Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Let's consider all things being equal and that AdSense remains the market leader and that the AdSense style, or the new unknown AdSense baby advertising format, is here for quite some time.
Do you intend retiring or simply keep reaping the rewards you have sown leaving your relatives to sort out the problem after you have died?
Maybe you have considered selling the site as a "going concern"? The value is obviously what someone else is prepared to pay.
Do you have any children, relations or employees who could or even would take over?
On a further note, just how would the Tax authorities value such a business for death duties etc?
Here's a suggesting for a new business venture. Commissions gladly received for the idea:-)
A site selling established and provable AdSense businesses! Does this exist outside of the ebay trashy stuff?
Me?
I'm looking to progress my AdSense sites over the next couple of years well into the $00,000.00 per month, sell up all my UK assets except for the family home and move to somewhere nice and temperate but continue with the AdSense as my pension since the UK government sure as hell ain't going to give me anything worth having!
Where? I haven't decided yet. I'd better ask EFV:-)
Damn, is there an IslandsForVistors?
EFV -- I'd be interested in buying an adsense businesses at 2x a month's earnings. are you selling?
Besides other things, Adsense depends too much on personal factors of a publisher (@ Google side), so it is almost impossible to predict it's future behaviour in someone else's hands.
That depends very much on whether or not there's a "system" in place. This is something we're working on right now for our business - exactly how I make the site growth in traffic and revenue, step by step. It's literally a training manual for future employees. And in the right hands with a dedicated employee, I'm positive the business can actually grow more with someone else. Frankly, I don't dedicate enough time to it, because I'm managing, gathering info in forums like this, scouting new ideas, etc.
This is the problem with a majority of Mom and Pop businesses, and why they can't be sold for much if anything. A friend of mine is a business consultant/accountant. He says for many small businesses, they need up to five years to get people and systems in place so the business can be sold.
The question is: how do you get your traffic?
If you have a spammey traffic strategy, depending on techniques that Google (and others) will like shut down in the future, it's probably not worth much.
If you have reliable users and traffic, whether or not you use AdSense or sell your own ads, is simply a business strategy. There are alternatives (YPN, at some point, maybe business.com). Or you could hire your own salesforce.
I have no intention of selling off my adsense business but I certainly plan on selling some of my websites that I have adsense on down the road ..and using the history of revenues as a starting point for valuating the sites.
Regardless of any documentation, confirmations and tracks regarding Adsense, the business would very likely not produce the same results when transfered to another person/company.
But unless the buyer were very familiar with the vagaries of Google's index that probably would sound fishy.
Kid_A is absolutely correct about building a transferrable business, there are many factors. Someone unfamiliar with AdSense probably shouldn't buy an AdSense business. But then that's true of any business.
I think I want to buy AdSense businesses instead of developing new sites from scratch, especially if they can be had as cheaply as EFV seems to think. :)
I think I want to buy AdSense businesses instead of developing new sites from scratch, especially if they can be had as cheaply as EFV seems to think. :)
I have no idea what an "AdSense business" is worth. Probably about what a comparable affiliate site would be worth. Both are risky propositions for the buyer.
A site with multiple revenue streams (not just AdSense) might be worth considerably more, depending on the type of content, traffic, audience, revenue sources, competition, etc.
At any rate, I'm not a buyer or seller, and I'll probably die in the saddle. :-)
That does suggest though that the domain should remain registered to the old owner as agent for the new and if possible the site should remain on the old servers, something to consider.
Extremely likely true, especially if the new owner is someone from the third world country, or someone with a lot of different sites/domains, or someone with already established bad history with Google, etc.
[edited by: activeco at 9:52 pm (utc) on May 3, 2006]
Both are risky propositions for the buyer.
Oh absolutely, T-bills, CD's, and municipal bonds are the way to avoid risk. But someone experienced with AdSense could spot a bargain and do well, this would be less risky and less work than developing a site from scratch.
I will be looking into this in the coming months.
But someone experienced with AdSense could spot a bargain and do well, this would be less risky and less work than developing a site from scratch.
One obvious question would be, "Why does someone who's got a nice little AdSense cash cow want to sell?"
Because you have other sites that are even more of a cash cow - you could easily have a site making, say, $1,500 a month which takes enough hours to keep going/keep building - but if you have one that also makes $4,000 a month, and makes more money with less work, you want to put all your time into the second site. In this case some would be happy to take money down for the smaller site, and reinvest it in the bigger site to get you further ahead faster. $1,500 is great, but not enough to justify hiring someone to keep it up and going/growing.
Even you must see the same thing within your own site: some topics are worth working on, others simply don't have a large enough ad base, or one that pays well enough to justify a lot more work into it.
Let's not also forget some people could integrate a smaller site into their larger network. If you have a high traffic site that pays REALLY low CPM's, like many people with screensavers/wallpapers, etc. sites do... you can funnel that traffic into a proven site, that's already build, and make more money that way. If I had one of those high traffic sites that's the first thing I'd be doing.
Yes, I will be keeping an eye open for AdSense sites for sale, researching the market and perhaps beginning a correspondence with Google about the idea of buying AdSense sites. I would feel more confident if I had some feedback from them on the matter. AdSense may be mature enough for an AdSense site secondary market, and such a market would be to Google's benefit if it operated responsibly.
Just thought some would like to see that the business was real that's why the link was posted.
The questions remain:
1. Has anyone sold an asdense business at 1 million or more?
2. Has anyone bought one and continued to run it successfully?
It depends on the business model. If it is ecommerce , dropshipping I would suggest $ 100,000.
[edited by: martinibuster at 4:35 pm (utc) on May 18, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed URL [/edit]
I wonder if that means anything?
Content is transportable, able to be repurposed, and is recyclable in many ways until you are...well, dead.
As to the question. I don't own an "adsense business", but I have sites with adsense on them. The value of the intellectual property connected with my business is way huge when considered over a period of of, 25 years (and I've been riding that value for 14 years, on and off the net).
The value of my business, to me, is way way beyond its value to anyone else (probably). In effect, I could sell off pieces (let's say a website or two), but alone, they aren't worth much. But the business as a whole is worth several millions dollars in earnings that I will recieve, or my estate will.
Unless, a Bush wins the next election, then all bets are off <grin>
