Originally Posted by nutzworld

OK if i understand right you are saying annual profit x 10? I have a site I would love to sell for annual profit x2.5 I am new to selling these and was a hobby site. Now too much work for me with everything else. Is that reasonable?

You can't give a valuation based solely on profit. Earnings history is important too. A site that has been making $200/month for 5 years is worth morethan one that's been making that for 2 months only. Niche is important (rapidshare download sites vs a static content site about some historical event etc). Also, you say the site requires too much work for you. Did you deduct a monetary value for that work from your revenue to arrive at the profit?

Originally Posted by gringo

You can't give a valuation based solely on profit. Earnings history is important too. A site that has been making $200/month for 5 years is worth morethan one that's been making that for 2 months only. Niche is important (rapidshare download sites vs a static content site about some historical event etc). Also, you say the site requires too much work for you. Did you deduct a monetary value for that work from your revenue to arrive at the profit?

24-30k a year for the last 10 years. I would say that I could pay someone 12k a year to do what I have to do on that site (15-20 hours a week or so). If I figure it that way, I would still only want 3-5 times the average total, the point is 10x seems very high to me. (The site is a static sports news and info site but always needing new content thus the 15-20 hours a week)

Originally Posted by nutzworld

24-30k a year for the last 10 years. I would say that I could pay someone 12k a year to do what I have to do on that site (15-20 hours a week or so).

With that case, there would be little point in selling it

valuations are tricky and there are many different ways to perceive value other than just how much the site earns (e.g. the strength of the domain name). Here are some things you need to consider when selling or putting your business up for sale.

Domain Name Length & Ease of Typing
Age of domain/site
Number of inbound links
Pagerank of site
The main search terms that bring traffic to the site
How much revenue it makes per month/year. If possible include a history of recent years
How the site generates revenue, i.e. affiliate commissions, tenancy deals, private ad sales, Adsense etc etc etc.
Number of visitors - and where they come from, i.e. paid or natural search and what percentage of each
Where do your visitors come from? Really important as you need to state any demographics you may have. Reason is if a company are looking to target a specific audience and you have it it can make your site worth more.
Number of members/subscribers to mailing list
What maintenance is involved in running the site, how often you update etc.

You can then think about assigning value to various aspects of the business. I think at the end of the day it all depends on what someone else thinks its worth. I have a good friend who ran a comparison site, was doing very well financially but put a STUPID price tag on the business when approached by a startup who wanted to build on what he had started. At the end of the day it was much cheaper (even allowing for a big marketing push) for the startup to invest the money they had and actually launched their own site.

Originally Posted by willcode4beer

With that case, there would be little point in selling it

The only reason I want to sell it is I can do something else with the income, totally unrelated. Otherwise that would be 100% correct, plus I have noticed you cant hire someone to care, and that just destroys a content site.