Selling PR3 Shrten.com - ~60,000 Monthly Uniques, ~1.5 Million Hits

Hello,
I would like to sell my URL shortening website Shrten.com
This site lets you shorten a long URL - Simple as that. It also has an API which is used quite heavily.

Basic facts
Registrar: NameCheap.com
Registered: April 2009
PageRank: 3
URLs in database: 32,101
Script is unique, made by me
Site design is unique, made by me
Runs on PHP + MySQL


Traffic
Traffic can be split into two different categories. Firstly there is what I will call service traffic. Service traffic is the traffic when people click through the shortened URLs. The other type of traffic is site traffic - this is the traffic which the site itself (shrten.com) receives.


Service traffic
I have analysed the MySQL table which records all clicks and visits made on the shortened URLs. At the time of posting, this table revealed the following information. These stats are since August 2009 unless otherwise stated.

Total clicks (non-unique): 11,359,993
Total clicks (unique, by ip): 458,300
Average clicks per month (non-unique): 11,359,993/8 = 1,419,999
Average clicks per month (unique, by ip): 458,300/8 = 57,287

More proof of this can be provided upon request. For now, screenshot of phpMyAdmin: View screenshot


Site traffic
Site traffic is the traffic which actually occurs on the shrten.com site and does not include the shortened URL traffic. These stats are available publicly ever since the site started at http://statistics.michaelgarethmorgan.com/

February Visits: 11,666
February Uniques: 9,855
January Visits: 11,963
January Uniques: 7,673
December Visits: 14,075
December Uniques: 11,382

As you can see at http://statistics.michaelgarethmorgan.com statistics for March have dropped slightly. I kind of lost interest in the site end of February - maybe that's why? To be honest I'm not too sure.


Revenue
The site currently has no revenue. I have however had several enquiries regarding having a framed advert displayed each time someone clicks on a shortened URL. Offers have ranged between $0.30 - $1.20 CPM. I turned these offers down as I didn't want to add frames to the site - Maybe you could? Based on a $0.30 - $1.2 CPM and current site stats you could be looking at between $425 - $1703. This is something for you to explore though.


API
I built in a simple API which lets third party applications and websites create short URLs on the fly. For more info see http://shrten.com/api/


Costs and operation
Surprisingly I'm running this site on shared hosting. Right now it doesn't need a dedicated server although give it 3-6 months and this is something you may want to look into. My hosting costs are $120 for the year - But I have 34 sites hosted on this one account. Site is very minimal and optimized so size + bandwidth isn't an issue. Could probably run this on a $5 per month hosting plan

As for operation, I didn't get round to building the administration side to this site. If I ever need to do anything with it I just do it directly via phpMyAdmin. I've only ever had to do this once though. If site is bought at BIN I'd happily put together a decent administration area to manage the URLs, etc...


Reason for selling
Come September the contract on where I live comes to an end and I must move house. I'm selling off several of my web properties to build some cash ready for the move.



Any questions?
If anyone has any questions at all please do not hesitate to contact me. You can email me at contact [at] michaelgarethmorgan.com or simply send me a PM. If you require any further traffic proof, screenshots or anything else just ask

Just like the traffic, the potential of this site is huge. I'm not going to just give this site away - I will accept a fair price for it. I personally use this site (e.g. http://www.twitoric.com) and therefore want to see it be put to good use! I will transfer and setup the site for the winning bidder. If necessary I will also host it for free for up to 3 months.

Thanks!

 

Can you PM me further traffic proof.

Also it's a great name although it's quite long for a tiny URL service.

 

maybe this is stupid question, but how hard is it to move from your hosting to mine? you said that the site is on shared hosting.

 

How much the traffic does the main site receives? Also any other possible monetizing ways?

 

@James.H - Will send you more traffic proof in a little bit.

@edywen168 - It should be quite easy to transfer. The database is over 400MB in size so that is a bit tricky. Its as simple as transferring the files and reimporting the database

@wptheme - For traffic for the site itself please see http://statistics.michaelgarethmorgan.com/. As for monetization - You could always sell advertisements on the site itself?

Any more questions don't hesitate to ask!

 

Please let me know BIN price.

 

please pm me the bin and the traffic details , i would prefer analytics

thanks

 

I have replied to both of you, thanks.
If anyone has any more questions just drop me a message

 

I really like this site,what size dedicated server would this require in say 6-9 months time like bandwidth and access speed.Thanks

 

I shouldn't think it would need anything too fancy. In fact, it would probably be just fine on a shared host. The only issue Ive found is when you're querying a table with almost 12 million rows it puts a little more strain on the server. The site right now is still super fast... Have only had issues when I've tried to get a count of the total clicks made on short ulrs... I very rarely do this though.

So I don't think a dedicated server is absolutely necessary... Just might be worth considering as the site keeps growing.

 

Quick update: I have linked my Analytics account to this thread - tracking code only went up a couple days ago though so the graph isn't too great. I can provide further Analytics proof if needed.

 

Just an interesting tip, visit http://twitter.com/#search?q=shrten.com to see this site being used on Twitter.
This of course doesn't represent even a fraction of the sites traffic but it does give an idea of how it is being used.

 

nice web..what is your reserve price..?
im interested..?

 

I have PM'ed it to you.