For Sale UKOffer.com - 8 year old site with revenues

[Kieron]

I have decided to sell my longest standing affiliate site, UKOffer.com. The reason I’m selling is that I really need to cut down on the amount of sites that I run as I can’t devote enough time to them. For example, UKOffer.com was last updated over 6 months ago in June 2009. Despite that though, it still earned 31k in profit during 2009, more of that below.

Launched in 2002, UKOffer.com was my first attempt at an affiliate site. It originally started as an online shopping directory, I then used it to create landing pages and price comparison for PPC campaigns. Then a couple of years ago I switched off all PPC and converted it into a voucher code/offers site. Google seems to like “aged” domains and over the years this has fared me well in terms of search engine rankings and traffic.

Some stats

2009 total unique visitors: 293,033
2009 total page views: 509,062
2009 total commission from affiliate programmes: £31,006

3075 inbound links according to Yahoo! Site Explorer

Selling price

In terms of a selling price/valuation, well that’s a tough one. How to value a website? Depending on who you ask the typical answer will be anything between a 1 year and 5 year multiple of annual profits. So in my case that means somewhere between £31,006 and £155,030. I’ve decided to go somewhere just below the middle and 2 years profits. So £62k is the selling price.

Potential

I genuinely think that the site can easily, yes easily earn £100k a year and more. If it made £31k with only 6 months worth of (infrequent) updating then just think what the site can do if somebody puts some effort into it and posts say 5 or more good offers/discounts a day - easily achievable btw. The other thing to mention is that the £31k it generated was from affiliate commission only. There is also a huge opportunity to sell banner spots and paid placements (such as the Top 5 “Hot Offers”). I would say anything between £3k to £10k can be made from these. Years ago, when I was sending PPC traffic to the old UKOffer.com I could make £30k a month on tenancy/ad sales deals so I know what’s achievable.

Will I do a revenue share deal?

I’ve already been emailed by a few people to see if I would be interested in a partnership where they take over the day-to-day running of the site and we split the profit. While I don’t mind these kind of deals I’m afraid that in this instance it’s just not for me. So a full sale only please.

If anybody is interested then please drop me an email to info @ ukoffer.com. I have a spreadsheet of revenue and traffic split by month for 2009 that I would be happy to send you. Likewise if you have any questions then please drop me a line or leave a comment below.

 

[retired_member9]

For every valuation it is important to account what kind of maintenance the site requires.

I understand this sites needs a lot of work for it not to lose it's previous rankings and revenues.

If it's left on an autopilot, I doubt it'll earn 62k even in a 10 years time, because customers need to always find fresh content there to facilitate their purchases. And to supply that content, there is a much more investment and work required.

There are so many similar 'offers' websites out there that it might not be worth competing and many players are now trying to exit.

My humble opinion

 

[Kieron]

Yes of course the site needs regular maintenance as it is a deal and offer site and needs to be kept fresh. I think 3 to 5 posts a day will get the site flying. So that's maybe an hour to 2 hours max per day.

However as per my notes, the site hasn't been updated in 6 months and yet it still generated £31k in revenue during 2009. It's busiest months were November and December last year.

 

[crazihos]

Hi Kieron,

I was just checking this out as i've always loved the site

Had a quick look at the indexed pages - I didn't dig too far but the first pages I came across were static style pages from the old design (like the broadband comparison pages etc..that I think you may have used for ppc).

I wondered if you know how much of the recent revenue comes from these compared to the newer blog style posts?

If its the blog posts ranking thats bringing the revenue/visitors then i'd imagine your right about being able to kick start it again with a few posts a day.

Cheers

Russ

 

[Kieron]

Hi Russ, thanks for your kind words.

100% of the traffic and revenue are from the new style offer/discount code blog posts. None at all come from the old broadband comparison pages.

Good point though, tbh I had forgotten about all the old pages

Cheers!

Kieron

 

[Kieron]

Many thanks for everyone who has expressed an interest in the site, it is very much appreciated. I have just accepted an offer for the site and it is no longer for sale.

Cheers!

Kieron

 

[crazihos]

Congrats on the sale mate - someone got a good site there really looking forward to seeing it develop/progress again now

 

[peacock]

Congrats to buyer and seller.

Kieron has done a blog post with some reflections on the sale which I thought might be interesting to some of the people on this forum :

Sold!