How to estimate price of a website

I was wondering how do you estimate price of a website, if you have website's number of unique visitors, revenue (and profit) data available... How do you estimate reasonable price for a website?

 

The easy way would be to estimate the price to $1 and sell it to me

 

If you have the revenue available it's quite easy ...

If you want to have the money back you have invested in say a year (break even after 12 months) you can value the website at:
Revenue per month * 12 ....

Whetevr you want to have your money back faster or slower is up to you.
It becomes harder when you have no figures for revenue ...

 

If I base the price of just one of my sites on x12 revenue then that will be alot!

 

alot of webmasters go by 4 or 6 months.

 

Depends what site really. I'd say average is 10 months for a site. For an established site 12 months. For a proxy 3-5 months.

 

I look at 12-20 months, taking in a number of factors including:

Page Rank
SERPS
Is it an Authority Site?
Net Income after expenses
Time I must spend on site

I definitely pay more for a site that is an authority in its field regardless of income.

 

The norm is monthly income x 10 or 12 it all depends. There are many factors that can make prices fluctuate like, number of members if applicable, visitor stats, general earning potential, etc…

 

I should have mentioned domain age as a pivotal factor in pricing any site.

 

You have to also bear in mind the potential longevity of a site

A page about some fly-by-night gadget/celebrity/band that will definately be outdated in 3 years is worth far less than a page about something that will never stop being relevant

A really good page about tortoises/oak trees/statues (for example) will still be getting as many (or more) visits in 50 years time.

A page with this kind of content has to be worth more that 10 months earnings

 

Yes, a good domain will drastically increase the site's price. A domain like free(dot)com will inflate the price considerably which is quite obvious.

 

Well, the site I have in mind is well established, been around for 10 years, it's authority site in it's niche, has great quality aged inbound links, PR6...

The owner is asking price which is ridiculously high though. It's more like 10 years revenue, as opposed to 10 months revenue some of you were suggesting. There is a good potential for signifcant grow of that revenue, but the price just seems way to high to me.

So I was looking for some input in regards to what standards are and how to evaluate a reasonable price which would work for both of us.

Thanks for you input.

 

sometimes a site makes low revenue because it's in the wrong hands

if you believe that you can make profits to cover the price you are payng then why not buying it ?

also be careful of scams when it comes to expensive sites

 

1) -> 6 last months gross divided by 6
2) -> 6 last months advertising cost divided by 6
3) -> 1 minus 2
price = 3) X 10

Make sense?

 

Let's say there is no advertising cost, all traffic comes form organic rankings + repeat visitors. In that sense your calculation means that price for the website would be 10 months worth revenue. Isn't that a bit low?

 

The value of a website is what somebody else is willing to pay you on any given day compared to what you think its worth... there is no formula for figuring it out... Each synopsis above is what somebody is willing to pay you... the question remains what is it worth to you?

 

http://www.college-startup.com/2006/11/173/
I think it's an interesting read regarding the valuing of websites... Problogger also has good posts on methods to value a website

For niche sites with good PR and long term potential, I do not think prices up to 24X are that unreasonable

 

you can also estimate your website price by making out that how much you spend on it or how much you are expecting it to earn

 

I agree. Value automatically increases with age and authority. Still, the seller doesn't seem to be serious in selling his site, otherwise he would price it accordingly.

 

offtopic: a guy tried to sell me a domain (just the domain) for 10.000€, you read it right, 10 thousand euros for a domain?!?!? no text, no visitors, no revenue, no nothing lolol

ontopic: if you can get revenue for your investiment in 12 months, i´ll say it´s fine. If not, it´s a bit scary!