Ask HN: Valuation models based on organic traffic? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Valuation models based on organic traffic?

3 pointsadzicg2 comments

Does anyone know a good valuation model based on organic (google search) traffic?

I have a side-project website that over the years grew to attract some nice traffic, and a potential buyer contacted me about it, but I don't know how to price it. Because it was a side project, I never focused on monetising it, so ARR multiples would not really make any sense as a model (and I doubt that they would be interested in buying it for the ARR). My best guess is it's a proxy for one of the competitors, that want traffic, or someone who wants to boost it a bit and sell to the competitors.

The site gets about 2.5m clicks per year from google search for keywords that, at least according to semrush, competitors are paying between 1.5 and 3 USD per click, so that traffic must be worth something. It's not even actively optimised for SEO (before anyone starts blaming me, it's a side-project), so someone with SEO skills could probably boost that significantly over a short period and then sell on.

If you were buying or selling something like this, how would you price it?

Valuations are just the price one person is willing to pay for something and the other party is willing to sell for. I wouldn't over think it too much.

Maybe there is some industry standard valuation method based on organic traffic, but at the end of the day even if it spits out some valuation you'll still need decide if it's a price you're willing to sell for. I also doubt whether any organic traffic valuation model would be particularly useful in practice. The valuation of something like this is going to depend largely on what keywords the site is ranking for and how monetisable the content you have on the site is. It could also depend on things like the domain name and the buyer's interest in the purchase to some extent too.

Just go in with a price you'd be very happy to sell for and if they're interested they'll come back with a counter offer. For what it's worth, my guess is that it's worth somewhere between $1,000 - $50,000 based on my limited experience of this market, but a killer domain and 2.5m clicks in a hot market like crypto would significantly increase the value.

Traffic is a cost, not an asset. It is the basis for monetization but without some type of business transaction coming from it, you have zero revenue, zero conversions, and negative value due to hosting costs.

Because of that, any value I'd pay for it would be low because all you are selling is the raw materials. I'd have to put in my own work for SEO, monetization, and building a profitable enterprise from it. It isn't zero value, but we're talking low 5 figures at best.

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