Generally, the value of a website is approximately 15 times its monthly average net profit. As profit can highly vary from a month to another, the valuation is usually assessed with about one year of results.

However, the value varies with the following elements:

- Quality of the domain - see domain valuation >>

- Quality and originality of the content: content is the main key-factor of success for a website. On the contrary, myspace, PTR, forums, arcade games or directories have less value.

- Pagerank and backlinks: Having high pagerank and good and numerous backlinks (such as Dmoz or Yahoo Directory entries) gives great value to a website.

- Traffic: Most webmasters do not focus on SEO and on how to monetize their traffic. The professional buyers can take advantage of this and thus pay more than the "normal" price if the website has some potential.

- Time and cost to run the website: The less complicated and expensive to run a website, the higher its value. Parked domain names, which need no time to manage, are value at at least 3 years net profit.

- Presence in Google's index: For some reason, some websites have been removed from Google's index. As it is not always possible to have them return, the potential value of such websites is lower.

- Topic of the website: Usually, topics with high level of advertising (finance, e-commerce, matchmaking...) are more valued than the rest.

- The design: it has a value in itself, but its importance is decreasing with the value of the website.

- Technology used: Simple HTML is the most appreciated by buyers, because it is always search-engine friendly. Dynamic pages (asp, php, java, etc.) are ok, as soon as they can be crawled by search engines. CMS sites are preferred by some buyers because they are simpler to use.

 

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