WTS: #1 gaming niche forum and related domains [Left 4 Dead]

WTS: #1 gaming niche forum and related sites​

This is a perfect opportunity for someone to acquire the #1 ranking forum for the Game of the Year 2008, Left 4 Dead. The forum is one year old almost to the day and at the peak of it’s popularity. The game was released in November to critical acclaim and promises to remain popular for the foreseeable future due to Valve’s commitment to fresh content and community support.

http://left4deadforums.com (PR: 3) ranks higher in Google than the official Steam Forum and the recent results in terms of registrations and activity speak volumes for the popularity of the site. Here is some simple data to whet your appetites:


Forum stats: Threads: 3,505, Posts: 36,098, Members: 3,170

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Stats: (Dec 10, 2008 - Jan 9, 2009) (Google Analytics)
41,712 Visits
21,777 Absolute Unique Visitors
90,393 Pageviews
2.17 Average Pageviews
00:04:02 Time on Site
62.80% Bounce Rate
49.89% New Visits

I have never bothered to try and monetize the forums in anyway other than a smattering of adsense. Results have been reasonable but not ground breaking:

November: $32.20
December: $47.07
January: $23.52


Recently however I was turned onto the idea of running ads on the site independently. I started on the 11th Jan, it is now the 13th and in the last three days I have earned $200 dollars in ads for the period 11th Jan – 11th Feb. The spaces sold out so quick that I had decided to increase the price/rotation for the following month. Ad spaces and the like can be seen here:

Left 4 Dead Forums - Advertise

Below is proof of earnings over three days:

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Based on the speed of which the ads were snapped up I see no reason why someone could not make a huge amount of money from this site.

Now, the meat and gravy. Traffic stats. I have/had been running this forum on semi-dedicated hosting from JaguarPC but the traffic coming into the forums killed it so I am in the process of upgrading to a dedicated server. You are going to need a dedicated server to be able to run this site.

These are webaliser stats for January 1st thru 13th.

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Unfortunately, the only stats I have to show you for earlier periods are these up until 11th December 2008:

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This is because the primary domain on my webhost expired, so I switched it and lost all webaliser/awstats as a result. Sorry about that but I think the above give a good idea of the traffic incoming.

I also have an up-to-date readout from Google analytics that I am willing to share with interested parties. Please PM me for a copy of this file if you are genuinely interested in this opportunity.

Additional to left4deadforums.com I have the following related domains all with GoDaddy that I will be including in the sale:

L4DFILES.COM (1/23/2010)
L4DFORUMS.NET (1/14/2010)
L4DNEWS.COM (2/16/2010)
LEFT4DEADFILES.COM (1/23/2010)
LEFT4DEADFORUMS.COM (1/14/2010)
LEFT4DEADFORUMS.NET (1/14/2010)
LEFT4DEADNEWS.COM (2/16/2010) (wp blog content included)

To summarise…

For sale:

• MySQL database of left4deadforums.com
• Seven domain names relating to Left 4 Dead
• Custom vBulletin Style

Not included:

• vBulletin Licence
• vBSEO Licence

Starting bid $300.

BIN $10,000.

Payment medium can be negotiated. Either post your offer below or send via PM.

I will remain involved in the community for as long as the new owner wishes (max three months) to oversee the transition and assist where I can.

Feel free to visit, register and check out the forums. Thanks for reading all of this.

Happy bidding.

 

Had a private bid of $2000 via MSN.

 

No longer for sale. Closed.