The threads about Pegasus looking to 'buy' customers from other hosting companies has brewed up this curiousity.

I was searching around the growthorchard.com site (Host owners can buy or sell clients here).

How much is a customer worth?

For Example.

Listed on the GO.com Site, is a host, selling 200Customers.
The revenues per customer are 15$ (Before Costs).

You are buying only the 200 Customers, so growth rate, and such doesnt matter, since you arent buying the company.

You can calculate that those 200customers bring in 3000$ a Month.

So how do you calculate how much is a good price to pay?


Thanks
Curious George

Most people ask for about 4 months revenue, am I right?

I think this has been discussed before on WHT.. ^^^-- Search button remember? =)

yeah i know its been discussed before
but i think this topic is a bit more specific..rather than a broad topic about what customers are worth.


Creid has exactly the type of answer i was looking for.
Is his response Accurate?
Thanks Chris.

Trevor

RunOfTheMill

Good question - I visited GO.com after reading the same thread as my curiuosity was stirred.

I have emailed them asking, asking them to provide more information on the site ie.
1. Is there a reserve price
2. Current bids
ect ect....

I like the idea - but without some indication of past transactions find it difficult to formulate a value.

Of course, there are many other factors to consider;
Do the customer no of the impending sale? if so would they remain? what percentage would leave?

The company may produce financial documents - but who validate s them? and on and on and on .....

Kind regards
Eladesor

This is something that I've been interested in looking at. There are a significant number of UK domain registrars that have gone out of business in the last year and we've been fairly active in trying to aquire their customer bases.

I've been considering 'sponsoring' a UK based site similar to growthorchard.com that will allow UK based registrars and hosts to seek buyers and sellers.

As for prices US hosts all seem to be in the $10 to $20 per month range. UK budget hosting prices are all in the $20 to $30 per YEAR range so prices and very low (Probably accounts for the reason why there have been so many failed hosts and registrars in the UK :-))

The UK market seems to be full of 'back bedroom' hosts buying services via reseller packages. I'm sure an ISP only buying and selling service would be of interest.

Any thoughts?

BTW to answer the question above our last aquisition was a registrar selling name only. Price was 40 pence per domain name on their books.

John,

Excellent idea - UK based company.
Please keep us informed - I'd be very interested.

Your last aquisition was a registrar - without naming was it UK based? How or where did you hear / find them?

'Off subject' - notice your in North Wales :) Hello neighbour (Brynford, Holywell!)

Regards
Eladesor

Will do.

It was a UK based registrar. I'd offered to help them a few months earlier when some of their customers moaned on newsgroups that they weren't getting any responce for support email. I was very open and asked if they were interested in selling. 6 months later they were back asking for advice on winding the company up, clearing debts and selling the business.

(They knew I was a Chartered Accountant as well so I was happy doing debt management and company sales)

We're still looking for registrars/resellers to take over and missed the DomainsRforever failure the other week by being 12 hours too late with our enquiry. :-( They decided to close and agreed a deal within 24 hours.

It also matters who these customers are in the scheme of things.
Are these all their customers?
Are they selected at random from a large pool?
Or, do they represent the slow-paying and support hogs?
etc.