Please can you value / give some advice?

[jgsmuzzy]

I have a site, cunardcritic dot co dot uk that deals with all things relating to Cunard Line ships past and present. While the main site is rubbish (done by myself with no knowledge of HTML at the time), the forum is fairly busy.
535 members, 75k posts and 2.5m page views since we started in 2007.
This is a niche area, in the luxury cruise market, although we do not sell anything.
When I started the forum in 2007, I had advertisers direct with the site (4 travel agents and a limo company in Southampton) that generated about £600. I never carried this on, as it was taking up too much of my time (having a new baby did not help).
I know that potential is a dirty word, but I believe there is some to move this on and up.
My questions are these:
Is there a value to the forum as it is now?
Is it worth me getting advertising in now and then trying to sell?
One last thing. The logo uses Cunard copyright images, but I have permission from Carnival plc General Counsel to use them.
I have attached the usage graph for the last couple of months.
Any advice very welcome
Thanks
James

Month
Page Loads
Unique Visits
First Time Visits
Returning Visits

Jan-11

17,571

5,834

4,225

1,609

Feb-11

14,360

5,505

4,104

1,401

Mar-11

13,164

5,002

3,697

1,305

Apr-11

9,676

3,572

2,608

964

May-11

9,859

3,898

2,938

960

Jun-11

10,184

4,221

3,198

1,023

Jul-11

14,447

6,521

5,251

1,270

Aug-11

11,440

5,476

4,450

1,026

Sep-11

10,928

5,004

3,999

1,005

Oct-11

17,374

5,912

4,766

1,146

Nov-11

3,942

1,698

1,194

504

[tke71709]

Is there a value to the forum as it is now?

As sites have a value, it has traffic and users so it's value > 0.

Is it worth me getting advertising in now and then trying to sell?

I would keep things simple for now and just put Adsense on the pages.

One last thing. The logo uses Cunard copyright images, but I have permission from Carnival plc General Counsel to use them.

If you have written permission then it shouldn't be a problem legally.

I would put some advertising on the site and see what it brings in, depending on the makeup of your traffic I would look at only showing ads to SE visitors so as to not annoy your regular users.

IANAFE (I am not a forum expert).

[crabfoot]

IANAFE (I am not a forum expert).

Hey, I like that - can we put it in the list of abbreviations?

Just to add to tke's remarks, if you get three complete months of Adsense earnings and multiply by 4 you have an idea of the annual income of the site, which is about what someone would pay for it if you put it on the market.

Then again, anyone buying it would be doing that because there are opportunities to improve the income from it, probably from direct ads and affiliate marketing programs. You might as well do that yourself, after you've used Adsense as a low-risk way to check the site's potential for selling things (the traffic might not be paying traffic, Adsense will tell you if the visitors buy or not).

IANAFEE (I am not a forum expert either).

[petertdavis]

The amount of work you're going to need to put into this to increase its final sale value may not be justified, depending on how you value your time. There are several challenges that you'd face in getting top dollar, I'll list a few.

1. While it's not quite at the 'stick a fork in it' stage, the forum is very quiet. If you're only getting a couple of new posts each day, it's not a thriving forum. Your first order of business would be to re-engage the community.
2. It's not growing. The traffic stats you've posted wouldn't be enough to satisfy a serious buyer, but it is enough to show that there is no growth. A forum that isn't growing is dying. A dying forum quickly becomes a liability.
3. The focus on a single cruise line will limit the number of interested buyers. Even if you can prove you have permission to use the Cunard name, and that it would be transferrable to the buyer, you'd find more interested buyers for a forum about cruises in general.
4. The .co.uk domain shows that the site is focused solely on the UK, and that will most likely limit your potential pool of buyers to the UK. Using a ccTLD in combination with a trademark in the domain is limiting of your market reach.

In its current state you'd probably get a price in the few hundred dollar range. I'd personally be interested in buying it if the community were more active. You could try a Flippa listing, and possible to get more if you find a couple of very interested buyers.

IAAFE (I am a forum expert)

[crabfoot]

I took the time to look at the site - perhaps there's too much emphasis on the forum aspects. It would be easy to improve the site itself by completing the unfinished sections. A dead link to a work that is obviously NOT in progress scores no points with anyone, and there's more than one dead link. A new section with reviews of current cruises (not just Cunard stuff) and affiliate links to sell them would be a big plus point towards income generation.

It's not growing. The traffic stats you've posted wouldn't be enough to satisfy a serious buyer, but it is enough to show that there is no growth.

I might agree with that about the forum membership - but those figures seem to show a steady level of traffic up to Panda, then a couple of dips as the Panda bites the traffic twice, and the October figures appear to show that the site is recovering well from the Panda bites. After the events of this year, I think it is too soon to be certain what is happening here. There is also the consideration that the figures might be influenced by TV ads for cruises - any cruises!

Since I've actually looked and found that the site is running Adsense, it might be that which can aid the "what to do" decisions.

I would set up indivdual Adsense channels to determine which pages are generating the Adsense income - tedious, yes, to set up a channel per ad block, but that will show whether the forum generates the income, or the static pages.

If any of the static pages are making a sensible contribution it would make sense to expand them and complete the site. If the forum is making the money, then you can cut out the dead links and concentrate on the forum.

IAG (I am guessing ...)

[Clinton]

IAG (I am guessing ...)

Isn't everyone?

So called experts, like me, are the ones who do more guessing than most!

jgsmuzzy, welcome to experienced-people.net. My guess would be similar to crabfoot's. I would stop thinking of the site as a forum and start thinking of it as a site with a forum section.

Is there value? Sure, but expect to get knocked down to peanuts as you don't have any trump cards despite having site age, a lucrative niche and the ability to restore traffic. My suggestion would be to put some time into tidying up the site, getting the traffic back and monetising it.