Website Investing Deals 6th May 2020
This week I’m featuring 4 new sites ranging from ~$10K to $1MM, plus two authority domains.
Happy Wednesday and welcome to this week’s pick of the best content site deals. You're receiving this as a paying subscriber.
I've started better tracking how many existing and new content site listings are on the brokerages and platforms each week, and thought it would be useful to visualize the split going forward. There's currently 163 listings across the market for content sites earning greater than $500/m.
(I'm aware there are other sites / brokerages but they would not significantly change this distribution).
This week I’m featuring 4 new sites ranging from ~$10K to $1MM, plus two authority domains.
Just be aware that Google confirmed there was an algo update on Monday so make sure you look out for this in Ahrefs / Google Analytics and adjust (or pull out) accordingly, i.e. below is one I saw on Flippa:
As always, the Reminder and Terminology sections are after the deals, and if you're using Gmail make sure you hit View entire message at the bottom to see all deals as Google truncates long emails.
On-Market Platform Deals
Site: grapplinginsider.com
Niche: MMA
Flippa Listing Type: Public Auction
Monetization: Direct ad sales, Ezoic & Affiliate
L6M av revenue: $770
Starting price: $7,000 (reserve not met)
Flippa Listing URL: https://flippa.com/10544666-advertising-sports-and-outdoor
Patey Notes: L6M av rev was $770 but L3M is only $337 - I initially assumed that the majority of revenue is from selling direct ads as the seller states in the notes that he no longer has time to do this. But there is a screenshot from Ezoic showing an average EPMV of $9 and with pageviews last month of 93k (due to a large social channel) that would translate to over $800 in earnings. Definitely one to explore here. DR15 bringing in 3K ST from 9.6K KWs on a flat trajectory. Three pages in the top ten are near the bottom of p1 in Google for their top KWs, but the site has two pages on p2 with 3.6K and 12K search volume KWs. Top page only brings in 10% of traffic. Almost 3000 pages in the google index due to a huge amount of bloat (archive, tag pages etc) and the top 100 pages in Ahrefs bring in 86% of ST. What I'd do is: 1) clean up the index, removing all but a couple hundred articles, 2) build a bunch of page level links (anchors currently very clean so can go aggressive) to double the current 43 dofollow backlinks from unique domains, 3) add a bunch of physical MMA product review pages (only reviews I can currently see are courses) to increase affiliate revenue.
On-Market Brokered Deals
Niche: Sports
Monetization: Amazon Associates, Ads & Affiliate
L8M av revenue: $3,041
Listing price: $111,996
Multiple: 37x
Broker Name: Empire Flippers
Listing URL: https://empireflippers.com/listing/47808/
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.
Patey Notes: DR19 bringing in 34.3K ST from 29.6K KWs on an upward trajectory. Zero page / KW level dependency, top page bringing in 11% traffic. Whereas the Flippa site above reads like a passion project, the content on this site is more made for adsense (or in this case Mediavine). Info content reads just about ok, but could be improved as well as could the page structure, with small left-justified images. Review content is structured better with ok looking product review boxes that highlight the two best options well. But CRO on single product review segments is poor, with again small images and no CTA buttons - so potential upside available. 104 dofollow backlinks from unique domains with a natural looking anchor text profile - room to be aggressive here too. 946 pages in google index but only 74 posts in the sitemap, due to a tag sitemap with 839 URLs spewing into the index - could be real significant upside cleaning that up.
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Niche: Culinary
Monetization: Amazon Associates, Advertising
L7M av revenue: $29,203
Listing price: $1,050,377
Multiple: 36x
Broker Name: Empire Flippers
Listing URL: https://empireflippers.com/listing/47823/
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.
Patey Notes: DR52 bringing in 198K ST from 222K KWs that got hit by the mid January core update, according to Ahrefs, but flattened out mid Feb and has been increasing since. Indeed, helped by the lockdown, traffic is now at an all time high. Three pages (#3, #4, #6) in the top ten are near the bottom of p1 in Google for their top KWs but top page only brings in 6% of traffic. Info content, monetized by AdThrive, reads well, and review pages are well laid out with a top / budget pick option above the fold (well would be above the fold if the featured image wasn't so huge and there wasn't an ad unit directly underneath) but the product comparison table is just a text table so potential upside available here. 646 dofollow backlinks from unique domains, mostly brand such as from nytimes.com but the odd partial match anchor thrown in for good use. Looks solid, which you'd hope for a 7 figures asking price.
Portfolio Sellers
Niche: Outdoor / Survival Gear
Monetization: Amazon affiliate
L6M av revenue: $330 (based on new commission)
Buy Now Price: $10,500
Multiple: 32x
Listing URL: https://www.motioninvest.com/ryg270601/ - You just need to sign up for a free account to see the URL and listing page (no deposit required).
Relationship with the Company: Motion Invest is Spencer Haws from Niche Pursuits and Jon Gillham from Authority Website Income who I previously interviewed
Patey Notes: DR27 bringing in 3.7K ST from 5.4K KWs which had been declining since November 2019 but has now levelled and is slightly up L30D according to Ahrefs. Only one page in the top ten (#2 page) is near the bottom of p1 for its top KW but this one has a huge 14K search volume and only has one dofollow backlink, so significant potential upside available from building page level links. Top page only brings in 13% of traffic, 97 pages in google index. Content reads well and the review pages are full-width and well structured with decent CRO (but could be improved further). Site has native ads in the sidebar on on info content, so would be worth testing an ad platform such as Ezoic instead once you get pageviews to 10K L30D (was 9K last month). Only thing to bear in mind is that the highest % of anchors are from a 301 redirected site which has now been turned off. That site only has a DR5 and 29 dofollow backlinks from unique domains but it's worth asking about.
Authority Domains
Domain Info Page: https://odys.global/dashboard/domain/843 (direct link for signed up subscribers - use this link to fast track your application)
Niche: Gardening
Google Trends:
Price: $1410
ODYS recommendation: We heartfully recommend building an authority affiliate site reviewing tools and seeds for gardening
Patey Notes: The trend for gardening is at a historic high due to the covid, so get a head start building out a site on an 20 year old domain and take advantage of that lockdown traffic and move to greater self-sufficiency. 121 dofollow backlinks from unique domains including a DR80 from mtu.edu and some old / archived dofollow links from fool.com and wn.com. Anchors are all about gardens and birds. Affiliate Site Building add-on available from $2610 for 50k words which includes keyword research, redirecting any old URLs that they can’t rebuild and one years hosting.
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Domain: locallygrowngardens.com
Asking price: $3k
Seller Name: Amit Bhattacharya
Seller Contact Email: abcrjee@gmail.com
My relationship with the seller: Seller cold reached out to me, have listed a number of his sites before.
Patey Notes: 12 year old domain with only 2 registrars and showing no drops in domaintools.com. DR16 domain with 2 pages still indexed and 1 KW showing up in Ahrefs. 113 dofollow backlinks from unique domains including DR91 from buzzfeed.com and DR86 from foodandwine.com - 70% of anchors brand, really clean looking domain. Most recent snapshot in archive.org is August 2019 showing it as a local restaurant site.
Reminder:
I pick content sites that look good or interesting deals to me. I look up the sites in Ahrefs and give my thoughts on the assets but you will need to conduct your own due diligence (use this process template).
I choose not to pick sites that are still declining after a google update.
I do not choose sites that require expert knowledge on a topic, such as Forex or a gaming niche.
I do not recommend multi-site deals (i.e. 2+ site packages) as it just gets too messy and the multiples get jacked up
I do not list sites that are based around a potential fad, such as a computer game
I don’t normally disclose the URL of sites - it is up to the sellers or brokers to reveal it. In the next couple of months I will have over 100 paying subscribers and investors do not want hundreds of people all seeing the URL of the site they just acquired.
I charge no fees to sellers or brokers of sites that I select, and charge nothing on the transaction so I can remain impartial.
I do not verify traffic or revenue - the amounts stated are from the seller / broker.
However, I only feature Flippa Listings with “verified traffic” where sellers have given access to their google analytics account
I choose to express an average of revenue rather than profit to make it easier to compare deals and it’s up to the investor to decide how much of cashflow to reinvest.
Multiples are based on revenue and not profit.
I don't count revenue from guest / sponsored posts - it's not sustainable and doesn't create a real asset.
All sites are in English and have the majority of traffic in US / UK / CA / AUS / NZ.
Feel free to hit reply and ask me any anything further about any of the deals.
Terminology:
L6M = last six months average revenue. L30D = last 30 days etc
TTM = Trailing twelve months (in total)
MoM = month on month
Keyword / page dependency = at risk of losing significant traffic by dropping off p1 in google by being in position 8-10.
DR = domain rating by Ahrefs measures a site's authority by the strength of linking domains. I call < DR 30 as low, DR30-60 as mid range, and DR 60+ as high.
KW = keyword (search term)
ST = search traffic
PV = pageview
Anchor = anchor text
RPM = Revenue per 1000 pageviews
EPMV = Earnings Per Thousand Visitors
CRO = conversion rate optimization
CTA = call to action
GA = Google Analytics
GSC = Google Search Console
Dime = $1,000 (poker term!)
Cheers!
Richard