Established web site for sale

Web site for sale.
www.wildfigurines.com - established end of Nov 2005.

Domain paid for until Sep 2010

Sources of income -

Selling wildlife animal, sea and bird figurines using dropshippers (no stocking)
Adsense (new)
Text Link Ads (new)
Art.com

Average net income since established $138/month,
in last 6 months $195/month

Costs - Nil (hosting costs for a site like this can be anywhere from $4 to $10/month, however I have one account where I run all my sites from, which costs me $4/month and includes cpanel)

Traffic all organic

Attached is spreadsheet showing income (inc graph) and traffic

Customer list 185. Set up through phplist (no cost) so can send email campaigns

Sales come through paypal
Pay wholesaler who ships products to customer

#1 for 'wildlife figurines' on

Google
MSN
Yahoo

Attach1 - My stats are from Statcounter until end of Jan.
Attach2 - Stats from cpanel
Attach 3 - Records from paypal for orders, text link ads, art.com from Jan 1 this year
Attach 4 - My main dropshippers site showing some of my orders.

I use around 6 dropshippers, some more than others. I have more screenshots however limited to only 5 here at DP.

BIN US$5000 - Price neg PM me.

I live in Australia, yet all of my customers are from US. It doesn't matter where you live.

Reason for selling - We want to get into real estate, and although this web site has little maintenance (1-2 hours a month), we prefer to focus on what we are doing rather than have several things going at once.

 

Nice niche there... Unfortunately for me, I can't use Paypal, otherwise I would have place a bid already

Good luck with your sale

 

So you're asking for 24 months revenue at $200/month?

 

$100 here...

 

I'm interested, but not any where near that price.

 

same as def328 - why such a high price !

 

Sent you a PM

 

Looks like your traffic has been steadily declining since November.

How do you submit orders to your dropshippers?

 

Ok guys,

firstly, this is an established business. It's not one of those made for adsense sites where you just set it and forget.

You have to deal with customers and wholesalers from time to time.

I'm not sure where you may live in this world, but the busiest times for gift shopping is towards xmas and in the summer in the US. This is why you see fluctuations in the traffic.

Having said that, this is why I started selling 'text link ads' to provide income for the slower months (you can see an example of one of these in the top right of the web site as 'online furniture store'). When all 8 slots are filled
that's an income of $60/month to you. When your PR goes up, Text Link ads raises the charge for a link, and therefore your income goes up.

I also added adsense, as this more than covers hosting costs.

All the dropshippers (except 1 where I send an email), have the order pages on thier own web sites. The diffierence is they don't sell to the public, and so you get a username and password with your account.

Regards
Dean

 

its an established business means if you leave it sitting you dont get jack. I have a question for you why are the majority of the sales from the same person?

 

No it doesn't mean that at all. It means sometimes a customer may send you an email saying 'what is this elephant figurine made of?' etc.

What do you mean 'majority of sales from same person'
I am Dean Whittingham, I am the person who pays the wholesaler.

Regards
Dean

 

If I may, could I please ask what it is most people first think of after reading the above. I understand that in this world you need some skeptisicm, but it seems to me I'm getting all the wrong questions, or that I'm out to shaft someone!

What is it people want from a business. This business is probably for that type of person who has a few hours a week to really take it to the next level.

My plan of attack (if I wasn't going to get into real estate - but we are on the verge of a boom here and so I'm not missing out), was to keep on building my links to get my google rankings up. So far I sit in the top ten in MSN and Yahoo for many terms such as elephant figurines, eagle figurines and so on as these are the more popular terms,.

Of course I have started selling links, so this adds income.

And then I was looking to buy out a few of my competitors. The way I see it, most people who come to sites like mine are looking for gifts. Grab some other sites with established seo rankings (like mine), and you instantly increase your traffic and sales.

Have a look at my testimonials page. These aren't made up, and I have kept all the emails to prove it.

But this line of thinking is not for most. And neither is this business.

If you have an interest in owning a gift site, and don't mind dealing with the odd customer from time to time, and maybe would even consider selling your own stock, well at least you have something that is getting traffic NOW!

This is not for those who are after something for nothing
Dean

 

I had sent you a PM with an offer. Guess you didn't like it...

 

There is also a Blog http://wildfigurines.blogspot.com/
and squidoo lens http://www.squidoo.com/wildfigurines that comes with it.

I've had two offers, but am declining both
Sorry

 

How do you justify $5000 what is your thinking maybe an explanation would reduce the scepticism it seems high to me too

 

What is the current bid?

 

Hi Paul,
That's a good question.
I'm basing the figure on several things

Firstly, I have bought and sold businesses before, and there's more to a business than just the monthly income. There's goodwill, customer list, place in the market place and so on.

I provide my web site customers with high service, which I'm assuming doesn't exist much in the US, and I only say this because of some of the emails I get from customers. If a customer has a question, query or a problem I act on it. The responses I get astound me.

When customers compare at other sites, they come back to me.

I also provide figurines that other web owners don't sell, mainly because they're too lazy to source them out.

I see no reason why this web site can not be making $500 a month in the near future, and it comes down to quality service.

Since my first sale on Nov 29th 2005, the traffic --> sales --> profit has only increased in average. You can see the comparison between Dec 2005 and Dec 2006 to see that.

With this business you get
- profitable straight away
- customer list
- search engine rankings (free traffic)

I'm also more than happy to help the new owner in transition. There will be things to learn. But as I said earlier, this is not a business you set and forget unless you want to hire someone to take care of your orders and to update your web site when suppliers run out of stock of a particular item.

I employ someone at $5/hour to do some admin (but this is not for this web site), but most people are too scared to hire someone to do work.

So saying that, you may want to have an interest in wildlife, or collectibles, or selling gifts. If you have not interest in any of these fields you'll only end up burying this business, which would be a shame as I spent many hours building it.

Dean

 

tridean - my comment above seemed blunt and negative. I didn't mean so, forgive me. I was just making sure that I read what your monthly income was correctly. I've seen sites sell for 60x revenue. Heck I sold my forum for 3 years revenue. You're right when you say monthly income isn't everything - i know that first hand

So, I'm agreeing with you and hope your site sales goes smoothly. It may take a bit longer to sell due to the price, but a serious buyer will come along eventually.

-Kyle

 

Hi Kyle,
No need to apologise.
I really appreciate your comments, and you're right, I firmly believe there is someone in the world looking for exaclty what I'm selling. I'd hate to see it go to someone without an interest in that niche

Best Wishes
Dean

 

Dean,

Thanks for the detailed reply to my PM.
You have a very nice site, and what even better, you've got very clear presentation of sales data. You don't see it often on DP.

But the price is steep. Is it an auction, or is it $5000 firm? If it is an auction, please specify a minimum bid, so that we don't waste time by sending you irrelevant offers.

I am still worried about the April sales data. Even if the snapshot was taken at 13 of April, the revenue is disproportionally low comparing to the March data. (~$25 till 13 Apr vs ~$320 in March). Is it a random fluctuation? Is there a corresponding slowdown in traffic or is it a slowdown in conversion rates?

Thanks,
mkassets