Freedom - 9:01 am on Jul 4, 2005 (gmt 0)

trader: You probably think that way because you only hear about the very large and public deals in the news. When Google or Ebay buy someone, they have their own criteria for doing so, even if the price is 5 or 10x annual income. Your basing your beliefs on what you read in the news and trying to apply it to your average joe website. It doesn't work that way in the real world of buying and selling websites.

For everyone of those very public, million dollar deals there are 1,000s of everyday average websites that are being bought/sold for 6 to 12 months income that you never hear about.

Ebay is not going to come along and buy "your" mesothelioma-debt-consolidation-buy-viagra-online-hotel-reservation.com website for 8 times annual income.If you want to value your site at 8x annual income, go ahead, but you'll never sell it for that price.

Many in this thread have real experience at buying and selling websites and are trying to explain how the market is. They are not making this information up. They, along with me, and everyone else, would love to sell a site for 5 years annual income but it just doesn't happen that way in the normal world of webmastering.

I was lucky to sell my $60/day site for $16,500 and trust me, that sale did not make it in the news.

Let me end by saying that IMO, the only reason people start these threads on WebmasterWorld (which pop up at LEAST once a week) is because they are fishing to sell their websites here to someone else. If they have to do something like that to generate interest in their site, there is not a market to justify 3-8x annual income for it.