The Math on Building a Website Worth $250,000

I’ve been reflecting on purpose and meaning this week, as mentioned in my previous post. Recently, I’ve felt trapped in a never-ending cycle of earning money just to pay bills and debts, with no end in sight.

What troubles me most is the seemingly endless nature of my circumstances. Deep down, I can’t imagine doing this for another 20-30 years. The main issue is feeling trapped; I can’t stop working because the bills will never stop coming.

A few weeks ago, someone I know on LinkedIn posted about selling his company, calling it “My first exit.” I’d heard the term before, but this time it resonated differently.

This led me to ponder: What if all the work and effort I put into something had an exit strategy, rather than the constant cycle of meeting monthly income targets just to stay afloat? What if I could build something to sell whenever I need a change in my life? And if I can build the first one, there’s no limit to how many others I can create after.

Wouldn’t life be more fresh and exciting knowing that I’m creating assets with the potential for future sale, instead of enduring the endless grind of work that seems never-ending?

The next question for me is: what is the shortest journey from where I am right now to a $250,000 exit?

I’ve been delving deeper into the world of SEO lately and have come across various individuals making multi-six figures a year (sometimes even a month!) through SEO-related online ventures.

In my spare time, I’ve been trying to grow a few sites of my own, and I believe my shortest path to $250K would be to grow one of them enough to flip it to someone.

How far am I from making that happen? Let’s look at the numbers.

Websites are usually valued at 30 to 40 times their monthly revenue, so to sell a website for $250K, it must generate between $6,250 and $8,333 per month.

The websites I currently have in my portfolio are primarily candidates for online advertising, so the next question is: how much traffic would I need to generate $8,000 per month in online advertising revenue?

The current leader in online advertising is Mediavine, a full-service digital advertising technology, which can generate anywhere from $12 to upwards of $65 per 1,000 views.

Staying conservative, $8,000 divided by $25 equals 320,000 views per month.

Interestingly, my website with the most traffic at the moment is one I built last September for an AI content competition.

Current stats:

  • 8.3K page views in the last 28 days from 26 pages
  • Average number of page views per page: 317
  • Number of total pages needed to hit 320,000 views: 1,009
  • Additional pages still needed to be created: 983

I think creating five pages a week for this website would be an ambitious goal. Starting now, it would take me 3 years and 9 months to have all the content published.

These are conservative estimates, so progress could potentially be faster. Additionally, while I’m building revenue toward the goal of $8,000 a month, I’m still making money, which can’t be overlooked. If this site generates $2,000 a month in passive income, that would cover all my basic living expenses. Moreover, once the website starts generating revenue, I can reinvest the funds into outsourcing content creation to accelerate the process.

So where do I go from here? I truly believe this is achievable, and I’m excited to take on this challenge. Just putting this on paper has reenergized me.

Let’s write 983 pages and see where it gets us!

Stay tuned to the blog for regular updates on my journey. Wish me luck!

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