$86.30/day WiredFlame Forum Population Company - Over 100 clients

Since the middle of January, I've been working my butt cheeks off planning and developing a project that I knew was going to be a success from the very start. Wiredflame launched on March 9th (2007) with a blast. It was an interesting experiencing running and maintaining this great site, but unfortunately, I really need to devote all of my time on a brand new project I am working on, which requires huge amounts of both time and money investment. I spent a ton of time creating content, having the backend php system made, and tweaking the site for the best performance possible.

WiredFlame offers two services. One is the classical Forum Population service where forum owners purchase one of our four plans to help populate their forum. The second service is an unique and new idea a good friend of mine, John Hamman, thought up for me ; WiredFlame Promotion Services. This is for website owners to promote their site through signature links on forums related to the topic of their website made by our writers. Very popular considering that it launched around 2 weeks ago.

How much Time Investment is required?
I hired a young individual as a WiredFlame campaign manager, who manages, maintains, and offers support for basically the whole site. I currently pay him $14/day for 1-2 hours of work on WiredFlame.com. He is very dedicated and extremely trustworthy. At times, he would spend extra time helping out programmers to help fix a bug he found. He himself know a bit about PHP, which is another big plus. Not to mention he was selected from over 30 resumes sent to my email from a SitePoint thread I made . Total time needed to manage the site is around 5 minutes per day to read/forward/rely the emails, and maybe 20 minutes a week to advertise the site through forum posts/threads.

How much Money Investment is required?
Alex, the hired campaign manager gets paid via a paypal subscription every week. The pay is $70. As for the writers who post on the client's forums, they are paid every 14-16 of every month. However, only a handful request a payout on these days. For the month of May, I paid out a total of $410.84 via PayPal to these writers. This is relatively larger number considering we had a lot less writers for April and March. I do not advertise WiredFlame at all except for the 468x60 flash banner I have on adminfusion for $25/month. Total expenses: $645.84/month.

Coding
Over 200 hours of coding work resulted in a beautifully, fully functional WiredFlame. Companies such as inb0x, forumshock, etc uses a third party to supply it's customers with writers and a control panel. WiredFlame has everything coded right on the site with an amazing admin panel, writer userpanel, and a client userpanel. Features are just too many to list. Please view the DOC file for a general list of features wiredflame has coded into it's system.

http://www.wiredflame.com/sale/wiredflamefeatures.doc

Please PM me for demo admin control panel login info. Interested buyers only!

http://www.wiredflame.com/sale/admincp.gif
http://www.wiredflame.com/sale/managejobs.gif

Others
WiredFlame features a custom designed skin. Web 2.0 all the way and one of the best designed sites out there according to DP, NP and DNF members. WiredFlame also features a writer's forum where WiredFlame writers may discuss different matters freely as a community: http://www.wiredflame.com/writersboard. WiredFlame also offers two payment options for clients. Paypal and 2CO (license included).

Included with Sale
- WiredFlame Domain name (domainsite regged. PR4 predicted PR6)
- Custom design and extremepixels phpbb forum skin for writer's forum
- Complete site filled with content
- Custom coded backend including feature-filled admincp, client usercp, and writer usercp
- 2CO License (WiredFlame.com Registered)
- Basically everything you see.

Stats
Clients: 105
Writers: 236
Campaigns (overall):73
Active Campaigns: 36
Completed Campaigns: 37

Revenue Details
Lets see. Between March 09th and May 19th (70 days), WiredFlame earned $3355 ($48/day):
- 5 Fireblast Packages ($240)
- 9 Fireball Packages ($110)
- 12 Ember Packages ($42)
- 23 Spark Packages ($16)
- 10 Custom Packages ($1.50-$18)
- 0 Thunder Packages ($185)
- 0 Lightning Packages ($125)
- 1 Electric Package ($45)
- 2 Static Package ($20)

--------------------------------------------------

From March 20th to March 30th, I started to record specific stats for sales:

$863 - May 20th - May 30th (10 days) - $86.30/day
- 1 Fireblast Packages ($240)
- 1 Fireball Packages ($110)
- 1 Ember Packages ($42)
- 3 Spark Packages ($16)
- 1 Custom Packages ($38)
- 1 Thunder Packages ($185)
- 0 Lightning Packages ($125)
- 4 Electric Package ($45)
- 1 Static Package ($20)

21st - 1 Fireball Package ($110)
22nd - 1 Fireblast Package - 2 Electric Packages ($330)
23rd - 1 Spark Package ($16)
24th - 1 Thunder Package ($185)
25th - 1 Ember Package ($42)
26th - 2 Spark Package ($32)
27th - 1 Custom Package ($38)
*28th - 1 Electric Package ($45)
*29th - Not Any
30th - 1 Electric Package - 1 Static Package ($65)

*Quite a bit of downtime on these days. Server fixed soon after.

----------------------------------
Alright, now if we go with the current stats ($86.30/day), we get $2589 monthly. Now, if you want to go the other route, we get around $52.73/day average from March 9th (launch date) till present date, giving us a $1582/month average. Let's take away the pay to the writers ($410.84 for May - monthly), and we come up with $1171.16/month (overall) to $2178.16/month (present - more accurate) in pure profit! Hows that?

Traffic Details
Uniques/day: 106.65
Page Views/day: 827.13
PageRank: PR4 predicted PR6
http://www.wiredflame.com/sale/stats1.gif
http://www.wiredflame.com/sale/stats2.gif

Alexa Ranking: 151,265
Incoming Links: 24,147

Traffic mostly comes from bookmarks/direct type-ins and webmaster forums (advertising threads and signature links). Traffic also come from Google for search terms such as 'Forum Population' (3rd listing). Traffic also come from various blog posts (eg. http://www.floodofdollars.com/5-get-paid-to-post-forums-and-how-to-use-them-profitably/). None of which are paid.

*I reserve the right to select any winner at any time and I reserve the right to reject any bidder at any time.*

Starting Bid: $8,000
BIN: $12,000
Reserve: None
Auction End Date: June 10th 6PM PST
Payment Options: Escrow or PayPal

Thank you,

Kinkarso.com Network

 

I will update this thread with new sales on WiredFlame.com.

As of now, I just received a custom package of $154.

 

All i can say i bought a package from this guy and he really delivered so bump for you man, and good luck! Good service for the right person.

 

Thanks spacecadet .

For a list of testimonials from our previous clients, please visit our testimonials page: http://www.wiredflame.com/testimonials.php.

Thank you,
Donny

 

I will update this thread with new sales on WiredFlame.com.

As of now, I just received a custom package of $154.

----------
Woke up today to find one more purchase made on WiredFlame. This time, a Spark plan $16. I'll update throughout the day as new purchases are made.

 

Received many 'payment plan' offers. Please do not contact me with these anymore, because I would not be interested. I am not looking for someone to run the site, giving me a percentage of the income. I am, however, looking for cash right now to fund my new project. This is extremely urgent, which is why I am letting WiredFlame go so soon .

Thank you,
Donny

 

I have received many offers lower than the starting bid. Please do not bother contacting me with them unless they are fairly close to my asking price . Only 6 days left! I will check back later today to answer all questions and PMs.

 

I have purchased a plan as a test as well and was very impressed and if the new owner keeps the quality up I would purchase bigger plans.

 

i really want to buy the site if you want to lower the price, plz pm.
thank you.

 

I'm interested in this, but I normally buy much smaller sites for development. The major issue with this one is that it would require a great deal of management in order to ensure that it does continue to keep these numbers. If you were to forget about it for a few weeks, you could potentially lose all of your income.

I'll throw a bid of $4K out there to start things off... I know it's not what you were asking for, but I guess it also depends upon how motivated you are to sell it.

 

pariswatches, PMed

buyingwebsites, Alex, the hired campaign manager, manages the whole site for me, so there really isn't much for you to do. 5-10 minutes per day is all you need to keep the site moving, and earning great income.

$4k is still a bit low at the moment. I am always open to offers, so if you would be willing to raise your bid, I'd be happy to consider.

Thank You,
Donny

 

Hi,

Not to be a jerk, but I do have a few questions about some inconsistencies.

You say you don't have the time to operate the site

and then you say it takes no time at all because there is a campaign manager

I'm a little confused on the time issue.

Liability on the books

If they don't request a payout, that money is a liability to the company. How much money is usually left, and what is the minimum amount
the writer needs to earn before payout?

Income

I get:

Expenses: $280/mth for manager, + $410/mth payout to writers, + $25/mth advertising, + hosting? = $715/mth
Revenue: $52.73/day average from March 9th (launch date) till present date, giving us a $1582/month average. I realize the site
is making more right now but the actual numbers show an avg of $1582/mth
Total gross profit before any misc expenses: $867/mth

Hiring of writers

Could you explain a little more how you go about insuring the quality of the writers? Either here or in a PM is fine.

Clients

How many of your clients are returning customers?

Competition

Who do you consider to be your closest competition?

Sorry for the long list. As you can see I am interested though. =)

 

Yes, I"m interested but see a few inconsistencies as well.

Why get rid of it if it takes you only 20 minutes a day to run it?

 

I think that we all have the same question. If you are making a good income off of a site, why would you sell it? The only thing that I can think of is that you foresee it to drop off and you are looking to cut your losses, you have a liability in your near future and you need the money urgently (need bail money.. idk?), or the amount that is required to maintain that income is so high that you really aren't making that much. My guess is that in order to achieve that much income, you have to do advertising, there is no other way without it. So I would assume you are paying about $200/month in advertising, am I correct in this assumption? My guess is that the site is netting around $500/month after all expenses.

So if we take $500 x 12, we have $6000, minus liabilities, which I assume would be somewhere around $500-$1000, so we have a fair market value of $5000-$5500.

Of course this assumes a lot of things, it could be much higher, it could be less, it's all speculative. But that's my valuation of the site. So yes, my $4k bid is a bit on the low side. I'll see how this thread goes and possibly adjust accordingly.

 

Now I like the site and the idea, but I'm not really seeing the money. When I look at it further here's what I come up with.

From March 20th to March 30th, I started to record specific stats for sales:

$863 - May 20th - May 30th (10 days) - $86.30/day
- 1 Fireblast Packages ($240) - 1000 posts
- 1 Fireball Packages ($110) - 450 posts
- 1 Ember Packages ($42) - 150 posts
- 3 Spark Packages ($16) - 150 posts
- 1 Custom Packages ($38) - unknown
- 1 Thunder Packages ($185) - 1250 posts
- 0 Lightning Packages ($125)
- 4 Electric Package ($45) - 1000 posts
- 1 Static Package ($20) - 100 posts

so I remove the $38 giving revenue of $825
There's 4,100 posts X .15 each (as far as I know that's the rate right?), for $615 in expenses, not including the $90 for the manager, (10 days).
So $615 + $90 = $705. $825 - $705 = $120 for those 10 days.

$12/day x 30 = $360/mth x 10 mths = $3,600. Unless I'm missing something and it's possible I am, a 4k offer seems reasonable....

 

Well, I'm glad I looked at your numbers before doing my own, because I just started doing the same breakdown as you. hahaha... and I am seeing the same thing. In fact, after looking at this, a $4K offer is more than reasonable. With this breakdown, you probably wouldn't be able to pull more than $3K, because you have to consider advertising budget, which is necessary for a site like this, you are going to have hosting costs, and probably some other unknown expenses as well.

 

WiredFlame takes almost no time each day to run. That's the truth, as Alex, the hired campaign manager, basically runs the whole site for me. However, in order to pursue my new venture, I need to have these things out of my way. The new project that I am working on requires quite a bit of money to get started. I plan on using the sale of WiredFlame to help supply my financial needs for this new project I am working on. I plan on going full force on this new project, and don't want to advertise, run, and try to maintain the steady upstream flow WiredFlame is part of. Don't get me wrong, WiredFlame does take time to advertise and expand, like any other website out there.

Going by your calculations, if WiredFlame earns $1582/month on average, 62.5% of that is supposed to be paid out to the writers, which equals around $988. 988/410=41.49% of the writers actually request for a payout per month.

The $280/month and the $25/month was not there before May. Also, the $410 is May's payout to writers. There were lesser clients, and lesser writers back before May . So, it is better to use the recent count of revenue/month for your calculations (the $2589/month). Lets redo it with that.

Expenses: $280/month for manager, + $410/month payout to writers, + $25/month advertising + $2-3/month hosting (on my VPS) = $718/month

Revenue: $2,589/month

That leaves us a $1,871/month GROSS income.

I've replied to your PM with the information. Here's what I wrote (for everyone else):

--------------------------
Getting enough writers to satisfy the large amount of orders we get was a problem for a while. But, I improvised, and did some work. We now have more than enough writers to supply all the active campaigns, because of the banner on the front page, and some direct advertising on writer-based forums. I also established a partnership with PaidPostingTools, who provides wiredflame with a backup writers pool of over 1000+ writers in case we have a job we can not fill with our own writers (~250 and counting).
--------------------------

30%

ForumShock.com, and Inb0x.com.

 

Please read above post. Thank you for your interest. I think I have you on MSN, so if you have any questions, feel free to IM me .

Thank you for your interest as well. I am paying $25/month for a flash advertisement banner on Adminfusion. No other advertising campaigns are active for WiredFlame. I do, however, post our advertisement on webmaster forums, which brings in the majority of the new clients WiredFlame receives. 30% of all purchases are from return clients because of the quality of our work. Please read our testimonials page for a few reviews on our services . Please also read the above post for a more clear Gross income amount using the current revenue stats.

If you have any more questions, feel free to PM me, email me at , add me on MSN; , or give me a call (PM for number please ).

Sorry, for the Thunder plan, the total charge is not $185, but $285. An interested buyer mentioned this to me on this forum, I think, above, and I have already emailed my programmer to have that fixed as soon as possible. It was a typo, and is incorrect . That's +$100 right there lol.

Anyways, I guess what I'm trying to say is that most writers do not go ahead and request a payout from us when the time comes. If you read the first post, you'll see that only 41.49% of the writers actually request for a payout per month. 62.5% of all income are supposed to go to our writers.

Thank You,
Donny

 

Just to clarify on the writer's pay. They are payed one month in arrears? I.E. A writer would get paid on June 15th, (or whatever date you have set up), for work performed in the month of May? Is there a minimum threshold for payout? How often can a writer request a payout? How much work is involved with paying a writer? How long does it take to verify their completed work?

Also, I still think your profit statement is off. You have to count the money that is DUE the writers as expense even if it is not paid out in that month. For example, you can't take revenue for May, and subtract the amount paid to the writers for April, (payment is one month in arrears), and call the rest profit. You have to book earnings against actual expenses, also, any money left by writers that was not requested is not profit either. It's a liability as it legally belongs to the writers.

However, on the bright side, your fixing of the typo brings the profit for the 10 days I ran the numbers for to $220 or $22/day. That is much better than $12/day! =)

The only real downside I see to this site is the time involved. Sure, the manager handles most everything right now, but what if he quits? Or gets sick? The owner has to know his job intimately, and also needs to process the payouts, keep an eye on the manager, contact the clients, do sales/advertising, etc. Other than the time committment, it does look pretty good. I'm still trying to decide if I have that kind of time. =)

 

Yes, they are paid for completed jobs from the month before. If a writer does not request for a payout that month, the earnings DO NOT carry over to the next month. Writers may only request a payout during the 14-16th of each month. An email is sent to all writers on the 13th with full details on how to request for a payout. No minimum. In the payout intro email, writers are required to list a bunch of information including links to profiles of completed jobs, posts completed, number of jobs completed, total amount due, etc. This makes my job much easier, as all I really have to do is confirm that the amount listed is correct (with a calculator), and send the payment out to the writer through paypal. Simple as that. Takes less than 15 minutes each of the 3 days.

Like I said above, if no payout is requested during that month, the revenue earned by the writer during that month is NOT carried over to the next month. That is made clear to them in the Writer's TOS when they apply for a job.

I think I mentioned this somewhere in my thread, but I will help the new owner out when it comes to managing the site. Training will be included as well .

Thank You,
Donny