www.wpreviewsite.com - $10,200 Profit / month

[hooperman]

Dan's selling his baby. The listing looks impeccable (apart from the discrepency in the traffic numbers) and if I was more technical (and had that kind of money lying around) I'd be sorely tempted.

This auction comes hot on the heels of the other WP review plugin, which "apparently" sold on Jan 1. The sale price for that was $30,500 and it was making $6,100 profit / month. I would guess that Dan's site sells for a higher multiple.

EDIT: Ah - I've just noticed that the impressive $10,200 Profit / month is just an average taken from the site's birth. Current profit from the last couple of months is half that.

[Clinton]

Nice catch, hooperman, thanks for posting this.

Dan, of course, is well reputed in Sitepoint. I'm not surprised he discloses

I don't expect it to go back up to the $20,000+ numbers it was hitting in 2008 as it had no competition in 2008

How refreshingly honest.

The site doesn't load for me but I'll have a look later and get back.

[3Six]

Just for those who don't know Dan - he's a Sitepoint "advisor".

I wish him all the best with the sale but the site's main product is a highly risky one that doesn't necessarily have a 5-10 year lifespan. My main issue with it would be that the income is on a downward trend. Whatever the reasons he gives in the thread, that's always a negative for me.

[Clinton]

There are substantial risks, yes. Wordpress could integrate a review feature in their next version, for example, making this completely redundant unless the owner finds some new approach/functionality they can add.

[3Six]

Bidding still at just $60K.

[Dan Grossman]

Hey guys, nice forum you have here. Been meaning to start coming by, though I'm not into website flipping so I only tend to sell a site or two a year.

The watch/view count is certainly nice on the auction, and I get new PMs every day, but no firm offers in the range I want. Below that I might as well just hold onto it since it's pretty much 100% markup and an hour a week replying to a handful of mails to hold. I might drop the buyout to $100k or so when the auction is closer to ending if there are no takers by then.

Dan's selling his baby.

I wouldn't call it that, more of a fluke. I was giving away this plugin for a year and a half on my blog before I realized how popular it was and rewrote it into a commercial version. Who knew it'd make $200k.

If anything W3Counter is my baby, though neither of them are my top money makers. It's a bit inconvenient that some people have asked me for complete income statements for my business and I can't give that to them. This is just one site, and the full statements would give too much away about the economics behind the sites I don't share details about, nor would they let anyone verify numbers from the auction except that the business makes more than the one site does.

[Clinton]

Thanks for dropping in Dan.

Been meaning to start coming by, though I'm not into website flipping so I only tend to sell a site or two a year.

One or two of our members are into siteflipping and I'm looking to get more discussion on the topic, but the bulk of the posts here so far have very little to do with flipping and more to do with buying, running and profiting from websites. Think of it as Sitepoint's "How to Buy and Sell Websites" on steroids

I understand your problem with opening up the books, I have the same dilemma on the odd occasion I sell a site. I've also found that interdependencies between sites in a portfolio further complicates things (though that's likely not an issue here)

I wish you all the best with your sale. Would you compromise on full payment up front if you found the right party and a price you were happy with?

[Dan Grossman]

I don't think I should act as a bank and essentially make a loan, no. That's what banks are for. If the buyer doesn't have the assets or the credit to be able to do the deal, I don't want to be the one giving them financing they might not follow through on. And I don't have any background in financial law to know if there are any regulations that would apply to me making such financing available. I'm very conservative when it comes to risk, including unknowns.

[Clinton]

Fair enough. In lower value transactions seller financing almost never happens. As the figures get bigger a "note" becomes more and more likely. In fact, in large M&As there's almost never a transaction that doesn't involve some form of credit or loan guarantee.

If you speak to a good business broker he'd advise you on ways to safeguard the loan - you call all the shots here. You'd get full access to the buyer's books and could demand his house as security. Sellers extending such credit facility are usually able to get anywhere between 20%-100% more for their businesses.

But I appreciate if you feel it's too much of hassle for the amounts involved here.