Selling a Bulletin Board

What to sell a bulliten board for

[aaronjf]

I really could not find a better place to post this. If a MOD can, sorry, please move it.

How do you figure out what an established board is worth? Someone recently approached me about selling, which I would really love to do, but I have no clue what to ask for.

I have a niche board that is roughly 3 years old that I no longer have an interest in running and maintaining. It ranks well (#7 for the most general search term related to what it is, #1 for another general search term) after doing a couple of quick searches. The traffic is pretty steady and with minor work could do a lot better - we locked the board down pretty tight as it was hard to find moderators that could commit enough time to keep the place running as well as we would have liked and we started having a huge problem with spam bots.

Anyone have advice?

[encyclo]

Is it profitable? Does it have a regular revenue stream? Is it membership, AdSense...?

[rogerd]

It IS possible to sell a community. There is at least one organization that has been acquiring successful communities in various niches (generally high traffic sites), but that's mainly a traffic play with some community management and monetization synergy thrown in. It is unlikely that someone looking to buy general traffic will pay top dollar for your site.

If you have effectively monetized the site, of course, then it becomes an investment/revenue play and finding a buyer may not be that difficult. In my experience, though, the majority of stand-alone communities aren't optimally monetized. Few community operators have the resources to engage in serious direct ad sales or negotiate other partnerships.

Your best bet would be to find a strong player in your niche who would find your traffic and community highly relevant to whatever they are selling. For example, an ecommerce site in your niche might be able to leverage your traffic into sales and generate far more revenue than, say, Adsense ads (often the default community monetization method). If you can find such a company, you will be selling based on relevant traffic rather than past revenue.

Good luck, Aaron!

[fintancostello]

I had a big reply typed out, but have realised it was another way of repeating what rogerd is saying.

So I'm just +1 rogerd's post.

Cheers
Fintan

[reprint]

Couple of other thoughts.. check who links to your community. Any potential customers in that lot? How about members especially senior members of the community? Sometimes active enthusiastic members will become buyers.

[tangor]

Ultimately the issue is "worth". How much worth do you attach, and how much worth others might perceive? Is it a passing of the mantle because I no longer have time/desire, or do I want to make a buck? In the case of the latter there needs be strong revenue numbers available to entice potential buyers.

Wishing all the best!