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Thinking about Selling my Insurance Website

by jeejuh
7 replies
Hi,

I am thinking about selling my insurance website. This is a insurance discussion forum powered by vbulletin that I started in 2008.

My site has about 11,000 members and 100,000 posts.

How should I go about selling this website, how much do you think I should be asking for?

There is a huge potential to make a lot of money here, my average Adsense click is around $2.

I do not have the time to work on this project anymore and I am looking to give this whole website and community to someone else to work on.

Alexa rank is around 100,000

Page views in 2011 was around 1,000,000

Thanks for any feed back or advice!

Mike
#insurance #selling #thinking #website
  • Profile picture of the author RyanGillam
    How much money do you make on average a month?
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  • Profile picture of the author zaco
    whoever wants to buy needs to know how much the site is making, how many unique visitors a day / month, where is the traffic coming from..
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  • Profile picture of the author jeejuh
    I haven't really monetized it yet, but it made $12,000 from Adsense in 2011.

    I know that sites generally go for 10x how much they make per month, but I am looking for some more info than just this.

    The traffic comes from purely organic Google searches.

    If anyone has any insights on buying or selling forum community site, let me know. Also if you have any experience with insurance that would be great to hear.
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    • Profile picture of the author David Keith
      Originally Posted by jeejuh View Post

      I haven't really monetized it yet, but it made $12,000 from Adsense in 2011.

      I know that sites generally go for 10x how much they make per month, but I am looking for some more info than just this.

      The traffic comes from purely organic Google searches.

      If anyone has any insights on buying or selling forum community site, let me know. Also if you have any experience with insurance that would be great to hear.
      I am not really sure why the value of your business would be too much different than the standard 10x ish.

      The only real way its worth more would be if you have a valuable brand or a real sense of community on the forum.

      Also, if your revenue is just adsense, thats a bit of a turnoff. I would look to monetize the site more if you really think its worth more.

      when buying a business, people pay much more for revenue than they do for potential revenue.
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      • Profile picture of the author jeejuh
        Originally Posted by David Keith View Post

        I am not really sure why the value of your business would be too much different than the standard 10x ish.

        The only real way its worth more would be if you have a valuable brand or a real sense of community on the forum.

        Also, if your revenue is just adsense, thats a bit of a turnoff. I would look to monetize the site more if you really think its worth more.

        when buying a business, people pay much more for revenue than they do for potential revenue.
        This is exactly the type of feedback I am looking for.

        So in your opinion would it be smart to completely cover my site in ads and sell all possible ad space to get its monthly revenue peaked out before selling?

        I mean couldn't a smart investor see the potential for revenue, or do I really have to show them exactly how much it can make?
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        • Profile picture of the author David Keith
          Originally Posted by jeejuh View Post

          This is exactly the type of feedback I am looking for.

          So in your opinion would it be smart to completely cover my site in ads and sell all possible ad space to get its monthly revenue peaked out before selling?

          I mean couldn't a smart investor see the potential for revenue, or do I really have to show them exactly how much it can make?
          I am not sure covering the site in ads is the way to go, but revenue sells well.

          Obviously, without seeing the site I can't answer how many more ads you could get away with before you start to make the site look bad and tick of viewers.

          To me it depends on how much you are willing to put into it. Are you willing to go get some direct advertisers or work with some insurance lead companies?

          Smart investors can see potential, but they also know that they could create the damn thing if they wanted to, so what are they buying exactly?

          They just don't pay much for potential.
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  • Profile picture of the author jamesrich1
    It might be smarter to monetize your website more effectively. If your getting over 1,000,000 hits a year and have 11,000 members it seems like you should be much more than $916 a month. Somebody else could take your website and have a field day with it.
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