Ask HN: I received an offer. Should I sell?

Hello HN.

I received an offer for one of the websites that I own. I'm going to keep the domain private for now for a couple reasons.

1) The site hasn't been sold yet 2) I don't want it to look like I'm simply promoting my site

Here's the story. I run a website that takes literally 5 minutes a year to keep updated. It's a simple one-page html/css site. It is ranked #1 overall on Google for a term that is searched nearly 20,000 times each month.

I've really only had the site up now for 2-3 months despite owning the domain for a year. Since the site has been up it has received over 60,000 page views from 55,000 visitors. This is all from organic search engine traffic... no advertising. In this same time the site has also earned $193 from AdSense.

Here's the stats for September and October so far:

September: 33,450 pageviews - $73.12 October (5 days): 18,667 pageviews - $13.07

Some potentially negative things about the site: contains a trademarked name in the domain. There are plenty of other sites on the internet with it in their domain as well and they are up and operating just fine. The site may only receive this much attention for 8 or 9 months out of the year.

So my question is this... should I sell the site? I was offered $400 (seems sort of low to me). Is the site worth more than that knowing it might be a seasonal(ish) site with potential trademark troubles in the name? Keep in mind the site costs literally nothing to keep up and takes 5 minutes each year to keep updated and accurate.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

If you want additional info I'd love to chat at draftpulse [at] gmail [dot] com or in the comments here.

Thanks for your input! I did think $400 was a bit low. Since selling isn't necessary right now (it's doing just fine without any work right now) I was thinking $1,000 would be the magical number.

The domain is an exact match for the term. It's also a .com. That along with some simple SEO work on the site had it to #1 in about 2 months. It was on page 1 pretty much right away.. then floated from 5-2 on the first page until the last 3 weeks or so.

$193 in 3 months = 65/month. Since it only takes 5 mins every year, I would say ask for at least 2 years worth of payment which should be roughly $65*24 = $1560.

I think the language you use is very interesting. "A website that I own" makes it seem like it's a commodity and not necessarily a product which you've put lots of blood, sweat and tears into building. From your description, it sounds like that's the case. So really its just a domain sale. Not sure what the domain is, so I can't be certain how much value that has in and of itself.

That said, the advertising profits alone do give the site value. I'd counter the offer at $600 and point out that, if current trends continue, the site will pay for itself in the next year. But there's definitely a lot of risk involved, so it's worth selling and taking the money now. I would at least.

Unless you want the domain for something, sell it. It's hard to rely on ad revenue. Being able to pocket a few hundred dollars right now is probably a good option.