mrsurrey
30th Jan 2013, 18:31
Hi All,
I've been sitting on a website since college days, despite being neglected it's steadily grown over 10 years to 72,000 unique visitors per month. I appreciate it's hard to tell without seeing it but given it's a recruitment website using user-defined-content do you think this is a significant website? (it's basically unmonetized).
My mood alernates between wanting to close it down so that I can forget about it, to wanting to hang on to see if it could somehow put my (as yet non existent!) kids through private school!
What do you think I should do? As I said I've been sitting on it for 10 years now so it's about time I closed this out! :-)
Cheers,
MrS
mixture
30th Jan 2013, 19:10
it's basically unmonetized
Therein lies your biggest problem.
If it was monetized with a clear and growing revenue stream, then you would have little issue finding a buyer.
For an unmonetized site, you have to have a very good reason as to why people are visiting your site, and indeed that they are genuinely useful "sticky" visitors and not just bots and crawlers.
Have you looked at the competition ? (both in terms of prospective buyers, and in terms of what makes your site unique from theirs ?).
wanting to hang on
Time waits for no man on the internet. If you want to see if you can sell it, start getting the ball rolling right now.... otherwise someone with deeper pockets could easily come along tomorrow, copy the concept and know you're unlikely to fight them.
If you heart is no longer in developing and growing the site, then there is not much point hanging onto it.... uncared for websites grow cobwebs and loose visitors quicker than a fast car gets from 0-60 !
to see if it could somehow put my (as yet non existent!) kids through private school!
I wouldn't pin your hopes on it..... sight unseen I would say low thousands, maybe a bit more if you've got a decent domain name and you talk a good talk .... say the £10-£20k region if you manage to get all your pitch lined up perfectly (maybe a bit more if you manage to secure a buyer with deep pockets) ... sub £10k if you muddle your way through. Doubt you would ever find your way to a six figure sum, but I may be underestimating you and your website !
Personally, I would focus your mental efforts on looking at medium/long-term investment opportunities available in the financial markets, particularly stockmarket equities (funds are a bit boring... low risk but also low reward with one or two exceptions I know of that offer moderately better rewards). There are some great opportunities out there at the moment, and more to come. If you don't trust yourself DIY, find yourself a good, solid financial advisor (yes, such a thing does exist if you know where to look !).
Sure having some money in the bank is a good thing, but unless personal circumstances dictate otherwise, it shouldn't be a large proportion of your money because you are loosing money every day with the poor bank interest rates combined with the effects of tax and inflation (to make money you would need to find an account paying somewhere between 5 and 8% pre-tax depending on your tax bracket !).
Maybe use the funds from a website sale to boost the starting funds for an investment portfolio ?