Selling established text-based mmorpg - Earns £700+ ($1,400+) per month

Hello,

I am now selling the popular mmmorpg: civ-online.com as I plan to move my expertise to other mmorpg projects within other markets.



Details:

DNS

Domain name: civ-online.com
Forum URL: civ-online.com/forums
Created: Fri 22/12/2006
Renewal due: Mon 22/12/2008
PR: 3
Notes: civ-online.com redirects to era2.civ-online.com, as a new version was released.
Pages indexed: 9,760

Traffic

Visits: ~900-1k per day
Uniques ~600-800 per day
Notes: We are listed well within google, proving #4 for "online civ game", #1 for "online civ" and #1 for "online civilization"/"civilization online". We have also had significant traffic from Wikipedia

If more detail is needed let me know...

http://www.civ-online.com/screeny1.JPG (Traffic stats)

Revenue

Money from last month: £681 ($1300)
Note: The second version, the only one with a payment system, has only been active since 13th of Feb. 2008 - Yeah, £681 ($1300) in 3 weeks Expect 4 weeks to be just over £700 ($1400)
Notes: I tell you, this must be the easiest and most relaxing way to earn money. Once this system was installed, the money came literally over night. All that would be required is making sure it stays popular, IE: A little advertising investment goes a long way. However the strong reputation the game already has, along with the embedded guerilla marketing already in effect, traffic is sure to rise and has every month.

http://www.civ-online.com/income1.JPG - Income statement 1,
http://www.civ-online.com/income2.JPG - Income statement 2,
http://www.civ-online.com/income3.JPG - Income statement 3,
http://www.civ-online.com/income4.JPG - Income statement 4,

As you will see, the income comes in pattern like forms. The values £2,£4,£6,£12,£24, are members upgrading their accounts, and the other amounts, mostly larger, are people buying in-game 'turns'

Game details

Co (civ-online) has been active for 1 year and 3 months. The beta version (Era I) which lasted 1 year until the second version (Era II) accumulated over 6,000 players. Currently, since Era II has only been live for 3 weeks, there are 881 players. Pretty good for 3 weeks eh?

Co's biggest selling point, and often attributed as the "addictive" factor within the game, is its huge community. The forum's stats:

The entire game and website (apart from the forum skin) was coded from scratch. This is no cheap clone of an mmorpg you see so often, this was planned, designed and programmed solely by my friend and I - 100% custom, 100% unique.

The community is huge and new players join every day, usually ranging from 15-40 new players every 24 hours - and the number's growing.

We have 2 totally secure, official paypay payment systems embedded within the game. This allows them to upgrade to "premium accounts" for a fee, and they may also purchase in-game turns using their paypal accounts. This has proven to be a success, as our revenue shows.

The forum is run by myself and my co-founder, along with a handful of completely voluntary moderators. We pride ourselves on an extremely friendly approach to the players and fans, and we take everything they say seriously, so much so, that the game is built up on mostly player suggestions and feedback.

Full front end "moderator panel" - hand coded for moderators to monitor in-game events and enforce the rules.

Several hundred man hours have gone into the design and programming from Era I to Era II.

I'd also like to mention that the game was featured on the front page of GameSpy's CIV branch.

So what's civ-online about?

Our press release best sums it up:

"Revolving around the massively popular "Sid Meier's - Civilization" Offline computer game series, the creator of www.civ-online.com has taken some new, unique and appealing features, and moulded a fascinating online game - Manage your own empire, construct buildings, train men and battle 'real-time' against other players from around the world!"

The site game summary:

Civilization Online (Civ-Online or CO for short) is a free mmorpg for `the people` and practically created by `the people`. Our vastly expanding forums mean that anyone and everyone can have their say in what they'd like to see in up coming updates. Civ-Online was inspired by the massively popular offline `Sid Meier's Civilization` series. Within Civ-Online: Build vast extensive empires, battle, trade, dabble in politics and take advantage of the countless other features that give Civ-Online its unique edge.

The game history:

Civ-Online celebrated its 1 year anniversary, and year of beta, on the first of last January. Of the many weeks leading up to the 1st of January 2007, the game took its very early and primitive steps towards the game you now see before you. At first, a one man team consisting of BRUm the initial creator and owner of the website (if you're a member of our forums, I'm sure you'll know me by now) placed the foundations of beta after being inspired by Sid Meier's offline Civilization series. However, it was not long before an eager player with the ability to learn fast wanted to help Co prosper. Therefore I thank AmbientFox for all the hard work and free time he put into learning the ropes and help Co in its infant stages.

After the initial growing stages, Co continued to greatly expand with the addition of the forums. Not only was this a great place to communicate with other players, but it gave the game an entirely new focal point with much more possibilities. The forums have seen such colourful times: Flame wars, debates, alliance propaganda, role-playing and general chatter. Without the moderators being so generous with their free time and effort with overseeing the forums and in-game matters, Co would not be the friendly, helpful and advanced place it is today. I sincerely thank the moderators, past and present, for everything and I hope to see you all enjoy moderating the new Era.

As the game and forum took a more serious role, and left the original ethic of a project, a new addition to the Co team changed everything, for the best. Enter Predator, a greatly enthusiastic, resourceful and friendly fellow programmer. Upon the acceptance within the team, huge changes were made. Co could now progress twice as fast and operate twice as efficiently. With great communication almost daily, not only were new features and fixes brought out frequently, but the final date and motivation given to the new Era that has fallen upon on us, was down to him. My greatest thanks go to my co-admin, programmer and business partner, Michael (aka Predator), of which this all couldn't have been done without.

The game is pretty easy to maintain. As long as you keep face with your players and fans in the forum every now and then, they will continue to tell their friends and grow exponentially, as it already doing. I have staff still there and can therefore offer any and all assistance needed, whether it be particular transitional programming or long term monitoring and training for you and/or your staff.

Note: We are happy to allow you as the buyer to continue using our webspace and bandwidth until this month expires while you find a suitable transfer, or you may acquire our server space at current rates.

Furthermore, I have created an auction at another business website, and have a very interested buyer who would like a quick sale. However, I'd like to give the opportunity for anyone here, of course.

Auction:

I'm taking any offers, but I have a reserve price in mind as given at the other website this is auctioned on. I'd like to mention this website + community, in entirety, has been evaluated at approximately $14,500. Deduce from that what you will.

Any questions, please ask away.

Thank you,

Lee Butcher.

 

Sent you a pm Lee.

 

Thank you very much for your interest. I have replied and hope to speak with you soon

 

Various significant members of my team and management have left. Therefore I would like a swift deal. I'm willing to drop as low as £6,000 ($12,000) for the entire business, which should make that money back in under 10 months.

Thanks,

Lee @ civ-online.com

 

if you are not getting offers... you should try sitepoint

 

I have been there. Had a good auction going until I backed out to continue the business as it's a good one. Although my team left, so now I must resell.

 

Would you be willing to consider a mid 4 figure USD offer?

 

This game makes over £700 per month, so the lowest I'm willing is somewhere between £5,000 - £6,000 ($10,000 - $12,000). It would make back £5k/£6k in under 10 months.

 

Sorry but - the classic question comes to mind: why sell a site that brings $1400 a month with little effort? I see really no reason...

 

i guess this is the answer.
anyway, great project, i maybe interested in a few weeks when i get some investments back

 

I'm very interested but my main concern is with any support issues that may arise.

As you said, the entire game was coded from scratch. Problems are bound happen, and any future modifications may be difficult to implement. Do you have a hire programmer that we can hire?

So two questions. 1) What language is the game programmed in? 2) What would be the best way for the buyer to continue modifying the game?

Okay I lied, three questions, how is this game on server resources? Does it require a dedicated? Heavy MySQL usage?

 

Hi,

Thank you all for your questions and interest.

Yes, I am selling because my team has left Co and I would rather start another smaller mmorpg than continue to try and manage the entire business alone.

Sir Tom:

1. The game is programmed in PHP and MySQL (Backend) and HTML and CSS (Frontend).
2. I made the game from scratch and my fellow co-admin joined later. So we have been the only programmers to see and touch our code - we never contracted in any work. The best way would be to have a programmer or two on hand within your team to do updates on demand. Although, my team consisted of generous volunteers.
3. The server we use is very small, which says it all really: There's hardly any server usage. We use a fraction of our 200GB bandwidth, 20GB webspace and we are even running on Shared Hosting 256mb partition! That's right, with room for expansion We even have a bustling forum with nearly 50,000 posts along with the website.

Thanks again for interest, I look forward to someday doing business with you,

Lee.

 

I'd really like someone to take the business out of my hands. Any takers for £5,000 ($10,000)? That's $4,500 below the surveyed value. I can no longer maintain the business without my team mates, therefore it's either sell or deletion I'm afraid, and I would really, really like to not have to witness 13 months worth of hard work, not just of my own, being lost as binary 0s.

Thanks,

Lee.

 

Probably a more realistic value would be around 6 months worth of revenue? Closest taker to £4k ($8k) can have the entire business.

Thanks,

Lee.

 

Is the reason for selling that you have a copyright infringement allegation? Or is it all kosher? (I'm interested but don't want to inherit a lawsuit)

 

I would have bought it if I had some support in case anything went wrong.....I no not know any computer languages.

I am new to this community, and do not know any computer language, though I own a number of sites that bring me income month after month, I like making money, by just having sites do it for me, but what djo471 said, I inherited a lawsuit, un-intentially, the person I bought my sites from was no where to be found, there went 20k and all the sites I had because I did not take the guys REAL NAME, yea thats right, the guy even used fake ID. I know this may seem stupid, but I gain nothing lieing to anyone.

Answer djo471's questions, and I will think about this site of yours you want to sell.

 

Aren't you worried about receiving a cease and desist letter or a lawsuit from T2's lawyers?

 

The game itself is really not similar to civilization - however they used the name. Probably a bad move, I know a person got a cease and desist letter only because had a domain with another big publisher commercial name (not even a game online, just a domain).