Why did this $1k/month site go for only $3500 on Flippa?

[affiliate]

I was checking out Flippa and saw this auction.... and I'm just wondering what you pro website buyers think about it. $1500/month in profit, but only sells for $3500? It seems to me like the buyer got a heck of a deal. Did it go for so low because of trademark issues? On the other hand, I see this $100/month adsense site went for $2600, which seems to be killer for the seller.

Am I missing something here?

The reason I'm asking is because I have a site that I'm thinking about selling. It's 1.5 years old and I never started monetizing until recently (haven't monetized it much for social reasons). It's scored some great organic links and is in an extremely profitable market with over 60 pages of unique content. Most of the traffic seems to be word of mouth because the Google traffic is pretty low overall. It gets a stable 50 uniques/day, and I could monetize the hell out of it, but I'd rather sell it and move on to the sites I enjoy developing.

I'm just trying to figure out why those sites above have such a huge variance in what they ultimately sold for. The buyer of the first one will recoup his investment in a couple months, and the 2nd site doesn't look special at all, nor does it have much content at all.

[benitez17]

If you back out the last month of revenue (where the seller might have been doing something underhanded to boost his stats before the sale), the first site is making more like $800 per month, but that's still a lot for a $3500 site that doesn't appear to be doing anything illegal. That seller doesn't have Google Analytics data, didn't do much to promote the site in his listing, and only let it run for 5 days, so that probably hurt the price.

People seem to like Adsense sites more than others and it comes with a good domain, but I wouldn't have paid 24x earnings for that second site.

I personally think the first site looks like the buyer got a deal, and the second site looks like the seller did, but I'll be interested to see what others have to say.

[Clinton]

Why Am I Selling?

It's just part of my business model

That would be good enough to turn me off.

I want to buy sites from people who've started them because they had a passion for the subject, not because they saw dollars signs flashing. The first kind puts effort into good content that attracts natural links, organic traffic and sustainable flow of visitors. The second kind puts his effort into getting traffic and earnings to a certain point however artificially inflated and short term his methods and tweaking all metrics so they look good on paper.

One seller creates his site to impress the visitor, the other creates his site to impress the buyer. Long term vs short term.

Maybe I'm not alone in this thinking. If there aren't a lot of buyers bidding for a site then it's reduced to competition among the newer buyers and those willing to take higher risks. These buyers aren't going to pay a very generous multiple.

There could be other reasons. The very, very low traffic (less than 100 a day) isn't very encouraging. If the site gets 50 fewer visitors a day that could wipe out the entire profit. There is further risk - the majority of the miniscule traffic comes from Google. All it takes is one small algo tweak ... and "site flipper" created sites like this get slaughtered.

[TeamFreedom]

Many people are creating regurgitated puke sites that need to be blown up. However they think it makes them money. Then you have these rules of selling it for 10x the amount, blah blah blah..

Sites need to have what I call the ah-ha moment. I absolutely despise going to sites that have been manipulated and have "spun" articles that devalue the actual person's need. I also dislike feeling stupid going to a site thinking there is something positive to be gained to only get hit with a *hit sandwich.

That's why I enjoy hatching the site, I know where everything comes from and I know what my end goal is. I want to start a major campaign to have unique content come back to the internet. That would make me happy.

There are many untruths to those throwing out "products" that are supposed to help the consumer in regards to finding a home for their web properties. They attempt to dazzle desperate buyers with glittery fake gold & try to pass it off as the real thing.

What I think people need to understand and try to go for is content that actually outlines whatever information someone might be looking for.

I used to write content for sites while I was putting my way through school. I would get people so mad at me when I would be charging 40-80 bucks for 600 words. People need real stuff to read. They need to know they can find their answer on the site they click.

I like the end user mentality where people buy sites because they see, understand and partake in the value & effort of the site in front of them.

[deeman]

I was checking out Flippa and saw this auction.... and I'm just wondering what you pro website buyers think about it. $1500/month in profit, but only sells for $3500? It seems to me like the buyer got a heck of a deal. Did it go for so low because of trademark issues? On the other hand, I see this $100/month adsense site went for $2600, which seems to be killer for the seller.

Am I missing something here?

One of the reasons for the discrepancy is probably the scope to change the method of monetisation. The buyer of the metabolism site is probably factoring in some 'blue sky' - that changing to affiliate offers will generate more per visitor than adsense has been historically.