PR2 subscription income site ($400-500/mo profit)

Looking to sell an existing, established PR2 craft fair site that's been online since April.

Stats:
Site: http://www.washingtonfairsandfestivals.com/
Online: since April 2006.
Active members: 226
Sales/month: $500-600
Advertising costs/mo: $100 (AdWords)
Misc costs/mo: $20 + hosting. The database is currently provided through Caspio at $20/month.
Revenue source: Selling subscriptions to access a database of fairs, festivals, and events for Washington State. $14.95/year ($14.22 after PayPal fees) and testing $2.95/month ($2.56 after PP) monthly option.
Payment method: Currently using PayPal subscriptions.
Software included: Licensed aMember Pro ($140), aMember Pro Simple Machines Forum plugin/bridge ($40)
Hosting requirements: Easy. You need PHP and MySQL (for aMember and SMF primarily) and a handful of MBs of disk.

Money:
I purchased the site a couple months ago, so I do not have data going back that far, but you can find the PayPal statements from my ownership here:

August 2006
September 2006 part 1
September 2006 part 2
October 2006 (so far)

I spend a maximum of $100 per month on AdWords (using their Budget tool). I hit the $3.33 or so maximum nearly every day, so it might be possible to increase sales with a larger advertising budget.

I have only gotten a few refund requests since owning the site. For example, one guy thought the search was bad (I'll admit it could be improved ), another guy didn't like the data (more on that later) and another person thought the value was too low. There are a couple refunds I made in October (you can see in the photo above) where a guy was trying to use an "echeck" through PayPal, which takes a couple of days to clear. Well, he didn't read that on the PP screens and kept resubmitting payments. Two of those refunds are for that guy's multiple payments.

Why am I selling?
When I got the site, it was a horrible mess of FrontPage generated crap that had been made with FP version 1 or 2. I re-did the site using CSS, limited PHP, and just generally cleaned things up, which was fun. However, I must admit that I'm not an active craft person and populating the DB and building more community is something that I've just been uninterested in. The site is low maintenance, but I feel that it could do much more with someone who willingly spends time working on it.

The site is designed so that people can come-by and input event data themselves. This happens, but it really also needs manual input to keep the DB really well populated. For someone with programming experience, I'm sure that an API could be used to automate this process (I can discuss ideas with the buyer).

Honesty section (stuff you want to know):
You will need to spend some time adding entries to the DB (as described above as a reason I'm selling). I will provide several locations where you can collect the data used for the DB. Potentially you could use an API for content also.

You might want to convert the database from Caspio with the $20/month fee to a local DB. That would require programming and DB setup which is not included. However, this is optional and only if you want the added power of running your own DB.

I have turned-off AdWords as of 10/5/2006 until I can either get the DB updated or sell the site. I still get an occasional sale just from search rankings or other links but they are minimal (AdWords drives lots of sales).

I have the product setup as a recurringly billed amount through PayPal. I'm not sure if those can be transferred directly. Users might have to create the sub when their existing subs expire.

The Sale:
To keep things simple, I'd probably go for a PayPal payment from the buyer. I'd be willing to accept half of the payment, transfer files/DB and set nameservers to your hosting. Then, upon the second-half payment, I would transfer the domain to your ownership. I will contact aMember and inform them that you are the new owner of the license also.

The buyer is responsible for setting-up their own PayPal, hosting, editing settings (paths for example), installing the files, importing Caspio data, etc. Basically, I will deliver a tarball of files and mysql dumps in addition to the domain. I can help somewhat if you have questions as well, but I cannot act as a reference on databases/etc. I suspect that the only "odd" thing for anyone on this forum would be the Caspio data and I can help you with that, although I'm not very skilled in it either (if you want to import the data and build your own local DB, the Caspio is not even required as I'll provide csv dumps of the data).

Starting bid: $800 (~2 months profit)
Buy It Now: $1800 (~4-5 months profit)
End date: Oct 14, 2006 or sooner if a serious offer is made that I like.

I think that's about all. Serious buyers can PM me and get a sample login to look around the member's section. I'm sure you'll let me know if I forgot anything

Mike

EDIT: Added end-date.

 

I will bid $800

 

weilim - are you still interested? Sorry for the delay - I thought I had the forum set to e-mail me messages when replies were made but I never got anything and just now came-back to check the thread.

We can PM if you are still interested.

Mike

 

Hi,

Will the buyer be given the AdWords keywords which you've been using?

 

Yep, although I'm an AdWords n00b and it's nothing overly advanced (meaning that for an experienced user, there's probably lots of room to optimize things!)

Mike

 

Can you please update October revenue?

Also how much of the monthly profit is subscription payments from existing customers?

Thanks.

 

As per the Honesty Section, I have disabled AdWords, which drives much of the site. I have received several new subscriptions (annual) since then, all via organic search:

5 annual subs ($14.22)
6 montly payments ($2.56)

Recurring income is only via the relatively few monthly subscribers (as you can see above, 6*$2.56 right now) and whenever the annual memberships expire.

Like I said, without the AdWords running, the traffic is greatly reduced and hence, the subscriptions are reduced. Since I have not updated the DB (due to reasons in the initial post) I don't want to be driving loads of people to the site. If you are serious, please PM me and I can answer questions better there (as I get e-mail for PMs. Even though I've subscribed to this thread, I get no e-mails when people post.)

Mike