paybacksa - 5:41 pm on Oct 25, 2011 (gmt 0)

Sounds a lot like common stories told/heard at pubcon. Owner starts late nineties, builds successful seo site, lives off it, keeps it evolving, suffers Google challenges, experiences crisis of confidence, convinces self the ride is over, then sells it for way less than comparables because honestly didn't know the latent value of the site for the same reasons was unable to see a positive future for the site.

I bet the buyer got an excellent value...its very common to hear a business person doubled or tripled revenues of sites like that in a year, usually by simply injecting capital in the obvious places.

Good story, thanks for sharing, but save the preaching. You lost the vision, confidence, and decided to exit. If you really want to help everyone else survive the future of Google seo etc. share your site stats, revenues/revenue mix, sale price, details of negotiation your exit, and domain so we can evaluate the risk for ourselves, and learn.