The Pursuit of Making Money Online10 Important Variables to Appraising a Website
Business August 9th, 2007Finding the value in a domain name or website has never been, nor will it ever be an exact science. It involves a plethora of variables and analytics, often times left up to professionals. I have created the general guideline below to help give you an understanding of some of the more common things to look for when appraising a website’s value, assuming that you’re doing the appraisal yourself. Please remember that this is in no way, shape, or form a complete guideline for web appraisal but it is definately a good starting point.
Ten Variables of Website Appraisal
1. Domain Age. The age of a web site’s domain name should be taken into consideration when determining its value. It gives any potential buyer a sense of security that they are buying something that has been around for awhile and not just a fly by night website that will be developed over and over again.
Tip: The age of a domain name is also thought to hold some weight in the search engines as well.
2. Domain TLD. TLD stands for Top Level Domain and can be extremely important well appraising a domain name or website. TLD’s are your .com’s, .net’s, .biz, etc. Generally, people only want .com and .net but I have seen other TLDs such as .mobi sell for quite a bit. I would stay away from .us, .biz, and .info if possible as they hold very little weight and credibility in our industry.
3. Is it Brand able? This can often times be a loaded question. The main point that I’m trying to make is, if this site were to grow - is it a memorable name? Does it have a unique Look? This is Marketing 101 at it’s finest, and can play a very important role in the value of a website.
4. Alexa Rating. Though the Alexa rating is a debatable statistic with some obvious flaws, I believe that it is still a very useful tool to find out the bare minimum in regards to a web sites traffic and site popularity. Most experts agree that once a website reaches the top 100,000 on the Alexa chart it becomes much more accurate and harder to manipulate.
5. Google Page Rank. PR relies on the democratic nature of the web by using its link structure as an indicator of a web site’s value. This is basically Google’s way of determining how “important” your website is, and it will take some time to build up PR. Increasing the number of quality inbound links will help boost PR greatly.
6. Indexed Pages. It is very important to have each page of a website indexed by all of the major search engines. If the pages are indexed correctly, that means visitors will be able to find your site through search engines such as Google and Yahoo. It can take time to be properly indexed, and this can be a huge selling point since indexed pages generally means that there is at least some incoming organic traffic.
7. Inbound Links. The more quality inbound links a website has will not only boost it higher in the search engines, but will bring more traffic to the site as well through said links. Having a high amount of quality inbound links will make the website look very good, and you will appear to be an important site of interest for it’s niche. This tip can tie in with Google PR.
8. Is it Search Engine Friendly? This is becoming more and more important as the internet matures. A website can have the best design with the best product or information, but if no one can find the website via the search engines, it won’t have very many visitors and it’s investor certainly won’t make a return. There are plenty of ways to establish quality SEO, I recommend hiring someone such as myself. /shameless plug
9. Is there Spider Food? Spider food in it’s most simplistic term is quality, unique content. If the website in question sells products or services, are their product or service descriptions unique? If the website bases itself on articles, news, and other pieces of writing, you’d better make darn sure that those are unique. Google hates Duplicate content and so do visitors and the original authors!
10. Monthly Revenue. Here’s a shocker. This is obviously the most important variable to consider when appraising a website. Whether the website receives an income stream through advertisements, affiliate programs, or product sales that certainly needs to be taken into account - because when a buyer approaches to purchasing the website, they’re looking to make money from doing so.
The 10 variables above should help point you in the right direction when appraising your website (or someone else’s). If you still feel that you lack the skills or time to undertake such a task – I would recommend that you hire a professional to do this for you. If you do so, great, but just remember that no one knows your web site better than you, so take all appraisals with a grain of salt and ultimately, It’s only worth what the highest bidder will pay.
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August 10th, 2007 at 11:33 am
This is a good list of things to think about. Nice site….I will be back.
August 10th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Thanks DayJobNuker!
August 12th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
While many of these are good indicators of domain value, I would just caution anyone to consider the difference between buying a domain name and a business built on the domain name…two very different things. Typically a domain name does not have a revenue stream associated with it, or other assets/content. This would be considered appraising/purchasing a web site or business.
August 14th, 2007 at 12:38 am
This is a great article, but the last sentence says it all: something is worth only what some one else is willing to pay.
August 14th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Good post, when looking at revenue would you put more value on a site with several streams or just one?
August 14th, 2007 at 8:49 am
I would say with certainty that several streams is always better than one. It really depends on the website in question, but each revenue stream tends to go through it’s own cycle of highs and lows so I prefer to have others there ready and optimized to pick up the slack when needed.
An example of this would be instead of having a pure Google Adsense website - combine it with an affiliate program or a few products pertaining to the subject. If your Adsense figures are low for the month then push the affiliate program or product harder to cover lost ground.
I never like to put all of my eggs in one basket.
Just my .03 cents
August 15th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
This is a little off topic, but the posting reminds me to ask, when is a good time to begin monetizing your blog. I ask because I get varying answers from people. Some say it wouldn’t hurt to do so immediately and some say you should start after a certain amount of regular traffic, for example, 500 visitors daily.
Love to hear your opinions, thanks.
-ejoe
August 15th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
ejoe - Thanks for visiting my little corner on the blogosphere.
I’m going to use your question and form the topic (and my take on the situation) into my next blog entry ;).
August 15th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
excellent, thank you.
August 18th, 2007 at 8:05 am
The blue guy with 3 arms and hands is a lil disturbing!
October 13th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
This is all great info but once you’ve done all the above suggested analysis how do you bring monetary value into the mix?
November 15th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
A great and easy to remember domain name bypasses the search engine. people rather first type www.blank.com than google blank. A cyber store is different than a physical store.