Xbox-Forums.com dead forums with 6300 members PR4

There wasn't anything wrong until I read you say "i havent done much for 5 months, now I am" ... or something like that... basically making it sound like you owned it all this time. Which is misleading and untrue.

Other than that.. you've done nothing wrong. I don't see why everyone is bagging on you... personally I think labrocca sold the site VERY CHEAP... was worth more than your originally paid for it.

 

Well, the bit about the paid posts is in his sales thread, so it looks ok to me.

 

Good point, Neil you might want to change that too, it does make it seem like you're saying you've owned the site longer than you really have.

 

Thanks.

I've now added that to the auction. I guess I could've worded that properly and just said "Not much has been done in the past few months" because there really wasn't, labrocca told me had basically forgotten about it and it eventually died.

Anyways, thanks again.

I have received a few offers a little under BIN, but still need to get a reply from these potential buyers. Other then that, everyone is free to make an offer and I will be updating the SP thread with the status of the sale, if it actually does sell.

 

Personally I don't see a problem with this. A site is worth what someone will pay for it.

 

No one said it was not legal, i personally said it was unethical and bad business (buying a site for peanuts, creating artificial activity, misleading potential buyers during a "controlled" auction on Sitepoint just 2 days after the buyout), this is it.

It was just an update, the site was not relisted here anyway, and most ppl understood why.

 

I don't see the fuss about this - i know people who buy up houses on the cheap, amend a few cosmetic features and sell on for 5 figure profits

I do however have a problem with some sales like this one http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/242? which is blantantly ripping off yahoo advertisers, it's only a matter of time before either advertisers stop advertising or yahoo does something about it.

call me cynical but if that's not a fake $50k bid in order to get the ball rolling then I'm a monkey's uncle

 

Lets open a new thread about IANAG

ok done.

 

My concern was not that he bought the site on the cheap and wanted to sell for a profit. I do that myself. I was concerned that paid posting was being portrayed as something else, but now I see that he's being up front about that in his sales thread, so my concern was withdrawn.

But, I don't see your point about ianag.com, does his use of the ads violate YPN terms or something?

 

Thankyou. There you have it guys, even Peter does it. We ALL do it. Heck, I've always been doing it. After all, business is all about making a profit, right?

 

Skribblez - maybe if you had left it a month no one would have bothered! People are jealous of your lucky buy!

Good luck

 

Nothing to be jealous of until he actually makes a sale.

 

Well, I'll let you guys know if I do infact make a sale. I've only received an offer of $1,200 so far, but still looking for atleast $1,500.

Let's see how I go.

 

Skribblez, here's the facts.

Had no one said anything to you, you would have gladly mislead a potential buyer into thinking this site has been up and active for months and sold it for far more than it's worth. So the problem is you only changed it AFTER we made you by bringing all these issues to light. You seem like a pretty intelligent guy so I know you not relisting it here after you made all these "improvements" was no accident. You knew darn well those improvements alone weren't enough. The buyer can't know that the site was just bought for pennies a week before and what it had so recently looked like.

I'm only saying this because I don't want you to walk away from this thinking you defended yourself and convinced everyone you were right. YOU WEREN'T.... You changed your auction and told the truth because you had to, not because you wanted to.

So in my eyes you still lost a lot of credibility because we know what you're capable of if you think you can get away with it.

You're taking an art that I too practice and twisting it into something it's not. Buying low and selling high means buying something that's actually worth something in the first place from a seller who doesn't know what he has, then applying the proper techniques to it and making it profitable, THEN selling it for a big profit. When you do it like that everybody wins.

- The original seller who obviously needed the money gets it
- You make a profit
- The new owner buys a profitable site.

Just my 2 cents.

 

makes me glad i read both forums ...

 

http://www.xbox-forums.com/member.php?find=lastposter&t=1342
Join Date: 09-11-2005, no post before yesterday.

http://www.xbox-forums.com/member.php?find=lastposter&t=1277
Join Date: 08-15-2005, no post before yesterday.

http://www.xbox-forums.com/member.php?u=5823
Join Date: 09-10-2005, no post before today, but 100 posts today.
Similar pseudo.

http://www.xbox-forums.com/member.php?find=lastposter&t=811
An administrator

No activity, paid posters= dead forum.

$0 revenue and $0 possible revenue.

The forum looks nice now, but its still a dead place. Current traffic must be from Sitepoint and Digitalpoint

 

Thanks for replying, George.

Yes, I made a mistake. I should have worded it so that it didn't imply that I owned the site for the past six months, nor imply that it was owned by someone else. For that I accept I am wrong and have respectfully added to my auction to correct that. I doubt it's that big of a deal though since labrocca didn't do much with the forum and that's exactly what I said in my auction, nothing had been done to the forum in the past 5 months. It's not like I made something up and tried to increase value by saying "Oh, I've submitted the forum to a few hundred directories during the past few months. I've promoted it heavily through forums. Blah blah". I've said what the buyers need to know.

Tell me, I'm sure you've seen some sites on SitePoint for sale, which were also recently purchased. Do you see those buyers saying anything about recently having acquired the site they are selling? If so, do you see them mentioning the price at which they had acquired it for? I don't think so.

After all guys, it's the buyers due dilligence to do their own research. It's even a rule at SitePoint. (Yes, I do actually read the rules. )

Also, try thinking of it this way:

Bob buys wholesale digital cameras at a low price of $50 each. Bob then sells to Joe, for $150. Wow! Bob made a profit. However, Joe doesn't need to know Bob only got it for $50. If he is smart with his money, he would do his due dilligence, research, and then try and find a better deal. Joe then thinks to himself "Damn, what a waste of my money!". It's just like buying an xbox game from a store, then walking to another only to find the same game, half price.

I hope I'm atleast making some sort of a point here. It's 7:29 AM in the morning here and I haven't slept at all, so forgive me if it looks like I'm blabbering about nothing.

Seriously guys, I don't think I've done anything wrong. I've clearly mentioned in the thread that it used to be running on phpBB and that I moved it over to vBulletin and brought the activity back.

Just want to point something out:

Some people mentioned that I was cheating and misleading buyers by claiming that the activity was natural. It's not my fault if people can't take the time to read my auction and notice that I've actually mentioned something about paid posters. Surely enough, if you had $2,500 to spend, you'd do your due dilligence and actually take the time to read everything to get a better idea of what's for sale.

I've basically taken this site from looking like an average dull phpBB forum to looking like a nicely designed vBulletin forum. It's a known fact that vBulletin forums sell more for the simple fact they are using vBulletin. vBulletin is eye candy, that's for sure.

Indeed I do believe it is "actually worth something". 6,421 members for $250? why not. Count me down for BIN. Now, I'm not an avid buyer or anything, nor do I like to waste my money, but when an opportunity like this comes up, I go for it. All it took was a mass email to the members, something Jesse (labrocca) himself could've done, and people started returning and posting within an hour or so. I then moved to vBulletin and added a nice skin, guess what? even more people start coming back.

I still don't see how there's anything wrong with me buying a site, making improvements, and then selling it for more.

I can't be bothered typing anymore. I'll leave you guys thinking what you want to think.

 

Maybe you should do a little more searching?

There are more current members than just those two. And frankly enough, only the second one you mentioned has been paid to post, the first one is a member who has returned (if you look at his member ID, number, or whatever).

 

Indeed. Its his site he can sell for whatever he likes.. Its business. Nice guys finish last

 

I'll refrain from commenting on most of this thread.

Skribblez, you may want to turn off the view permissions for guests to your private staff forums. Talking about your users in public is never a good idea.