Paying up to 3 years income for UK based sites

If your looking to sell your website and it is primarily UK based with good history/stats then I may be able to pay up to 36 x monthly net income. Cash waiting for the right sites. Open to all topics, preferably 40% + UK based traffic. Low maintenance an advantage. Email scott atsign selfmademinds.com

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. Good luck.. we look forward to seeing what you buy, if you dare to tell us 😉

    Intriguingly, I was doing the sums on the very same thing today. Both 2 and 3 year net income calculations on a site of mine that I “might” sell one day. Sadly for this situation, however, it’s about 95% US 🙂

    Peter Cooper’s last blog post..Think Visibility: Awesome Web Marketing Conference in Leeds, England - March 2009

  2. On a different note, I would love to see a post on the monthly income for CG against cost, traffic, which you haven’t done in a long time. The site has become absolutely massive since the last time you did the revenue chart for the site for the month of December 2007 I think it was.

    You can perhaps mention the figures here in comments dsection if you don’t feel like doing a post because I am sure a lot of people would be interested in knowing this.

  3. Great post as alwasy Scott 🙂
    Just curious as to how do you detect
    1. false/unstable stats
    2. a dying site
    is there a check list that you go through for each site you buy ?
    cheers

  4. I´m going to invest some money into some “income” sites pretty soon. Don´t want to pay more than 36 months for them either.
    hardest part is finding them though - so difficult and sooo much dross around….

    Scott - when you approach someone to buy a domain do you normally request income stats if there is an active site on it??

    • Yes for info I get income numbers as I’m usually looking to buy and improve income to get paid back in 12-24 months.

      • OK - so you see a site you like the look of - it is not advertised as being for sale but you want to make an enquiry.
        Do you just ask if they are interested in selling it at that point?
        If they say yes - you then ask for income details?

        • Yeah I would say I am looking for a site on that topic and generally can pay up to 36 times net income and if they would consider selling could they please give me some rough income & traffic stats. I would already feel I could better monetise the site before making contact though to reduce my risk.

  5. So for 36x monthly income are you looking for a passive low maintenance site. I’m guessing a blog that requires updating wouldn’t be of interest.

  6. Scott,

    Cash is king now…surely you could get away with paying 12-18x monthly income?

    • For some of the dross on sitepoint sure but I don’t think you can buy good quality ranking zero maintenance sites for under 24 months income, would be happy to be proven wrong.

  7. How do your really confirm the income? I’ve bought a couple small sites which claimed to have adsense revenue but it never materialized. Just curious.

    Kris’s last blog post..Reverse Diabetes

    • You can get screenshots but they can be doctored, at the end of the day you can take the information and compare it to the traffic stats which you can get full access to and confirm pageviews and see if you feel the amount of clicks and cpc add up using your best judgement.

    • As Scott says use tools like Googles sktool for cpc.

      You can always use compete.com and semrush.com to try and see if the site is getting traffic (not perfect but more accurate for US based sites).

  8. Just out of interest Scott, I know you’re not looking at blogs, but do you know the basic benchmark for blog valuation these days?

    Last time I look it was around 12-18 months revenue - is this still the case for blogs or could it be up to double that too?

    Cheers!

    Zath’s last blog post..Lenovo Pocket Yoga Netbook Was Just A Concept!

  9. I don’t see why a blog should be worth any less than a site. A blog is often more reputable because of the interaction and readership base. Some blogs can be maintained with minimal posting a week.

    I know CG probably has around 100 posts a week, but for many others anywhere between 3 and 5 is enough to maintain traffic and earnings and even increase it. The costs per month is therefore quite minimal.

    • I think the difference is the work required Nesa.
      Blogging means you either have to have some knowledge of the subject or learn the subject or hire writers.
      A static site with solid passive income can just sit for years and pay you.
      I have just started a News site and its bloody hard work keeping it up to date.
      When I buy something I will definitely be looking at low to no maintenance.

      • “..have just started a News site and its bloody hard work keeping it up to date.

        Andy W - Have you looked at Autoblogged plugin for your news site?

        I’ve had a play with it and it works pretty well for news sites. At least it gives you a starting point for your posts. You can set it to either publish directly, or just send to draft, then edit.

        There must be other plugins that could help of couse, but this is just one I have played with.

        • Haven’t really had time to tinker to much - just sticking articles up for now. Once I have 20 or 30 I´ll play around with the set-up.
          Looked everywhere for info/&advice on news blogging but didnt come up with anything very useful. Started getting traffic almost immediately (which I didn’t expect) so need to sort it pretty quick.
          Hadn´t heard of that plugin - will go and have a look!

  10. I think it is so difficult at this time because not any one want to sell their popular site.

    • Same with any business though isnt it?
      I have seen crap advertised here in Tenerife as:
      “business making 10,000€ per month, fully legal blah blah blah - 95,000€ cash….”

      Who in their right mind is going to sell for 9 months income? What are you going to do with the money to generate that kind of return again?

      The hardest thing in this game is avoiding the bullsh1tters - and there is one behind 80% of the “website for sale” ads.

      3 years income is still a non-compounding 33% ROI!!! Which is pretty amazing. But, you have the risk of your keywords losing value, google changing their algorithm or your product simply losing its mass market appeal.

      You always have to consider why someone is selling - better still is when someone isn´t selling and you approach them and they are interested - but might take hundreds of emails….

      I´m stil working on picking up a nice little site but just taking my time - want to get it right.

  11. 36 times earnings seems like a lot. I’ve usually heard more like 12 times.

    chris@dofollow backlinking’s last blog post..DoFollow Search Engine Reviews

  12. If you believe that Chris, then feel free to forward me your established money-making websites that are up for sale for 12 months income Chris - I have cash… 🙂

  13. Hi Scott,
    I just came across this website and I have to say … What a breath of fresh air! Great content on your site!

    Just regarding valuations, 36x earnings is more that reasonable for a good quality site which has established SE listings and organic traffic plus a solid earnings history. In fact, a few months ago I sold a simple content sites monetized with nothing but AdSense for over 37x earnings.

    Also, as you’ve mentioned ‘up to 36x earnings’ which implies you’ll only pay that for sites which match your buying criteria, and not every single site that you come across.

    It sounds good to me. Keep up the good work!
    All the best,
    Tony

  14. What do you require to prove that a site has good history and stats? Like a screen shot of Analytics?

    Mike @ Diet Blog’s last blog post..Don’t Punish Yourself And Don’t Give Up

    • Or perhaps a password to access analytics. That would be good for me, but I suppose some people will be very reluctant to have you dig around in there unsupervised., heheheheheh

  15. Are you still looking for sites? I have a friend who could be interested. I’ll send them a link.

  16. I’ve had a play with it and it works pretty well for news sites. At least it gives you a starting point for your posts. You can set it to either publish directly, or just send to draft, then edit.

  17. Woah that’s a pretty generous offer! Are you sure you’ll be able to make all that money back? Seems risky.

  18. If I had some good UK based sites I would be all over this offer. I have a uk credit card website, but I’ve never spent much time on it. So it would not be a worthwhile sale. I am probably better to sit on it for a while and do work on it when I have the chance.

  19. I know this is an old offer but is it still on the table,and how high is the monthly roof? 1k,5k, 20k? Cheers

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