Buying & Selling Forums

[Joe Ward]

Note: This forum is for members to post offers to buy and sell their forums.

Other topics or promotion of products/services other than a forum that is for sale is prohibited.

Exceptions may be made for websites or blogs that are related to SEO, forums, or vBulletin. If you are unsure if your site qualifies, please PM me the URL and I will review it.

[briansol]

Only forums? what about other "real" sites?

[Webnower]

Do you have any links for determining the value of any given site?

[Joe Ward]

Do you have any links for determining the value of any given site?

Actually, I do not have that information. It would be interesting to develop a valuation guideline for forums. If anyone has any experience in this area, or has bought or sold a forum in the past, please feel to jump in.

Only forums? what about other "real" sites?

FYI I think it it best to focus on forums only since allowing non-forum sites might invite unwelcome spamming attempts within this forum.

[briansol]

Brent,

Generally, sites sell for 10-18 months of revenue, give or take depending on tons of factors such as trends, domain name, seasons, no more potential (ie, a forum about a tv show that just got canceled probably will hold little future value)

[Brandon Sheley]

I'd like to buy some good forums
but I don't think 200$ will get me much :(

maybe some day when I'm rich and famous...lol

anyways, it'll be interesting to see how this section does..

[Joe Ward]

I did some brief research. Valuing a forum does not seem to be an easy task. The best rule of thumb I discovered was using 18-24 months of revenue as a baseline pricing. Here are some factors that should be considered. However, there is no formula. Once suggestion is to take open bids at various forums to get offers. Highlight the top qualities when introducing your forum for *possible* sale.

• domain name (the domain itself can be very valuable)
• # of members (rate of growth measured by # new members/month; # of active members)
• monthly traffic (uniques; organic vs CPC traffic, etc)
• monthly earnings (Rule of thumb: 18-24 months earnings)
• uniqueness of content / category
• # of threads/posts (# posts/month; rate of post growth/decline each monthly)
• Costs of promotion per month (AdWords, etc)
• Hours of management time required (# of active moderators)
• cost of upgrades (licenses, skins, commercial plugins, time)
• current level of indexed content (Google, Yahoo, MSN)

Are there any other factors that should be considered?

Does anyone with experience buying/selling forums have more information, or how to combine factors to determine a suitable asking price?

[briansol]

I buy and sell from time to time, and I've NEVER paid more than 10 months revuenue for a site. I think 18-24 is a bit on the high side. 10-14 is average I would guess.

Of course, there's always other factors that can increase its value such as the name, or an upcoming event (ie, if you own 2018olympics.com, its probably not going to sell for very much until 2017 )

[petertdavis]

The multiple of monthly revenue metric is way overhyped, in my opinion. If you can buy a forum for ten months revenue, perhaps you got a real bargain. Or, maybe not, it really depends on a lot more than that. We were discussing this topic at Sitepoint the other day, and a guy posted who owns a forum with close to twenty thousand members and over two million posts. The revenue on his forums is zero a month, so I quickly offered him the going rate, or heck I even offered him thirty-six months revenue, lol. I've written a lot on my blog about this topic as well.

[Juan Muriente]

I've written a lot on my blog about this topic as well.

Links to the blog entries please?

[petertdavis]

Links to the blog entries please?

Sure, here you go
Peter T Davis » How much is my forum worth?
didn't know if you allowed links to my own websites here.

That's my most recent post, it also leads to a couple of other places where I've been in discussions about forum valuations.

[Joe Ward]

Thank-you for the resource Peter.

BTW, we do not prohibit links unless they are off-topic (i.e. spammy).

[petertdavis]

Thanks Joe, I always err on the side of caution when I'm not sure what the rules are.

[Mike]

The multiple of monthly revenue metric is way overhyped, in my opinion. If you can buy a forum for ten months revenue, perhaps you got a real bargain. Or, maybe not, it really depends on a lot more than that. We were discussing this topic at Sitepoint the other day, and a guy posted who owns a forum with close to twenty thousand members and over two million posts. The revenue on his forums is zero a month, so I quickly offered him the going rate, or heck I even offered him thirty-six months revenue, lol. I've written a lot on my blog about this topic as well.

I agree.

The bottom line is the buyer needs to determine the value of the site he wants to buy and make sure he doesn't pay more than that.

The seller needs to get all he/she can.

That is the way I look at it anyway.

[hurricane_sh]

The multiple of monthly revenue metric is way overhyped, in my opinion.

An active forum is a great asset, I don't think revenue is a good metric, even 36-month revenue is not justified.

I often see people are looking for good forums, but not the other way around. Active forums are too undervalued on the market, probably that's why we can hardly find any good forums for sale.