Selling Active Political Forum For Sale

POLITICALBULLPEN.COM



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Political Bullpen (PB) is a subsidiary of Forum Contractor. We build forums for clients and companies. This forum was actually one of our first and it was built out of mutual interest of politics between myself and my business partner. We're currently selling it as our business is taking a new direction and it's time to move on. We have several upcoming prospective sites that we are working on right now. Political Bullpen is a very active forum community that is over 2 years old now, however since we changed the site name last November, whois records will only reflect up until November 2012 I believe. The site started under the domain politicalbuddies.com in April of 2011. The forum is PR3, likely to increase to PR4 next Google update. It's currently operating Vbulletin 4.2.0. We have the forum running on a dedicated server but it would probably do fine on a VPS as well.

The forum has an active userbase and quite a few new threads and posts are made every day. We currently have 498 members and quite a few of them are routine members that come on everyday and some seem to stay on all day. You can visit the site almost anytime of the day and see a long string of users online. We have 2 moderators on staff; one of which could run the forum for you practically with all she does. Our niche, which is politics and current events, never gets stale and is always changing and very easy to keep going. The forum is running VBCMS on it's front site where we promote the hottest debates to the front of the forum so that they are the first things users see when they come in; and it also keeps a constant flow of fresh content for the Google Spiders to crawl. The forum is also running a variety of plugins including VBSEO.

The forum is set up to promote healthy competition. For example we have a leader board with all sorts of levels of achievement including top poster, top referrer, etc. A point system keeps track of how active users are and adds to their point value based on that. We have an arcade that members enjoy and all sorts of things that set us apart from the other political boards on the internet. Most features on the forum are automated as well including the moderation system; a user reports a problem and a moderator responds to said problem. Mods don't go looking for trouble under our rules.

The theme is customized, however based off a free theme to begin with, since my skills are only up to par enough to radically change coding rather than create it from scratch. You probably wont find anything like it as I believe I have customized it beyond the point of recognition. The design is simple and patriotic. Fluid so it fits the screen of anyone who browses the site. The logo is interchangeable and you can theme it out per certain events if you wish. For example if you visit right now it has some Christmas elements to it. The logo is also custom, I personally made it, and we've been treating it like a brand.

I do not have exact estimates on revenue since I let finances fall to my business partner but I will update the thread later when the sun comes up over his timezone (we live on opposite ends of the USA). However I can tell you that we have not put a lot of effort into getting revenue from the site. This site wasn't about money for us. Someone ambitious enough could easily turn a profit with this forum - we however were not all that interested in the concept. Any profit that comes from the site comes in the form of donations. We have a "Gold Member" usergroup that is made up of donators who routinely donate monthly to receive some special bonuses such as a gold username, bigger PM inbox, etc. I think he tried to put some adverts up yesterday however I do not see them right now - his idea was to make it so normal members could post a certain amount of posts a day to get rid of the adverts. Some users are already meeting the set guidelines to get rid of the adverts too.

We have quite a few back links as I've worked hard on the SEO for a few years now. You'll notice in the footer a affiliates bar and a top sites bar. We lead several of the top sites in their top 3 members list and these top sites provide a good amount of SEO just by themselves. The affiliates are all forums and blogs that link back to PB, a few of them are very good links (above PR4 and PR5) that will certainly up the PR next update. For example the blog "NiceDeb" down there is a direct affiliate of the Daily KOS which is the #1 political blog on the internet traffic and popularity wise.

Politics. Oh where to start...the board leans conservative right now but has it's fair share of liberals, Tea Party Activists , Libertarians, Anarchists, and everything in between. We've tried to keep the board in neutral affiliation when it comes to political parties however with the population it does swing either liberal or conservative, last summer I'd say it was more liberal. We've promoted the board on the concept of free speech and less moderation and it's worked out well. The mods find that they really only have to maintain a presence rather than infract or warn often. We get a few new registers a week although we don't go out of our way to get them either. Someone driven and ambitious enough to find more will do so easily enough - 90% of the political boards on the web are over modded and they have their fair share of disgruntled members who will take their social circles and defect to your site - treat them well and they'll attract more. It's been easier than a lot of other niches.

The forum has 3 themes that it comes with. Two of them are actually the same but with a different logo to please a few in the crowd lol. The logos are all custom. The site has both a facebook page and a twitter and each are automated to post new threads as they are posted on the forum. The forum is also registered with Tapatalk and Forumrunner and does work with both mobile platforms.

We've invested heavily in this site and we've gotten good returns from it. We've gotten our kicks and enjoyment out of it. However, like all things in business, the show must go on and we need to move on to bigger and better things and expand ourselves. This community is great and you really don't need to invest in it unless you want to. I'd damn near call it turn key.

This sale includes the domain politicalbullpen.com (PR3), the forum database, all plugins listed above, and all PSD's that I have for the site. In addition to the database we'll give you a dump of our directory so you have a complete backup of all files. I have a variety of PSD's for the logo, default avatars (FB, twitter), etc. It does not include our VB license (we still need that!). The facebook and twitter are also going with it.

I'll post up Google Analytics and revenue information when my business partner wakes up. Opposite country time zones don't work. Might be 0730 here...but it's 0330 for him lol.

I highly encourage you to browse the forum (it's in my signature), check it out, ask me questions, etc We are only interested in offers from serious bidders. This site will sell, I am posting it on other websites, and I do not expect it to be on the market for very long. Political Admins are always looking to suck up their competitors and merger, and if you are just getting into politics...there's a better reason to get an established community. The transaction will be done on Paypal (as it's a trusted source) and Forum Contractor will not be responsible for the paypal fees - so factor that in to your bid.

PLEASE CONTACT ME OVER THE PRIVATE MESSAGE SYSTEM ONLY.

I will not be watching this thread for replies.

As I get more information I will edit the topic, if you wish to see something, best ask for it in your PM.

 

Note....DP says we have 36 backlinks. My own research says we have 1000+. Do your own research on that....DP is wrong on that count.

Here is analytics. Already gotten some very good offers.

The buyer can also have the analytics account. Forgot about that one.

 

Is there any reason the bin is $4000 despite the forum having only <200 traffic per day ?

 

Yup. For the amount of work that's been put into it we're not selling it any less than it's worth, except for the reserve, which is less. The politics niche is not an easy one to start, it's easy once you've got it going, but to start it....heck no. So we're not under cutting ourselves.

It's not like we really need to sell. If no one with sense is interested in this deal...then we'll keep it and grow it. Your loss more than ours tbqh.

My business partner does the finances, and I need to get the images from his records, but he say's we're making $700 monthly from gold members.

I think the donation bar alone is enough proof really. We received $50 just today. A monthly subscription is like $5.....

Please reserve all replies to private message. Thanks.

 

well look your site dont have much traffic

 

unfortunately the amount of effort put into a website does not determine its worth.

then you should get revenue proofs for 700/mo revenue and post it.

 

Unity, as much as I love the fact that you are dead set to undermine me....I don't know are you compensating for something? Jealous? Upset? I'm not sure what your problem is honestly. I've reported your post to the moderators regardless. If you have a concern PM me, if not, grow up and go away....you aren't interested in this...what you are doing is called trolling.

 

What is the reserve?

What's the highest offer you have received so far?

 

Oh hell. I forgot about this thread. My business partner decided he wanted to keep half the damn site and sold off the other half of it for $2000. I'm leaving it up to him to figure out. So sale is over.