Looking for help valuing a site

[Marketing Guy]

Prompted by the thread about website valuation models, I'm starting to get curious about selling one of my sites, but I'm having trouble placing a value on it (the thread was quite old so I .

It's a weird one - not really quantifyable in terms annual income. 31k pages indexed (Google, not entirely accurate!), PR6 (lot's of .edu, etc links), 3 years old (has weathered every major SE updated without any problems), good SEO (top 5 for industry top level generic with 120m+ results), good reviews (from the likes of Harvard Business School, etc), 80k or so visits per month.

The issue is that it hasn't been monetised other than with Adsense (it's an information site). But the industry lends itself well to the web and it could be commericalised reasonably easy.

I've been toying with figures - based on current earnings I could reasonably look at $15-20k selling price (perhaps more given the current and consistent rankings of the site). But churning figures for selling the main industry service, then the annual income alone could be in the region of $100-200k (probably the upper end), which places the end selling price notably higher.

I'm not really technically able enough to implement the commericalisation myself, nor do I have the time or enthusiasm to setup a business to do it just now (mainly because it would require substantially more investment than I'd be prepared to take on, where a more technically minded person could most likely do it themselves).

I'm not niave in the ways of the world and I know "potential" generally isn't worth the paper it's printed on and indeed, the best tactic is to find the "right" buyer. But I would like to try and quantify things a little more than they are just now so I have a better idea of where I'm going with it.

So my question is, how do you quantify your site's value based on potential?

I understand there's no firm answer here - I'm just looking for some ideas really.

I mean, for example, an ecommerce site may have more "potential" but achieveing that may be more difficult than achieving the "potential" of an information site?

How do the experienced sellers / buyers make the call? On a site by site basis, industry by industry? Do you have a plan or go by gut feel?

Any input would be appreciated.

Cheers
MG