Help pricing a poker forum I am selling

[system0]

Myself and a friend are starting an online shop soon. Im very excited about it but due to the time I will committing to it I will be selling off the majority of websites I own.

One of my biggest sites is a poker forum called www.texasholdemforums.com

I am going to list it for sale within the next few weeks at sitepoint however I am keen to get an idea of what I can get for it. With regards to affiliate income, the two largest income sources are from full tilt and pokerstars however both of these affiliate accounts are tied to my player account. I believe I could transfer these however I'm not sure whether it's best to transfer the site with the affiliate accounts or without them. Of course, the value of the site is a lot less if the affililiate commission accounts arent included but thats something I understand.

Another reason I think that leaving out the affiliate accounts from the sale is because commissions were very low in December (they are always much lower in December). However, they are back to normal this month so perhaps that isnt an issue.

So here are my questions

* How much value would you put on the forum alone noting that it has : Threads: 18,814, Posts: 161,182, Members: 16,332 and has been online for nearly 4 years.

* I sell a lot of banner and text link ads on the site too. How much additional value would be added to the sale with direct ad sales. ie would it be 12x monthly direct ad income, 18 x monthly direct ad income etc

* How much additional value would be added to the sale if I decided to include affiliate accounts in the sale. This is the one thing Im not entirely sure of because affiliate commissions go up and down every month. To be completely honest, I'm leaning towards selling the site without the commission accounts but I would obviously sell them with it if thats the standard.


Anyhoo, any help with this would be appreciated, particuarly from those who have sold or bought a gambling related forum in the last 2 years

[TheGooner]

I have no selling/purchasing experience of sites or forums.

But ... that never stopped me having an opinion :


Typically I think that you could expect to get a sale price equal to around 12x the monthly revenue ...

A good number might actually be the revenue that you earned for the last 12 months, for the pieces of the pie that you're selling.

ie. 12x monthly affiliate account + 12x fixed fees.

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Of course there might be a premium for the size of the forum (16K+ members is awesome) if it could be demonstrated to have a market leading edge.

On the downside - google recent decree on paid link selling might also put a lessor value on that revenue ?

And also with the recent valuations of things like facebook, stumble and youtube they also did seem to put a monetary value on the users.

This did seem a bit corporate-speak wank and extreme overselling to me - but if you're discussing with venture captalists (who seem to have no idea) then you could try and value your users at $20-$30 a head.


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In the end your site is worth EXACTLY what the highest BUYER is prepared to pay for it - not a cent more or less - but that answer always feels like a cop-out.


Good luck with the negotiations.

[system0]

thanks for the reply

I actually have quite a lot of experience of selling sites. I've probably sold close to 500 sites in the last few 6 years. However, as I said in my original post, I wasnt sure exactly how to price it without including the affiliate accounts.

Your right though. The site is definately worth more than 12 times monthly income due to the membership etc. The site also has a lot of commercial scripts integrated into the forum (review section, gallery, blog section etc).

I am going to gather up as much info as possible for the sale in the next few days. Thanks again for the reply

[gtycoon]

Im interested in this. Please pm me

[imteaz]

Well. basically when someone buy a site, first they look at traffic.
how much traffic you are getting per month. then it comes to revenue, how much revenue it earn per month.

Without affiliate account:
if you try to sell without affiliate account, i'm afraid you won't able to sell in higher price. caz those whoever buy the forum have to start from $0.

( include your affiliate account)
If you earn 4k revenue per month. then you can start bidding at $20K
and put bin BIN: $65K

People usually dont buy site based on 18 months revenue. i have seen on sitepoint most poker site & forum sold at 10 months to 12 months revunue, also depends on traffic. site looks good, good luck with your sell.

[system0]

thanks for the tips imteaz - I decided that it would be best to sell the site with the affiliate accounts

The site is now listed at sitepoint





I am more than happy to answer questions here though


[stroke]

So it sounds like full tilt is the biggest earner. Seeing most affiliates already have a affiliate account there how would it work taking on another account? Could they be merged or would you have to have 2 separate affiliate accounts? Does full tilt allow this?

[Holis]

Gl again with this sale ^^

[system0]

sorry for the delay in replying - i didnt get an email saying the thread had been updated

stroke - im sure full tilt will merge the accounts. I dont forsee it being an issue. I was actually more concerned about pokerstars because they can be funny about some things but they said that as long as I sign something to the effect that the account should be transferred to the new owner it will be fine.

For anyone who is interested, Ive responded to some questions on sitepoint about comissions and forum info etc

Holis - thanks bud

[imteaz]

as you mention 2k per month revenue, you sould atleast get $25K for this forum. seems like 20k higest bid, good luck