domain High Volume Ecommerce Site for Sale

[Perfumes]

I thought I would put some feelers out there, as I am looking to possibly sell my 1.5 year old Perfume Site. I will not reveal the URL at this point, so, please don't ask, however, please note the following. I do kindly ask that if you are able to figure out the URL, that you NOT post it, as a courtesy, yet:

-PR5 Homepage (likely to be PR6 after next update)
-Roughly 40,000 unique visitors per month (growing quickly)
-Roughly 400,000 page views per month (growing quickly)
-Roughly $70,000 per month in sales volume
-Roughly $800 per month in google adsense revenue (could generate more if ads were placed more prevalently, but, I don't want to take too much attention from the main, ecommerce portion of the site).
-Page one rankings on google, yahoo, and msn for most of my targeted keyphrases, including the biggest keyphrase in the industry ("perfume")
-Likely to do more than $1mil in sales volume next year


All of the above information is quite easily verifiable by any interested parties. If you are not interested, or simply don't have the capital for a website of this type, any guesstimates as to it's worth, with some reasoning, might be GREATLY appreciated.

Sincerely,

Perfumes

 

[Keynes]

Sounds like it has "Unlimited" potential :] ...any information on your product margins? Do you ship via wholesale or do you own?

 

[btrader]

you have our attention, I know of several potential buyers. I would need to know your gross margins, your acquisition costs, the number of customers you have, the number of repeat customers, and you advertising expense. 2004 #'s.

If you are serious, and your numbers look good, I will expect a brokerage agreement (non-exclusive gets you a few phone calls and emails) exclusive get you a serious focused effort.

Hope this Helps, best of luck.

 

[wot]

We were talking a year or so ago I believe. :talk:

A very extensive site and huge potential above and beyond current revenue.

This is not the best place to get a sales evaluation. It warrants inviting a professional approach with perhaps a firm of accountants familiar with this wonderful business of ours.

I hope you come up "smelling of roses" :lol:

 

[Perfumes]

You folks are good. Yes, there is "Unlimited" potential here, in my opinion. Let me answer a few of your questions.

All products are shipped (not dropshipped). There is no way to compete in this industry with a dropshipper, as they don't exist in the industry. There is ONE company out there claiming to dropship for you, however, their pricing is absurd.

Any sale would NOT include inventory (close to $1mil in inventory), however, I would provide you with a list of suppliers, including the product lines in which tehy are strongest. One of my strengths is my buying ability, and, I would be happy to pass this on to you.

BTrader: I'm looking for opinions at this stage, nothing more. I am seriously considering selling, yes, however, this is my baby and, you must forgive me if it's going to take a little bit of warming up to. Please don't expect any exclusivity agreements, or anything of the sort, yet. To answer your questions, however:

I do ZERO pay per click marketing, other than in the format of the shopping engines (Shopping, Bizrate, Yahoo Shopping).

Let me give you some hard numbers here. Please note that cost of goods sold is approximately 68% of sales (this number is VERY conservative, as there are certain items with MUCH higher margins, but, for the sake of remaining conservative/realistic, we will go with 68% of gross sales as the cost of goods sold).

It should be noted that I didn't escape the "Google Sandbox" if you will, until early June. I am still slowly ranking for every major search term, including category and product pages. I expect to have upwards of 1000-2000 phrases/search terms on the first page of google by the end of the year.

March:
$25,270.30 in sales
$2,100 spent on shopping pay per click engines
$1,869 spent on shipping/freight charges

April:
$42,335.23 in sales
$2,150 spent on shopping pay per click engines
$2,207.40 spent on shipping/freight charges

May:
$38,663.73 in sales
$3,400.00 on shopping engines
$2,265.85 in shipping/freight charges

June:
$52,907.01 in sales
$2,250.00 in shopping engines
$1,495.17 in shipping/freight charges (went to a rewards credit card for payment of shipping fees, which might explain the drop here)

July:
$49,837.66 in sales
$2,600 in shopping engines
$0 shipping/freight charges (again, the credit card billing statements did not coincide with the end of the month)

So far in August:
$53,246.87 (on pace for around $70k)

It should be noted that, in general, the summer months, in retail, are the slowest of the year. This is a site which will almost certainly do $1mil plus in sales next year, and is running very profitably.

Anything I've missed, please be sure to let me know.

Perfumes

Please note that, in addition to that, you can expect approximately $800 to $1000 in Google adsense revenue (pure profit). We've tweaked the ads to NOT display competitors with pricing that is competitive with ours.

Forgot some website statistics, as well as the number of customers:

There are 7,976 customers in our database. We also maintain a mailing list (some will coincide with our customer list, some won't).

Unique Visitors:

January:7763
February:9933
March:10934
April:14638
May:17260
June:17444
July:22217
August (so far):26252 (on pace for around 35000 unique visitors)

Anything else?

Perfumes

By the way, Wot, I don't think you were speaking with me, as this is the first time that I have considered selling the website. Also, I don't really want to incur the costs associated with bringining in professionals, until such time as I have made up my mind, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I'm going forward with a sale.

Having said that, if folks on here were to post appraisals of say $50k, for example (picking a number off the top of my head), I would know that selling is not an option, as I wouldn't consider anything in that range. Know what I mean?

Just trying to get a VERY rough idea on here prior to proceeding with possibly more sophisticated valuations.

Perfumes

 

[btrader]

Anyone serious is going to want some type of exclusivity. We could discuss further in a PM. I have sold businesses for almost 2 decades, and could elaborate on my unique background in private.

As for the value, very rough gauge - but I would think you should net around $150k on $1M sales - assuming you have kept your SGA under control. Under a scenario like that I think $300k-450k is a likely range. Consider that buyers will want to see those sales BEFORE they pay, hard to "sell-on-the-come". Expect buyers to pay in the neighborhood of $150k down and give you note for the balance.

Hope this helps. It is not pie in the sky, but it is a realistic number based on where you are. Keep in mind your valuation goes up exponentially as your revenues grow.

Be sure to PM me if you have any more questions, I have built and sold many businesses and currently own an ecommerce biz doing about 5M a year.

 

[Perfumes]

Anyone else have any other opinions/quesitons? Opinions as to the value of such a site?

Perfumes

 

[Zeeble]

Ok, the value of a website is not based completely on the level of sales. The brand, URL and Design also hold great value within themselfs. Until that information is provided, no accurate amount can be given.

However, based on the sales for this month, and the increase on last month, also provided that the sales comtinue to increase as they are at the moment, I would say that the website will have a total profit of around $300k over the next 12 months, brining the websites worth to at least $900k.

 

[Perfumes]

Well, the design of a site is something that would likely influence sales (whether directly or indirectly), and, the design of a site is something that can be changed relatively easily, whereas earnings, and profitability, as well as things like free traffic from search engines (and I emphasize free...in a highly competitive marketplace), is something that isn't as easy to obtain.

As for brand recognition...unless you are talking mega brands like Google, Coke, or Mcdonalds, how do you really measure this?

Either way, I appreciate your input, and, I would kindly ask your suggestion for going about finding a buyer. I certainly don't want to go with traditional means of finding a buyer for a business, as websites have factors which many traditional business brokers don't likely know how to measure.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

JP

 

[Kenny]

Hello Perfumes and welcome to NamePros.
:wave:
Sorry to crash your thread and I wish you
luck on your endevor, but I thought you
might want to visit our Welcome Center,
located here:

http://namepros.com/forumdisplay.php?f=49

and introduce yourself as requested by NP Staff
in the rules. Please read the stickys.

I hope you enjoy your time spent here and
continue to visit and post.

Peace, kid5150

Sorry,

BTrader, I notice you haven't
introduced yourself as well.
Please visit the Welcome Center
so everyone can get a chance
to meet you.

Peace, kid5150

 

[Perfumes]

Anyone else care to give an opinion?

 

[Zeeble]

In regards to brand recognition, I would highly disagree.

It doesn't have to be a huge brand name such as Coca-Cola, if you have a memorable name and a good looking logo which is unique, people are far more likely to come back.

 

[Perfumes]

Disagree with what? What I said was that, unless you have a major name brand, brand recognition is almost impossible to measure. How do you measure it? What might be a memorable logo to you might not be, to me. So, you didn't answer my question. How do you measure it? You should probably take greater care in reading a post prior to responding to it, without actually responding to it.