Selling Active Advertising Forum - 260k+ Posts, 4k+ Members

Hey everyone.

I am selling my advertising forum, found at http://forumpromotion.net

What you are buying:

- Account access to the Domain Registrar
- Account access to the Site's Hosting (HawkHost)
- cPanel Access
- The Forum's database
- Admin Panel Access on the forum
- The custom Website / Forum Skin exclusive to ForumPromotion.net

The passwords to all above accounts will be sent to the winner once payment has been received. The buyer will be responsible for changing account passwords and filling in their personal information.

Why I am selling:

I am selling the Site because I wish to start a new online venture. Running the site has been a great experience although all good things must come to an end and I feel it's my time to move on.

About the site:

The site is an active Promotion Forum. A promotion forum is basically a forum where Forum Administrators sign up, post a topic about their site and everybody joins each other's sites. The forum also offers other services such as "Posting Packages", where a group of volunteers post on other people's forums in return for virtual forum credits. Other services such as "Featured Forum" and "Banner Rotation" are great for giving Admins extra exposure.

Some more stats:

Posts: 263,844
Topics: 27,547
Members: 4,575

Members logged in over 48 hours: 200+ . Normally around 235. (Sending a quick Mass Email will increase this).

Alexa: Alexa rank is currently 59,053 but I challenge you to look up the site on Alexa.com, our lowest Alexa rank per day was around 45,000.

Analytics has only been set up for 7 days, although I took this screenshot today to show you some proof of traffic:



We moved to HawkHost in April. This shows the Site's statistics progessively increase since we moved there:



The member base is 95% Forum owners. If you buy the forum you could easily turn it into a Webmaster forum, Administrator forum or even just a general chat forum.




Revenue

Since day #1 the site has been a non-profit organisation so there has been no real revenue. Over the last two months I've offered "Forum Sponsorships" where users can pay for their banner to be shown in the header of any forum. This is the only revenue the site has got.

If you chose to put Ads on there, considering the amount of uniques, traffic and the niche you would probably get a nice return.


SEO

The site requires no promotion, we get a lot of traffic from Google. Analytics has only been set up for a week and it shows that 15% of traffic comes from Search Engines.

Screenshot from Google Analytics



Also please look at the following screenshot from Google Webmaster. This shows where our SEO traffic comes from: http://i38.tinypic.com/xf70hu.jpg

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Payment:

Payment must be sent first. Once payment has been received you will receive an Email with all of the usernames and passwords required to access: The domain registrar, the Web Host, cPanel and the forum's admin panel.

It will be your responsibility to fill in your own personal information and renewal information.

I will be accepting PayPal only. Please post your offers in USD or you are welcome to contact me via Private Message if you wish to remain anonymous.


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If you have any questions or require any more information please feel free to ask.

Good luck!

 

hi there.

any bin price for that?

 

How much time does this site require per day? per all the manual services?

Will the existing mods/admins stay on board?

 

@cavenet: A BIN is yet to be decided. If you would be willing to PM me what you think is a reasonable price you'd be comfortable paying I'll definitely give it some consideration.

@zanman: Good question. Updating the services (Banner Rotation etc...) takes around 1.5 hours a week. Normally we update the services every Wednesday, although if you buy the site of course you'll be more than welcome to do it whenever you like. It will be your choice entirely if you choose to keep the current Admins / Mods on.


Private BID received at $300.
Majority of proceeds will be donated to charity.

Any other bids?

 

Regarding the revenue, have you made any sales since you introduced the forum sponsorships and if so how much?

Also how much does the hosting currently cost per month with HawkHost?

Edit: And what about revenue from the House Mouse UK advert?

 

Does the top sites and the directory come with it ? they are on different domains

 

Hey. With regard to the revenue I've made mid-high $xx in the two months it's been available. However - this is mostly due to discounted introductory rates and the fact it was only open to members of the community. I'm pretty sure you would see a higher return if you sold official advertising space to members here at DP.

The hosting is paid for until March, after which it will cost $3.29-$3.95 per month depending on which billing cycle you choose. It's cheap and for that price on most hosts you'd expect a lousy service, but I've never had a single problem with HawkHost and their staff are very friendly.

The MouseUK advert used to turn over £5 GBP ($8) per month, although they've recently stopped paying out. Rumour has it the company is going bust.

For now assume they do come with it. They are hosted elsewhere (on Novahost). The Topsite used to be PR3 and directory PR1 (or the other way around), but the PR was lost in the latest update.

 

Some questions.

Does the twitter account come with this?
can you give me access to google analytics?

 

Ill bid $400 here..

--Thanks!

 

are we required to manage this forum actively?
what about moderators?
and spam ?

 

Once you buy the site you're welcome to do what you like with it (although i'm sure the members would appreciate it being kept in one piece). Managing the advertising services takes no longer than an hour a week at the most.

The board currently has 6 moderators. 3 Community Team (these are members with global Moderator permissions. They also welcome new members to the community and respond to feedback topics) and 3 Team Leaders. They are all very active, fully dedicated, and very loyal.

The forum gets no spam, and in the occasion a spam bot comes along it's cleared very quickly by the moderators. There's normally always at least one staff member online - they're always happy to help.

Yep, the twitter account is included.

I can't give you access however if you require any information from there let me know and I'd be happy to print screen it for you.

Just a note, if you are the winning bidder you are under no obligation to keep things as they are. You are more than welcome to take out all of the services and simply turn it into a Webmaster forum or something else that takes your fancy.

 

Hi everyone, please note I've spoken to MhW via PM and been given permission prior to posting this.

I'll be honest, I really like the concept of this site and love where it's going. Unfortunately for me, due to doing a lot of voluntary work, and work at cheap rates, I don't currently have the money in my PayPal account to buy this outright.

So here's my proposal. I'd like to become a joint owner of this forum. If you're interested in making an investment please read on as I'm sure there's money to be made for you. Money wise, I can only offer $100-150, however what I can offer is my time an experience. If you decide to make an investment, and would like to own 50% of this your money is all I would need. I'd be happy to do all the admin stuff like, getting sponsors, deleting spam, assigning mods/admin, creating new packages and new sources of income. Whenever a project like this comes along I put a lot of effort into making sure it's the best it can possibly be. If anyone does invest and would like to own 50% of this business I can assure you within a few months you will not just have got your investment back, but you'll be in profit. I also would aim to add new features and payed services such as selling traffic, SEO packages, posting services and more. Everything anyone would need to promote a forum. Moreover, once we are in profit, I will spend some of my half of the earning towards advertising campaigns and increasing the traffic, meaning over time your profit will increase beause of this.

If you are interested in buying this, and working alongside me, please send me a PM, and hopefully we can come to an arrangement. Thank you for reading this.

 

btw how big sql database is?

 

he has $400 offer if i am not mistaken

 

39.00 Mb - just checked.

 

Nice offer. But why cant there be two admins like in DP? So you want us to make the investment of anything above 150$ (Currently around 300$ as the highest bid is 400$)? What kind of share will you be willing to if I am also taking the admin jobs and promoting at the same time?

 

Obviously the next bid will be something like $450 - $500 so how would you justify a 50% share ? I might be interested in giving you a 30% share to run the forum as i have enough forums to run. However I will have complete control ( owner ship ) of the domain and database (two things that once its set up you shouldnt need to touch anyway )

Your probably asking why you would accept letting the domain and database control with the other investing party ?

1. because you will own the smaller share

2. because i would imagine your looking to earn a little on the side and help create a successful forum, which is fine how ever its a business for me , i have to have something to show for my investments , either legal documents or actual hard back up in case anything would go wrong between us. A little collateral if you like.

Have a think about what i said and PM me if you wish, Ive got money to invest and other things which i can put into the site but i havent got the time to run it.

 

I will bid $450.

 

btw i am interested to see screenshot - visitors by countries.

 

Visitors by countries -> http://i36.tinypic.com/2w2o2nr.jpg

Thanks for your Bid. Good luck