How Do You Value A Site With Growth?

[Grant]

Let’s assume this is your site, or a site you’re looking at buying (screenshot attached).

90 pages of content. Average around 1,000 words (guestimate).

Earnings nicely in-line with traffic, around £12cpm.

Additional content ranks for lower-comp keywords within days, matures for higher volume terms over months.

TTM & normal earnings multiples don’t work...

So, beyond "just wait until it stabilises" - how do you work out a price?

 

[Edwin]

Evergreen or time-sensitive content?

Also, year-round or seasonal relevance?

 

[Grant]

Good points.

Evergreen.

Seasonal relevance, as it's boiler related.

To add to confusion, I added the most content in a single 30 day period - in this one (i.e. in season).

As an example, one post (published Oct 30) ranked for a half decent KW in 48 hours (getting 5-10 visits a day), and has had over 1,000 uniques this month, but 124 yesterday alone, as it creeps up rankings.

Most growth can be attributed to ranking improvements, but there's no denying that winter has a higher search volume for a lot of search terms.

Quick example regarding ranking improvements.

A few examples top 3 rankings from May to Nov (so possibly a few more to come):

0, 4, 10, 18, 32, 35, 51

Does that help?

 

[Edwin]

Thanks for the extra detail.

Sites seem to sell for anything from 12-36 months earnings for low-earning sites that aren't just a slapped together affiliate play, but real content.

Given what you've said, it might be better to hang onto it through one "season" since you don't know how high it's going to go (you might be pleasantly surprised at the traffic once winter bites). That way, you also have some solid data to use to haggle for the higher end of the multipler.

 

[martin-s]

In a similar niche to this, I have LOVED this site recently:
http://www.stovefittersmanual.co.uk/

We've just smashed out an old 60s-style fireplace to install a wood burner and this site is a godsend of useful knowledge.

Ranks roughly in the top 40-50k websites in the UK - and well deserving of it.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stovefittersmanual.co.uk
https://www.similarweb.com/website/stovefittersmanual.co.uk

Shows what you can do with an evergreen website when you show a bit of passion for the topic.

 

[Grant]

Edwin - Thanks for the feedback, you're probably right!

Martin - Some decent stuff on there.

The whole plan with this was a huge boiler/heating/solar/log-burner advice site. But, plans and reality sometimes differ...slightly