ROUNDTABLES ★ 6 upvotes 2014

Ask HN: How should I value my side project?

The Founder's Submission

Direct narrative and submission text authored by @n1c on Hacker News:

For the last 2 years I've been running http://dressed.so which I built for /r/malefashionadvice (it's also used by /r/femalefashionadvice now) but it's time for me to move on. I'd obviously like to sell it for as much as possible, but I can't really figure out a nice way of objectively valuing it.

Some numbers:


  About $ 100 a month in affiliate revenue
  About $ 100 a month in adsense
  3,563 verified users
  8,904 active posts
  6,366 comments

Traffic (last 30 days, 99% from reddit)

  75,360 Visits (363,112 Pageviews at 4.82 pages / visit)
  39,231 Unique Visitors

I've been eyeing about $ 2'500 as the lowest I'll entertain, any thoughts / feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I posted this to reddit on the weekend here - http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/212raf/ask_rstartups_please_help_me_value_my_little/

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled analysis of the business dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic takeaways:

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2014 where @n1c convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:
1
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
2
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
3
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:

Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

High-signal perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (4 total discussions):

NI @nicholas73 Peer Contributor

Factors: 1. Growth rate 2. Competitive analysis 3. Work required to run.

If you have a demonstrably consistent growth curve, you can ask for a high multiple of revenue.

If your competitor really would benefit, you can ask for more to the right buyer. If your site is easily whipped together, and users aren't sticky, then you get a low multiple designed for the buyer to get his principle back ASAP and hopefully make a profit.

If the site requires active management, subtract time costs from potential revenue.

AZ @AznHisoka Peer Contributor

If you sell it in a site like Flippa, it'll be go for at most $1200, but more likely $800-$1000. That depends on how long you've had that revenue for. If it's 3+ years, then upwards of $1200 is more likely. Otherwise, less than $1000.

Risks are: Reddit is your lone traffic source Adsense can be banned anytime by Google.

Also, the # of users, posts, comments means absolutely nothing to a seller. Just monthly recurring revenue :)

DS @dsschnau Peer Contributor

Hey, that's a nifty tool. How did you go about getting the idea to make it? Did the community ask for it?

JE @jesusmichael Peer Contributor

well A: its not worth anything unless someone wants to buy it.. and B: you should be making more money

HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 6 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 4 comments
TOPICS & TECH STACK: