just write 10 or 20 new posts and maybe freshen up the design or whatever and then just tell them once we've done that and they'll just resubmit it to the premium ads buyers and they feel confident that the ads income is going to go way up and that's 50% of the income next is an email list drives me crazy that I've never gotten to this but it gets three hundred thirty thousand page views a month and so if you just had a pretty simple lead gen just something you know a little you'll get this quick guide if you sign up for our email list kind of deal I mean with that much traffic I would feel pretty confident that you could add a hundred people a day to an email list if you really do it right and man a hundred people a day to an email list ISM woo you could do some pretty cool stuff by doing that and just emailing out affiliate offers things like that right now there's no email list I've just never gotten to it next is other affiliate offers probably my favorite way to change an existing website with high traffic when I buy it is I just go to Google Analytics look at the top 20 most trafficked posts and I just really simply go to ShareASale Clickbank and I'm looking for affiliate offers in the outdoors survival knife niche and I'm just gonna slip in you know just add a couple sentences ooh one of my favorite tactical flashlights is this and I mentioned tactical flashlights because that is a red-hot affiliate offer right now I heard some numbers the other day from somebody in internet marketing that's selling tactical flashlights as a funnel for it who's just crushing it and I thought man what a like there's this a perfect website to advertise something like that so man you get one of those bank share sale offers for a tactical flashlight and slip a few lengths in I would be pretty excited about that I think that could do something cool and next new content on the site is just probably gonna rank pretty quick because it's a very established authoritative domain so the new for the low-hanging fruit is really ripe on this website the field is white already to harvest for those of you that get that joke and it but just because it has high traffic but there are some threats to the website frankly I kind of think they're pretty minimal this is just a solid site but I sat here and I thought okay what are some things that aren't perfect about the website one it does probably need 20 new articles so there is some work to do I'd probably want to do that in the first month you own it to appease the ad brokers next because there hasn't been a whole lot of content written in the last year I mean a whole lot like - because there hasn't been content written in last year I don't think the traffic is going to be increasing for you over the next six months after six months yes if you write new content but I I'm gonna expect a plateau in terms of the traffic which is I think a good thing I like to see steadiness but of course it would be nice if it was just going up for you and I think that's unlikely next the site relies on Google traffic now to me that's actually a good thing I've never been hit by a Google penalty with all the sites because I just build them organically no weird link link building stuff and so I just don't worry about updates to Google algorithms and stuff but because the Google is the biggest source of traffic you know there's just less diversity but it does often get big spikes in content from social when somebody finds we have some really cool content on there that sometimes people share and you'll just see a spike for a particular month and stuff so it's not like it's the only traffic source but it is a significant one so something to keep in mind so those are kind of the threats to the site and the low-hanging fruit you know it's just been a really reliable solid web site me and that's why I feel pretty confident that I really doubt somebody's gonna come back to me and say oh I wish I wouldn't have bought that website I just if somebody well first you could just stick it in your portfolio as a passive site and I mean 35 months from now you you got all your money back and you have the website so you've essentially doubled your money which I don't know an investment in the world that could do that you know it's difficult typical kind of stock market kind of investment that's really cool and that's why I love buying websites when I can find them but of course there is risk I'm not saying there isn't any business any investment has risk so so that but I think it would be pretty cool next the sales process so I have to say I'm gonna be pretty cautious if a biro is from an international country outside the US just because I have a little recourse if you did something shady whatever it didn't pay something like that but I'm not totally closed off to it so I'd like to hear from you so if you're interested in buying email me at gym at improve photography.com but please just do not waste either of our time please only email me if you have the money I mean the site is being sold for one hundred eighty four thousand dollars it's a very fair price at that level I believe and so I'm not really gonna even look at a lowball offer you know I'd be glad to look at any offers but I'm just I feel pretty confident that it's gonna sell it at about that price so so email me if you actually have the money and you are serious about buying it in the short term because I do think this is probably gonna sell pretty quick after that we're gonna set up a live call and I'll answer any of your questions anything you're concerned with about anything you want to know about the website right there we'll do that a live call after that point once you make your your buying decision then we would sign a contract and I would want you to put money into into an escrow for a down payment before I show the Google Analytics and things like that just because that's very proprietary information the website and the reason I feel comfortable putting that later it's like I've really given you a lot of information here you saw the general traffic to the website exactly what the earnings are etc so that and I just there's not gonna be any surprise there I just know there won't be so but we will verify it of course you have to see that you have to know that it's totally good and I want you to be able to look at everything on the website so you feel totally confident and and at that point that you would pay the full amount to the to an escrow and then once I transfer the website to you I take the money out of the escrow so that keeps me from getting scammed and you from getting scammed by going to an escrow from the third party it just means that you know you aren't getting the website without paying me and I'm getting the money without paint without giving you the website so kind of prevent scams so I do want to do it you know the full do this the right way kind of thing so that's the process for knife up that's the website I hope it's been fun to kind of see a deep dive into the website and if you're interested in buying email me at gym at improve photography.com but again only if you really do have the money that you could put together in in a pretty short amount of time to buy it it's a it could be a killer investment for somebody who's in a position to do it I mean like I said I mean 35 months from now even if you do nothing there's a good chance you've earned back all your money and you own the website so if you've essentially doubled your money that's really cool so anyway let me know email me and let me know what you think bye