WPMods.com WordPress Blog Placed For Sale On Flippa
WPMods.com aka (WordPress Mods) a popular wordpress blog which shares wordpress news, tutorials, tips along with reviewing themes & plugins has been placed for sale on flippa.com by it’s founding owner Kevin Muldoon. At the time of writing the site has already garnered a bid of $30,000 after revealing around $2,500 per month in income from affiliates and advertising.
WPMods.com is not the first recognised wordpress website to be put up for sale on flippa, around seven months ago WPMember.com a WordPress membership plugin business sold for $33,500. Although both are very different sites WPMods being a blog; WPMember being a paid wordpress plugin subscription business both of these sites show the potential of the WordPress economy.
With seven days left to go on the WPMods auction sale in my opinion it’s not an unreasonable assumption that WPMods could crack the $50,000 barrier before the sale finally concludes.
Whats your thoughts, how much do you think WPMods is worth or what it might sell for? as always leave a comment letting us know.
Thanks for writing about this Stuart
It does seem that some people under estimate the value of a blog about WordPress. I’m going to update the auction with a comment that explains why I believe it’s worth much more (I’m looking for at least $80k, hopefully more).
I can post the comment here as well
Here’s the comment I left:
I hope it hasn’t scared anyone away from bidding and has in some way helped those of you who aren’t familiar with this niche/market have a better understanding of how things work (and helped understand my valuation of the site).
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Stanto – I had originally deleted your comment as I didn’t want this comment area to get off topic as it’s the place where I give updated to those who are watching the auction and need updates.
As many of you know, Flippa sellers frequently have to deal with negative comments from users who who have no interest in buying the site, no budget to bid for the site and no experience with buying a high traffic and/or profitable website (I’m not referring to you Stanto, I know that wasn’t your intention, just explaining why I didn’t want your comment published originally). I was thinking about your comment about it being overvalued and I am aware that traders who are watching this auction perhaps feel the same because they are not familiar with the niche.
I tried not to make the auction thread too long as quite frankly, most people don’t have the time or patience to read a long description – they just want the facts. Though I believe I need to explain things a bit more for bidders that aren’t familiar with the niche
The price of a website is always subjective – i.e. one mans rubbish is another mans gold. I know what it is worth to me though and I know what it’s worth to a WordPress developer or a professional blogger. I do want to sell though as the sale would really help me – it will give me capital to launch my next site and get it established in 2-3 months rather than 6-12 months (the cheesy cliche ‘time is money’ is very true!).
All websites aren’t created equal, therefore I don’t think it’s fair to compare wpmods to an affiliate website that has been making money for 6 weeks or an adsense website that relies on traffic that was built using backlinks. As such, it doesn’t fit into the 12 times monthly income formula that many traders seem fixated on. I spoke to a few large blog and website networks before listing this site for sale to get an idea of what my website was worth. They all agreed that established blogs that are consistently making money usually sell for 3-5 years income. Many Flippa traders might be surprised by this but this is the standard rate that blogs valued around $100k and up trade when the traffic is reliable and the blog shows growth.
I think it helps if bidders understand the niche a bit more and time and energy required to establish a blog in this niche.
I’ve owned blogs in other niches and WordPress is by far the hardest to get subscribers for. It’s much easier to get subscribers to blogging advice, making money and design blogs etc. With my old blog BloggingTips.com, when I got a guest post published on a large blog such as ProBlogger I would usually see 100-150 subscribers that day. With WordPress Mods the figure is closer to 10-15 new subscribers (at the same traffic levels, BloggingTips had around 6-7 times more subscribers). The fact is, when it comes to WordPress, the vast majority of people simply Google the problem they have, find a solution, and then leave. Therefore a WordPress focused blog with a loyal readership that keeps returning has great value.
Most successful bloggers are aware that that blogs grow exponentially. By far the hardest part is launching a blog and developing it to a level where it will grow naturally. It takes half the time to take a blog from $2,500 a month to $5,000- $10,000 a month as it does to take a blog from $0 to $2,500. I think many new traders forget this.
For example, lets say a marketer wants to develop a new WordPress blog. How much do you think they would to spend to get 1,000 quality posts, established traffic and turn a profit?
Websites such as WP.TutsPlus pay $150 per article. At that rate, it would cost $75,000 just to get 500 articles – and that’s before you do any promotion, pay for editors, develop revenue etc (and this process would probably take 6-24 months). It’s worth noting that WP Mods has 1,000 articles, not 500. This includes many short posts however there are many many extended articles that took me 5-6 days to write (e.g. 1000 great WordPress designs etc). I would have charged a large design blog at least $1,000 for each of these articles, if not more (though I doubt that many people have the traffic or budget that the TutsPlus network has).
Valuations are subjective and are dependent on what the owner already has and what they need to complement their portfolio. I’m selling to raise capital. I certainly wouldn’t be selling at this stage in the blogs life if I didn’t think my next project would be more successful as I am acutely aware that I am losing a big asset if I sell this website (and I am also aware it hasn’t been developed fully with regards to promotion and monetization).
The site has not really been monetized yet. I only started selling ads via buysellads and selling paid reviews two weeks ago so it should increase beyond $2,500 very soon. It’s real strength lies not with ads but with the site being a platform to push quality WordPress products and services to WordPress users. This is something that many other websites simply don’t have.
A good example of this would be Oli Dales WPLift.com website. He has used that to launch two great premium plugins and this week he used his blog to launch his new WordPress theme store. I have no doubt he would not have had the same success with these projects if he didn’t have a successful blog to promote them with. I have no idea of his income though I would suspect it’s around $15,000 per month minimum due to these products (if not much more).
I do want to sell the site to raise capital for my new project and I want to work with bidders to agree a price that suits both parties, though I don’t want to cut myself short. Not only would I be reducing my monthly income with this sale, I would be losing a platform to sell WordPress related products. This is why I want to work with bidders to establish a price that is good for them and good for me.
The future of the site should not rely on selling ads for income. In my opinion, anyone who is thinking about buying this website should also be thinking of the WordPress product that they can sell through the site such a theme, plugin or membership area (though the site could still be a success using an ad only business model). There are hundreds of theme and plugin developers on sites like ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, MojoThemes etc making 5-6 figures a month with no website and no readership. Having a high traffic blog that allows you to promote your products will put you in a great position.
Thanks for reading this long drawn out comment.
If you are interested in bidding but have some additional questions, I encourage you to message me here on Flippa or email me directly. I am happy to discuss monetization ideas for the site with those who are considering bidding (e.g. my original plans for the site in 2012) via a messenger service such as Skype or Google Chat.
I would appreciate it if Flippa users didn’t leave comments about valuations though as I only want to answer website related questions here regarding traffic, income, how the site is run etc.
Thanks, Kevin
@Kevin Muldoon Hey Kevin,
Great to hear from you and I wholeheartedly agree that WordPress topic blogs can be greatly undervalued even when making a good revenue stream and having the potential for even more growth in the future.
Going by the general rule of thumb that a business is worth around 3 times it’s turnover your goal of $80’000 is actually $10k undervalued with a turnover of $2’500 per month. I do believe however that for the right buyer that $80k is not an outlandish expectation by anymeans, and for a site with good quality content / targeted traffic like your has it’s a definite possibility of reaching that goal.
I really do hope you get the amount that you are hoping for and wish you all the success for you new project and the future. Please feel free to post that other comment here if you wish
@stuartduff Thanks. Many people agree with my valuation whilst others think it’s more. I had one person messaging me asking why I wasn’t using the 12 times monthly formula. He seemed quite offended by the fact I didn’t believe that the formula was applicable. Thankfully, the people who waste my time with messages like that do not have the budget to bid anyways (i.e. their profile shows them buying and selling a few websites worth a few hundred dollars).
I’m confident I will get a good price for it. I’m lucky that my back isn’t against the wall. I want to sell the site to give me more capital to develop my new website though I’m not in a position where I have to and there would actually be some benefits from keeping it as I know that if my new website makes money I can use the profits to develop wpmods even more (i.e. services, products etc).
@Kevin Muldoon
It’s always a gamble with Flippa in my opinion as to what price your site will eventually fetch, I noticed that you dropped the reserve which I imagine must be a frightening prospect in an open bidding auction. I do know from past experience using Flippa though those bidders do tend not to bid on an auction with a reserve for some reason that they otherwise would have without?
As for comments questioning a sites value your 100% correct when you say they are usually from someone who does not have the financial means of even bidding on the property, again something I have experienced in the past too.
It’s was no doubt a hard & probably emotional decision I Imagine to sell WPMods as the time and effort put into quality articles on the site will never truly reflect its valuation. Then as you mentioned you have the “Well I could develop the site even further” and generate more revenue from multiple streams which is also a great option if you could work with the smaller sustained funding to launch your new project whilst if possible finding the time to post articles at WPMods.
What I have experienced with Flippa in the past albeit not with a site valued at $80k more like $5k was the new owners not having the same drive to post articles and having to watch the site decline in traffic and quality. I’m sure this won’t be the case for WPMods though
And as always nice to see a fellow Scot involved in the WP Community
@Stuart Duff Thanks Stuart. Didn’t realise you were a Scot
Where are you from?
Yeah, most of the time wasters are people who have no intention of buying and have never purchased any site over $1k before. It’s less of an issue once the bids get high. I know from my last big auction that many bidders prefer to guage whether you would sell lower before making a bid. Once a few more bids come in though, I reckon it will force the hand of others and allow me to see who is serious about buying and who is not.Keeping it is certainly an option as I know I could really take WP Mods to the next level if I can get my new project going. I do have other websites at the moment though they are fairly consistent with regards to revenue and require very little maintenance therefore I’d prefer to keep them (whereas with wpmods I’d have to do some work to develop it more).
I’d like to think that anyone who buys the site will work hard to keep up the same quality of posts etc.
Kevin
@Kevin Muldoon From Airdrie just outside Glasgow Kevin and yes it’s currently raining haha :p what about you?
and a nice comment on fippa from Spyros makes a pleasant change from the usual drivel it seems your retort to Stanto set the tone for the sale which has kept most of the no buy trolls away.
24hrs left and counting
I will be watching the final hours with my fingers crossed for you, good luck
@Stuart Duff haha Cool. I’m from Wishaw
My very first job at 16 was a lifeguard at the reopening of the John Smith Pool. £2.16 an hour – I’m surprised I took the job as it cost me £2 in buses to get there and the bus took over an hour haha. Was a nightmare for morning shifts.
Yeah I’ve been quite lucky that there hasn’t been any trolls leaving comments in the auction. 24 hours to go. Should start seeing some bidding
@Kevin Muldoon WIshaw awesome lol a stones throw from me, what a coincidence
Think I have been in the John Smith pool once since it was re-opened years ago, who knows we may have actually seen one another; small world indeed.