dnScoop allows you to get a feel for how much your domain name is worth based on some statistics that the site scrapes from other sites, such as Alexa, Yahoo! SiteExplorer, and Google PageRank. I don’t know how valid the estimates are, but at least it’s fun to speculate.
A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from an individual who wanted to buy one of my websites. I have built websites for clients at predetermined rates in the past, but I have never sold one of my personal web projects. The site that the person wants to purchase from me is located at:
http://www.yougetsignal.com/ (~5,000 visits a day, of which ~600 visits come from organic Google traffic)
YouGetSignal is a collection of AJAX web tools I wrote for fun throughout this last school year. I am currently monetizing it through Google AdSense and donations.
I searched the Internet for some kind of magic formula that would help me appraise the worth of my site. After searching for several hours and finding a ton of different opinions, I decided to contact the Brigham Young University’s Center for eBusiness to ask for some advice on appraising a website. Dr. Stephen Liddle, the director of the program, responded with a very insightful e-mail:
Valuations got crazy during the dot-com bubble, and then they crashed too far. They’ve stabilized a bit since then. In the bubble era, people made the argument that old formulas for valuation went away. Everything was new and needed to be measured differently. Well, the same old rules still likely apply. As the basis of value, you need to understand business fundamentals: what is the revenue potential for this property? You may or may not currently be maximizing the potential revenue stream (you probably aren’t – probably nobody is truly “maximizing” their potential). So basing the value on your current revenue for the site is likely not quite the right thing to do, but it’s the easiest number to start with. “I’m making $X/year now, so you need to pay me $X * Y to buy it from me.” (Where Y is a standard multiple you’d use for any business – online or offline.) At least that would establish a floor for the valuation. The next thing you could do is estimate potential revenue if you were to apply best practices to the property. How many of the visitors are loyal visitors? What would it take to engender more loyalty? Are you getting affiliate revenue as you refer visitors to other e-commerce sites? Etc. Here’s an interesting blog post along with links to further resources:
http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/02/20/website-valuation/
That doesn’t answer all your questions, but it’s a place to start. What it comes down to is that you have to negotiate. The first person to state a number typically loses a negotiation. Have they made an offer for you to counter? If not, ask them for an offer. Then you can see whether it’s worth a lot of your time and effort or only a little to justify your estimate of the site’s value. In the end, the value is whatever both parties agree it is.
One of the tracks at the Omniture Summit today focused on leveraging user generated content (UGC) to help accomplish a site’s goals. Focusing on UGC is a wise move considering some of these latest trends:
Marketers will embrace social networking sites. The average social networker:
Advertisers want:
All of the above trends show that UGC is something worth investigating. Some important metrics used to track UGC include:
A valuable strategy for a web marketer is to use the above metrics to find and promote high value content. High value content includes both popular content and influential content. Popular content can be found by looking at raw page views. Influential content can be found by looking at the actions of users after they view UGC. Quality content can be promoted by making it a big deal:
Omniture’s SiteCatalyst v14 has a really cool feature where you can have your site interface with the analytics API and dynamically use site statistical data to identify content that is making an impact. You can then have your site use that data to automatically promote high value UGC to the front page.
This summer I’m going to implement the things I learned today on my own site, Social Wallpapering.
I was lucky to have the opportunity today to attend the Omniture Summit hosted in the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Omniture Summit is an annual event where online marketers get together from around the world to network with other professionals and learn more about their trade.
Seth Godin, a marketing guru, presented to over 2,000 people on a few abstract marketing concepts. Seth made some points about marketing that I feel are worth noting:
Seth’s presentation was stellar. For more information on his ideas and books, see his website.
Almost all popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) increase a web site’s rank based on the number of links pointing towards the web site. In an attempt to falsely inflate a web site’s popularity, an individual may generate hundreds or even thousands of dummy web sites containing little to no content except for links pointing towards a specific domain name. One method that search engines use to detect this type of miscreant behavior is to see if these inter-linking web sites are hosted on the same IP address or IP address range. If the web sites are in the same IP address range, it is highly likely that they are operated by the same individual. Search engines devalue links from web sites pointing to other web sites hosted on the same IP address range.
Conversely, search engines value links from web sites hosted on different IP addresses. An effective search engine optimizer would go further than hosting inter-linking web sites on different IP addresses. They would host the web sites on completely different class C network addresses. They would make sure that all of their domains were registered with different registrars under different names. They would not use the same template on more than one web site. They would erase all traces that their sites are operated by the same individual. They would go through all of this trouble with one goal in mind - to game the search engines in order to bring in more organic traffic.
For most web sites, having a dedicated unique IP address will have little to no effect on search engine rankings. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, stated:
“If you are an average webmaster and just running a few sites, I wouldn’t worry about them being on the same IP address and I definitely wouldn’t worry about them being on the same server. That’s something that everybody does.”
To see other web sites hosted on your server, use this tool.
The current leader in the web analytics industry, Omniture, recently promoted a web analytics competition at Brigham Young University. I participated in the competition and had the opportunity to compete at Omniture’s office building located in Orem, Utah. I had a really enjoyable time, and was able familiarize myself with SiteCatalyst, Omniture’s flagship product. I’ve been using Google Analytics for the past couple of years on my sites, and I have been very impressed with SiteCatalyst. I learned that SiteCatalyst is far more customizable than Google Analytics and allows for the creation of much more extensive reports.
The idea for the competition was simple. Omniture gave everyone access to one of their current client’s web analytics data. Our job was to analyze the data and present our findings and recommendations to a panel of judges. The client this year was backcountryoutlet.com, and our team’s strategy was to focus on these three key performance indicators (KPIs) for e-commerce stores:
During our analysis we quickly learned that the readily available data in SiteCatalyst was useful, but insufficient to draw any in depth conclusions. Given enough time to create custom reports and create calculated metrics, a web analyst can find some really cool correlations with a web site’s design and the KPIs mentioned above.
One of my favorite experiences from the competition was the chance I had to meet with a product manager at Omniture during lunch. Our team talked with the product manager about Omniture’s other upcoming products, including Discover and Search Center. We also discussed the process of choosing and bidding for good keywords using AdWords and other CPC advertising venues.
My experience in the competition has led me to ask myself how I could use what I learned about web analytics to further monetize my existing sites. Also, being able to see all of the web traffic data for a large online retailer has instilled in me the desire to start my own e-commerce store. We’ll see what I can do this summer!
Search engines use keywords in a web site’s URL to determine site content and ranking. Knowing this, it is important to form your URLs to be as search engine friendly as possible.
My latest web project is a collection of web-based network tools. I originally wrote the site with URLs formed using camel case like this:
http://www.yougetsignal.com/openPortsTool/
Search engines have a difficult time understanding what the term openPortsTool means. Matt Cutts, from Google, recommends separating terms in the URL using dashes. Here’s my new URL:
http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/
Camel Case: loremIpsumDolor
Underscores: lorem_ipsum_dolor
Dashes: lorem-ipsum-dolor < - Use dashes in your URLs for better search engine placement
Reference: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
To be tempted is to be seduced or led toward evil. Something that is evil is anything that will cause harm, either to ourselves or to others.
Everyone is tempted. When we resist temptation, it builds our moral character and helps us to make better life decisions. If we succumb to tempation we will inevitably regret our actions, either because we have hurt ourselves or hurt someone else.
Some tips to resist temptation include:
God has told us that He will always provide a way for us escape from any temptation.
I ran across this thought from one of my favorite motivational speakers, Tony Robbins:
To make your relationship work, give what you most want to receive in that relationship. If you want respect, then give respect. If you want love, then give TONS of love. If you want passion then give TONS of passion. Don’t say “Well if they would be passionate with me, then I’d get excited about my relationship.” Be passionate first!
If you are willing to come from the place where your job is to give that what you want, you are going to find that you will receive back in your relationship all the things you want. Stay out of the trap that says “Well you do it first and then I’m willing to commit as well.”
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