You spend a lot of time and money designing, developing and promoting your website or blog. Hopefully, some of the tips you’ve glained here have come in handy.

But how do you measure the success of your site? For many webmasters the buzz of owning a hobby site is reward itself. For others the community they’ve built up makes friends and valuable contacts. Returns from a site could include the satisfaction from increasing traffic, getting to a high position in SERPs or showing off a high Page Rank. But one thing is certain: when you come to sell your site, all of that is going to pale against the main criteria on which buyers value sites.

Yes, it’s money. The amount of money you make, the length of time you’ve been making it and how much of effort is involved in generating that profit are some of the main motivators for buyers. But valuation is a cross between a complex beast and an art form. Sites apparently making no money sometimes sell for vast amounts. Think youtube.com. Think myspace.com. So if you want to take a tape measure to your site and see what it would command in the market, what do you do?

There are two ways of approaching it. Try one of the online valuation tools. Any search engine should point you a few. And you’ll be amazed at how many million your site or blog is worth. Most of the valuation tools aren’t really tools at all. They’re designed to flatter you so much that you’ll give them a click-here-to-see-how-fantastic-I-am backlink. And that’s their primary purpose. They exist to collect backlinks, not value your site.

Now, however, there’s something different: A valuation tool that values your site realistically, a tool that analyzes your site and compares the metrics against a range of similar sites that have sold in various auctions. It then comes up with a figure and a detailed valuation report that’s surprisingly accurate. Value your website at this new resource. Several sites that have sold recently found that the price they got was within 10% of the value predicted here. As valuations go, that’s scarily accurate.

There are a variety of ways you could use this tool. For example, you could use it as a development guide – try different figures in there to see what increases the value of your website or blog. Or, if you’ve read my recent post on buying websites, you’ll find this tool invaluable in assessing, valuing and doing due diligence on any site you’re looking to buy. Once done, head on over to ebizvaluation’s sister site that covers all you need to know about buying and selling websites.

Related posts:

1. Tips For Choosing A CMS For Your Website
2. Getting Started Purchasing Websites
3. Guide to Buying Traffic
4. Building an Effective Website
5. 10 Ways to Save Time While Building a Website