The traffic to the site will generate leads for the company who owns the site. If they already have a website that converts then they will know what content to put on this site to create that conversion rate.

The buyer is buying the site knowing the potential that the site will have when it comes to generating business for them.

I've looked at is as the first page results of Google are a line of shops. The shop at #1 is seen as the shop which gets the most visitors to it. Now imagine that shop is currently being refitted - people can still see the shop and what it sells but are unable to actually enter the shop to buy anything.

Now, the person who owns the shop further down the street (i.e is ranked #10 or #12 or #15 etc) - he really wants to own that shop which is being refitted and he knows how much that shop is worth to his business if he owned it after the refit is completed.

Although the site I have created is a basic canvas, all it needs is branding by the new owner and it will then perform as well as their current site when it comes to conversion rates.

Does that make sense with explaining the view point I am taking on this project ?

And again, the finer points of how to sell the site are something that i have covered from all angles. The part of making the sale and closing the sale isn't an issue.

I appreciate the feedback from everyone here but doubt I'm going to find someone who can actually answer the question of "how to value organic traffic". The matter of the niche or if the potential client already has a site or an SEO company is by the by and not part of the issue. I can deal with all of those parts.

Market Samurai makes a calculation for organic traffic value by taking the average PPC cost and multiplying it by the amount of traffic the site will receive if it was ranked number one on Google.

My question really should have just simply been asked as "How accurate is that figure" ? , <- that's all I needed answering.

Oh I did my research on this and looked at the service providers who already have website ranked in the top 30 as well as all those who are currently using Google AdWords.  The service providers already understand the value of an online presence, I'm just trying to work out what that value is.

Thanks Ben, thanks for your answer.  I have thought about different payment options from a "one off - hand it all over" option to a "monthly payment" where they 'rent' the site. Or even break the cost down in to a deposit payment followed by monthly payments until the full amount is paid. Once it's paid I would then sign over the domain ownership.

The main sticking point is calculating a price for the site in the first place.

Hi,

I'm currently creating a number of sites which target the wedding market. Each site is localized and specific to a niche within the wedding market.

The intention is to create the site, rank it in the top position of Google and then sell it to a local business within that niche and area.

The problem that i am having is that I don't know how to place a value on each site. I have factors taken from Google (using Market Samurai) so I know the broad and phrase match traffic details as well as the Google PPC average prices.

My initial thought was to use the Google PPC price and multiply that by the number of organic visitors the site would receive if it was ranked #1 on Google. I appreciate that the PPC figures may be higher than what an advertiser would actually pay per click so I conservatively halved the Google PPC figure given in Market Samurai.

Is this a good way of valuing the site or do I need to look at the value per customer to the business that I am trying to sell the site to and work from a conversion factor based on the number of visitors that the site would receive.

If the site received 500 visitors per month and 5% of those became customers multiplied by the average profit per customer - that would give a monthly value of the website.

I am very unsure as to what the best approach is here and look forward to hearing any advice and ideas from fellow members.

Thanks,

Michael