Translate.com sells for $853k

[Nigel]

This sale included a profitable website as well. Here's the news:

https://www.thedomains.com/2018/11/28/translate-com-auction-closes-at-853000-on-flippa/

https://www.bizquest.com/business-f...-almost-2m-monthly-visitors/BW1564661/?q=bz0x

 

[wonder_lander]

Looking at the revenue figure of $400k per annum it would be interesting to see what the costs were? I assume a fair chunk to feel like that was a fair amount of money for the enterprise

 

[Nigel]

in that second link I posted it says the new buyer will be able to operate the site with about 10-15 hours work per week. Sounds like the buyer got a good deal - although the seller only set this up in 2014. I imagine the domain even without the website would be worth six figures.

 

[wonder_lander]

It's this bit I'm wary of:

To date, the business has completed over 400,000 translations totalling over 10M words. There are over 50,000 registered and vetted editors

I assume that these 50k editors need some form of remuneration?

 

[RobM]

If those figures are true then anyone selling a domain that earns $354k (I'm assuming that's the profit) in 9 months for less than 2 years profit with a generic premium domain like this must be *really* desperate for cash. Appalling seller price. Revenue alone at those figures it is a 7 figure domain and that doesn't even include the actual domain value which is another 6 figures.

 

[Nigel]

Good point about 50,000 registered translators - they have a page that offers translators the chance to become a paid translator paid by paypal. But maybe those earnings have already been separated from the websites earnings.

 

[Nigel]

If those figures are true then anyone selling a domain that earns $354k (I'm assuming that's the profit) in 9 months for less than 2 years profit with a generic premium domain like this must be *really* desperate for cash. Appalling seller price. Revenue alone at those figures it is a 7 figure domain and that doesn't even include the actual domain value which is another 6 figures.

agree not a great price based on earnings - but says he wants to focus on other initiatives - doubt that he's short of cash.

 

[RobM]

That doesn't explain why he sold so cheap then. If he's not short of cash he could wait to get a realistic return on revenue. Either the figures are incorrect or he is not a very shrewd businessman. But to sell at that price the real profit would need to be about $4k-$5k per month in my opinion. So that would mean his costs would have to be like 90% of his revenue which I doubt.

 

[Nigel]

it was an auction - so could have sold higher or lower