Getting out of Adsense and wondering about selling my sites?

[carlos123]

I am pulling out of trying to make money from Adsense as much as I have and shifting my focus to building some lists through which I can sell affiliate or my own products and am wondering about the possibility of selling the sites I have worked on?

I have to wait and see what my partner wants to do (he is the one who actually owns the domains) but it's almost a sure thing that he will want to sell the domains he has in the next week or so.

This is not a sure thing...just preliminary. I am just interested in the possibility of selling and what the best way might be to go about doing that so that if he decides to sell them I can provide him with useful information about how to do that.

The four best domains are all sitting in the top ten or down to position 13 (give or take a couple of positions fluctuation here and there).

They are product related domains.

I carefully did keyword research before selecting these sites. They are good ones in my opinion.

They each have about 5/6 pages of solid, custom written content. Each has a true contact form that turns input into emails sent to the domain owner. Other than the PHP that runs the contact form the rest of each site is comprised of static HTML files. Some have Squidoo and Hubpages associated with them to help push their ranking. They also have a variety of ezine articles already written to push up their rank.

Their on page SEO is as good as it gets.

I believe they have potential not only for Adsense but also for Amazon affiliate sales.

But after a few months of working on these sites my partner has grown tired of not making hardly anything from them (they only arrived in the top ten in the last few weeks).

Adsense is a lot of work for absolutely peanut pay and in his eyes it's just not worth continuing with it (he is not an internet marketer and is just looking at things practically with respect to how little return he has gained from these sites and not their future potential). On my part, while I still see potential in these sites, I have settled on other, easier ways, to make money over the internet that do not rely so directly on Google's good graces nor on having to wait for them to recognize changes at the sites.

Anyway what is the best way to proceed with their sale (assuming my partner wants to do that which he likely will)?

What is the going rate for the sale of these type of domains?

Any input on this would be appreciated.

Again I have no sites for sale today. I am just making inquiries so that we can prepare to sell them when and if he decides to do that (assuming that there is a market for these types of sites).

Carlos

[bluelambda]

Some places you can sell your site would be Flippa: Buy and Sell Websites and Domains as well as the section on this forum for buying and selling websites.

If there is any revenue at all on your sites it should be relatively easy to sell.

[Dean Martin]

It the domains have potential as ebay or amazon affiliate sites (or better yet fit into one of the money making, health and fitness niche) they'll be worth something.

Otherwise, they'll be worth about as much as they're currently making you... pennies on the dollar

[carlos123]

There is no revenue coming in to these sites at present. The potential is there but there is no revenue coming in from Adsense on these sites as yet.

If that is the criteria for selling them then it sounds like it's not worth trying to sell them such that we should just abandon them.

Carlos

[Davioli]

Why not buy the domains from your partner and spend some time adding more content. What are the current traffic stats like?

For xfactor type websites even 500 uniques a month can get you around $30 or more if the keyword has ads and a good CPC.

From your posts earlier.. I see a person who's learned alot in short time.. hate to see you abandoning adsense after your first fall.

[carlos123]

Hi Davioli,

Originally Posted by Davioli

Why not buy the domains from your partner and spend some time adding more content. What are the current traffic stats like?

The problem with buying the domains is that each would cost $25 to transfer into my name at Hostgator. I don't know why Hostgator charges this to transfer domains but that's what they charge.

I don't have the discretionary income to afford that or I might do that.

So it's either sell them or they will just sit abandoned.

As for the traffic stats the best one has gotten 93 unique visitors this month so far. 20 of those visits came directly off Google sitting at position 11 or so for the specific keyword phrase being targeted. The rest of the traffic came from long tails, ezine articles, blog post comments and the like.

The second best is less than that but still shows promise and on down the line of the 8 sites that we have worked on.

The most promising use of these sites is probably as Amazon affiliate sites since they are rich in content that will target people wanting to buy. They are more generic than XFactor's sites in that they target a more general product category and not so much a specific product brand.

The cost per click of the main keywords being targeted are all over $2 and the traffic according to Google's keyword tool for each of these sites is 2000 or more LSV per month (to my memory...I don't have the specific stats in front of me).

I personally just don't want to sink more time trying to promote these sites since there are ways that are so much more profitable than sinking more effort into building Adsense sites.

Someone else might be able to come along and push them up into the top 3 positions with a bit more effort and make them very profitable.

From your posts earlier.. I see a person who's learned alot in short time.. hate to see you abandoning adsense after your first fall.

Yes...I have learned a great deal Davioli for sure. And I am thankful for what I learned even if one of those lessons is that Adsense is a hard way to make a decent living. It takes way longer than I thought it would to make any decent money from Adsense.

Not impossible as many on this forum can attest to but it takes a lot of work to get there with Adsense.

At this point I would rather sink my limited time into building lists and making an income through them rather than continuing to sink more time and effort into Adsense web sites.

Carlos

[bigbyte]

You can transfer the domains to any registry for normal transfer fees. You do not need Hostgator for that. Join the xfactor forum by buying the ebook and sell the sites there for free.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

"Adsense is a lot of work for absolutely peanut pay"

It is if you don't understand how to profit from it.

People like to blame the tool.... but it's usually the carpenter.

When you figure out what works... replicate it. But just jumping ship to ship won't make any difference.

You need to figure out why something is not working. Then you can go from there.

[carlos123]

@bigbyte...oops! I misspoke. It isn't Hostgator that charges to transfer a domain to another owner, it's domaindiscover. My whois registrar.

@InternetMarketingIQ...you are absolutely correct overall but sometimes it's good to jump ship to something that stands a better chance of making some income faster than Adsense. If there is a fault with the way I did Adsense it was that few of my sites made it into the top ten quickly. Most took a month or two to get up there or close to the top ten.

Without being in the top ten I could not make any money from them.

So what I was looking at was either sinking more money into domain registrations to get up into the top ten more quickly or work on existing domains that were way down in position to get them into the top ten. I chose the latter since I did not have the discretionary income to keep sinking money into new domain registrations. But this latter approach also meant going for months at a time without any significant top ten presence through which I might have stood more of a chance of making money through Adsense.

Google was slow at indexing my site changes such that it oftentimes took weeks for changes to be recognized by them. Nothing I did caused Google to index or see changes I made quicker.

Now that several of my sites have gotten into the top ten the traffic has not materialized like I expected it to in line with Google keyword stats and I am left with a whole lot of work and no pay and the need to start all over again with new domains (which I still don't have the discretionary income to pay for).

Creating a list around something I am knowledgeable in and selling products to that list (either my own or as an affiliate) seems like a much more sure thing. And it's a whole lot of easier than the seeming Russian roulette nature of Adsense where oftentimes it seems more like rolling the revolver and hoping the next shot will be a winner instead of a dud.

Carlos

[AFD]

Originally Posted by carlos123

There is no revenue coming in to these sites at present. The potential is there but there is no revenue coming in from Adsense on these sites as yet.

If that is the criteria for selling them then it sounds like it's not worth trying to sell them such that we should just abandon them.

Carlos

main criteria for selling and site valuation..

domain age
traffic / pr / alexa / backlinks / indexed links / ranked keywords
earnings


There is a great article in sitepoint forums that contains website valuation computation.. sorry but I have no time to find it...

[GSX Enterprises]

If you absolutely decide on selling the sites, head over to Flippa as they're the best marketplace with the most active buyers and sellers of websites. Be sure to ramp up earnings as much as possible before you sell, as it's great leverage for when you decide to pull the trigger.

-Safe Travels

[JoshuaG]

Originally Posted by GSX Enterprises

If you absolutely decide on selling the sites, head over to Flippa as they're the best marketplace with the most active buyers and sellers of websites. Be sure to ramp up earnings as much as possible before you sell, as it's great leverage for when you decide to pull the trigger.

-Safe Travels

I'm going to assume that "ramping up" earnings would involve doing some pretty distasteful things since you don't want to put work into improving the sites and applying anymore SEO.

Don't do this if you care at all for:
a) Your reputation
b) Your self respect

If you can't show long term consistent earnings you might as well forget about it.

Also, profitable sites don't always sell and it does cost money to post on flippa.

[firstdandy]

I guess the main thing people consider to buy a website is how much is the profit of the website and how's the prospect of the website in the future. For me related to that I will say that PR and Alexa rank is the most important one. SERP is also considered so We know for what term people will come to our website.

[nettech]

You also want to sell the sites 'potential'. I see lots of sites that arent fully SEO optimised etc as if you sell a site that is fully optimsied, not ranking or earnign any money then its going to possibly deter people. Just my £0.02 pence!

[nequity]

Carlos,
Best way to value non earnings sites is often to use a comparables valuation to see what others have sold for in the market. Gives a good idea of the likely selling range of the site. You can see an example of the comparables valuations reports we do at the ling below:
nequityonline.com/reports/TicTacTester-CompReport.pdf

All the best with the sales

[AZ]

Get out of adsense- Tons of work for absolutely nothing. Work on creating your own product or joint venture- Built a list and loyality. Do what the big hitters are doing, not peanuts. Just my thoughts. Good luck

[robrave]

I'm always on lookout for Adsense sites. Whenever I'm on Flippa, I always check Adsense sites that are being auctioned.

The very first thing I check for those listed are its revenue per month. Even if it is just $100 a month, I would be interested in it.

The good thing about Adsense sites is that once you found what worked, it is the best source of passive income.

[Davioli]

Originally Posted by AZ

Get out of adsense- Tons of work for absolutely nothing. Work on creating your own product or joint venture- Built a list and loyality. Do what the big hitters are doing, not peanuts. Just my thoughts. Good luck

You couldn't be more wrong.
Once you know how adsense works.. there's a ton of money to be made.
Its becoming a common trend on this forum for people to make constant blanket statements that are so wrong. sigh.