CarInQuotes.com gets $500k+ bid…. Whoa?!?! Lets break it down.. Shall we? :)
Unbelievable… Right? But no, it’s not just a domain but rather an established website or business or whatever you wanna call it. Here is what I received in my inbox the other day from Latonas.com:
“CarInQuotes.com has hit reserve at $530,000. If nobody comes forward and wants to put in a bigger bid, the site will be sold. The property pulls in incredible revenue so now is the time to act if you want in on it. You can reply and contact me directly if you have an interest. This site is making more than $2000 per day.”
Domain: This domain is the brandable / sound good type… It was made up. A hand registration, back in 2008 for under $10. Does not hold much value today, tomorrow, 10 years from now, etc… If you know what I mean. Has a nice play on “Car Insurance Quotes” but of course it’s mis-spelled.
Content: Looks like there is a few dozen articles on the site… Not the best, but not the worst either. Just average content filler type of stuff. Every site has those. Worth maybe $500… If it’s even unique.
Design: What design? LOL. Not much of a design to speak of. Just a page with some pictures and text. Worth a few hundred bucks at most.
Traffic: A little over 3,000 unique visitors per month. Not too bad. Insurance traffic is valuable… But for a site selling for mid six figures I’d expect traffic to be 5x to 10x that.
Revenue: Site is supposedly making $2,000 per day right now, which comes out to $60k per month… Over half a million per year. How that is happening, off of only a few thousand monthly visitors is a complete mystery to me, must be an act of god or something.
CarInQuotes.com website up for sale --- mid 6 figures sale pending?!
What I’d really like to know is… Who is this idiot offering $530k for this shit… I mean site. So… It’s only been around for 3 years. It’s only got a thousand dollars or so in actual “assets” or real face value. Everything else, mainly the traffic, can literally evaporate overnight since you are relying on the search engines to send you free / organic traffic. Talk about a risky investment… LOL!
I know insurance pays well with PPC and affiliate leads as well, but it’s quite shady to see claims that a site makes around $50k to $60k per month off of some 3,000 monthly visitors. The numbers don’t really add up here and I’ve tried to come at this from all angles.
With these types of sites, you milk em til’ the last drop… I think the owner has had a good run if indeed the numbers are what they are claimed to be, and now he is trying to dump this on another sucker who has no clue about the first thing of running sites, development, search optimization, marketing, etc. Seriously… Why would you get rid of a site that you are only spending on a little over $300/month and profiting $59,700? Does not make sense one bit.
Everybody and their mamma is trying to get into the insurance niche. 1000′s of new competitors popping up daily. It’s really always a matter of time before somebody with a bigger budget, knowledge, strategy and more resources takes over your rankings and you are out of the game… Barely pulling in a couple of bucks to cover your expenses.
When that happens? Hard to tell… But it will happen 100%. Why? Because it always does in the most competitive and lucrative niches such as insurance, health, etc. 1 year is a great run if you ask any of the pros. 2 is even better. 3 years? Un-be-fuckin-lievable… Anything beyond that? I wouldn’t bet on it! LOL.
I would not even recommend to any of my clients to consider putting in a $100k bid on this one. Just too much risk involved. Plus the numbers don’t even make sense, once again, something is shady with this one. We’ll see what happens… If anything even happens.
Somehow I think this a ruse to find a legitimate buyer. It’s like those auctions you see on Godaddy where a name that has absolute no value has like 90 bids and is up to 35K, you just scratch your head and go Wtf?
Insightful feedback, except the [foul] language!
It made sense what you said, but I had to examine it for myself.
$2000.00 revenue per day isn’t an over-the-top number. I like the design. Simple doesn’t necessarily mean low quality. I like how the graphics are busting out of the category borders at the bottom. The appeal is: it is supposed to be simple to generate a list of quotes.
If you click, “Articles,” that’s a massive amount of unique articles, which if they’re original, represent incredible value of original content! IMO, you are off on your appraisals. It’s cleaner and more professional-looking that the articles template is unsullied with Adsense and distracting ads.
3rd, I typed, “car insurance quotes,” without quotes, into Google. CarInQuotes is page 1, #2. That’s a high ranking! It’s worth its weight in gold.
It looks like an established site which has achieved high ranking, and because the design of the site is minimalist without Adsense and distracting clutter, it looks like it’s going to hang on to its position, IMO.
The exact monthly local [US] searches are: 60,500, according to GAKT. Those are clean, Google searches entered into only Google, not partner sites.
The more I study it, the more valuable CarinQuotes is looking, and the reserve is looking like a bargain!
The name brand insurance companies appearing in Adsense for the term, Car insurance quotes: Progressive, Gieco, Liberty Mutual, are paying some $50.73 per click.
It’s starting to look like a fabulous bargain! Time will tell, right? The new owner has to get in writing a non-compete that the current owner won’t take his relationships with the affiliates and start a new website! He has to sign a non-compete to get out of the auto-insurance business, and smooth the transition so the new owner will be in with his affiliates.
Problem is… In this case at least 50% if not 70% or 90% (hard to tell exact number without looking at actual sites analytics / stats) which is driving all of the traffic.
You lose that one valuable keyword ranking, and you are screwed.
http://www.semrush.com/search.php?q=carinquotes.com&db=us
It’s nice and all that the site ranks for one or two of these huge keywords… But other than that, is has no substance. Everything else can be replicated. I can put together that same exact site, content, etc.. For less than a grand. REALLY
I agree. Not a good way to attempt to rebuild a tattered reputation if you ask me.
I hear ya. Now the traffic could not be coming from others sites or a network of sites that the same person owns could it…LOL. Now I am not saying that they are not telling the truth but I agree with you one this one 100%.
Run forest Run.
If your going to spend that type of money go buy a state geo domain name for 100k if you can find one that would even sell for that. By the way if anyone can find a state insurance name for under 100k Please let us know.
So Then you spend another 100k for seo. Then you sell for 500k a few years later. You build up some trust with Seo, Unique content etc.
This is just insane.
This is not going to sell if it does for this amount the only person who is going to lose out on this is the broker who should verify everything and have complete details about the traffic. But that is just me maybe I am asking for to much.
LOL- Cant wait to see what happens.
Signing off
DF13 a fake alias of course
Exactly…
The stated expenses of $300/mo simply make no sense.
The traffic is surely pumped from AdWords / PPC… And the linkjuice is from other sites in this guys’ network.
A good question is how long has it been pulling in $2k per day… and how much in Adwords needed to be spent to pull that in. Site does not look like it is built to pull in large traffic through organic SERPS.
Is there a $530k bid or is it a marketing tactic to try to elicit a bid?
Something definitely does not smell right.
What you said… Yes to all of the above 99%.
I own TornadoInsurance.Net and it’s parked I think it’s a great name with all the tornados we have had this past year.It does not get much type in traffic,maybe if it is one of the auctions coming up it could fetch 900.00.
I wonder if there is something like a cartel in the domain industry? Prices like these are outrageous given the info you have stated.
The links, being part of a network etc really matters; but, in the end what really matters is the traffic. The traffic pattern does not seem to be stable:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/carinquotes.com/
Seen as low as 248 visitors a month (May 2011). Even if we factor in the fact that compete.com shows 1/2 to 1/3 of the real traffic; after paying $500K and seing the traffic go down to about 500 visitors, someone might feel terribly ripped off.
Not much is stable when you are solely relying for SEO traffic. This guy went after longtail keywords from the beginning and it’s been paying off… 3, 4 and 5 keywords long but very targeted ones which seem to be converting alright. Given, it’s less competitive than the top ones but still… Only a matter of time before you are bumped down. Nothing good ever lasts forever, especially in the SEO game.
You have to read between the lines.
“This site is making more than $2000 per day.”
Revenues. I don’t believe it’s what the site owner takes home. If I’m correct, the 2K/day revenue claim could be 1 to 3 leads per day resulting in approx 100$ net to the site owner daily, and there may be some traffic acquisition costs on top of that number. If that’s the *real claim* it could be 1:100 conversion rate which makes more sense.
Thanx for supplying the chart, @Oz Taz! It looks like traffic is on the rise from the low earlier this year, and that there are 8 unique referring sites sending more traffic . . . If the buyer does his due diligence, I think it would be proper to request the seller maintain the backlinks and sign off that he will not create or be part of a car insurance business. You can’t ask him to not do health insurance. Plus, I would request to have him smooth signing up with the current affiliates . . . I would get in writing the articles are unique, original, and don’t violate any trademarks, and that the copyright stays with the site. Plus the buyer can ask proof of revenue . . .
but you could take that half a mil and stick it in the bank at 1% and net 5k a year. sure it’s less than three days revenue but it’s guaranteed by uncle sam. flippa is very honest. rick latona is very honest. i seem to sense an air of disbelief. let me state for the record… they couldn’t put it on the internet if it wasn’t true.
The reason is that latona is a pirate and should go back to used cars or whatever easy money scam he can conceive
Most of what’s said here is true. This is a risky site and maintaining the number 2 position for a search term like “car insurance quotes” is difficult to do. If he loses that position, his revenue will fall dramatically. That’s reason number 1 that it’s selling for an extremely low multiple.
Reason number 2 is that he has a reserve price and he has to sell it. When we got the agreement his revenue was much lower.
All anyone has to do is ask me for stats or come to me for due diligence rather than flaming me without doing their homework.
Rick is correct, it’s a risky site and maintaining the high position for a search term like “car insurance quotes” is very difficult. Any loss of this position and revenue will fall dramatically. We’ve been working on SEO for ZipQuote.com for what feels like forever and finally have #2 position on Google, for the long tail keyword “compare free insurance quotes” This can move to page 4 tomorrow, but we’ve worked hard to hold page 1 position. With the competition of thousands of insurance quote sites out there, hopefully the new buyer is ready for the time, effort and expense of maintaining their current ranking.
If all it takes is 2nd place to get a big bid – I am ranking #2 for “premium keyword domain names” for my domaining site. The first $100K takes it
SEO is the critical factor here and like the others have said, you need to maintain that rank for awhile to make it worthwhile for a buyer.
I have the domain name CarInsQuotes.com and if any of you
investors or developers have any interest in this domain,
drop me an email; urlbrands@aol.com
If the website makes $60,000 per month than why sell it? No one that has a website that makes $60 per month will sell it for that low amount