Any ideas on valuation of websites?

Rival business gone into liquidation.

Didn't find your answer?

Any ideas where to go on this.

A rival business to my clients has gone into liquidation, my client wants to buy the website URL and social media accounts to direct them to his own business.

How do you value such a thing? I imagine the value of a website generating and making profits is far higher than when it goes into liquidation as I assume there is a small window of opportunity before the value reduces to nil if sales emails are not been responded to etc.

Do you pick up the phone to the IP and just make an offer of whats its worth to your client?

How the hell would you value an instagram account.?

Replies (16)

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Lisa Thomas
By Lisa Thomas - Insolvency Practitioner
22nd Aug 2019 09:36

I know just the man for you! get in touch and I'll pass you his details so he can give you a valuation.

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By SteveHa
22nd Aug 2019 09:53

Option 2 is wait until the address is back with Nominet and then buy it off them for a fiver.

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Replying to SteveHa:
By Charlie Carne
30th Aug 2019 11:57

That could be years away and the likelihood is that, if this was a thriving business, someone else will already have set up a bot to buy it as soon as it released (by which I mean within nanoseconds of release). And Nominet only manage .uk domains.

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
22nd Aug 2019 09:59

From a lead generation point of view "something" is usually the vague answer. Given website are quite ephemeral, at most you tend to pay is 1 times the annual margin generated from the site, assuming its a non-recurring transaction. If its just the domain (as opposed to a functioning website) then it would be negligible. Domains now have very little value, even if they are a generic, as Google looks at site content primarily when deciding what to list first.

I would simply ask if it was for sale, and how much they want for it. Then laugh, and offer 25% of the above answer and see where you get to.

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John Toon
By John Toon
22nd Aug 2019 11:07

Unless your client's competitor is Facebook or Google (or similar) the website and social media accounts will be worth [***] all and I'd be massively surprised if the IP places any value on them.

Ring up and offer £1 - it'll be the best offer they have/get

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Replying to johnt27:
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By Mr_awol
22nd Aug 2019 12:54

johnt27 wrote:

Unless your client's competitor is Facebook or Google (or similar) the website and social media accounts will be worth [***] all

Not necessarily true at all.

One of my former schoolfriends is constantly spamming my FaceBook feed with his Herbalife page. He seems to be doing pretty well from it actually, and ive just checked his page to find that he has several thousand followers.

Now if I wanted to start flogging diet shakes, and he was looking to stop, then his page would certainly have value to me. A ready made page via which I could offer quick fixes to thousands of fatties who want to be thin but don't want to put the work in, and whom have already expressed an interest in overpriced slim-fast.

Scale that up to a page with hundreds of thousands of like and you have a decent marketing tool, depending on what industry you are in of course. If this wasn't the case, then 'like farming' wouldn't have become a thing (for FB to then try to stop with their page transparency info).

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By paul.benny
22nd Aug 2019 11:51

There are two different questions here:
- what is the domain worth to your client?
- what price will the liquidator sell it for?
They're not the same thing.

You don't mention the business activity. If there are other assets, the liquidator may be more willing to transfer the domain as part of purchase of the whole lot.

Is there a customer list that would also be attractive?

As for the Instagram account - you need to check their T&C to ascertain whether it can even be transferred.

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Replying to paul.benny:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
22nd Aug 2019 12:58

I think there is more to it than that.

There is potential to convert their sales to my cleint, but there is the technical cost of setting it all up as we are not transferring the website.

We have an estimate of the sales we can get from and what profit it can produce.

For me there is a lot of unknowns as to how succesful it will be as I imagine the traffic is already looking elsewhere so the volume of enquiries will be going down faster than a fat lad on a seesaw.

So by the time you have transferred it all there maybe very little left, it seems an opportunity but very high risk.

It may be better just beefing up our google ads to try and pick up customers of the now bust company.

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Replying to Glennzy:
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By paul.benny
22nd Aug 2019 13:13

Certainly there's more to it.

If you own the domain, you can simply put in a redirect to your own website, without the need to operate the site of the defunct company. No advertising needed to scoop up that traffic.

Having the customer list lets you mailshot them to advise of the "change of ownership" and inviting them to sign up to you (using legitimate interest as GDPR justification).

Another competitor might do all of that themselves if you don't.

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Replying to paul.benny:
By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
22nd Aug 2019 14:15

Just making the domain point to a different site is as above a doddle (5 minute job, and that's 4 minutes resetting your password)

But wont pick up any organic traffic from google based on current content. At best you will benefit from backlinks to the site, and potentially any bookmarks from old customers

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Replying to ireallyshouldknowthisbut:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
30th Aug 2019 15:05

I think the domain traffic will be the smaller part of it and its the google stuff that will be the volume.

Plus my client does carry as many ranges as the insolvent company and could really stock up to cover them all so a lot of the traffic would be wasted.

Seems like a lot of variables involved and a high risk for me unless he got it for few quid.

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By SXGuy
22nd Aug 2019 13:25

I owned a domain name once, many moons ago, wont say the name, but lets say it was very good from a marketing point of view, business associated with it went under, and I stupidly let the domain go also, skip forward 10 years and decided to ask the new domain owner how much they would want to sell it, they wanted 100x what I originally paid.

Of course I laughed and moved on, but my point is, for what annual renew costs, never give up a domain name unless you really don't care, there are people out there who just buy up names that expire in an attempt to make money.

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paddle steamer
By DJKL
22nd Aug 2019 14:45

Ask yourself how many others will be queing up at the liquidator to buy it?

Ensure liquidator is selling assets piecemeal and not trying to sell the business?

Subject to above make a daft low offer which in the scale of the liquidation size is enough to get him to waste an hour of his time at £350 per hour considering it, go in too low and he will not bother.

Also remember it is always easier to increase an offer than reduce one so if you start low you get a second and third attempt.

My experience of liquidators over the years (usually as landlord of the company in question) is 9 times out of 10 they just want rid of things quickly- speed not best price is certainly what they go for re furniture etc and half the time they just leave it in the unit so idiot landlords have the cost/hassle of getting rid of it.

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By MissAccounting
22nd Aug 2019 15:41

Had a similar thing recently Glen, my client made an offer
of £1,200 to the IP (litterally picked up the phone and asked for the relevent person) for the domain and Facebook account and they took his details and sent an email back to say that they had looked into it and the legals along would be £2.5k so the offer would need to be "in excess of this amount for the benefit of the creditors". He politely declined to increase the offer.

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7om
By Tom 7000
30th Aug 2019 12:42

yeah offer them £200... See what they say... its better than nothing...

You are just horse trading...

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By mickeyparish
30th Aug 2019 16:51

Simplicity also adds value to a website :

A domain like www.abc.com will always be worth money. A domain like www.wesellteenagersclothing.net will be worthless. Even if punters can memorise it they won;t be able to spell it......

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