You plan to sell your forum but for how much?

[Shawn Gossman]

Have you ever thought about selling your message forum? In thinking about selling your message forum, have you thought about the price?

How do we as forum owners consider the price of selling our forums? How do you go about deciding on what to start out with? Are you factoring in everything? amount you have spent, amount you have worked on the forum, your content, your dedication, etc. etc.

How do you feel about this issue?

 

[radu81]

 

[Lisa]

In all honesty, how much you've spent on a forum has no relevance to its worth to anyone looking to buy. You have to look at the site the way a potential buyer would - what are they getting for their money? Is there any revenue, how much does it cost to keep it online, do you have any customisations unique to your site only, what's the postcount like, member count, how active is it. Is it cost effective to run or are you out of pocket at the end of each month.

 

[haqzore]

one practice is

Annual Income x 10 = Purchase Price

because the assumption, obviously, is that the buyer can improve/increase the already present income.

 

[LeadCrow]

one practice is

Annual Income x 10 = Purchase Price

because the assumption, obviously, is that the buyer can improve/increase the already present income.

That calculation overlooks the fact the amount of content is the commodity sold, not the promise of revenue matching acquisition price. Let's take a 5 million post forum without ads. Do we sell it for an incredibly generous 500$ ?

A fair price would instead be the following:
Average cost of post (per the paid posting industry's best bulk rates. Let's say up to 10 cents, but their worth should be closer to half, as the majority of contributions were posted by users and volunteers and the savings are passed into the final price) x Total post count + Annual income x 10 + Premium negotiated for extraordinary worth of the content/ownership = Fair purchase price

After all, for both seller and buyer, the starting bid is what ownership of the forum is worth for you, even if that worth is not monetary (like for example entering a niche, completing your portfolio/network, or just acquiring sizeable influence in the niche that is worth at least that much for you)

 

[jadmperry]

 

[haqzore]

That calculation overlooks the fact the amount of content is the commodity sold, not the promise of revenue matching acquisition price. Let's take a 5 million post forum without ads. Do we sell it for an incredibly generous 500$ ?

A fair price would instead be the following:
Average cost of post (per the paid posting industry's best bulk rates. Let's say up to 10 cents, but their worth should be closer to half, as the majority of contributions were posted by users and volunteers and the savings are passed into the final price) x Total post count + Annual income x 10 + Premium negotiated for extraordinary worth of the content/ownership = Fair purchase price

After all, for both seller and buyer, the starting bid is what ownership of the forum is worth for you, even if that worth is not monetary (like for example entering a niche, completing your portfolio/network, or just acquiring sizeable influence in the niche that is worth at least that much for you)

your thought process is wrong. the amount of content is NOT the commodity sold.
what is sold is the PROVEN revenue (which the content can help).

Average cost of post x Total post count + Annual income + blah blah....

you're way off. it would be nice for us admins! and i would love it! but... you're way off.

buyers do not care about post count. they mean very little in the scheme of revenue. do posts help with views/ad revenue/etc? sure.

but consider this: Warrior Forum was sold for $3.2 million. it had over 7 million posts at the time.
by your calculations, they were shorted $4 million simply on post count alone.

see your flaw?

another example: Perez Hilton is estimated to make $500M+/month.
worthless because its a blog with a few posts per day (low content amount)? hardly.

nobody... NOBODY is going to flat out "add" the post count into a purchase price. the AMOUNT of content on the forum means nothing in the calculation of a sale price.

it does INFLUENCE other things (such as page views, affiliate links, other embedded programs [memberships])... but net/net the post count is fluff.

 

[Lisa]

Actually, I sold a site a little while ago based on postcount alone

 

[jw00dy]

Those who have sold forums, were you selling in a marketplace of some sort or did someone contact you?

 

[Joeychgo]

Usually, someone contacts me...

Pricing depends a lot on who the buyer is and why they want the site. It also depends on the size / age of the forum as that can translate into stability of future income.

 

[jw00dy]

I have been contacted 2 times. Both times I said I wasn't interested. One of them gave me a ball park for what they would pay based off some basic globally available metrics.

This is what he said they looked at:

Just by looking at some rough stats (members, posts, traffic) and making an estimate of what the site is generating with google adsense.

The other guy wanted to know all the stats, earnings per month, etc, but never would give me a ball park on how much or how he would come up with that value. I didn't want to sell, so I never ended up giving him the information, so never found out how much he would have paid. In the end the second guy was a jerk so I was glad I didn't give him any information.

 

[Joeychgo]

I have been contacted 2 times. Both times I said I wasn't interested. One of them gave me a ball park for what they would pay based off some basic globally available metrics.

I would consider buying your site....

 

[jw00dy]

thanks, but she's still not for sale.

 

[DirtRider]

Basically if I could get back what I paid for the software and ad ons I would be willing to look at that as a start up number.

 

[CiullaWins]

I can tell you with a little experience as I have sold a previous forum and am in the process of purchasing another, I always do mine by revenue. And how fast it can be profited from.

 

[tomk]

another example: Perez Hilton is estimated to make $500M+/month.
worthless because its a blog with a few posts per day (low content amount)? hardly.

$500K.

 

[haqzore]

$500K.

500M = 500K
it is common in finance/business to use M.
i work in finance.

 

[Alpha1]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/28/weedmaps-acquires-marijuana-com-for-a-kushy-4-20-million/