An UGLY $33 Million Website…
Every once in a while I come across a complete surprise when I hear about a website that was sold.
I like to pay close attention to which websites are selling and how much they are selling for. It helps me pick potential niche markets and business ideas, and helps me determine what types of websites we should be focusing on.
While doing some research this morning, I found a press release that said this website was sold on May 7, 2007 for $33 million in CASH! Here’s the article from the New York Times that explains the details.
Usually when you think of a website worth $33 million, you think of something that is cutting edge. Something that would be extremely difficult to compete with. Something “unique”.
That’s why I was so surprised when I checked out ConsumerSearch.com to see why it sold for $33 million.
Just by going to the homepage, it looks like a home made type website you or I could have made using Frontpage. It has big obnoxious Google Ads on the right hand side of the page and just a bunch of categories listed on the left.
To me, it looks like a simple “made for adsense” type content site anyone could make. If you click on a category, you can read reviews about various products. These reviews are basically just re-written reviews posted by other people and companies. Click on a link that says “Where To Buy” and you get taken to a page with 30+ affiliate links to other websites selling those products.
Scroll down and you’ll see Chitika Mini Mall ads. Hover your mouse over a “compare prices” link and an annoying Shopping.com ad box shoots out at you.
If I saw this website listed for sale somewhere without knowing their income figures, I would have put a price on it of about $50,000 max based on what I see. Obviously I have no idea how much money they make, but it must be pretty high to sell for 8 figures.
According to compete.com, this site is getting about 1.7 million visitors to it per month, which is pretty impressive given the lack of real content on this site.
It just goes to show you that even a basic website can be worth A LOT of money. ConsumerSearch.com was launched on May 19th, 2000 and was sold on May 7, 2007. So, by compiling reviews of products in their own words, this website was able to write content for about 7 years, then cash out for $33 million in cash. Who knows how much they made during the 7 years of running the site itself.
Does it look like a huge task to build a site like this? Not enough hours in the day to write all those reviews? No problem, just do what they did, hire people to write reviews for you. As seen on their jobs page, they pay writers about $350 to review a category of products.
I see about 330 total categories on their site, so paying $350 per category x 330 categories will set you back about $115,500 in content costs. Sell the site for $33 million, and I think you’ll come out a little bit ahead : -)
Not a bad gig if you ask me.
Comments
Sheamus April 16th, 2008
Heh, what a surprise who bought it, too… our old friends About.com!
I didn’t realise About owned Calorie-Count.com, either. I really need to pull my finger out.
Would be interesting if you could put some kind of ‘tracer’ on this article and see how many copycat sites start appearing now, all over t’Interweb. I’d wager more than a few.
Tom Printy April 16th, 2008
I am flabbergasted. I can’t believe this! I work really hard at making sure my designs are pleasing and this ulgyness gets. Did some quick math and assuming that they were getting .25 cents for the shopping.com clicks this site was pulling in over 5mill per year. This assumes that 20 percent click rate on the 1.7 unique users. However if you analyze the site a bit more you see that you are most likely getting at least 1 click per visitor which more than likely puts you at 10mill per year. I sure would like to have a site that pushes this much into my bank account.
Amazing!
Mark Krusen April 16th, 2008
Ok, Ok, stop twisting my arm. If you give me 15 mil for my site as it stands now. I’ll say. “Sold!!”
Terry Tay April 16th, 2008
WOW! 33 MILLION
I don’t think looks of a site matter all that much. If you go to Google.com I’d say that is one of the most boring looking sites I have ever seen. I don’t think you could get it for anything less than 10-11 digits
Tomaz April 17th, 2008
The site ranks in the top 3 in Google for most product reviews keywords. Just try dishwasher reviews, juicer reviews, paper shredder reviews and so on.
Besides that, they also advertise on Google Adsense network and are continuously one of the highest payers with around 0.15 to 0.20 per click on a content sites!
And yes, it’s a horrible example of how to make money online. I really wonder why Google doesn’t push them lower in the rankings based on their arbitrage models of making money…
InfoDoorway April 17th, 2008
That’s insane. If I came across that site upon my travels, I don’t see anything unique enough to even get me to bookmark it. I’d like to get in touch with the buyer, I’ll sell them my site for a little cheaper and retire!
William Profet :: OneJobTwoSalaries.com April 21st, 2008
This is a stupid and ugly site but they made a great deal. This is to point that it is the marketing that count most!
Maybe even “Marketing over Content”??
jack April 28th, 2008
Your average user at home doesn’t appreciate good design because they have no experience with the internet and don’t know what to expect. Theyre amazed simply that they can click on buttons and see information on their screen. So they hear about a website with reviews of every product imaginable from their 60 year old neighbor who found it off of askjeeves.com and they go there and their expectations are met because they find some blurb about the product they want. They don’t realize that they could be getting much better presentation and much better information elsewhere. I imagine that site is successful because of the domain name and the fact that it covers every product category ever, so I’m sure it gets lots of search exposure from anyone searching for anything.
jack April 28th, 2008
I read through it a little bit more and it appears all they do is read consumer reviews on ecommerce sites, decide which product out of each category is the “best” and write a small blurb about it telling people its the best. Takes the thinking out of buying things. It would be like me making a site telling people which computer components to buy by reading all of the reviews on newegg.com and making recommendations for processors, memory, monitors etc.
Max Davis April 28th, 2008
Jack, that’s EXACTLY what this site does. Pretty crazy what good search engine rankings + affiliate offers + “borrowed content” can be worth, in this case $33 MILLION!
Jack August 11th, 2009
Could it have had anything to do with the short domain name the would have appraised for quite a bit of money and was probably getting tons of traffic just due to the name?
Kyle August 11th, 2009
Not for a $33,000,000 price tag. That’s well beyond sheer domain value. In Buying & Selling Websites, one of our training videos is actually a detailed case study of this site, transaction, and what we estimate made it so valuable. It’s actually really helpful to be able to look at a site where we know the domain, sales price, etc. That kind of information is typically hard to come by on any domain purchase level, much less one for that much money.
Since they were purchased by a publicly traded company, that was partly responsible for the more “public” knowledge of this transaction.
Craig August 16th, 2009
The domain alone would worth from 1-15 million dollars, just take into account that one. Besides, probably they overhauled the design in 2009, but right now it looks good, it will not fall into ugly websites by any standard.