I wish to sell my web hosting business:

1. Business established in 1999
2. Domain listed in dmoz and yahoo
3. Plesk Official "Gold Channel" Partner
4. $100k p.a. profits - verifiable via cc merchant report
5. 980+ clients, each paid $99/year - verifiable via Plesk
6. $0 debt - sale does not include web hosting equipment

Asking price: $100,000.00 (including domain name)

Reason for sale: Baby coming soon and I've made my money :)

Comprehensive documentation will be provided upon direct request only. If interested, please contact topwiz@hotmail.com with full details including a day time contact number.

Serious enquires only. Thank you.

So you have 980 customers X $99.00 a year Gross income $97,020.00 but yet you make $100,000.00 a year profit.

I guess you get all servers and bandwidth for free and no support related cost? Does the buyer get that deal also so they can make 100k off of 97K gross income?

Originally posted by Monte
So you have 980 customers X $99.00 a year Gross income $97,020.00 but yet you make $100,000.00 a year profit.

I guess you get all servers and bandwidth for free and no support related cost? Does the buyer get that deal also so they can make 100k off of 97K gross income?

$100k p.a. profits are an average, it’s not the actual figure. My profits vary from year to year. As indicated, hosting service, server equipment and manpower is not included!

I cannot estimate your future profits, I'm merely stating my past performance which I have hard proof from my credit card merchant reports.

Originally posted by Monte
So you have 980 customers X $99.00 a year Gross income $97,020.00 but yet you make $100,000.00 a year profit.

I guess you get all servers and bandwidth for free and no support related cost? Does the buyer get that deal also so they can make 100k off of 97K gross income?

By profits I meant gross profits. FYI I'm the only employee and the only cost to me in running this business is the $99 month dedicated server hosting fees!

What is the domain name?

Originally posted by brn2h8
What is the domain name?

As stated above: Comprehensive documentation will be provided upon direct request only. If interested, please contact topwiz@hotmail.com with full details including a day time contact number.

This is to weed out non-serious buyers and I don’t wish to alarm my clients. Thank you for your understanding.

How many dedicated servers do you have in total and with what data centre?

Greetings:

It would help if the persons selling their business new BASIC accounting.

Gross Revenue

- Cost of Goods Sold (in this case the costs required to make the revenue)

= Gross Margin

- Operating Expenses

= Pre tax Profit

- Taxes

= Post tax Profit

As it was pointed out to you, 980 clients paying $99 per year = $97,000 per year DOES NOT equal PROFIT (any type of profit).

It does not equal gross margin. It is gross revenue.

While a company may not be buying the equipment or people required to make that revenue, that information is extremely important in the decision making process.

How many servers are required to support 980+ clients?

Does the sale include the PLESK licenses?

Are the servers now co-located or are they rented (dedicated)?

They may not be part of the sale, but it does matter for determining the actual gross margins and whehter a company buying $8.25 per month hosting customers (that's extremely CHEAP hosting) will be able to have a better margin.

Thank you.

I agree with dynamicnet, I don't know basic accounting because as I said I'm a one man show. I should have said Gross Revenue. In those golden days even an idiot like me can make money :)

Anyway here's more info on the server:

* Dual 1 GHz P3 CPU
* 4 GB ECC PC133 SDRAM
* 1 x 36 GB SCSI drive (60% free)
* 1 x 73 GB SCSI drive (45% free)

I have about 980+ clients (each paid $99/year) but since they are on multi-domain hosting accounts (each able to host 10 domains), in total they are hosting about 2600+ domains. I only have ONE server, LA is below 3.0 and uptime is superb. As indicated the server equipment is NOT included but can be negotiated.

My Plesk 5.0 license is not for sale. The server is co-located and the cost to me is $99/month. There are no other operating expenses, I don't even advertise.

Hope this helps.

As I mentioned earlier I'm a Plesk Official "Gold Channel" Partner http://www.plesk.com/Partners/gold.php so my version of Plesk is maintained and optimized by the developers to take such a large number of domains. I don't see any problems with more than 3000 domains on this server.

Are you saying you have only one dedicated server from which you have 980 clients on it paying $99 a year each!

Originally posted by blob2
Are you saying you have only one dedicated server from which you have 980 clients on it paying $99 a year each!

Yes, what's wrong with that? :D

Well since you offer every customer 3GB webspace and 30GB b/w you are seriously overselling...but you seem to have done ok from it :)

Originally posted by a:\
Well since you offer every customer 3GB webspace and 30GB b/w you are seriously overselling...but you seem to have done ok from it :)

My clients don't want to use their webspace and b/w to the max, what can I do? :D

BTW that post about being a Plesk partner really gives you away....you might want to remove it to remain anonymous.

Good luck

Ouch!

Originally posted by a:\
BTW that post about being a Plesk partner really gives you away....you might want to remove it to remain anonymous.

Good luck


yep, i second that, it took me whole 15 seconds to visit your web site

I took a look at your plan and you offer 3Gb of disk space and 30GB of bandwidth and unlimited emails/databases... it's pretty cheap if you ask me ;)

I offered 2GB of bandwidth and 150Mb of disk space back in 2000 for $99/year, that were good times.


Good luck with your sale, you have nice business there

Greetings:

Yes, easily identified out of the scores of companies listed at http://www.plesk.com/Partners/gold.php -- NOT ;-)

See his email address above.. then look at the link you posted.. then look at the plan.. ( nice site btw my88 ).

Originally posted by dynamicnet
Greetings:

Yes, easily identified out of the scores of companies listed at http://www.plesk.com/Partners/gold.php -- NOT ;-)

I think you are asking too much. Mainly because I would be very nervous to buy close to 1000 customers that are all on one server. So, the net profit is not going to be anywhere near what you are asking...and will be much lower for any serious host. I would be willing to offer 1/2 the amount you're asking.

As mentioned earlier: my action to remain anonymous is to weed out non-serious buyers and I don't wish to alarm my clients. I don't care if YOU know about me as long as you don't waste my time. Why should I spend time talking to 15 year olds who don't have any money?

I have over a dozen serious enquiries and I'm negotiating the fine print. I will NOT accept anymore offers.

Thank you for your enquiries.

That's a bit over $100 in acquisition costs for each client. The average client will have 6 months of time left on their contract, so you'd have to keep them for 6 months before you saw any revenue from them, and then another year before you cover the acquisition costs, and that doesn't even cover the costs of providing service.

how does it give him away/ There must be over 100 gold partners in that list.

If you can't find it out you are not looking very hard.

Holly crappers batman.... 3GB of space and 30 GB of BW for 99$/yr

:eek: ...site looks great.

Please let me know , talk soon

Originally posted by allprohost
Please let me know , talk soon

Please don't feel offended but in your email, you mentioned that you don't have access to the funds so why should I bother replying?

I have responded to all genuine enquiries with financing already arranged.

As mentioned earlier: I have over a dozen serious enquiries and I'm negotiating the fine print. I will NOT accept anymore offers.

Thank you for your enquiries.

I have some contact me telling me you haven't replied to them.

i think what my email said was funds will be availabel soon
70-90k
I never said i didnt have them, anyways if you dont sell it let me know , i wont have funds for 30 days

whizz whizz! LOL

based on the numbers posted, the market for a deal in unix plesk to plesk at 100K yearly is about

cash = 65K
finanaced = 85k

100k is out of the market ( at your oversell rates )

Oh how do I know this, I am asked to get buy's and sellers all the time on unix web host, I end up buying the windows sides pleanty of time. I'm also asked to look at deals and advise ( since I do it for free to help some unix players out thier in exchange for access to the windows account for my business )

just giving guildance
also I have a cash buyer if your interested

Originally posted by ADEhost
based on the numbers posted, the market for a deal in unix plesk to plesk at 100K yearly is about

cash = 65K
finanaced = 85k


Hey ADEhost:

Are you saying that plesk deal is about 65-85% of annual revenue?

What about others? Good to learn something new.
:D

Originally posted by kittiwat

Hey ADEhost:

Are you saying that plesk deal is about 65-85% of annual revenue?

What about others? Good to learn something new.
:D

Before you take anything of what I say on valuations prices, I will state the following. every purchase has some varibles. I've priced out about 85 deals this year. I have been able to take a small gift from the transaction for my own account every now and then. Also I do this for free to anybody that ask for valuation, finding the other side has to have a specific commitment known and if the deal hit's the price the sale goes.

I can price out for quick sale, financed, or wait for cash. I have buyers and I have sellers all depending on what's out thier. somepeople think that the market is 20x monthly and to be truthful, yes, 20x monthly is out there for people that have 50k monthly revenue. ( those are 1mm deals in which I take 1 point for finders fee from both sides )

I look at every deal because thier are buyers at different levels and sellers at different levels. I've learn alot this entire year on trading accounts.

well there are basic things to look at.

sale type : business or just the accounts

loss percentage ( or transfer loss ) : depending on the sale it's from 4% to 9% the objective is that the sell will guarentee on the basic platform transfer that the losses ( clients that leave ) will not exceed certain amount of monthly revenue.

revenue flow : is the client base yearly or monthly, the closer to yearly the less of a priemium you pay.

shelf life of company : has it been around long enough ...

anyway after looking over carefully the posting I would state it's a tricky deal, why ... let me point it out.

1) domain name might not be subjected to the sale
2) only yearly accounts are for sale ( so that means he's got his money out of them, and it will take you some time before you see cash flow from them )
3) well keeping quiet is good, I give him respect for weeding out the bad
4) no details on the percentage lost due to transfer
5) no details posted about monthy accounts
6) no details about non-compete agreements ( don't forget it's an asset sale not a business sale so the domain name might not come with the deal )
7) server software is non-transferable, weird, that's a first, tipcal of all deals that I have seen are the servers software is marked as leased or owned, never seen one where it's stating that it's not for sale.
8) again, the lack of basic sales info.

it's no like a walk a way deal but it's a 20 question deal.

Thanks for the insight, ADEHost.

I used to work as an Investment Banker for a few years, before turning to setting up my own hosting & software company. That's why I'm so interested in learning how you guys pricing this business. Anyway, you're totally right that there are many other aspects to the pricing, especially the quality of your portfolio (customers).

Merry X-mas everyone. :santa:

Originally posted by kittiwat
Thanks for the insight, ADEHost.

I used to work as an Investment Banker for a few years, before turning to setting up my own hosting & software company. That's why I'm so interested in learning how you guys pricing this business. Anyway, you're totally right that there are many other aspects to the pricing, especially the quality of your portfolio (customers).

Merry X-mas everyone. :santa:

no problem, if yo ever need a valuation, drop me an e-mail, if you need the win side of the trade taken I might be interested.

mike

Originally posted by AffordableHost
I think you are asking too much. Mainly because I would be very nervous to buy close to 1000 customers that are all on one server. So, the net profit is not going to be anywhere near what you are asking...and will be much lower for any serious host. I would be willing to offer 1/2 the amount you're asking.

What a load of crap! I keep backups on the second drive, why should I get more servers when my current server is half empty and half idle?