A Typical Day for an Affiliate Marketer

[GreenAs]

Originally Posted by Eurisko

My typical day is like wake up around 10ish, hit the office at 11ish, lunch 1130ish back from lunch around 2ish, check emails.......Hit the golf course around 2.15ish. Home by 6.

Don't let anyone tell you it cant happen!

So that would be after 6 years of 80 hour weeks building your business...

[prepaidplans]

I think 9 is enough actually. What I have tried to do is diversify into different industries to learn more about what works. The actual return is not great, if I didn't think I was learning something out of this venture then I wouldn't continue.

At approx $5000 annually it covers a few bills and hopefully over time I can be smarter at what I spend more time on. Some sites might go and others come in but it is all about experimentation.

This is my first attempt at doing my own thing and as I said I am learning. Its not all about the money. Prepaidplans was started because I was researching a prepaid mobile plan for my wife and I did all of the research, so I thought why not publish it.

[GreenAs]

Originally Posted by newbie

That was what I thought too. I figured 400 per month was a quarter of 1600 per month so why not value the ten sites at a quarter of the value of a house that grosses 1600 per month?

(and no public liability or skips either)

No rates, strata fees, property management fees, clean ups between tenants, or petty letters from strata companies about your tenants sneezing, walking or closing the door too loudly. The real estate comparison is a very interesting way of looking at it.

I wonder how closely the sale prices of thriving affiliate websites match the various formulas for pricing traditional businesses. Is that a stupid question? I would think that if someone had built up a good income earning site, it's as good as any other type of business (better!) - although there is no stock to sell, and no contracts or tangible assets. It's all in the "goodwill" category. Then again, why would anyone sell a thriving affiliate website? It would be like buying any other business - the seller talks it up so much you wonder why on earth they're selling if their figures are that good.

[newbie]

Originally Posted by GreenAs

No rates, strata fees, property management fees, clean ups between tenants, or petty letters from strata companies about your tenants sneezing, walking or closing the door too loudly. The real estate comparison is a very interesting way of looking at it.

I wonder how closely the sale prices of thriving affiliate websites match the various formulas for pricing traditional businesses. Is that a stupid question? I would think that if someone had built up a good income earning site, it's as good as any other type of business (better!) - although there is no stock to sell, and no contracts or tangible assets. It's all in the "goodwill" category. Then again, why would anyone sell a thriving affiliate website? It would be like buying any other business - the seller talks it up so much you wonder why on earth they're selling if their figures are that good.

I have not heard of many bona fide affiliate site sales apart from Fairfax buying the baby site and getprice but I do not get out much.

[Gav]

Originally Posted by newbie

I have not heard of many bona fide affiliate site sales apart from Fairfax buying the baby site and getprice but I do not get out much.

Clearly.

TripAdvisor buys Holiday Watchdog, reviews site M&A begins

$20m that was sold for. There are a whole heap of other examples.

[newbie]

Originally Posted by Gav

Clearly.

TripAdvisor buys Holiday Watchdog, reviews site M&A begins

$20m that was sold for. There are a whole heap of other examples.

$20M for only 1M unique visitors. Wow. Wow. Wow.

I think there is a lesson in this for you Gav. You should stop talking about building sites and start building them.

Added: Why do you think they bought that site? On second thoughts I think I was wrong to assume they bought it for the audience given the huge disparity in traffic between the parent company and the site they bought.

I cannot find any content they have moved to TripAdvisor. What am I missing here Gav? What do you think they bought it for?

[prepaidplans]

I was thinking about the comparison with real estate. It's not really apples with apples because the actual day to day effort with property is minimal. There are certainly costs involved and head aches. Property is about having the capital to buy in and then hoping for capital appreciation (the real income comes after it has been paid off).

My experience with sites so far (again I am still a newborn at this) is that they take a lot of effort but the setup costs are low. I buy my domains via crazydomains and have them hosted via hostgator. Costs me $26 for the domain for 2 years, that is pretty much it (for 2 years anyway). On the effort side, I would spend about 40 hours per month on these sites (mind you some of them are new so it takes effort to build content). When you compare it that way $10 per hour is not even minimum wage these days and I doubt I would find someone to buy one of my sites (you never know).

So I have no real incentive at this stage to leave my day job. When I started I wanted to atleast cover my costs. At this stage this goal has been achieved. Now its about an income stream that grows comparably to the effort I make. This will take time and some brighter ideas.

[Tanooki]

Originally Posted by GreenAs

Then again, why would anyone sell a thriving affiliate website? It would be like buying any other business - the seller talks it up so much you wonder why on earth they're selling if their figures are that good.

I have thought about selling one of my sites. My interest in the subject matter has waned and so I am not maximising the value of the site. Someone else could make far more out of it that I currently am. So if I can sell it and get some return on my investment then I would be happy and a buyer would also be happy. Win-win right?

Does anyone know any good places to sell websites?

[Marlnet]

Originally Posted by Tanooki

Does anyone know any good places to sell websites?

I used Sedo for my sale; though there is another place SitePoint who I haven't dealt with...