Would you sell your site if...

Hi ecopac,

If I were you, I won't sell it yet at this point. I would suggest you give it some TLC and try ranking for other keywords. In time you'll surely accomplish that and get more revenue out of it. Who needs a full time j.o.b., when right in your face a great potential is smiling at you. Just my two cents.

1) Probably not a clever idea
2) SE traffic is risky
3) Great
4) Their valuation tool isn't very accurate. With 3 months of revenue history, no-one is going to pay 10-12x monthly net income.

You could try to sell it, but if it is heavily reliant on a single keyword, buyers with 6 figures to invest are going to avoid it or want to pay a very low multiple to offset their risk.

As an alternative, have you considered going for paid traffic instead to reduce the risk.

There is no guarantee that your site will rank high even next month. Then what are you going to do?

I would suggest that you seriously look into paid advertising so that if this happens, you are ready for it and your site still gets traffic and you earn money. I would not sell it.

If i held a day job, i would most likely sell it away and focus on other project since with the money made i can build and invest in other project

If you can share your site would be in a better position to review. I wouldnt sell off a site thats making 9000 pounds a month and you are saying that you arent sure how it got to the top and this money generated is it thru ads or affiliate marketing , i guess somebody out here can help reviewing your site on why its ranked for that keyword and then you can go ahead and rank for a few more keywords rather than selling it off as if you go ahead for another 8 months as you are earning right now you would have got more than what flippa is evaluating and you would have your site too.

Hello ecopac

If your blog/site is generating so many visitors and so much revenue each month, just go with the flow because it seems you are on to a huge thing.

Many marketers would kill for the results that you are getting and you would risk losing a lot of potential income if you was to sell your site.

Google does rank by keywords but it is also ranks good quality content and maybe google likes your site for that reason? However, other sites may also be linking to your site without you even knowing which may be helping your site to rank high too.

Simply do a search of your site's url on google and you will see many of the sites that may be linking to you.

On top of that I would highly suggest creating some more good quality articles on your site targeting other specific keywords and building some targeted backlinks to your site as well to help ensure your site remains at the top of the search engines

Neil

No way I never gonna sell this one piece. If I were in this situation, I would have appointed someone to maintain my site.

Many thanks for the replies, I understand what everyone is saying and I absolutely appreciate the lucky position I am in and obviously want to cash in as much as I can for as long as I can, I just kind of feel like I am a slave to Google at the moment as without that ranking position, it's worth nothing! It does drive me mad with worry.

Ideally I wanted to run the site for at least 1 full financial year to get a proper set of accounts up, I think this would help me sell it.

I have tried Google Adwords but they refused me an account because my site is an affiliate site and users click out of my site to get to their destination - Google didn't like that, but that was about 8 months ago now so possibly they may change their mind now?

I just feel like if that position drops and the site's revenues suddenly drop, I will kick myself for not selling at the right time as whilst I may not necessarily reach what Flippa quote, whatever I get for it (even 4 or 5 times monthly rev) that would be a huge return on what I have put into it for a year, it costs me less than £100 a month to maintain and that's being generous.

I have built another site (same niche) in preparation for any potential fallout and I'm trying to do this in a way that I will actually know how I am ranking, but it's proving a long and difficult road. That said, it's only been a month since I launched it so I am not expecting to see any results for at least 3 months with this one.

Thanks for all the input, I appreciate it

I can understand your nervousness. It's very risky to rely just on Google traffic when Google changes it's algo so frequently and drastically. I would also be very nervous about selling a site that was my only source of income though. Maybe you can start to work on some alternative means of traffic.

I would try to get a good ROI with paid traffic asap. Try using the keyword you are ranking for along with similar ones in PPC. Hit up Adwords, Bing and possibly 7Search. If you can make 9k pounds with paid traffic then you will be doing 18k lbs with only 9k of it being 'risky'. Then you can sit on it and relax a bit. Or sell it for twice as much as you could have before!

If you can't figure paid traffic out for it, then I would sell ASAP.

For a site with 4-months' real income, and based on SEO traffic?! Good luck with that!

That's certainly significant money. (Spoken here with the wistfulness of someone who doesn't yet have any one site earning that much!). However, if it's Google-dependent, I'd probably sell enthusiastically, if I could get a decent price, yes. Because I'd regard it as a precarious income-source.

That's £80k - £95k, so it's about 10 months' income ... but you've had that income-level only for 4 months and it's based on SEO traffic? I think that's quite a generous valuation, myself. I appreciate that that's not at all the same as having a customer willing to pay that, but I'd be interested in selling, myself, if I did.

I'd be thinking exactly the same as you, and rightly or wrongly potentially very interested in selling, and for the same reasons that you are, I think. Good luck!

That is interesting that you never did any SEO on it at all and it's only 1 year old, but it's earning £9000/month. How many natural backlinks does the site have to it?

It doesn't have any backlinks, I didn't even know what they were when I started!

Literally all I did was run the Yoast plugin and I've got the particular keyword that I rank for all throughout the site, but not in a spammy way.

I'd like to think part of the ranking is from good quality content too though, I spent a lot of time on it and I think it's relevant too.

The commission for the product I sell is fairly high which is why it generates good revenue. It averages 9k per month, this month it will do more.

I am tempted to sell, but would someone seriously pay over $100k for it? It's more money than I ever would have dreamed I could have sold the site for, I started it really for a bit of pocket money and to learn a new skill, and it's turned into my full time job now.

I have around 30 products on the site, and from 2 of those alone they have bought me in over £5k in January, so this will be a record month for me.

It's very humbling knowing you've done something well, and I really really hope it continues!

Sell right now

I think you should sell it but only if you can get a decent amount like 120$k or 150$k. If you are going to keep it I think it would be a good idea to invest in some paid traffic. It is a tough decision!

If you are making that ammount of money a month i would keep the site and start looking for a top notch seo service and build on what you have target more keywords.

If you sell the site and start a new one your going to be in the same boat worried about seo, so my advice would be to keep the site and re-invest money from the site and find someone who is dam good at seo

I have thought about that, but some SEO experts are requesting stupid money if I'm honest.

I know the potential this site has in the right hands however, and I am sure the right person could turn that revenue over 10 fold by doing all the right things.

The other problem is that I am scared stiff to mess around with it too much in case I lose the ranking!

If I depended exclusively on Google for my traffic, and considering how fragile Google ranking is, I would sell that puppy right away at the first beefy offer I get.

The good thing is that since it seems you haven't engineered your SEO, it's probably a solid ranking to stay.