Large Forum Host - $1600/mo Net - Growing

[mdvaldosta]

First off, I hate to sell this. I've had offers over last several months and decided against selling, but a need for funds is forcing me to part with it.

www . eamped . com

The site will make about $1750 this month via adsense, and another $60 for paid advertising removals via paypal subscriptions (only been offering this for about a month). This is with no advertising at all, only by serps and referrals. The only expense is the VPS (ES1 Solo Pro) at ServInt which runs $229 a month, server load is only around 0.2 so there's a long way to go on just one box. You don't need to be a server admin to run this, but alittle knowledge of phpBB would be helpful. Here's an Adsense screenshot for the month so far:



The site is about 2 years old and has had about 18,000 forum signups total. All inactive (30 days no posts) are purged and there are currently 3700 forums with about 70 signups per day, with about 1.2 million posts (going up very fast). This forum host was re-launched from scratch about 6 months ago, at that point there were just 50 uniques / day...

Currently, about 300k pageviews a day are served according to Awstats. According to Google Analytics (which is shown only on content pages where adverts are served and not on forums paying for advert removal), there's about 200k pages and 20k visitors served per day. Here's an analytics screenshot of the month so far:



It runs on sebflippers script, it's been modified and includes alot of add-ons from Cyberalien. All forums are search engine friendly, and on subdomains. There are about 400 themes available, modified for quick reply (to reduce pageloads). Overall the users are quite happy with the service, feel free to browse through the support forum and see for yourself.

Payment via bank transfer, cashier's check, or escrow (you pay the fees) is preferred but am willing to negotiate other methods. I will assist any way I can with moving the site to your server and making sure it's running right for you. I will provide one week of support in the support forum, and answer questions and help the buyer run the service for a week as well to ensure a smooth transition.

I am looking for 12 months income, approx $19k for a BIN. This isn't really an auction, I'm letting you know what I want out of the site and won't sell unless it unless I get a reasonable offer. This would be an excellent investment, and the name is branding well.

[mdvaldosta]

Had some questions, so I'll answer them publicly:

How much time/day is needed to run the site?

I get 2-3 support emails a day that I usually answer in the morning. Stuff like changing someone's url or asking how to do something - I usually refer them to asking in the support forum. In the support forum I spend probably 5-10 minutes a day answering quesitons, though most of the time they could (and often are) answered by other members.

What kind of knowlegde/skills does the new owner need to have?

I don't have any real knowledge or skills, I suppose having used phpBB before would be a plus but not necessary. Everything's pretty much done, maintaining the support keeps users happy.

Do you have mods for help?

There are two mods in the support forum, they don't do much really though. 90% of the questions can / are answered by other people using the service.

Do I need to keep your current hosting server?

Nope, not at all. In fact, I want to keep the server but if you keeping everthing as-is on that box is a deal-breaker I'll transfer ownership it to you.

How can I increase the revenue and traffic in the future?

It should increase on it's own. You could advertise if you want, though if it were me (and what I've been doing) is working on search engine rankings. It does pretty well as-is and obviously as more forum's sign up revenue is sure to increase... as will sign-ups for the ad-free service.

What version phpBB are you running?

The latest version, 2.0.22

Is the software encrypted?

Nope it's not.

[mdvaldosta]

More questions...

Can you tell me what the current hosting spec is? And how much bandwidth would be needed in the future. I was wondering if I can move to goDaddy.com hosting or have to leave it there.

It's this dedicated server: https://www.servint.net/dedicated/details.php#pkg1 but under their Virtuozzo VPS environment. You can move to whichever hosting you want, and is what I prefer.

What kind of keywords is the site under on search engine?

free forum, free forums, free forum hosting, etc.

Can you send me past revenue/traffic/referral stats for the past 4-5 months?

Yea sure, but there wasn't any revenue until alittle over a month ago. Traffic has increased dramatically over the last 5 months, all naturally (no avertising ever, other than getting blogged and listed in directories).

Is there any issue with spamming, virus or anything harmful? I mean do the users ask you about that support? Also please tell me what kind of support you provide to them.

Spamming really isn't an issue, sure it happens but I've made some modifications that keep 95% of it out. The support forum for example receives maybe 1 spam post a week, so that's not what I'd consider a problem. Not like most forums anyway. As for getting spam sign-ups, that was a problem until I integrated a pretty good captcha there. Also, the back-end of the script has a spam scanning feature, among a bunch of other stuff like importing databases, backing up individual forums, removing adverts, changing forum names, etc.

Just to confirm, you'll accept escrow.com with my 100% fee, right? The service is excellent and I used it before.

Yes, escrow is fine so long as you pay the fee.

[TasteOfPower]

19K. ok sold.

[dotcom360]

Do you do any kind of advertisements ?

[Valhalla]

Hi,

I am interested in this, how long has revenue being stable?

Also for a novice would it take long to become proficient with providing support?

[TasteOfPower]

it sold and i have no plans on NOT BUYING.

[Valhalla]

if this falls through please contact me

[mdvaldosta]

Contacting TasteofPower. Sale pending.

[jtweb]

Can you post the traffic stat and also the referral stat?

[Luke Beale]

Originally Posted by jtweb

Can you post the traffic stat and also the referral stat?

If you look the sale is pending with someone else

[mdvaldosta]

Buyer fell through, back up for sale. Listen, if you don't have the funds to pay for the site - don't try to buy it. At this point, I have to request the buyer send a non-refundable deposit of $500 within 24 hours of the close of sale and the rest to be paid within 5 business days. I also reserve the right to not sell to someone new, with poor rep, or poor iTrader if I so choose.

BIN is still $19k. Here is an updated adsense screenshot covering the last few days...



As mentioned earlier, I will provide 1 week of support and assistance with getting familiar with the service. Really little work involved, and what little work I do is done to keep the users happy - it's not required.

[funkymario]

this is one of the best websites for sale that i saw on DP since i joined, too bad am really busy with my others projects, i cant believe your are selling anyway i wish you good luck!

cheeers.

[mdvaldosta]

As requested, here are more traffic stats. There are a few screenies so I zipped them:

Right click, save as

[mdvaldosta]

$15k offer received via PM. Auction will run for 48 hours (from this post) or until it goes for the $19k asking price.

[mdvaldosta]

24 hours left.

[mdvaldosta]

BIN reduced to $17k.

[wvccboy]

Hey,

How old is the site?

Thanks!

[mdvaldosta]

Around 2 years old.

[kidder]

I've sent you a PM if your interested