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I have a website which I never developed, which is pretty useless.
HOWEVER it receives 18k visitors per month and is ranked at around 1M on Alexa! I've seen it listed on domain evaluation sites, some of which say its worth $700, another says over $3000 and now whoisbucket.com is saying its worth $5k
Is there any formula for calculating the value of a domain based on traffic,alexa rank etc?
Also, where would be the best place to advertise such a domain/site for sale?
The first thing that is not entirely clear to me is it a website or a parked domain?
you contradict yourself when you say you never developed it if is a website which gets traffic at least some minimal development must have taken place. otherwise it would be just a domain.
Valuations for domains are completely different compared to website valuations.
You write the site gets 18k visits a month. Traffic alone is meaningless.
What matters most in traffic based valuations is the quality and the source of the traffic. Insurance traffic (US) can be worth a lot while chinese traffic can be almost worthless at the same level.
So for a domain the important points would be:
1. Where does the traffic come from?
Is it from an expired domain: backlinks, bookmarks etc.
This could be worth maybe 10-15 months parking revenue if the backlinks are of a good quality and expected to last for a while.
i think the revenue per 1000 views would be around $10-25.
So if it is a domain the first step would be to park it to see how much revenue it generates. Traffic based valuation is usually revenue based.
if it is type-in traffic: Is it from a generic keyword e.g screwdrivers.com
then the traffic would probably be worth far more than 10 years parking revenue(a multiple of that i would say) if you can find an end user for that name.
to a reseller that traffic would be worth at least a few years ppc revenue i would say(in reality the domain value would be much higher than that in such i case i would guess)
if the traffic is type-in but some kind of misdirected traffic:
example: there is an established website under websitexxxx.net
and you own the .com version of that than the value to a rtraffic buyer it would probably higher than the backlink multiple and lower than the generic type-in parking revenue multiple.
if the traffic is typo traffic from trademarks it worth less than 0.
if it is a website which gets traffic from search engines: typically they sell for 10 times monthly revenue unless the site is special. then you can get more than that.
if it doesn't have any revenue you could put up adsense or something like that to get an idea of the revenue potential.
if you have traffic stats you could use a simple formula like:
adense CPM (Earnings per 1000 impressions) x Monthly Pageviews in Thousands x 10
The CPM can be anywhere between $1-10 sometimes even higher or lower.
Commercial categories (financials etc.) will be on the higher end and non commercial categories on the lower end. CPM will probably greatly depend on the country where the majority of the traffic originates: US, UK , Canada, Europe will have far higher CPMs on average than traffic from developing countries.
The only real way to find out is to test.
Is there any formula for calculating the value of a domain based on traffic,alexa rank etc?
you don't need alexa if you have traffic stats. Alexa is unreliable. i would forget about it unless it's the only data you have.
i read about an alexa based traffic calculation once. i think it was something like alexa reach x 500.000 to get the daily traffic. from that you could guess the revenue but i don't remember how it worked exactly and if this can be an useful metric. I don't believe this a a very reliable method though.
better stay clear of alexa if you want to estimate website values.
so based on your traffic info : 18k visitors ( lets assume 1.5 pageviews per visit)
27k views per month:
from backlinks: $17.5 x 27 = $472 per month x 12 = $5670 domain value (to a traffic buyer)
some kind of misdirected traffic(non TM) = $9440 domain value
adsense website: $5 x 27 = $135 per month x 10 = $1350 website value
these are of course averages which tell very little about an individual website or domain.
this is my personal opinion based on limited experience from spending some time on domain forums and website auctions but i think it shoudn't be that far off on average i would say.
if the traffic is somewhat targetted you could try your luck with other monetisation options such as affiliate programs. this can sometimes greatly enhance CPM (many-fold if traffic is right), sometimes it doesn't work at all.
