What is my website worth?

[PaulBronson]

Hi,

I have a website which provides my business with enquiries for asbestos surveys. I no longer wish to do this as a profession. I will be closing my business down, however the website belongs to me and I would like to try and establish its worth before offering it for sale to my industry contacts.

The website is: As I'm a new member I cannot post a link to my site. I'm happy to share this with anyone who would like to message me privately for it.

For our last financial year that we have audited accounts for, the website generated sales of £133,661 with a Net Profit of £79,748. In that period the site had 5669 visitors.

Taking an average from the first seven months of this financial year so far, the site is likely to reach approximately 6440 visitors. for the year.

Can anyone advise as to how I may calculate its worth?

Thanks in advance
Paul

 

[gpietersz]

Lots of variables here. How much business did it generate? How much would it have to get the same amount of business through other channels. How much time and cost went into getting visitors (e.g. did you run ads, regularly post content, link to it from social media...?).

 

[PaulBronson]

Thanks for your reply pgietersz,

It generated £133,661 with a Net Profit of £79,748 in our last audited accounts and set be around the same once the last years financial accounts are compiled.
No money has been spent on advertising of ANY kind, adwords, yell, bing, radio, journals etc in the last five years. All traffic to the site is organic.

With regards to generating the same level of sales via adwords, A competitor / colleague was spending up to £2 / £2.5K per month to do this on their site.

I have spent many many hours creating pages, updating content etc, however this is now only something I invest about 1hr per week on.
There is a Facebook page embedded on the site upon which I post a couple of times per week if I remember.
In essence very minimal ongoing input.
I hope this helps shed some more light.

Kind regards,
Paul

 

[Darren_Ssc]

It seems like the making money aspect of the business is in providing asbestos surveys so your pool of potential buyers is limited to those offering a similar service or selling leads to such?

Reaching out to industry contacts is likely your best option. The value will depend on how many interested parties there are?

The website in itself may have some inherent value but it's not going to much.

 

[PaulBronson]

Hi Darren,

Thanks for your response, and yes you are absolutely correct with regards to the pool of potential buyers.

I was wanting to investigate if there was such a way I could determine an approximate value based upon its past / current performance / level of revenue generating leads.

I really have no clue as to value and wouldn't want to negotiate the sale of it without gauging roughly what would be a good / fair price.

For example, a competitor is spending £2K per month (£24K PA) on Adwords to generate similar leads / sales to my site which is providing the same organically. To them an investment of £24K which has paid for itself in 12 months sounds like a good investment to me?

Thanks Paul

 

[Darren_Ssc]

For example, a competitor is spending £2K per month (£24K PA) on Adwords to generate similar leads / sales to my site which is providing the same organically. To them an investment of £24K which has paid for itself in 12 months sounds like a good investment to me?

I think your expectation of such a high price based on someone else's adword spend may be optimistic (how well was his campaign optimised, for a start?) but it's a fair place to start. . Can you back up this claim with some sort of documentation and what is the likelihood your site will continue to rank so well in the future. Has this other guy expressed an interest in buying?

How old is the site and is it a good domain name; does it have some powerful backlinks and have they been in place for sometime?

The more evidence you can build to show a potential buyer that he's not wasting his money then the more likely you are to get a decent bid. At the end of the day, it's worth what someone is willing to pay.

 

[The Byre]

The first problem is that nobody knows if those 6,000 visitors are genuine 'cold' visitors or are coming to you and your website based on the recommendations of others.

But the bigger problem is that the website on its own is not worth anything without the underlying company. That £133k TO was not with the website, but with the company. Your list of past customers and your track-record and glowing customer testimonials is for the company and not the website. That means that EVERYTHING that turns visitors into potential customers that pick up the phone has to be removed.

Simply put, on its own, your website (IMO) is worthless!

 

[gpietersz]

@The Byre quite right, so the next question is, can the business be sold as a going concern?

 

[The Byre]

can the business be sold as a going concern?

I suspect that this is a one-man show and that customers are coming to the company because of the experience and qualifications of the OP. In other words, it's a job and not a business.

So I must ask the question - would I buy the company? I have no qualifications in or around the field of asbestos and TBH, I know F-all about asbestos. So as a businessman looking for an investment, the answer is emphatically no!

A potential rival may want to buy it and just stick a redirect on the site - but that's a long-shot and I doubt they would pay much if anything.

 

[fisicx]

Can anyone advise as to how I may calculate its worth?

The website - not a lot. Someone with the right skills you easily replicate what you have and get it ranking.

The business however could be worth something to someone in your area.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

It is worth as much as your closest competitor is willing to pay for it. Would not hurt contacting your closest competitor and sell it to him. He most likely would give you the best price. You can value a bit here but people in that industry would tell you if you get £1000 for it you were lucky. With some work and time anybody can outrank your side easily.

 

[Lucan Unlordly]

The missing piece of information is.... 'how is the contact made through the website turned into solid business'?

Do you get payments online when surveys are booked?

What are the primary reasons for conversion to sales?

 

[Mr D]

Website gives you leads that are then turned into income. The website itself is a portal, nothing more.
How likely is a competitor to already have a portal? Pretty certain.
So your website isn't worth much.

Your business? Again not worth much except to someone already in the trade - and then its worth however much they are willing to pay for it.
Which usually is a lot less than you want for it.

Then again if you cease trading, what is the business worth to you? Zero then.

 

[billybob99]

£5K to get the ball rolling.

 

[Clinton]

@PaulBronson , take @billybob99 's offer. You're unlikely to get a better one.

@The Byre makes some important points and saves me having to explain them.

Businesses aren't valued on turnover. They are valued on profit.

What profit the website generated for you is also irrelevant though because the website didn't generate the profit. The website generated an enquiry but it's a sales person and the reputation of your business that converted it into a sale.And it was the execution of that order which generated the profit.

There's a long way from lead to profit.

And if someone is paying Adwords £2K for a certain number of leads, why would they pay you the same kind of price?! They know the quality of the Adwords leads, they pay monthly (not for 12 months in advance) and there's no risk. With your website there's the risk that it loses all its traffic overnight and they'll have lost all their money.

 

[Paul Norman]

The answers by Byre and Clinton cover most of the topic off.

Don't listen to people who say there are hard written formulas for valuing a business. There are not.

And your website. I haven't seen it, but it's value, unless you are selling the business with it, is only the value someone places on the leads it generates. And so you will need to be able to convince a buyer of the veracity of the lead volumes, and the certainty of that volume continuing.

The reality is that @billybob99 is probably still the front bidder!

 

[gpietersz]

With your website there's the risk that it loses all its traffic overnight and they'll have lost all their money.

On top of that, its very difficult to verify what the traffic is worth. Can they verify how many leads it generated, for example?

Most people selling websites (myself included!) end up disappointed at what they can get.