Valuation of Unique Visitors Based Upon Purchasing Power

We've been approached by a few Angel Investors and are working through some valuation questions, so that's forced me to think about how to value our intellectual property, some of which includes unique visitors. We haven't sold any equity outside of immediate family, but are now looking to move SkyRank in a different direction which will require additional working capital. We've also lacked some management expertise and have put together a wonderful Board who is helping with that.

The top Google return on this topic states that web companies with unique visitors are selling at about $30 to $40 per unique on a monthly basis. You can view that analysis here. So, a normal website that publishes content and attracts let's say 100,000 monthly unique visitors could typically get valued at 100,000 * $35 or $3.5 million. Interestingly, I'm friendly with a company that caters to the ultra high net worth investor and alternative investment funds that recently received a similar valuation with far less traffic than 100,000 uniques, which does imply a higher value per wealthy visitors. Most social network and recurring users in the web space though are average consumers surfing the internet. I don't know of much that's tracked high net worth investors or institutional investors with high purchasing power.

Tiger Global Management LLC recently invested $20 million in LinkedIn providing a valuation of $2 billion for LinkedIn, valuing each of LinkedIn's 14 million visitors at $143 each -- that's 400% greater than the $35 per visitor estimated prior. I would think the majority of LinkedIn users however are college-educated professionals seeking upward mobility which would imply income greater than $100,000. LinkedIn probably has some significant revenue also based upon subscriptions they charge, which should be accounted for in the valuation.

But what about traffic of very wealthy individuals, say, of income greater than $500,000 per year? There aren't as many of those people worldwide, but shouldn't their purchasing power and their value as unique visitors be valued higher than other visitors? After all, they are able and willing to pay more for more expensive products and services. I was recently talking with a Board Member who mentioned some web subscription services and other "social groups" requiring subscription fees to access a network of ultra high net worth individuals. He said he typically pays $4000 to $5000 per year to access these groups which equates to about $350 per month. I'm interested to hear what others think about this concept of valuing unique visitors based upon purchasing power.

I would propose the following equation:

(Avg Annual Income of Monthly Visitor) / ($50,000) * $50 = value per unique visitor,

where $50,000 is the mean income of males and females in the USA, and $50 is the value per unique visitor for a site with average income users.

This would value a website attracting ultra high net worth investors with $500,000 annual income at $500 per unique visitor, a similar value as the monthly subscription my friend and Board Member pays regularly for useful subscription services.

Or perhaps a more simple formula to value a unique visitor would be how much a user is willing to pay per month for a useful subsription-based service.