UK Voucher Code site for sale (spendlessonline.co.uk)
***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.
Good luck with the sale mate, I hope it goes as well as Kierons. Its a nice site and well worth the money.
Hi Barry,
thanks for the kind words. Ive always been impressed with your approach to discount-voucher and hope it continues to do well for you.
Hi Peter,
Good luck with the sale, looks like a great site you’ve built up!
This is the first time I’ve seen your blog, just taken a quick look through your travel posts from last year, think I was about 3 months ahead of you, looks like we stopped off at the same places in NZ & Oz
Greg
Hi Greg,
great places to travel huh?
thanks for stopping by.
Good luck with the sale. I’m in the process of starting up my own voucher code site so I know how difficult is it starting from scratch – if only I could afford it…
thanks Stephen. i dont think i would be able to start a successful voucher code site these days. Not with all the competition. But good luck with yours!
Pete, don’t undervalue a profit stream like that, had you thought about hiring someone to run the site for you instead of selling it? Might be worth considering unless you have a specific need for the capital.
& what do you want an MBA for? You’re doing good without it, and they’re mostly aimed at people in the corporate world I think.
Good luck with the sale Pete.
It seems a hefty asking price but I didn’t think Kieron would be able to sell his site for the asking price either so I’m no judge.
The more interesting stats to me, as a potential purchaser, would be the Adwords versus SEO stats – I had to turn my Adwords off to establish that baseline.
I can’t wait to have another proactive competitor to do battle against!
@ Matt – Great to hear from you! The problem with getting someone else to run the site is that it is my first real affiliate site. So as a bit of a control freak i find it hard to let go. Thats why i came up with the decision to either keep trying to grow the site myself or to sell it. With the mba you might be right, but there are some very interesting sounding programs out there.
@ Joe – i agree that seo v ppc is an interesting statistic for a potential purchaser and more than happy to share those figures and many more with anyone who wants to chat about them via email.
If you know anyone who might be interested in the site then feel free to pass on my details.
Seems like a good amount! Will see what I can do
I’d imagine people are trying to evaluate what income can be generated without having to spend a substantial £50k a year on marketing.
Hi Ray,
it’s a good question. When i started the site i never envisioned spending that much a year on advertising! Actually my initial daily budget was 1 pound a day as that was all i could afford. Once i found i could make ppc traffic profitable then just increased the budget every couple of months or so.
But back to how much the site would make without ppc… Thats a really hard one to say. I dont have comprehensive enough tracking setup at the moment (one of my projects for if i end up retaining the site). My guess would be that the site would easily make well over 46k a year (worked out as 55% of 85k). I reckon that the individual visitors from organic and other traffic sources are worth far more (even before the cost per click) than the ppc traffic. But like i said, it’s only a guess.
Hope that helps and actually makes sense. I am sure there is a much clearer way of making my point but cant think of it now…
To be honest, if you think site traffic in a worst case scenario under “normal conditions” is to remain as is, then as Matt says above, the free cash flow created by your site is worth alot, particularly if you can buy a resource to simply maintain your existing position.
If you can stand back and let the employed/contracted out resource expand the business then you are laughing. However, this does assume that you don’t want the capital for another project and you can accept the relatively low risk of this scenario.
Great site and best of luck with MBA
Pete, does your guess that the site would make 46k (55% of 85k) take into account without the PPC you drop back down the commission tiers?
From experiments with my own sites I know this, along with a few other side effects, can be a significant factor which affects the overall profitability.
Hi Richard,
thanks for the for comment. If i dont get an offer that i am happy with then i certainly need to look down the outscourcing route as i have other projects that i really want to dedicate more time to.
Hi Joe,
that is a very good point. Looking through my top performing merchants i dont seem to be on increased tiers in most cases (there is either only 1 tier, or the increased ones are private). When i do go up the tiers it is normally via direct negotiation for increased exposure on the site. There are a couple of exceptions, but looking at the figures, the numbers are not really significant. However, i should say again that i dont have comprehensive enough tracking in place yet to say for sure what effect dropping the ppc would have.
If someone was to buy the site then i am happy to provide all my ppc keywords/negatives/ etc so they can just continue running the site. So whilst 50k sounds like alot, it is money that is invested to make more money.
Pete,
I’ve noticed that Ads for your site appear on a lot of searches for merchants that have tightly restricted PPC terms.
Is this a special arrangement you have set up with the merchants and could this be transferred over to the potential new owner?
Hi Mike, i have over 6000 negative keywords added to comply with merchants t&cs. I think it is nearly impossible to be 100% up to date. But i do also have a fair few direct arrangements that i am sure can be passed on.
Great site Peter and in my opinion well worth the money. Good luck with the sale.
Hi Darren,
thanks for the compliment
Great site, if only I noticed this back when it was first posted, we may have considered putting in an offer as we’ve spent loads of time since the begigging of the year on our own site. Will take quite a lot longer to get to where your site was, but did manage to learn everything from the ground up so any changes we need to do, we know the code and can be fixed fairly easily.
Not sure if you managed to sell the site. Would be interested to know.
Hi Gary,
thanks for dropping by. Site was sold just over a month a go. I keep meaning to write an update on the whole process, but other projects keep taking up my time/energy.
Doesn’t it consume a lot of time to keep your weblog so intriguing ?