There’s an interesting new service out there that everybody’s talking about. Trouble is, Seth Godin is the only one call an apple an apple.
The service is dnscoop and it’s respectable enough to be on a shared host that never seems to be up. When you can get to the website, the idea is yet another website valuation tool and, if it’s in the least bit accurate, my sale of Technosailor should have easily hit the 5 figure number I was asking for because it should be worth $198k.
The problem is, this valuation tool is absolutely worthless – about as worthless as the share host he is on. The thing that bothered me the most about my attempt at selling Technosailor were the bidders who in essence looked at site value purely on revenue. It’s never that cut and dry and anyone who expects to get money from a site needs to understand that a lot more goes into monetization than simply sitting back and hoping to collect revenue.
Worse yet, dnScoop attempts to tell me where I could be making money – like an automated scan can speak with any authority on the issue. Of the recommendations made, it advises that through Text Link Ads, I can make $392/mo and with Adsense I can make more. In both cases, the ad programs are affiliate programs that are not disclosed. Full disclosure: my links above are not affiliate links. If you want to sign up for Text Link Ads and help me make money, do so with the banner in the sidebar, k?
In addition, I can’t understand the valuation that this guy uses based on services like… Altavista? Are they still around? Alexa…? Are they credible now?
So to sum up, the owner of this site is making money based on deceptive practices (I’ll help you learn how to make more money on your site if you click on my boilerplate affiliate ads, but I’m not going to tell you I’m baiting you to click or signup), less than credible data sources (Altavista, Alexa) based on automated data evaluations (like how much money a site can make with TLA).
The reality is that there are better site valuation tools. My personal automated favorite is the SEOMoz Page Strength test which by far gives a more non-deceptive interpretation of a sites value based on a more trusted set of data sources (though it too uses Alexa but far more balanced by other data sources as well).
The ultimate guide to website valuation is still a human one. Phillip Liu wrote an entry (actually examining the sale of Technosailor) that objectively analyzed factors for consideration when determining a site’s value. Phillip makes it obvious that site valuations are far from a cut and dry thing. A very good thing, I’d say.