

Ask HN: How much can I sell my company for? - whittwuli

I created a site back in 2006 to teach myself rails and it is now a #1 Google Ranked PR5 site.  It has a strong viral loop and continues to grow at an exponential rate because of this.  It's profitable and requires no work to maintain. The details of my sale sheet can be downloaded here:
http://myfreecopyright.com/sale_sheet.pdf<p>How much do you think I can sell this for?
======
nkh
I think the better question is how much do you want for it?

I'm sure you have heard of Flippa.com. Head over that way.

I would determine how much you want to fund your next thing and see if anyone
takes it. I would multiply the revenue by 3X, so I would put a price at ~45K.
However, that is me just making up what I would do.

------
AznHisoka
10-12 months multipliers as others in this thread has said. And that's being a
tad optimistic.

You mention all the reasons why it should be higher, but look at the other
perspective.

\- You say good, organic SEO. But remember, Google can penalize anyone, even
if you are 100% white hat, and if it's a mistake, would you trust the support
dudes will help you?

\- You say no work to maintain. But how about someone who has no clue how to
run a dynamic site? There's work involved in moving files, setting things up,
setting up email, DNS, name servers, file permissions.. etc, let alone fixing
any issues that might arise.

\- You say viral loop but it means almost nothing because the dudes who come
in through the viral loop are worth less than the ppl who come in through the
search traffic.

\- You say stats are legit, but remember, noone knows who you are in the
internet. You're not selling to a friend or family member. And ppl will always
be suspicious of someone selling something that's raking in cash, they'll ask
why are you selling it in the first place?

------
staunch
I'd be worried about the liabilities in operating the service. It appears to
be offering a legal service. What if someone gets involved in a big lawsuit
and your system fails so they sue you for negligence? I'm not a lawyer so I
can't imagine all the scary things, but it _seems_ scary.

When you sell it I'd be sure to get the buyer to release you of any
liabilities related to it.

~~~
whittwuli
It is a legit non-repudiation service that is legally valid. It can be used in
most countries court system and follows Berne Convention. I've got most of it
covered in the FAQ and more information can be seen here:
[https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...</a><p>Thanks for
the advice thou.

~~~
rprasad
Except that it's not legally valid in the U.S. or in Europe, where courts will
not _and cannot_ enforce a copyright which has not been registered with a
recognized copyright authority (i.e., the U.S. copyright office or its
equivalents in the European Union).

You are on the border line of committing fraud when you state that your are
providing free copyright registration, because you are not. You are providing
free _third-party_ copyright registration, but that is not the same thing.

(IAAL, and I have done copyright litigation.)

~~~
whittwuli
Last I looked into it, it was valid in most European courts and the exception
was U.K. and U.S. who have an extra layer of extortion above the Berne
Convention which requires registration with their system in order to be
accepted into the court. Spain, Italy and the others accept what MFC provides
and is why there are a ton of services started in these countries like the
following: <http://www.dmca.com/> <http://easytimestamping.com/>
<http://www.safecreative.org/> <http://myows.com/> <https://depotcode.com/>

~~~
rprasad
You're mistaking evidence of creation with the ability to enforce the
copyright. The first goes to your ability to win your case, the second goes to
your ability to even file the case in the first place.

------
SHOwnsYou
I think usually the general rule for smaller sites like this is 8-12x your
monthly gross. A small site can quickly lose its money generating ability and
10 months is still a long time in the internet world.

Also, put your contact information in your profile.

~~~
whittwuli
What are some common things that could happen that would cause this site from
increasing it's revenue monthly? I can show steady, monthly growth in all
metrics for the past 3 years. It continues to earn more and captures more
users which display the badge on their site and this continues the snowball
growth. Is this not valuable?

~~~
SHOwnsYou
Google recalculates pagerank and search rankings, you were using underhanded
seo tactics and google will nix you, or you could just be lying about what the
site does.

Other less common things: legislation, new competition, or a bad server
outage.

What were you expecting to get?

~~~
whittwuli
All my stats are legit. Also the SEO is pure and natural growth from a site
that has been around almost 6 years. I mentioned that some creative SEO
tactics could be used with all the content, but I've never done that. I've
added my contact to my profile...if your interested in the site, please
contact me offline.

------
mrkmcknz
I think you could get around $10,000-$15,000 for this.

~~~
whittwuli
That's what I make in a year on ads for the site. Wouldn't there be a
multiplier on a sale? It keeps increasing pageviews, uniques and users per
month because of the viral loop.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
It's hard to say. If you really want to sell it the best place to go is
Flippa. There's so much trash out there that a site that actually makes decent
money are pretty valuable.

------
vjy
I think it depends

