Appraisal on the RS Club, worlds largest Subaru Impreza RS site, PR1

Hi,

I'm curious as to folks appraisal of my site www.rs25.com as I am considering selling it.

Details:

I've owned and run the site since it's inception back in 2000. The site started as a personal site for my Subaru Impreza RS, and slowly transformed into the site it is today. It is the worlds largest Subaru Impreza RS site. There are other larger Subaru sites, for the WRX, STi, etc., but no one else has a site dedicated to the RS. As a result, I have a very tight-knit community of users. The reason why I made it was simply due to the fact that parts are hard to find for our cars. As a result, this is the one place where you can find just about anything you need, as well as the info on how to work with it.

The site is #1 ranked for "Subaru RS" on Google, as well as other similar searches:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=subaru+rs&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=impreza+rs&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=impreza+rs+forums&btnG=Search
etc.

I have never performed ANY type of search engine optimization, site advertising, link exchange, etc. This is all natural traffic!

I have forums (the mainstay of the site), PhotoPost Classifieds, a FlashChat system, and a Coppermine photo gallery which are all integrated into the vBulletin users system (single sign-on).

I have added additional features to vBulletin, such as the vBadvanced home page, Trader Ratings (which are also integrated into the classifieds), vBgarage (a members car and details), as well as many custom modifications that change the operation of the site via the template system.

The majority of the features can be seen simply by clicking the links across the top navigation, although the chat room is only accesible by a link on the home page. Most features are common-sense named, however, so the structure is like this:

www.rs25.com
www.rs25.com/forums
www.rs25.com/chat
www.rs25.com/classifieds

I try to make it easy, ya know?

There is a paid membership option for $19.99/yr which allows users to register and remove the Google ads, as well as opens access to additional storage on PM's (Private Messages), access to private forums, have an avatar, and a host of other features related to users profiles. This is controlled via vBulletin and goes through PayPal, so it's 100% automated.

There is a paid membership option for $34.99/mo or $349.99/yr for vendors who can then post products for sale on the home page. I currently have about 12 active vendors on the site, some doing yearly plans (as it gives them two months for free) and some doing monthly. This is also automated by vBulletin. Again, I have done no advertising of any type to get more vendors on the site. With a little work, one could easily entice more vendors to sell on the site. My most recent vendor, selling generic parts such as oil catch cans, apparently is overwhelmed with the number of orders he received.

However, a recent influx of vendor ads on the home page has me contemplating adding another section to the classifieds, and then integrating it into the main section of the home page to show 15-20 vendor ads as thumbnails, similar to the personal classifieds on the left.

In addition, I am thinking about offering "Sticky" ads for around $5/$10 as people are interested in that. There are many ways to increase revenues, that's for sure.

Google Adsense revenues doubled recently when I (1) changed the color of the ads and (2) added a second larger ad at the bottom of topics and the forum home. I'm no expert at integrating ads, so I expect more money could be made. I have been contemplating integrating some sort of Commission Junction system or Google Adsense Revenue Sharing system. I have also thought about more tightly integrating ads in the classifieds, uploads, and other areas of the site. All in all, the site can bring in as low as $700/mo, or well over $2000/mo. December and January are the slowest months, summer the best. (This is obviously due to the fact that cars are easier to work on when you're not freezing to death. )

I have a custom implementation of the Reputation system that allows members to "dock" points from other members based on the comprehensive site rules, and after 4 points the "bad" member is banned. This helps get rid of spammers and jerks in a few minutes to a few days. It's rare when a bad apple manages to stay on the site for long. As a result, I have nearly zero spam and nearly zero jerks, and I have to do nothing to make that happen!

The site is very busy, and is growing all the time. In the past six months the traffic has steadily increased as I changed features on the site. Typical load is 150+ members online concurrently, 6500+ uniques per day, and ~200,000 uniques per month. While I do log the visits, I've had to disable the stats programs as it slows the server down too much. Instead, I run reports offline using WebTrends.

The domain name, obviously, is fantastically short. The site is well known among the Subaru community as one of the best due to the fact that I personally spend time on the site and make sure everything is running smooth, everything is patched, member suggestions are reviewed, rules are handed down fairly, etc.

All of the graphics have been created by site members at no charge to me.

Branded merchandise is created on a regular basis by members, such as stickers, shirts, hats, bags, hoodies, etc.

By and large, the #1 draw to the site has been sales. As a result, the home page is squarely geared at folks selling stuff - the classifieds on the left and vendor ads in the middle. As a result, well over 75% of visitors come in via the home page (as opposed to only ~25% when the home page was just posts from the forums a few years back), and some folks spend 8+ hours on the site. It is a TRUE community.

All in all I spend around 30 minutes to one hour per day interacting with members, checking for bugs, and basically making sure things are "cool."

I think that's about it. Your feedback is appreciated.

-James F

 

No one?