Forum appraisal, asking for advice

Discussion in 'Monetization Techniques' started by nohuhu, Oct 31, 2010.

  1. nohuhu

    nohuhu Novice

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    A guy approached me with an offer to buy my forum and he's asking for a price. I'm at loss, frankly. It's not that I wouldn't want to sell it, kinda bored with it after nearly four years and all, but I haven't got a slightest idea of its worth. The stats are like this: Threads: 11,554, Posts: 190,235, Members: 4,658, Active Members: 1,050 (in a month). About 300 people visit every day, almost like clockwork. Google Analytics shows 42k visits, 420k pageviews and ~16k unique visitors per month with ~50% of traffic coming from search engines.
    I'm running Google advertising for guests and registered users alike, plus premium subscriptions for ad removal and other niceties. I get about $200 a month overall and that's without any kind of SEO or promotional activity, I have never actually advertised my forum, it just grew.
    So I'd like to ask more experienced admins out there, what would you pay for such a forum - supposed that you would want to buy it? Thanks in advance for any input.

    Regards,
    nohuhu.
     
  2. petertdavis

    petertdavis Old Timer

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    PM me the url, and I'll give a try at valuing it for you. There aren't many people you'll come across who have bought and sold as many forums as I have.
     
  3. MordyT

    MordyT Grand Master

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    If you talking about the ford trucks site then I would have to say somewhere in the ballpark of 1K. That is just a quick 10 second estimate...
     
  4. nohuhu

    nohuhu Novice

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    MordyT,

    Yes, I'm talking about my old ford trucks forum. Thanks for advice, $1k sounds pretty impressive. :)

    Regards,
    nohuhu.
     
  5. Eric Lyon

    Eric Lyon Adapt, Improvise, Overcome!

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    Ok, you may want to base your asking price on your provable monthly income (As most businesses do). $200.00 per month x 12 months (1 yr.) = $2,400.00 ... When selling a business you want at least one years profits to make the sale worth it, otherwise you could potentially make more consistently keeping it as it grows. Now you want to add a price on your content (forget pricing members, they come and go), so you figure 190,235 posts at, at least .01 cent per post (that's for the content value) = $1,902.00. Now you add your yearly projected revenue of $2,400.00 + your content value of $1,902.00 = $4,302 asking price.

    Start at $4,302.00 as your asking price & then let them make a counter offer, you can break down the value to them like I did for you so they can get a better mental image of what the investment has to offer.

    Good luck to you :)
     
  6. nohuhu

    nohuhu Novice

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    drifter73,

    Wow, things are getting better and better. :) I made my initial bargaining offer - it was just a bit more than you've calculated, at $4,500, but the guy didn't respond yet. Probably lost his interest. :(

    Thanks anyway! Now if anyone would ask me the same question, I will have my bearings.

    Regards,
    nohuhu.
     
  7. Blandt

    Blandt Regular Member

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    Can you link us to the forum. Let me take a look .. I am interested :)
     
  8. nohuhu

    nohuhu Novice

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