How Much Is Our Blog Worth?
As most of you know, we’ve been seriously thinking of taking a break and sell this little blog of ours. Obviously one of the main factors in that decision is whether we’d fetch a tidy sum for it. Browsing the Interwebs, we came across a fantastic article that showed us what a website buyer is really looking for. It turns out that the “rule of thumb, 10/12x monthly revenue” isn’t really an accurate way to help you put a pricetag on your website, in fact, you’ll be kicking yourself if you’ve done so. Just read this post and you’ll see what we’re talking about.
Max Davis recently purchased Blogging Experiment for an undisclosed amount, but we’re sure both Max and Ben Cooke (the seller) both came to a satisfactory agreement. Max did a great post in which he breaks down how he values a website as a buyer. We think everyone should start tuning in to the same wavelength because there are so many online properties that are undervaluing themselves. We’ll use Max’s guidelines in the following breakdown, of what we think is a good price for JohnCow.com
- 1) Income - Currently we’re making an average of $2,500 per month with this blog. This number would mean that we could ask for $25,000/$30,000 if we’d go by the 10-12 months revenue rule.
- 2) Traffic - We’d say that an average of 30,000 unique visitors visit our blog each month, which adds up to 360,000 uniques per year. Max uses a great example here: If you were to start a new blog in the highly competitive MMO niche, and you were to pay for adwords campaigns for example, you’re looking at roughly $0.40 per click. Try multiplying that with the average yearly traffic amount: $144,000 to get the same amount of traffic per year with Adwords!
- 3) SEO/SERPs ranking - Getting high SERPs in the search engines will increase your organic traffic tremendously. We all know how competitive the SEO field is these days, and that it takes a lot of time or money to get in the top ten for any MMO keyword. We’re currently ranking 5th for “making money online” out of 31,400,000 results. (Also ranking #1 for “John Chow” by the way
) Its hard to translate this into money, but it would cost a hefty sum if you would start a linkbuilding campaign with Text Link Ads for example. - 4) Content - This would be the 382nd post. Just imagine starting a new blog, hiring someone cheap to write your posts. Lets say you’re paying someone $15 per post. Multiply that by 382: $5,730. And we didn’t even include the 13,381 comments that we’ve got. 2,830 of our pages are indexed by Google.
- 5) RSS Subscribers - Right now feedburner tells us that at least 1659 subscribers had a look at what we had to say yesterday. According to Mark at 45N5, a subscribers value should roughly be estimated at $30. (obviously we think you guys are priceless, but hey, we need some statistics!) 1659 times $30: $49,770.
- 6) Backlinks - Yahoo! says we’ve got 47,412 links to our blog. Max takes an average of $3 per backlink if you were to pay for them. Sure, you get some links for free, but there are links you can buy on other sites for well over $100. 47,412 times $3: $142,236. Buying an established site with many backlinks saves you a lot of time. Imagine having to leave that many comments on other blogs, hope you’ve got some spare time!
- 7) Graphics /Theme - We’ve got a professionally designed theme and header. Besides that we’ve got custom created creatives like banners and wall papers to go with it. Very important for your branding. If you’d have to get all that done for your new blog, you can add roughly $2,500 to the bill.
So, lets have a look at the total sum. If we’d go by these rules, we wouldn’t sell our blog for anything less then: $344,236! Shocking amount isn’t it? And we haven’t even calculated the value of the brand you’d be selling. The “status” and numerous new networking opportunities that would come knocking when you buy an established blog.
Obviously we wouldn’t get an offer from anyone for that amount, but as you can see, your blog might be worth just a bit more than the old 10-12 times monthly revenue its pulling. Perhaps something to think about before you sell. Keep in mind that a buyer will always be looking for a cheap deal. They’ll always have arguments to talk the price down, but you know what you’re worth in the end.
Thanks Max for an enlightening article on how to value your website.
*Update* Here’s what some online tools think we’re worth:
My blog is worth $65,486.64.
How much is your blog worth?
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Damn Cow that’s some really strong revenue for 1k uniques per day. Perhaps I have more to learn from you and your bovine ways.
Llama Money’s last blog post..Fast Food Kills Your Wallet
My take is that the earning level reflects all the other factors mentioned - the design, content, backlinks, even subscribers. These factors make the earnings what they are.
So, the 10 / 12 x monthly earnings is a good starting point. The only other thing I’d want to look at is the earnings trend - if it’s going up month on month, then you need to factor that in, and vice versa. If it’s holding steady, then the growth factor is naturally one.
That makes my basic calculation: current revenue x potential growth factor.
There are no doubt other factors that come into play, but given this blog’s current status, I’d say the $30k mark was a fair price, as long as the new owner(s) were able to carry forward the processes that made the blog popular in the first place, and keep the current audience engaged.
Just my 2 cents.
Simon, you can keep your 2 cents!
Holy COW, that is a hefty about of money.
Rob’s last blog post..Win Yourself a Free Xbox!!
John your crazy $300,000 literally out of your mind.
[...] of major players who are successful in making money through blogging. Right from the John’s; Cow and Chow, Amit Agarwal to Amit Bhawani, Syed Balkhi to Karamveer to , Jeremy Shoemoney to Maki, [...]
It’s particularly difficult to receive rss from a blog when a subscriber knows that there’s a new owner. I mean, we subscribed for a reason, and mainly, that reason is the blogger himself, his personality, writing style etc.
Evil Woobie’s last blog post..The Direct Approach to Making Him Confess: Ask Him
While that amount is out of the ballpark, I do however agree that its VALUE is correct when you take in all the parameters. I’d say $50,000-$75,000 would be the max I would pay.
Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
I looked up johncow.com on SiteAmount and it says you have 724 backlinks on Google and 34,340 on Yahoo. Based just on the domain name value and backlinks the total value is: 5,444.92 ($10 for the domain name + 5434.92 for backlinks).
Bryan’s last blog post..New Hosting for GrandmasterB.com
I’ll give you $100 and a case of Energy Drinks for this kick ass site!
Great article, you’ve casted the line out and just waiting for someone to bite! Good luck!
“30,000 unique visitors visit our blog each month,”
when will I reach that traffic?????hahaahahah=)
joshuaun’s last blog post..Troublesome Win XP
So what’s your B.I.N. price John?
greatness008’s last blog post..Japan IDs all it’s citizens!
So you think that 30,000 uniques per month equals 360,000 uniques per year? Depending on what stats s/w you are using it either resets at the beginning of each month or uses a 30 day rolling window. So a visitor will be counted again after 30 days. So your actual yearly uniques may be little more than 30,000.
If that 30,000 monthlies is really based on 1,000 dailies then extrapolating a yearly number is even less accurate.
Do yo use awstats for recording stats?
Can I buy your blog at USD 10.00?
Just kidding 
Sunduvan’s last blog post..Fishing For Sale.
A website is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. Are you going to use some auction to sell the site or are you just going to accept a bid silently?
/Andreas
Andreas from Xavier Media’s last blog post..Updates for 2008-04-08
Each subscriber is worth $30? I agree with mostly everything in your post except for that.
Wow! $300k? That’s a lot of money. The trouble would be finding someone out there that can afford that. Then convince them to buy it!
Biztone’s last blog post..South of the border
I think the value of the blog is based on the blogger itself, and not the name of the blog. Therefore, if some Joe Blow that buys JohnCow.com may not have the same following, and readership, since most visitors visiting and commenting on the site are here to for JohnCow.
Notice the drop in Alexa Traffic when you had guest posts while vacationing.
You can add my 2 cents to Simons.
Think Like An SOB’s last blog post..How To Pwn Craigslist And Kijiji
That’s a whole lot of money. Puts alot of perspective on things. If I sold my little blog in many years to come I think I would be happy with the cost of hosting back and anything else as a bonus.
What would you do with the money if Bill Gates decided to buy your blog for that amount?
I think the best valuation method was actually the rss method.
You selling John or just writing all these posts to make sure you don’t get lowballed when you do start to sell. Lets just hope that this does not turn into another cash quests.
Mubin’s last blog post..One of my sites finally made the front page of Digg!
I disagree with #2 greatly base on the estimated average of $144k to get the same number of uniques. Depending on how well you manage your QS, it can be drastically less. You can also use other PPC such as Yahoo, MSN, as well as several other lower tier PPC engines to get the same number of targeted traffic if you were going the paid route and still spend less.
Steven’s last blog post..Man Jailed for Forgetting to Pay for Pop or Soda
[...] wondering how much he’ll be able to sell it for though. In his most recent post, he cries out against the ‘10x your monthly revenue’ rule and uses a much more diverse [...]
[...] How Much Is Our Blog Worth? If we’d go by these rules, we wouldn’t sell our blog for anything less then: $344,236! Shocking amount isn’t it? And we haven’t even calculated the value of the brand you’d be selling. The “status” and numerous new networking opportunities that would come knocking when you buy an established blog. [...]
[...] of a website can roughly be found by looking at the annual revenue. Instead, he takes a look at other ways to determine your blog’s worth, all of which value his blog at more than the “10-12x monthly revenue” paradigm. The [...]
C’mon man, $300 thou?? in the end it’s the buyers really that set the price.
Web Hosting Reviews’s last blog post..Google Web Hosting Review with Dirt
I won’t sell this COW if I were you!
Employ some part time writer to earn more mooneys for long term deal…
–blog for dream–
AhTim’s last blog post..The Fastest Way to Defrag Your Hard Disk
[...] I found this interesting as I was planning on writing about this subject a couple of days ago when I found out that John Cow was up for sale. You can see the Cow’s post here; Cow for Sale and the prequel post done prior to the announcement here; How Much is our Blog Worth [...]
johnchow or johncow? Must be something that makes them think this blog is worth it
Peace!
shearyadis last blog post..The World Bodypainting Festival Asian awards, Daegu
Your blogs worth damn a lot of money!
It’s interesting that the two tools you have displaying the ‘ blog’s worth’ are saying different things and do not even come close the actual estimate
I find that these tools are often grossly inaccurate at least with my blogs they have been
Totally agree with you that calculating the amount of revenue the blog generates per month and multiplying it by 10 gives a pretty good estimate
Never considered the value of the posts though so that’s a new tip for me. Thanks
Get this just shows that its possible keep it up john cow
nice calculations… but is this how any blog is valued? Where can I find more info on this?
Wow shocking but kinda hard for me to believe.
Oh and by the way i like the pagani in the logo at the top looks cool