How Do You Price Websites Or Domain Value These Days?

I was chatting earlier today with Bec and we both realized that on a few of the larger message boards in the past few months, the amount of people offering domain names or websites for sale has increased dramatically, to the point where those individuals who are actually buying sites or domains seem to be dwarfed in comparison.

Do you think that the reason for this is because the sites or domains being offered are simply over-priced?

How do you work out the value of a site or domain these days, i know it used to range from around 12 months revenue plus, for a developed site and a single domain the price depending on brandability, traffic, how it sounded etc, has any of this changed given that the economy has tanked dramatically in the last 12-18 months?

Regards,

Lee

A few years back I put up our sites for sale (I was going through a burnout phase for a while) - and came up with a price based on one year's revenue and also added a significant amount because of the exclusive (original) content and the unique quality of everything.

I wasn't including copyrights to all the images in the selling price - simply an unlimited licensing arrangement.

We had a few nibbles and tire-kickers who expressed interest, but nothing I took seriously at the time.

I've seen a significant escalation of sites for sale on GFY in the past year or two (as you say - dwarfing potential buyers) - many of which I think are over-priced by unrealistic webmasters who don't take all factors into consideration. I've always considered content to be king - and if it's exclusive to one website only - it adds significant resale value to a website. If the content is widely available on multiple sites, obviously the overall site isn't worth as much - unless the site enjoys a great volume of traffic and good conversion ratio.