Selling Social bookmarking site with big traffic (17k visits) and premium design

I'm selling one of my best bookmarking sites with premium design and 17k visits by Analytics (114k pageviews).



- Short web2.0 domain

- PR3

- 17k visits by Google Analytics (114k pageviews) [TRAFFIC SCREENSHOT]

- 69% direct traffic from returning visitors coming back daily to post new bookmarks.

- eye-catching unique design (template, logo, favicon)

- 12k member accounts

- 70k+ bookmarks posted by users (new bookmarks are posted every few minutes)

- the site is running on the Pligg script with many customizations/optimizations

- the domain name is registered at goDaddy

- the site is not monetized. I have 30+ websites on different niches, so I have no time to manage all of them. Please use your our judgment to estimate the site potential. It's up to you to find the best monetization methods in order to get the best revenue from your investment.

I can do the full install on your host.

I'm taking BIN offers by PM.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

Happy bidding.

 

Do you have revenue screenshot?

 

@Erinrinaldi
If you came to my thread for other reason than having your post count increased, please take a minute to read the auction details in the first post.

Everyone's welcome to the auction as long as you're really interested on my site.

Users with iTrader less than 5 or less than 90% have to purchase via "mass payment".

thanks

 

Do you push the domain and when will domain be expired? What daily work have to be done?

Please tell us more about the website.

 

Domain name:
- free push at godaddy
- expires January 31, 2011

The site is mostly running on auto-pilot. If you wish to remove some content, that can be easily done from the admin panel or directly from the main interface of the site. User accounts can also be banned and their posts removed with one click.

Please let me know of you have any more questions.

 

you do realize tht 80% of traffic on these sites (pligg) are from bots...alexa rank is just high coz of bots...there is no real traffic so there will be no income. correct me if i m wrong.

thanks

 

@azulfi,
Yes, you are completely wrong. There is some bot traffic, but...

1) The bot traffic is not recorded by Google Analytics (you can test this with any bot on your own sites). What I have posted in the site description (17k visits) is REAL HUMAN traffic.

2) Alexa also doesn't count the bot traffic. The Alexa rank is based on browser toolbar. The bots aren't using the IE and Firefox browsers. In any case, the boots doesn't have the Alexa plugin installed. The Alexa toolbar is made for browsers and it is not compatible with BookmarkingDemon and other similar software.

The Alexa rank is low because many users are either webmasters (submitting bookmark for themselves) or SEO professionals (submitting bookmarks for clients). Social bookmarking is about SEO optimization.

3) The bot traffic is not 80% as you think, but only 46%.
This is from Awstats (Sep 01 - Sep 10):
Viewed traffic: 100,629 pages
Not viewed traffic*: 87,846 pages
(* Not viewed traffic includes traffic generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes.)

I repeat: What I posted in the auction description is 17k real human visits.

Thanks for your comment and let me know if you have any other questions or if you wish to make any offer.

 

I am really Impressed the way you replied to my comments....you sure are a genuine seller and a good guy.

What I commented above was my personal experience as I myself own couple of social bookmarking sites (e.g desigrade.com) the real issue is tht only "SEO professionals" are using these kind of sites to submit clients sites...most of those professioanls use bots to auto submit links on pligg sites...as you can see in your stats that there is huge traffic from India where all these low cost SEO professionals are based..also you wud see a regular drop in traffic on weekends where those SEO professionals are having days off.

so the point is its nearly impossible to monitize this kind of traffic.

I m sure the information you provided is all true and I honestly wish you good luck with sale.

 

@azulfi,
Thanks for your comments. Please note the following points that may be helpful for you and for others.

1. Yes, the users are mostly using these sites for self-promotion. You can't blame them. This is the way we are using twitter and other social websites. You can't expect them to post unique quality content on your site for free.

2. Making revenue is not impossible, but it is just NOT the same way as you monetize other kind of sites. As long as the users get some benefit by using your site, you can get some benefit from them too. Unfortunately the most webmasters don't know and can't imagine other options than AdSense and similar networks (eg: adbrite, bidvertiser etc). This is why there is so low competition on web2.0, regardless the huge viral potential of these sites.

Social bookmarking sites can make revenue from AdSense and similar networks ONLY if you can manage to get traffic from different sources (eg: search engines, bookmarking widgets like addthis.com, etc, etc, etc). This is not impossible if you do some SEO work and promotion for your site. One of my other site (bl**********s.com) used to generate HUGE revenue from AdSense ($x,xxx/mo) until it got banned. My mistake was to let it run completely on auto-pilot; I should take care to remove the content that is not accepted by AdSense. Now I'm re-developing it and I hope to have it re-approved by Adsense.

The traffic from "seo professionals" can also bring you revenue if you set up some kind of options that can either increase the seo rankings of their bookmarks (and charge them $$) or determine them to bring some backlinks and traffic to the submitted bookmark (rank the bookmarks by popularity, detect and reject votes from the same ip, remove the bookmarks with zero votes after a short time etc).

3. The automatic submission can also be reduced by some simple methods. I can’t share my secrets here, but keep in mind that you always have more control than them on your own site and database.
One of the options is to prevent each user to submit more than one bookmark per minute. This option is already implemented at jackpea.com. In that way you avoid mass submissions that bring your server down.

One other method that blocks the most auto submitters excepting probably the greatest ones (eg: BookmarkingDemon) is also implemented (I can't tell that method here, even it is extremely simple, but it will remain on the site after the sale). Please note that the best submitters like BookmarkingDemon don’t let the users to abuse your site by submitting hundreds of bookmark at once, but they are delaying the submissions.
You can also remove the bookmarks that get zero votes in a certain amount of time. Don’t forget to disable the auto-vote option. In that way you determine the human submitters to vote for their bookmark. The bots aren’t voting, so you can detect and remove theirs bookmarks and keep the database light and clean. A simple cron job can do this work.

4. The custom bookmarking sites with some seo optimization and backlinks (like the one on sale here) can attract advertisers. Selling ad space is a good monetization method for these sites.
Adsense is serving ads based on the site content, but you should serve ads related to your niche (bookmarking, seo, webmaster, directories etc). This is why selling private ad space can be a better option than AdSense for some sites like this.

5. Please note that NOT all of the above methods are implemented on the site that I’m selling here, but this is still a good starting point for building a profitable business. This is a quality site on a quality domain. If it were already profitable I wouldn’t sell it, but it is mostly a neglected site because all the methods I written here I actually have and run on other similar sites with better rankings and traffic.

The most webmasters that are trying to enter the bookmarking niche are just creating a free pligg install on a new domain ($9) and let it run on auto-pilot. That means zero investment and zero work. That can’t bring you any revenue (otherwise everyone can be rich).

I have already told you too much, but I really feel the need of some more competition on that niche

Happy bidding!

 

The auction will be ended earlier than the date listed at the top of the page (probably on Sep 16), because I may be out of my desk for a few days from Sep 18 and I need time to complete the transfer.

I have reduced the BIN price and the reserve.

Please make your offers before Sep 16 if you want to buy.

Thanks!

 

As stated in the previous message, I have to end the auction now. I'm still waiting for offers by PM. If the site will not be sold, I will be reopening the auction soon.

Thanks to everyone!

 

Website SOLD via PM!

 

Thanks for setting up everything on my Server