domain Site Appraisal

[Zeeble]

Hi guys,

(Rep and NP$ to good appraisers)

I'm not looking to sell the site, I'm just curious as to how much it's worth.

The site up for appraisal is:
www.dd.am

DD.am is a free webhosting forum with 584, and between 10-30 new signups daily. The site has an average of 9.3 posts per user which is fairly good (I believe).

The service currently hosts more than 500 websites.

The USP of the website is that members can signup instantly through the custom modification to the site. Members can choose to either host using a subdomain or a TLD. If they choose subdomain they can use a free .dd.am subdomain which is proving to be incredibly popular with the members.

The custom script installed on the site offers more than just automated signup through the forum, it also upgrades and downgrades accounts bi monthly depending on the number of posts they make. So the complete system is automated. I have not seen anything like it anywhere else.

Up until recently the site had Google ads running, however I believe that a competitor had been clicking the ads to make it look like click fraud was occuring, and the account has been banned (at least until I square everything with Google). Before the ads were taken down the site was turning over $200 per month, and was set to increase to $300. The long term potential of the site is good.

Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Zeeble]

Bump, any appraisal is appreciated.

 

[JSaez]

It's a really nice idea you got there. The forum seems quite active and if you had a revenue of 200$/m + 600 users + 500 hosted webpages it should go for mid $xxxx IMO.
On top of that, the domain is great and the redirection service is perfect.
Congratulations for your webpage!

 

[Zeeble]

Rep left, and 5NP$ donated. Many Thanks!

 

[Celdric]

I wondering what "good" appraisers are? The ones who agree to your opinion about your site? And will you give me bad rep points, if I do not?

 

[Zeeble]

Good appraisers (in my opinion) are appraisers who give an analysis and a reason for the amount they appraise at.

You could appraise the site at $1 so long as you tell me why

 

[ilcesco]

I think that an honest appraisal of the entire website would be at about low $xx,xxx. (let's say at ~15K)
Most of the potential users that would be interested in buying a website like your, will be watching mostly at the traffic revenue. The average buyer probably would think something like this:"~200$/months, I pay 3 years revenue, 200*36=7200$", But what lead me to see that your site has strong upwards potential is that it's all almost automtic, so it donsen't need a daily or hourly work, it's a community that is still growing, and also the domain itself is really good for a redirection service.
Obviously i wouldn't sell it at the moment, maybe in few years.

 

[Celdric]

I asked with a smile. Thanks for the response.

Well, I don't think that the name has a high value. Two letters, thats nice, but .am (I think thats Armenia) is doubtless not the kind of extension (among many other contry domains) that the international market desires.
I wouldn't pay more than low $$$ - mid $$$ for it. Also because the name has no meaning and you can use it only as acronym.

As for the site. You are posting a couple of infos. The most important one seems to be in my opinion that the site is actually banned at adsense. So if I understand it right, the forum does not earn any revenue. That's bad. Usually I say monthly revenue x 36 month = value.

Actually that would be 36 x nothing = nothing.
Well, of course it's not nothing. I just want to say, actually I can't say what the site may be worth. Though basing on your infos I would agree that the site has a good long term potential.

 

[smub]

dd.am

i'd say it can get more than high xxx due to the fact it is on LL.am also it is two same letters, and very easy to remember.

Also it have 183,000,000 << google results if you just type dd

and 94k results by only typing dd.am

so link popularity is good

it can have many acronyms.

for ex. domain daddy dig domains etc

i'll say an end - user might pay in high xxx easily or xx,xxx

good luck with the domain

 

[Zeeble]

Thanks for the appraisals guys.

rep and NP$ left.

I also wanted to add that another domain used by the site (www.ariel-networkz.com) currently has PR6.

 

[Zeeble]

Just an update and a bump. Since I made this thread we have gained 98 new members, and we now host well over 600 websites.....

Any more appraisals?

Thanks,
Colin

P.S Google ads are back up, averaging $5-$6 per day.

 

[SiteBroker]

I am amazed at some of the appraisals here, especially the mid xx,xxx.
I will give you an honest appraisal.

The site itself is a free web hosting site just like any other expect from some custom modifciation. Free webhosting sites do not tend to make much profit and often come and go.
I took a look around the site, most of the users like at all freewebhost sites are outside of the usa and europe which already puts the value down as these are not main targetted areas advertisers want. 500 members isnt bad, but when these are all 500 members who pay nothing and only join to use free services and post to keep their accounts, this means a prospective buyer can not plan on turning this site into a paid host, or use it to stem other paid sites as these members are only here because it is free and for free hosting.
The $200 a month, this is not nothing special in a site, im also sure you havent included the server charge, lets say $100 a month for a server this now brings your revenue to $100/month not including advertising etc.
The large resources free hosting sites take up, alot of people use free hosts soley for illegal and un ethical uses. As a throw away host.
A look into the site shows its had alot of downtime and even was offline for around a month due to it.

Take into account when buying a site:
A Solid 12x monthly revenue (a few months of revenue is not solid in any buyers mind)
Traffic and members

I would appraise your site at $1000, if you are very lucky.

 

[Zeeble]

Thanks SiteBroker.

Just in reply to a few issues which you raised (quite rightly).

Most of our users come from Europe, and quite a few from the USA.
I do agree that many hosts have a problem with people hosting illegal material, however we do monitor for it. We do have the odd sites which do this, but the majority of our users use the server to host forums, blogs and personal sites.
I just glanced over our stats as to where most of the traffic is coming from, and in fact US visitors far outweigh those from the EU, Russia and China.

The history of the downtime really came down to a bad webhost when the site was originally launched. However, we relaunched ourselfs with a new managed dedicated server. This month has been our first proper month online since relaunching and we had a few problems, mainly with MySQL which the host has now sorted.

In regards to revenue, I suppose it's probably not so much the current revenue but the potential revenue which would lead a buyer to buy this site. With over 700 websites now hosted, it certainly does have good potential revenue.

 

[floatingworld]

It is a nicely designed website.
IMHO, the potential value of the site is somewhere down the road where a big player would decide to pay a substantial price to takeover a service with a multitude of participants rather than begin something themselves eg picassa for pics. You might need deep pockets for three years before cashing in which is worth it IF you are carving out a distinctive niche, so the value is potentially very high indeed as per dotcom boom, but also the risk of the bust. Good luck.

 

[Zeeble]

That is a good point that you had made Yoshi. It's the long term gain rather than the short term here. Although the site will always at least cover itt's server costs.