Freedom - 5:22 pm on Jul 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

The ip site had zero earnings and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hobby sites with no earnings history get bought all of the time by people who want to put adsense on them.

...we have a couple major properties that many companies have offered 4-6 years worth of earnings to purchase...

Yes, but these examples are so rare and isolated that it's not even worth discussing here.

Those examples, along with ones in the major media(Picassa, Blogger, Orbis, etc.,) - are such 1 in 10,000/deals in the real world of webmastering that they just skew the market perception into something that it's not. People who have never sold a website, never bought a website, and don't know anyone personally who has done either, are giving their advice here and it doesn't make any sense to me.

Are "you" going to take my advice when it's time to install a new timing chain on your car? Heck no, because I don't know anything about, never done it, and I'm not going to pretend I know what I am talking about - just because I own a car and drive it.

People who say: "wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't" but have never done anything are not the ones who have the most valuable input.

If one wants to know how to value a website for an actual sale in today's marketplace of buying/selling websites, don't talk to people who have never done it, and ignore the 1 in 10,000 deals like the infamous "IP site that sold on eBay." Go find out from people who actually bought/sold websites. THey can tell you what the market is really like.