***UPDATED*** (08.02.10)
After much deliberation I’ve decided to sell spendlessonline.co.uk which is one of the longer established voucher code websites (launched in 2006). Building it was a great experience and it’s still not reached anywhere its full potential, although it makes a very tidy and growing profit every year. While you might read about websites for sale every now and again that shout from the rooftops of their massive earnings potential, returning visitors, ninja seo optimization etc etc, I think the stats for Spendless speak for themselves. It’s always been growing, with increasing profits, it’s well branded and professional, has never had a google penalty or drop in traffic. It’s reliability was a strategic decision, not to focus or rely on one specific merchant, in fact I’ve 1036 listed (so there’s still a few thousand more you can add) and make commissions for over 250 different merchants every month.
Selling it is a hard decision, because I know it’s not reached its peak. But I’ve other projects I want to pursue, such as the MBA that I plan to enroll in for this year. How much you should value a website for is a hotly contested topic. Following the advice of Kieron and the sale of ukoffer.com, I’ve also gone for 2 years profit which is £171k.
Let’s take a look at some stats:
Unique Visitors:
2006: 10,478 (from Oct-Dec)
2007: 79,971
2008: 340,282
2009: 662,781
Profitability:
Here you can see the profits by looking at revenue minus my ad spend.
2006: £1,380 revenue – £413 ads = £967 profit
2007: £20,887 – £6350 = £14,537
2008: £90,940 – £24,415 = £66,525
2009: £137,380 – £51,633 = £85,747
It’s not all about affiliate revenue, the site has also won a fair few prizes, including Philips 32 LCD TV, Bose DAB/CD Wave Music System, Philips 19” Widescreen LCD TV, Laurent Perrier Champagne, Dulux PaintPod, Sony 10.1 Cyber-shot camera, Sony DAB HiFi System, Thorntons Hamper, £100 Schuh voucher, £100 Totally Gifts voucher, £50 Red Letter Days Voucher and many more.
Inbound links according to Yahoo! Site Explorer: 3080
If that’s not already convinced you, let’s look at some of its key strengths…
SpendLess’s key strengths:
1. Age of domain/site. Goes back to 2006. Older than MVCs and VC.co.uk
2. Consistent growth in the face of ever growing competition. (See stats above)
3. Varied sources of traffic, not reliant on any one source.
4. Great Design + site runs on Wordpress so easy development.
5. Varied sources of income. Not reliant on any one merchant (1036 listed, approx 250 convert regularly)
6. Full PPC list of keywords included in purchase (including 6128 negative keywords)
7. Lots of mutually beneficial exclusive codes already in place for esteemed merchants in high value sectors such as (Interflora, RedLetterDays, Match.com)
Future potential of Spendless:
1. Site currently features 1019 merchants. Most voucher sites have over 3000 so there is plenty of space to expand niches where I’m already ranking successfully.
2. SEO is not my strong point, I would not say the site is highly optimized, vastly increased traffic and revenue growth could be achieved by someone with expert knowledge in this area.
3. It’s worth noting that from 2006 – Sep 2008 the site was run part time. Also from Jan 2009 – Sep
2009 I was travelling the world and only worked on it in small intermittent bursts, yet look at the growth in revenue! Way more could be achieved by its new owner working more consistently or with a team.
4. The new owner could expand to selling ad spots, this functionality already exists and this could add significant income(see the skyscraper banner on the right hand side of every deal page for example).
5. At present codes are administered via a custom built tool, however it would be possible to automate this management process by using a system like icodes or promotions.co.uk
The asking price is just two years profit, so £171k. This is fixed and non-negotiable. I would not accept a revenue split so please don’t suggest that. Of course I’d be more than happy to answer any more specific questions you might have, just drop me a mail.
***UPDATE***
A few people have been asking about the breakdown of traffic for the site. The breakdown is roughly:
45% Organic
45% PPC
10% “Other”
The growth of organic traffic has outstripped that of ppc over the last year or so as you can see in the graphs below. Any other question then send me a mail.
***UPDATE 2***
Just incase anyone is thinking i am jumping ship now that Spendless has reached its peak i thought i would add a small update. Looking at the stats for January, profits are up 23% year on year. If things carry on at this rate then Spendless will make roughly an extra 20k this year.
Searching for the perfect Christmas present is never easy. Especially when you want to combine it with your photos from a recent trip/event. In total i uploaded over 1500 photos from our round the world trip to flickr and was searching for a great present to combine them all. Then up stepped Zumyn.
This great little site will turn your photos into a stunning mosaic. The 2 main advantages of the site are that it automatically pulls all your photos from Flickr for you, so no tedious uploads. And secondly you get to determine how many times each photo is used (i went for twice to get a better overall clarity of photo). Other companies that i found will use the same photo up to 10 times in your mosaic which i find really takes away from the overall effect.
Here is my now framed attempt.
Zumyns quality and service both come highly recommended!
Neil and i run several experience day websites. We started the sites 18 months ago but since then we have both been extremely busy (Neil with his job, and me taking a small trip around the world). This means the sites are not nearly as developed as we would like (although this is one of the projects we are working on now that we both have more time). It also meant that most promotional material we recieved from experience day sites went under our radar in the run up to the Christmas period. The 2 exceptions were the Red Letter Days Christmas incentive, and Treatme.nets Hell’s Kitchen promo. We didnt really expect to have much chance in categories 1-4 (at least not this year), but we decided to have a stab at the “Free prize draw category”. In an attempt to win we gave Treatme added exposure on some of the sites, and these small changes seemed to have a big affect. Sales for Treatme.net were up 60% on the previous year and to our great surprise and delight we have been chosen as one of the winners! With the date still to be decided we will have to wait and see who gets to put on the signed whites and cook for 30 people in the Marco’s very own Chelsea restaurant.
So once again, a bit thank you to Vanessa and the rest of the Treatme team.
The affiliate program can be found on Webgains.
Visitors not profit.
Browsing through some Google Analytic stats and i noticed that my first affiliate site has recently passed the million visitor mark! The site was started back in 2006 and the first visitor (probably me) was recorded on the 11th of October. As you can see from the tiny graph above the site didn’t really take off for quite some time, going from 15 visitors a day back in 2006 to a new record of 3294 on the 7th of December 2009.
Just goes to show that it is worth plugging a way at a site no matter how few visitors you get in the early days.
Just noticed this when i logged into one of my favourite networks (AWIN).
Apparently it was necessary to technical reasons (see here). Bit of a shame as i enjoy logging into affiliate networks that dont make me hunt to find out how much i have earnt that day. The new solution still allows this, but the since last login was an added bonus for complusive stats checkers like me.
