Buying an established website

willis

Just wondering if anybody has ever bought an already established website, and if so how would u go about it? Say for example you have a website, menupages.ie for example. and u want to exapnd the site internationally, so you want the site to encopmpass reviews of restaurants in say Australia. Now you research some sites and find an excellent similar site to yours, but you think you could add value to the exsisting site using some of your knowledge etc gained from menupages.ie. You might decide that setting up menupages in Oz is difficult because this other website already has a huge base of users and you might find it hard to attract them to your site, so maybe you decide to buy this website and eventually merge it with your menupages site so you have a foothold in Oz striaght away, and then u can develop the site the way u wish without the hassle of starting the whole review of restaurant process/attracting users etc.

How would one go about this, and how would you determine a reasonable value (i.e. what factors would contribute...revenue that the site makes,hits per month,number of members etc)

Hope this sint a stupid question or confusing in any way
Thanks

mneylon

Good question

Not easy to answer either

Factors I'd look at would include:
size of market, estimated traffic, earnings, domain name, page rank etc.,

Basically I'd want to see how well the site was really doing in its market and combine that with its potential

blue4ever

I’d think of looking at it from different angle (given the facts you gave).

If you want to buy an existing site here you may in certain cases have to pay the value of the revenue stream – but also a value for the ‘brand’ – that’s not in every case, but in a few where these sites have built up not only traffic – but reputation (intrinsically linked one might argue).

So if the site was going to be exported to a different jurisdiction that brand element may be worthless and, as you are not the original principle, the ‘learning curve’ is still steep.

Would you not be better off starting from scratch and eliminating the extras in the price for a “brand” that unknown in other parts?

As the point for the worry element of other sites having a currently better hold on a market: they won’t forever if you can offer something different. I have an interest in a site that went up against some very established sites in the ‘ents’ sector. It’s a struggle to get traction; it’s hard to get up the charts in a competitive sector; but it is beginning to happen (now). So, just keep at it!

flash harry

Hi

sorry cant add any value re pricing vs user numbers vs revenues etc, however do keep in mind the price is ultimately what the seller will sell for. I know this is obvious but the site you are interested in must be buyable.....

Sorry for stating obvious!