First of, all, sorry if this is not the aprropriate forum to post this. I m not sure i chose the right one.

I have a question: I m thinking of selling a forum i own,
1. because I nned money
2. because it is too big for me to handle it.

How can i calculate the price of my forum?

Details:
The forum is up and running for about 4-5 years/
It has 2120 members. 80% of them hase posted at least one message. Inactive members are being deleted regularly.

It has around 1.000.000 posts
around 14.000 topics

Average visitors: a few months ago, it was around 30.000-40.000 per month.
After serius problems in hosting it was shut down for more than a month. Now, the visitors are around 20.000-30.000 but it started growing again, so I think it will soon reach the previous number of visitors (of around 40.000)

Last (and maybe most important), it is the largest forum in my country. I mean it has more than 100 forums and many many more subforums. Actually, the unique thing in my forum is that it is 5 different forum installation combined to work as one. (sharing members, private messages, who is online option etc) This was made by a programmer who did any needed changes in code so as all forums are combined.
The five forums all share a "portal/index page" which gives information about latest posts in each forum, newest members, descrpition for each forum etc.

So, could you help me find a right price for selling it? Is there a standar/fair way to find this out?
If you need any more details in order to help, feel free ta ask.

Thanks in advance for any help.

12 x monthly revenue is a good yardstick.

It could be easy if i have been earning money from the site.
Right now, in my site, 12xmonthly revenue =0

It could be easy if i have been earning money from the site.
Right now, in my site, 12xmonthly revenue =0

So you are selling potential basically.

If you could get some cold hard figures this may increase both your chances of selling and the price you sell for.

So place an ad for 2 months and display these figures when you are selling.

Ash

In my opinion you could be sitting on a goldmine :P

You definitly should get some revenue started right away although forums can be tricky to generate much but with some research you could find a profitable stream. As mentioned, run it for a month or two and you will be able to be in a much better position to sell. If you must sell now then it will be based on traffic and potential so be ready to hand stats etc over to potential buyers.

Whatever you think your forum is worth to you. =)

Value of something can be different to a lot of people. If it has stable revenue than 10x something to throw out there.

Try monetizing it first. Your forum sounds like it has the potential to earn at least some money, so it is worth a try to do this. And who knows? Maybe you will be glad you didn't sell it down the road from now.

first of all, thank you for your opinions/advices.

I unfortunately see that forum arent really worthy these days. They are....out of fashion. Exceptions are the specialized forums, like this one we are right now for example.

I really aprreciate your advices, but i d really want to hear some range of prices, maybe any sale of a similar forum. I inseest cause i dont know if we are talking for 100 $ or 1000$ or 10000$

I really have no idea what is a fair price both for me and for any buyer.

Try selling your site on sitepoint.com alot of people go on that site and you can be banking if you sold that site. Just list a price you think is most fair or ask them on that forum. I wish you the best of luck. I'd be interested to know what this site is called, could you please send me an email Frimon86 -@- Hotmail.com with the link please? Thank you!

P.S I am with Fanatical Host :) on this. You COULD be sitting on a goldmine.

You could go onto several domain related sites and ask for offers. Just state the facts without trying to look clueless. See if you get any offers.

One of my sites receives 20000 to 30000 unique visits per month and I am getting about US$150 per month from it. I heard this is low relative to other sites (I have low eCPM because I did not optimize for the keyword and did not spend much effort to get sponsors.)

So assume 1. Techno is right and 2. you get $150 per month (at minimum), the price should be $1800. But being the largest forum in your country (that is a good selling point to get advertisments), I think you should try to get someone to help you to maintain and to market the site. There are some venture capitalists out there that may be interested in investing money in it.

You mind to share the forum's url?

I would look at the revenue and come up with a number between 6 to 12 months annual revenue. I would also look at other factors, like the domain name. Is it popular, is it worth something on its own? The PR of the site. The number of indexed pages, backlinks and other SEO important factors will also contribute to the site.

I've sold Amazon Sites for $3k or more just based on the indexed pages and PR they held alone. You may find that your site is worth more just based on these SEOish factors alone...

Good luck!

PageRank and search engine ranking going count toward the total sale of the forum. If you own a high pagerank site, you get more $$ :)

Try sitepoint forums, SitesBuySell.com and Digipoint.com all offer site trading and auctions

BTW, it is "forums.digitalpoint.com", i.e, "digital" not digipoint... ;)

I would second that suggestion. You'll find that at DP you can do this for free. Sitepoint I believe charges.

Good luck!