PR5 - 120k unique/month - general content - no monetization - what's it worth?

[TrustButVerify]

Hi there,

Working with a seller, he's got a site with 110-120k uniques a month.

Home page is PR5, has a few PR5/PR4 internal pages and tons of PR1-3 pages, and sub-domains.

The site has a lot of user generated content in various areas.

No revenue and no ads.

32k backlinks in yahoo.

I'm considering purchasing the site strictly for link juice purposes...

And then maybe just following up with adsense to re-coup cost.

I'm just wondering how to handle it when introducing ads in a site that has never had ads before... and I have no idea what the ad revenue might be, etc.

From a strictly traffic and PR point of view, in a niche that was completely dis-related - what would you pay for a PR5 with a verified 110-120k uniques a month?

The idea is to use the links + link juice to pass on to my "money sites" to help increase their rankings. The site has very few outbound links which would make the links extra "juicy".

Does anyone here own any other sites with general/article directory type content and non-agressive adsense placement?

I'm trying to get an idea of possible earnings per thousand - worst case scenario.

Clinton, surely within your profile of 23432 websites, you must own something that fits that criteria.

[petertdavis]

You can't expect anyone to give you a decent estimate of value with that information. You can value a site approximately by valuing its traffic, but you need to know some keywords, assuming the traffic is primarily search engine.

OTOH, if all you want is links, why buy the whole site? In theory, you could buy links on that site, and many others, for the same price you'd spend to buy the site. Buying sites for links usually doesn't make sense at all.

[PPC Icon]

Looks like a good traffic level. My two queries would be do you feel you can increase traffic and what are the serp results like for the main keywords?

[TrustButVerify]

You can't expect anyone to give you a decent estimate of value with that information.

You're right Peter. The site was selling for a cheap price and I was just looking to get some back up on the minimum value...

The site is actually a PR6 with a couple PR6 pages and a couple PR5. (wasn't there a recent update in PR?)


The site is like a hub pages, squidoo-ish type of site so it ranks for thousands of keywords.... nothing real high in the serps and for all sorts of obscure stuff, just whatever the topic created are.

It's get about 4k uniques a month for one page in the financial job market area so that's a plus.

I ended up buying the site for about $2500.

$2.5k for a pr6 with 110k visitors a month... now I just got to figure out if I can monetize it...

The first step is to install adsense on the site... my rational is it only needs to make $200 to make it worthwhile.

But I'll really have to balance not pissing off the users and getting a good CTR rate.

Also, considering link sales... the site has very few outgoing links on the home page...

Anyone know what the market is for PR6 links?

I'll report back here in a month to let you know how it worked out.

[tke71709]

The first step is to install adsense on the site... my rational is it only needs to make $200 to make it worthwhile.

But I'll really have to balance not pissing off the users and getting a good CTR rate.

If most of your traffic is from search engines then you could choose to only display adsense to visitors from the SEs and not display it to regular users (or make the placement more prominent for SE visitors) that should maximize revenue without pissing off your regular users.

[petertdavis]

Well, I'd say if the traffic is real you got a heck of a good deal. Even at lower end traffic (like gaming sites, entertainment, etc), it's not a bad deal. Of course, that's just IF the traffic is real. I gave up on selling links quite a few years ago. I burned many a PR 6 site that way. If I were you, I'd be figuring out how to do some CPM ads, probably start with networks, and enhance the site in ways that will solidify the traffic and lead to steady growth. Now that you've bought the site though, you should post us the domain so we can pick it apart for you. I wish Clinton had a private area in the forum where we could do stuff like that away from prying eyes.

[Clinton]

Clinton, surely within your profile of 23432 websites

LOL. At least someone knows exactly how many I've got!

[benitez17]

Congratulations TrustButVerify on what looks like a nice purchase. You should be able to sell PR6 links for a minimum of $50 per link month (as long as you don't load the pages up with paid links and kill the PR) and 110k uniques should be able to pull in another couple hundred a month in CPM/PPC ads.

Do you mind sharing how you came across this site?

[LukeMoulton]

Congrats TrustButVerify. In future you could look at what similar sites have sold for.

[TrustButVerify]

Thanks for the tips about displaying adsense to search engine traffic only.

Great idea to not piss off the existing user base.

I'll look into cpm ads... you guys are probably right, I won't bother with text link sales.

As far as verifying the traffic I had access to analtyics (couple years worth) so we'll see...

Do you mind sharing how you came across this site?

I won't say exactly just yet but I will tell you that you'd be extremely underwhelmed by how I found the site...

I also check biz buy sell daily and spend about 1-2 hours a day looking for sites for sale... most of my time is completely wasted sifting through garage but occasionally you find something decent.

Also, on the business for sale type websites (bizbuysell, etc) people don't always categorize their websites in the right place. And you'll occasionally see a real good deal, just listed.