Halloween Site/Blog: 3yr old, Well ranking, revenue earning, original content & more

Halloween season is here and it's time to make some extra cash!
This site has HUGE potential and is already well established in the Halloween community.

Been around for 3 years.

URL: 365Halloween.com (Halloween fun all year round!)

Content: 100% Original & personally created, with a few contributing authors. Lots of Halloween themed content; costume ideas and tutorials, haunted house reviews, zombie everything, Halloween recipes with pictures, DIY Halloween crafts, and more.
Custom design (WP theme format) can provide .PSD files.

Analytics:
Alexa = http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/365halloween.com#
Google Analytics says about visits: Off season gets 500-1,200 visits/day. Peak season (mid Aug-Oct 31st) 1,200-33,000 visits/day (Oct. '08 was 5,000-33,000 visits /day)
GA says about Traffic Sources: 54% Search engine (71% Google, 13% bing, 12% Yahoo), 42% referring sites, 2.8% direct traffic.
Whois info: http://whois.domaintools.com/365halloween.com

Google PageRank 3/10
Listed in DMOZ.
Registered and hosted with DreamHost, domain expires Sept, of 2010. (created Sept. '06)

Runs on Wordpress.
You also get my custom Wordpress plugin for displaying eBay auctions of your choice via Aff (ePN) links. Nobody else has this, as I've never released it.

Revenue:
Adsense: Oct '08 the low profile AdSense (ie. not prominently displayed) made $600+ ($2,300+ for the lifetime of website)
Commission Junction: (Mostly BuyCostumes.com) Oct '08 made $600+. Aug. 1st '08 - Oct 31st '08 made $900+
eBay partner network: All of '08 made $413 (again most $ made in Aug to Oct.) So far all of '09 has made $219.
Share A Sale: Sept 1 2008 - Dec 31st 2008 : $220 ... 2009 so far $65
Totals = All of '08 made at least about $2,200.

This site in particular doesn't make much revenue in the off season, but that's mostly due to revenue not being our main focus. It was fun for us, it was our joy, and yes some revenue was nice, but we didn't want huge ads in the way of our unique content, or cluttering our site, or making it look like we are in it for the money, so there can be improvements I'm sure. We just did small adsense here and there, and some costume links to aff Halloween stores.

Other Benefits:
We've been able to wrangle some free products, tickets, parties, etc. just by contacting them (Knott's scary farm, etc.) and letting them know we have/run this site and said we'd write about the product/event/etc..

We have also partnered with other websites to offer their product or service as a prize for our visitors.

===============
Bidding starts @ $3,000
BIN: $6,000
Auction ends @ Sept 17th '09 - We are willing to end the auction early for motivated buyers.
Paypal Preferred (we are verified)

We are selling this quick because we are int he middle of moving and don't have the time or desire to keep the site going. We'd prefer to sell it to someone who will contribute more to the Halloween community and not just let the site stagnate.

I have been with DP since the beginning of the forums (user id 5!) and contributed a lot in the beginning, but stopped posting to focus on my sites. I've never used the iTrader since it was added after I stopped visiting on a regular basis. I'm just looking to pass along this site, and I remembered DP has a great forum for this. So here I am. Let's get it on.

Terms:
You get everything that comes with the website. Our only stipulation is that you can't use the pictures of us (our personal photos that show us/friends/family) for any advertising, promotions, graphics, etc. You can keep our pictures up because they go with the content, but no further reproduction of these images are allowed. Thank you for understanding.

 

Q: Just wondering what sort of daily uniques the site generated daily in October 2008 and how your server coped with it.

What sort of average uniques per month does the site get outside October?

A:
For the month of Oct in '08...
Oct 1st got 4,500 visits for the day
Oct 15th got 5,500 visits for the day
Oct 25th got 13,000 visits for the day
Oct 30th got 33,000 visits for the day
on AVG the new visitors make up 92% of the visits

Our server did fine because we are on a Private Server with DreamHost and we have Super Cache for WP.

As I stated in the post; Off season gets 500-1,200 visits/day
What I didn't mention was that 95% of those are new visitors.
--------------------------

Thanks for the Questions... keep 'em coming.

 

is there any revenue proofs we can see?

Also, Traffic proof preferably screenshots of analytics/

 

Sure thing.
But first I'd like to mention some other perks this website has given us over the years.
We are also a StreetTeam member @ http://www.threadless.com and very often get points for referring customers there to the point where we constantly have credit at threadless.com. Thus free shirts for you and your friends. They don't spit out stats, but let's just say we've spent over $300 on t-shirts (for friends and family) in the past couple years.

And as I mentioned earlier, about getting free products or services; ie. just by writing a nice email we were able to receive and review things like Zombie board games, Knott's scary farm tickets, local haunted house tickets, prizes for contests, etc.

We also partnered with a few Halloween sites out there for cross promotion, and I don't doubt this year being the same.
We also get emails from magazines wanting to feature an article, or use a picture, with full credit back to our site.

We also sold some ad space (just text) last year for the first time which added another $300+ for the season.

This is a very diverse website in terms of revenue, and I'm sure someone with focus and knowhow can turn this into a XX,XXX figure income this Halloween.


AdSense total for 2008


AdSense total for 2009 (so far)


Commission Junction (CJ) total for 2008


CJ total for 2009 (July 1st - Sept 3rd)

 

And since you can only do 4 pics per post ... more.



eBay Partner Network (ePN) total for 2008



ePN total for 2009 (so far)


Google Analytics 2008 (Sept - Oct 31st = peak)


Google Analytics traffic 2009 (July to Sept)

So what do you think guys and gals?
Need more info?

 

In that last picture you see a dip in traffic around Aug 16th; this is simply due to my tracking code not loading because i made an error in coding and the footer file didn't load properly each time for a few days, thus limited tracking.

Thanks for the questions.

 

UPDATE:

We have a $3,000 bid so far.

I just updated the Word Press version to the latest most secure WP install (2.8.4).

Traffic is just about to cross the 2,000 visits per day mark and will be above this from now until Nov '09.

 

New Highest Bid: $3,100

BIN: $6,000

Thank you.

 

New Highest Bid $3,300 - DP user

BIN: $6,000

Thank You.

 

I am the 3300$ bidder in case anyone is wondering

 

I bid $3350 on site/domain

 

Since I'm a bit new to this forum auction setup ... and it seems everyone contacted me via PMs thus not so much action on the thread ...

We've got two people bidding right now and I'm going to extend the auction a day to let them and anyone else who wants to bid to get their bid in. If you want the site/domain please bid higher than the highest bid. It's that simple, right? Let's get it on.

If there are any other questions please let me know ASAP.

Thanks,
Sean

 

Update:
Highest bid is $3,500.

Latest Stats:
Sept 19th got 3,120 visits
Sept 26th got 4,332 visits
Sept 27th got 5,790 visits
Sept 28th got 6,649 visits
Sept 29th got 7,078 visits
... 93% is new visitors, 60% Google referrals,
and 200+ people subscribed to RSS feed (feedburner).

The highest bidder has been procrastinating so I'm giving everyone else another chance.
Please post your bid on the thread, we will be contacting the winner shortly.