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Asset evaluation checklist
Use this checklist to evaluate whether a digital property a site, content hub, or creator-owned asset is worth building, buying, or putting real time behind. It's designed for owners: people who care about margin, durability, and upside, not just traffic screenshots.
This isn't a formal valuation framework. It's the set of questions we run through at Margin Media before deciding whether to invest in, acquire, or build around a digital asset.
A few rules of thumb before you start
- Traffic is not the asset. Traffic plus clear monetization plus clean operations is the asset.
- Platform-only attention is fragile. If everything lives on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, you're renting, not owning.
- A well-built site with a solid RPM can out-earn most platform payouts. We often see solid sites significantly outperform raw social RPM.
- Payback window matters. If a realistic 12–24 month path to "paying for itself" doesn't exist, it's probably not an asset it's a hobby or an experiment.
The Margin Media asset evaluation checklist
You can run this against a property you already own, a site you're thinking about acquiring, or a hypothetical asset you're considering building with Margin Media.
1. Audience & demand
- Is there a real, identifiable audience not just impressions?
- Which topics, videos, or posts consistently perform?
- Is the demand evergreen, seasonal, or trend-driven?
- Are there clear problems or questions the asset helps solve?
- Would people notice if this property disappeared?
2. Traffic & discoverability
- What is the current monthly traffic (sessions / pageviews)?
- Where does that traffic come from search, social, referrals, email?
- Is the site properly indexed and technically healthy?
- Do social profiles and content link back to the site?
- Is there obvious upside from basic SEO & structure work?
3. Monetization & margin
- How does the asset currently make money (if at all)?
- What's the effective RPM / RPV today (revenue per 1,000 pageviews or per visitor)?
- Is the revenue mix high-margin or low-margin?
- Is there upside from layering in ads, email, product flows, or sponsorships?
- Can you reasonably imagine a 2–3× RPM improvement with focused CRO and layout work?
4. Operational reality
- Is the tech stack modern, fast, and maintainable?
- Can non-engineers update content and key pages without breaking things?
- Is analytics set up cleanly enough to trust the numbers?
- Is there someone responsible for ongoing updates and upkeep?
- Can new experiments be run without months of dev work?
5. Risk & defensibility
- How dependent is the asset on a single platform or algorithm?
- Could a competitor copy the idea quickly and cheaply?
- Is there brand, depth of content, or IP that makes this hard to replace?
- Are there single points of failure (one creator, one channel)?
- If growth stalled for 6–12 months, would the asset still be valuable?
6. Payback & upside
- What is the realistic build or acquisition cost for this asset?
- With current traffic and a reasonable target RPM, how long would it take to "pay for itself"?
- Is there a believable path to 2–3× revenue within 12–24 months with focused work?
- Does that upside justify the time, focus, and risk it will require?
- If everything goes better than expected, what does a “great year” look like?
Using this checklist with Margin Media
When we partner with creators or businesses, we effectively run this checklist together: what you have, what's working, what's broken, and what kind of asset this could become with the right build and systems.
If you'd like a second set of eyes on a property you own or one you're thinking about building or buying you can share the basics (traffic, niche, monetization, goals) and we'll tell you how we'd approach it.