Archive for February, 2006
At SitePoint there is a new sales thread for a very unique website I think. The URL is scriptscribbler.com and it is a PSP programming tutorial website. I believe that is an interesting niche, that one could make decent money from.
The website is pretty small in page count, but it has traffic, ~100,000 pageviews a month, and a revenue of $150 monthly from adsense. Traffic comes from the many links the site has obtained - probably because of its uniqueness. Also there is a lot of traffic coming from search engines, and the site has seems to have many top rankings for the keywords of the niche.
With the uniqueness of the subject, and the likeliness of the site probably almost being an authority in the field, I guess one would be able to get a forum going quite well. Regarding the adsense, I think a new web design could increase the CTR. An e-mail newsletter when there are new tutorials would probably increase visits.
The catch is, that you would have to know about PSP programming. Or you could maybe find someone with the expertise, and have them continue the lessons by writing further tutorials, and participate in the forum, if the site got one implemented. But maybe the owner is willing to do some paid work after the sale.
Tags: unique websites, niche websites, programming website, tutorial website
February 28th, 2006
I honestly believe that there is too many webmaster communities for sale at the moment. There is like a new one up for sale every day. And almost everyone of them are very small with few visitors, members, posts, articles etc.
Why do some people create these, and why is there other ones buying these, when there is already a lot of large and very popular webmaster communities? It is really hard to bring something new to this area, and almost just as hard to create something as good. To succeed in creating a good, large and profitable webmaster community you would have to be blessed with some amazing marketing skills.
I think that the main reason for this, is that most of the people creating websites are into webmastering. So it is the obvious thing for them to create since they know about it. The people buying these communities are probably in the exact same situation.
This is what I found of webmaster communities for sale, by browsing about 10 days back in some forums.
And then there is this thread where someone wants to buy such forums for their userbase - which makes it pretty clear that it is hard to market such a site and get users. But this guy might be on to something - in some cases it is cheaper and easier to buy other sites to merge with your own than through organic growth.
But as stated I believe there is too many of them for sale. But they are certainly not the only kind of sites that there are too many of being for sale. I also see small image hosting and arcade sites for sale almost everyday.
Tags: webmaster, web development, webmaster community
February 27th, 2006
Now it is public who bought Blog Herald, and it was BlogMedia, Inc. I know that I’m not exactly right on time with this post, but I was travelling back home from Istanbul yesterday, and really needed some sleep, so I didn’t see it before now. But back to the sale..
Duncan will be posting for the next two months while BlogMedia gets their team started. This is an obvious thing for blog sales since most blogs are kind of personal, the original blogger will need to help the transition to be smooth.
The Price: The big question is what the price ended up being, but unfortunatly they won’t tell. All they say is that both parties believe it was a fair deal. It is hard to say what the price might have been, but some bloggers are guessing:
I personally guess it would be something like $30,000+, but probably not higher than $35,000, so my guess is much like Chartreuse. My reasons for believing this is that BlogMedia must have known about the first time Blog Herald was supposed to sell, and they didn’t buy it then. And also, I’ve been watching and participating in website auctions for a long time, and since the public bids at SitePoint ended at $25,000 I guess that the private bids haven’t been that much higher.
I’ve previously reported on the sale and the supposed sale:
Tags: blog herald, blog sale, blogmedia inc, blog pricings
February 27th, 2006
If some of you are browsing forums and other sites looking for potential website investments, then I would guess that you look into the details for some of them.
Some times you have noticed that not everything seems right. It could be that the stats are manipulated. Maybe some parts of the website is copyright by someone else than the seller. Or it is that there is just something of general interest to potential buyers that you know, and they might not.
Then what do you do…
- Close the browser window and move on?
- You post it for everyone to know?
In most cases - if I find it being important - I will let everyone know about it. And I have my reasons to believe it is the better thing to do.
- I see other website buyers as colleagues, and real people, so I don’t like them to get ripped of. Getting the best deals isn’t a war between me and them. If I help them they will hopefully also help me. This not only being to warn me about risks, but some might even “get to know me”, and tell me if they see something of my interest for sale.
- If what I point out is indeed a mistake by the seller, he will apologize and clear things out. Now the sale can go on and everybody knows that the seller is a nice guy, who is just as human as you and me.
- In case I’m wrong, and what I point out as “not being right” is actually correct. Then I will apologize and let everyone know that I was wrong, and help the seller to repair it, if damage has been caused.
Tags: buying websites, website scams, trading websites
February 25th, 2006
DNJournal provides us with a comprehensive list of domains that sold in 2005. The list includes price, date and where the domains sold. Domains that are listed has sold for prices of $10,000+
It is pretty interesting to look at the domain list to get a better idea of potential domain value, which should also be taken into consideration when buying (and selling) websites.
Via Google Blogoscoped
Tags: domain names, domain prices, buying domains, domain value
February 23rd, 2006
The first one is a Hip Hop Forum that is listed for sale at Dnforum and NamePros. The forum stats according to seller are as following: threads: 50,711, posts: 701,104, members: 6,631, which makes it a pretty large forum. The site has a revenue of $400-800 a month coming from Casale, Fastclick and YPN.
It doesn’t seem to get that much traffic, since the seller talks about a potential buyer would make $1,000+ if they bring it up to 2,000+ unqiues a day, so this should be taken into consideration. With a minimum price of $10,000 I think it could be a bit too high, because the site is already cluttered with a lot of advertising. But a forum can be a very good investment if you’re able to grow it.
The second one is a BitTorrent forum, which is for sale at NamePros. According to the stats screenshots provided in the thread it is obvious that the site has a huge amount of traffic. It doesn’t have that many threads or posts, but with 90,000+ registered users I believe that there is reason to call it a large forum. The asking price is $60,000 so it is a sale that needs deeper investigation if you’re a potential buyer.
Tags: selling forum, selling community, bittorrent, hip hop
February 22nd, 2006
I just read a thread on DigitalPoint, where some users point out, that some guy that has been bidding up his own auctions using multiply user accounts. Numerous other users has ended up paying more for websites than what they probably had sold for.
It is a shame that such things go on, but it will probably always be like that, and it is really hard to catch such cheaters in time. So it is an obvious example of buyers to consider what they want to pay for given website, and stick to that. Don’t think that you’re missing out on something because there is several other bidders competing. Do your own valuation and do only buy for less than the value you conclude.
If you want to buy sites on auction and if you want the bidding to be real, then it is just because you want to make steal and buy it too cheap. Nothing wrong with that, but then you’d have to expect some people to try and drive up the bidding.
Tags: buying websites, auction bidding, auction cheat, shill bidding
February 22nd, 2006
There is a really nice blog / website for sale at SitePoint - it is Unmatched Style, which I personally visit once in a while, and a site that some of you probably have visited.
The seller reports that there is around 9,000 daily uniques doing 25,000 pageviews a day. He also tells that the site has a revenue of $500-$900 a month through YPN and Amazon, with most of the revenue coming from YPN.
It is on auction - currently without a BIN - with a starting bid of $3,500. The bidding is already on the roll and as I’m writing this the current high bid is $4,000.
I think that the ads could get much more relavant with adsense, but I don’t know if replacing YPN with adsense would result in a higher revenue. The CTR with adsense would have to make up for the probably less paying ads compared to the current YPN ads. I guess it is worth trying.
This is absolutely an interesting site that I think you should check out if you’re into web design.
Tags: unmatched style, 9rules, blog auction, blogging
February 21st, 2006
There is an “amazing” deal at DigitalPoint. Someone is selling a website with 4000+ daily uniques and a $10 - $20 daily revenue. It is for sale for just with a BIN at $200 or best offer. That is less than 20 days of revenue, so I think that there has to be a catch, or is this guy just desperate to get $200..?
“When something sounds to good to be true, it probably is”, but I can’t find the exact thing. I have some quick thoughts of potential risks, but I can’t tell for sure.
The risks that came to my mind was:
- Framing other websites isn’t always accepted, and there could be legal threats.
- There could be legal issues with BitTorrent search engines. Even though it “just” uses other search engines.
So would you consider buying such a website, maybe even that one?
Update: It seems like he has just edited the thread, and the BIN is now $300.
Tags: bittorrent search, website risks, webmaster risks
February 21st, 2006
There is a boy band (breeding 5..?) community for sale at Dnforum. The forum is located at www.breeding5.com and seems pretty active. It has about 15,000 monthly uniques and 150,000 monthly pageviews according to seller. There is currently 260,626 posts and 5,245 members.
Almost every forum category has had activity today, and there a lots of threads in which this activity occurs.
It is on auction with a starting bid at $995, but the seller looks for $2,000+. With a $75 monthly adsense revenue this seems a bit high, but I would judge that the adsense is badly implemented, and that there definitely is opportunities for big improvements. Like implemeting more adsense elements - one in between of posts.
Also the indexing in Google and Yahoo is not much, so with a little bit of SEO and link building I guess that you could increase the traffic. That is, if there are searches in this “niche”.
Only thing I would worry about, is potential issues regarding the domain name. I don’t know if this is a real problem, but I recall there beeing some previous cases about using artist names in domains. Heck, I don’t even know what the exact name of the boy band is…
Tags: selling community, selling forum, adsense improvement, domain issues
February 20th, 2006
Previous Posts
