Looking for partner to buy into affordabook.com

Hey,
My name's Vinnie Thomas, I am the founder/owner of www.affordabook.com. In a nutshell, Affordabook is a price comparison engine for books and textbooks. I started working on it around November with the idea of making it a Virginia Tech specific project, by listing the courses and associated textbooks. I quickly realized it would be in my best interest to make it global, but have the option of school specific subpages.

Anyway the site has been out of beta since aruond January and has done well for a young site. In January it generated around 400 dollars during textbook season. Since then the #'s have dropped, but so has the time I have put into it. Traffic remains around 100-150 uniques a day, and usually 4-6 sales a week. Right now no money is being put towards advertising.

Overall I have put around 4000 dollars into the site. The scripting ended up coming to around 2200 dollars, and then add in the design/logo, coder, database work (the VT subpages) and advertising and that is what it comes to. The site is very close to where it needs to be. It basically needs a few more hundred dollars for the features I want.

The thing is, I am going back to VT in 3 weeks for the summer semester. I thought that I would have the site ready for when I was back to school and would have less time and money, but I don't. Plus school is very expensive, and even though I will save TONS of money on textbooks by shopping with Affordabook (I know, I'm a riot) it won't be enough.

Now that doesn't mean I won't be putting time into it, but not as much as I have been able to in the past.

I thought about just selling the site but I really want to stay a part of this site, and I know with some SEO, and a little more work the site can be very profitable.

So I am looking for a hands on partner, not just a financial backer. Preferably someone who is familiar with SEO, and maybe PHP editing abilities, but it's not a must. The original programmer still works with me on the site, and performs maintenence when needbe.

Basically I am looking for the buyin price to be somewhere around 2000-2500 dollars. 500 of it will go right back into the site (or put aside for future development costs), and the rest will be to reimburse me for half of the development costs. I too will put in 500 at that time. I will be flexible on the # as long as it is fair.

After that everything would be 50/50.

Ideally I would talk with the person for a few weeks online and over the phone to establish a working relationship and trust, and then we could make a legally binding contract.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in please post here or PM me. My AIM is Drworthless and my email address is vtindustries [at] gmail.com.

I'd like to see some past work if possible. I also have several other domain names registered and lots of future plans for the site and partner sites that you would be included in on.

Thanks,
Vinnie

edit: I will provide stats/proof of earnings and whatnot for people with serious interest.

 

The site looks great and I like the fact that you're providing the books required for each class at VT. College students are lazy and it seems to be an easy way get their sales. I just wish I had $2500 laying around.

Chris

 

Just wanted to say that that is an awesome concept and site, if you can expand it out to other colleges it could really do well.

I'm not interested in a partnership (the cost of a lawyer to draw up the proper documents would probably cost more than the actual investment anyway) but I wanted to encourage you to keep it up. It's refreshing to see a site for sale/partnership post that is well thought out and even grammatically correct!

 

I like your site....and yes...keep it up..i the future this will add a great revenue.Good luck!!

 

Thanks for the input.

I think there might be a pre-existing contract we could use (sort of a fill-in-the-blanks) that might just need to be notarized. That's something that would have to be looked into.

 

Just to answer a few questions I received in PM:

I might be willing to do some sort of payment plan (like 1/3 up front, 1/3 in a month, and the last 1/3 a month later)

I am not interested in having several partners, just one.

I may consider selling the site outright, but that is something I would really only do if I can't find a partner.

 

Here is some updated information:

Current earnings this year (from Jan 1st)
Affiliate/sales: 387.67
Adsense: 31.69
Other ad/banner space- 100

Traffic:
For April 2007:
Uniques: 98/day
Pages: 932/day
Searches: 6600, 275/day


I can take screencaps if needbe.

Several people have shown interest but I have yet to find a partner. If you are interested feel free to IM me (drworthless), MSN me , email me (vtindustries AT gmail.com) or PM me here.

 

Sorry for the delay, all PM's have been answered.

Currently no offers have been submitted, but several parties are interested.

I can be flexible on the buy-in amount, especially if you bring something to the table that would save us money in the long run (such as PHP skills, or design work)

 

PM's appear to still be trickling in, so I just thought I'd post here saying this offer is on longer on the table, as I have reached an agreement with a partner and the deal has taken place.

Thanks for all the iniquiries, consider this closed.