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Selling a mailing list

         

bcc1234

2:09 am on Jul 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Hi guys, I'm thinking about selling one of my ventures.
It's an ever-expanding autoresponder sequence in one niche related to crafts.

So far, I've been concentrating on simply growing the list, so I never tried to maximize revenue. All I was aiming for is to make sure the list is breaking even by generating enough money to pay for advertising expenses needed to attract new subscribers.

Theoretically, I can do this indefinitely and one day end up with a really huge list. But recently, something else caught my attention and I decided to concentrate on another project and sell off everything else.

So here is my question. I'm trying to figure out a good way to price it. I don't want to go by the revenue or profit because, as I mentioned, it's not optimized for that at the moment.

I can think of two methods of valuating, and can't decide which one represents the reality better.

1) I can go with a price per subscriber. So the total price of this venture would be the price per subscriber * the number of subscribers at the moment of sale.

2) I can go with an average cost per click in my niche * number of unique daily visits I get from my mailings * 365.

It's a web-based newsletter, that's why I'm thinking about cost per click.

If an acceptable cost per click in my niche is 20 cents and I get, say, 1000 uniques per day based on the sequence mailings. Tha makes it $0.20 * 1000 = $200 per day.

After that, I would factor in the usubsribe rate and calculate how many subscribers would be lost in one year if no new people signed up. Let's say 50% of people would unsubscribe (realistically that number is much smaller). So that would make it $100/day in pseudo-ppc costs by the end of the year.

Would it make sense to ask for $150 * 365 = $54750?

Does that make sense? Is it realistic or should the lists be priced at just by the number of subscribers?

I just made those numbers up, but do you think this makes sense?

jomaxx

5:16 am on Jul 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If the business is only breaking even now, then maybe you should put some time into demonstrating how the list could be cashflow-positive before selling it.

I mean there's no telling what you could theoretically get if you meet just the right person and cast a spell over them, but it seems to me that a rational buyer would want to buy a going concern rather than a list of email addresses.

BaseVinyl

5:46 am on Jul 16, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



In response to your question...No..it doesn't make sense.