closed DealofDay.com - PR 5 online since 1999 - 300K + monthly uniques

[mayor]

Hey gang,

Trying to get a feel for what I could get for one of my older properties, DealofDay.com.

The site has been online since 1999 and is one of the oldest bargain-hunting sites.

We get approximately 325,000 uniques each month to the PR 5 site. Large majority of the traffic is organic. About 80% of that traffic goes directly to a forum thread.

About 84,000 pages indexed on Google.

Alexa rank of 43,000 currently.

Net revenues are about $20,000 per month from AdSense, Kontera, Chitika, banner ads and affiliate commissions.

We post any where from 25-50 new deals each day, taken from CJ, Linkshare, ShareASale and independent affiliate programs. The site works well with little attention and receives a steady revenue stream. I would imagine it could do quite well in the hands of someone who actually worked the site to its potential.

I am focusing on a new business model and am considering selling the site.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Joel

 

[Jilo]

If that was my site, I'd want to sell for 18-24 months revenue.

 

[Stian]

The 25-50 deals you post per day. Are they automatically syndicated or do you have to manually hunt down the bargains and post them on your site? Just curious. Thanks.

 

[mayor]

The 25-50 deals you post per day. Are they automatically syndicated or do you have to manually hunt down the bargains and post them on your site? Just curious. Thanks.

We grab them from sites like CJ.com and Linkshare.com. I pay an outsourced person $1000/month to make it happen. Nothing to it.

Joel

 

[Stian]

We grab them from sites like CJ.com and Linkshare.com. I pay an outsourced person $1000/month to make it happen. Nothing to it.

Joel

Nice.

 

[turtlenet]

If that was my site, I'd want to sell for 18-24 months revenue.

I think the site's traffic could be worth a lot more than that to Groupon or one of its many competitors. They're probably already some of your biggest advertisers, and it seems to me like getting exclusive access to your traffic with no cut to a middleman (like Google) would be more valuable than just a standard multiple of the site's revenue.

 

[alwaysthinking]

I absolutely do not think this site should be valuated based on multiples of monthly revenue. In fact I never sell my sites based by that.
The site is a gem with a perfect domain name.

You should be approaching bigger brand names and sell based on traffic. Coupon and deal sites are REALLY HOT at the moment. Hire a professional if you have to. I think this site should at least net you 750K to a Cool Million. Yes its do able and It gets done everyday.

 

[Theo]

$2.5 million - $4 million.

Pack your bags, try to locate Groupon executives before themselves sell out to e.g. Google.

 

[godolphin]

I second Acro's view. Don't sell on multiples or cheap.

 

[nam6641]

If gross revenue is $20k/month then net revenue would be...? $18k?

Not sure how numbers in the millions are being mentioned here. $1MM is an almost 5 year break even price (even longer if you consider time value of money). I think for an established online business of this type you get 3 years of earnings, or around $600k.

If groupon was going to buy a deal site they would go after a slickdeals or fatwallet, nothing less.

 

[Theo]

Slickdeals and especially Fatwallet would sell for $xx,xxx,xxx to $xxx,xxx,xxx
Yes, you read that right.

When selling to a corporation 5 years of a "break even" period is nothing. How about 20, 25 years? It's happening.

 

[james2002]

May be xxx,xxx range for resellers. Who knows how much it would sell to end users?

 

[nam6641]

Slickdeals and especially Fatwallet would sell for $xx,xxx,xxx to $xxx,xxx,xxx
Yes, you read that right.

When selling to a corporation 5 years of a "break even" period is nothing. How about 20, 25 years? It's happening.

It is happening (in instances like the Groupon offer or the Huffington Post purchase) because there is huge growth potential and other factors. Those are also market leaders in their niches. And there are synergy possibilities. Groupon was ideal for Google because it is about 'local' and Huffington Post was as much to buy Arianna and have her run all of AOL's purchases like TechCrunch and Engadget as it was for her blog. Is a big company going to be interested in something that makes them an extra $18k/month? Very doubtful. It wouldn't be a blimp on their screen. A site making $18k/month is going to sell on Flippa for a low multiple years before a big company would sniff around it unless there is something totally unique about the site with huge growth potential.

 

[Theo]

If you aim low, you can only jump that high.

 

[nam6641]

If you aim low, you can only jump that high.

Agreed, and in some instances it works... I'm shocked that VisitBerlin.com sold for $230k (or around there) and I'm even more shocked that the owner of the domain had turned down a $150k offer for it prior to arriving at this sale. So it worked out for him. But he is a millionaire and can sit around and wait.

If owner of DealofDay wants to move his site he can't shoot for the moon, he needs to be realistic, and Flippa is a good place to gauge what the going rate for his type of site would be in the marketplace.

 

[RTM.net]

Interesting - we own aubainedujour.com (essentially "deal of the day" in French) and have turned down a few crazy $xx offers... (obviously trying to fish a bargain)...

I would say EASY high $xx,xxx but $xxx,xxx considering that you have it running and monetized....

Advice by Acro to hunt down a blue chip end user (Groupon, Living Social, etc) is very wise indeed.

Rob