Website Investing Deals 17th June
There's currently 171 live listings (+12 from last week) across the main players in the market, for revenue-generating (pure) content sites earning > $500/m:
And here is the breakdown of new listings:
It’s always interesting to follow up on listings on Flippa to see what they sold for. Last week I featured garagegympro.com which had a price of $165K where I said offer just under $100K - it got sold at $110K for 32x (a lot of money for the Slovakian seller). And after publishing last week’s podcast with Ron Stefanski he decided to sell one of his sites on Flippa!
I’ve been getting more into domain investing (I bought 5 domains yesterday) and have a subscription to Estibot which I’m now using to look up the market value of the domains in deals I feature. I think this is useful to know, even if it is in theory priced into the asking price (an oversimplification I don’t subscribe to). I’ve also started including the total word count using Weglot (under the premise that content is an asset too).
This week I’m able to feature 4 revenue-generating sites ranging from ~$27K to $68K plus an authority domain from ODYS to build out on.
The Reminder and Terminology sections are here (to avoid emails getting truncated), and SOPs for due diligence and generating upside are here. You can also comment on these deals / ask me a question at the bottom of the web version.
Authority Domain
Domain Name: TheMonsterFactory.com
Domain Info Page: https://odys.global/dashboard/domain/1007 direct link for signed up subscribers - use this link to fast track your application and receive $100 in credit)
Niche: Kids / Toys & Gifts / Shopping
Google Trends: Online gifts
Ahrefs screenshot:
Wayback Machine: Feb 2018
ODYS (SEO) Price: $1,360
EstiBot (Non-SEO) Domain Value: $520
ODYS Monetization angles:
Authority affiliate site reviewing the best Kids and Toddlers gifts
eCom website selling the top-selling Gadgets & Gizmos
Authority Amazon affiliate site reviewing unique Christmas gifts, Mother’s Day gifts, Valentine’s Day gifts, Birthday Gifts, and gifts for various gifting occasions
ODYS recommendation: We heartfully recommend building an authority Amazon affiliate site reviewing unique Christmas gifts, Mother’s Day gifts, Valentine’s Day gifts, Birthday Gifts, and gifts for various gifting occasions.
Trademarks: One live word mark found on the United States Patent and Trademark Office for ‘THE WORLD FAMOUS MONSTER FACTORY’ and one on the UK Intellectual Property Office for a ‘The Monster Factory’ design (class 16 on printed matter) owned by the previous website owner ‘The Monster Factory Ltd’ (although strangely it’s not the logo that was on their site) - but looking on the UK Companies House, the company is now in administration (go detective Patey).
Patey Notes: The company that owned this domain (and trademark, see above) has gone busto as an e-commerce play, so turn it into an affiliate play instead. I like the domain, I think it’s a decent brand and Estibot places value on it. Online gift traffic and revenue is going nowhere, unlike shops in the UK which have reopened this week to unsustainable footfall. Affiliate Site Building add-on available from $2,720 for 50K words which includes keyword research, redirecting any old URLs that they can’t rebuild and one years hosting.
Off-Market Platform Deals
Niche: Gardening
Monetization: Affiliate marketing / Advertising
Total Word Count: 67,623
EstiBot (Non-SEO) Domain Value: $300
L3M av revenue: $2,519
Asking price: $68,013 (valuation/price updated to reflect the recent commission structure changes made by Amazon)
Investors Club value range: $65,000 – $70,500
Multiple: 27x
Platform Name: Investors Club
Listing URL: https://investors.club/listings/BhmfGSzgONBvZLdCvdPm (you need to register and get approved to see listings, sign up here).
My relationship with the platform: I sold Flipping Websites to Alpha Investors last year who own Investors Club.
Ahrefs screenshots:
Patey Notes: Almost no domain authority with this one due to an average DR of 1.5 from the 58 dofollow backlinks from unique domains - so this is a risk in terms of future google updates but also significant upside available from doing link building. Indeed there are over 100 KWs with > 500/m search volume that are sitting on p2. I’d budget $2K+ a month for 6 months and re-evaluate (link services I recommend). Only two pages (#4 & #9) in the top ten are near the bottom of p1 for their top KWs, and top page only bringing in 13% so little dependency here. Top page passes copyscape and gets a grade 10 ‘OK’ for readability in Hemingway so could be improved. Review pages are well structured with decent CRO. Organic traffic in Ahrefs showing a potential dip in the last few days (but not as bad as it looks in the ‘One year’ graph above) but has still doubled in L30D.
Niche: Home Entertainment
Monetization: Affiliate marketing / Advertising
Total Word Count: 71,109
EstiBot (Non-SEO) Domain Value: $0
L6M av revenue: $985
Asking price: $27,580 (valuation/price updated to reflect the recent commission structure changes made by Amazon)
Investors Club value range: $27,000 – $28,000
Multiple: 28x
Platform Name: Investors Club
Listing URL: https://investors.club/listings/iKA3PXaDk2W5rvBl5WdK (you need to register and get approved to see listings, sign up here).
My relationship with the platform: I sold Flipping Websites to Alpha Investors last year who own Investors Club.
Ahrefs screenshots:
Patey Notes: Top page brings in only 10% of organic traffic and only #7 page is near the bottom of p1 for its top KW, but need to bear in mind that out of the 4700+ KWs that are on p1 in Google, 3300+ are featured snippets - this is a snippet beast of a site. Weak / spammy looking link profile with only one genuine-looking link I could find in Ahrefs from a DR7 site - 49 dofollow backlinks from unique domains. Again I’d look to invest a similar level into backlinking as per the site above, and potentially disavow a lot of these existing links if not already done. Putting the top page in Copyscape comes up with 10 results but that may be due to the nature of this site (will make sense when you unlock the URL), but the content scores a grade 5 (good) in Hemingway. 210 pages in google index but the top 100 bring in 95% of traffic according to Ahrefs so may be decent upside running a content audit (SOP here). Site design is also terrible, which is easily fixed with any modern theme (or Elementor) and always good to see as an investor.
On-Market Brokered Deals
Niche: Technology
Monetization: Amazon Associates
Total Word Count: 268,389
EstiBot (Non-SEO) Domain Value: $0
L11M av revenue: $1,602
Listing price: $53,300
Multiple: 34x
Broker Name: Empire Flippers
Listing URL: https://empireflippers.com/listing/47775/
My relationship with the broker: I’ve sold a six figure site through Empire Flippers and they give me VIP codes to get access to their listings.
Ahrefs screenshots:
GA screenshot:
Patey Notes: Crazy differences shown between Ahrefs and GA (with organic traffic segment on) - Ahrefs shows a huge hit from Nov 8th Google update and another potential acceleration down from May 4th update which did not happen in reality (but again at least the trend was correct). Only two pages (#5 & #8) in the top ten are near the bottom of p1 for their top KWs and two pages are on p2 in Google - top page only bringing in 13% traffic. 184 groups of similar dofollow links which are mostly spammy looking or low quality guest posts - indeed only 1% of anchors are to the brand / domain name so also needs investment here. Top info content page passes copyscape, but only scores a grade 12 (ok) in Hemingway so could be improved. Top review page is structured well, there is good design throughout the site, and CRO elements are decent but upside available improving the product comparison tables.