thehotfix.net for sale - $24,000+/year in profits, 8000 unique/day, 30000 pageview/dy

For sale - TheHotfix.net @ http://www.thehotfix.net/

A major computer news and forums website with huge profits.

Quick Facts:

* Fully staffed site for free: News posters, forum moderators, content providers are all in place for transfer
* Averages $1000 - $2500 profit per month off of ads and PayPal subscriptions
* Started July 2005 - Earned over $50,000 profit so far
* 4000 - 10,000 unique visits per day
* 20,000 - 30,000 pageviews per day
* Highest profit month was over $11,000
* In the top 100,000 on Alexa with 4 star rating
* Google PageRank 5, 4, and 3 on most pages under domain thehotfix.net
* Major articles linked in from PC World, InfoWorld, Computing World, bink.nu, digg.com, Yahoo News, etc.
* Over 47,000 registered members, all mass e-mailable.
* Full Admin managable Invision Power Board and Joomla setup. Knowing code is not needed (but helpful)

Bid here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150127968840

Thanks,

Ethan

 

What a good site~~

If I have enough money to buy~~

 

Thanks, I put a ton of work into it the last few years.

 

how much work/time is required on a daily basis?

Do you actively promote it?

PM me will you? How do we bid on this?

 

I probably only put in 1-2 hours in per month. There are a number of members to the site that actually run the forums and post the news for free. On transfer of the site, all of these members will continue to work on the site for you. Their contact information is included in the transfer.

Yes, every month or two I activately promote the site around to other related sites, I have an affiliates section for link trading, etc. The links generally build quickly without much work.

You can bid on it by clicking the eBay link in the original post. It's a 10-day eBay auction. I have PMed you this info as well. The eBay link has a lot more info on the site.

 

Here are the answers I gave to a couple of questions via PM:

[1] "site is fully staffed with a number of people who work for free." Why there are working for free? I am little confused on it.

- A number of my staff members are just members who like to help. They work daily to post news, moderate the forums, etc. I usually give them a $15 iTunes gift card as a Christmas gift. They love the site and I give them power to control it for me. In a silent transfer they would never know the owner of the site has changed. That is how the content on my site is updated daily without me needing to be involved.

[2] In snapshots, I can see that google adsense income in $200, on title of auction you mentioned that you're earning $2200 per month. It is major difference. Can you explain me in details?

- I have income from not just Google Adsense but also Yahoo Publisher, ValueClick Media, and PayPal forum subscriptions. It amounts to about $2000+ a month. Moving ads around, etc could possibly increase that amount, but I haven't played much with it since my site redesign a few months ago. ALL of those ad revenues will be transferable to you if you get a Adsense, YPN, ValueClick, and PayPal account and just insert the code. I have also turned down some offers for permenant banner placements, so I know there is a lot more money to be made than what I have been able to accomplish.

[3] How much time i should spend in promotion and how much time i should spend to maintain?

- Probably 1-3 hours a month is spent on maintaining the site. The staff control nearly all of the site (except ad control and placement), I just let it right and earn the money. As far as promotion goes, I like to heavily promote it every few months to other tech sites, coming up with exclusive content, etc. Just posting around to various forums and mass emailing the members every month or two bring in tons of traffic.

[4] [Do] you consider India as Developed country or not[?]

Yes. India is an acceptable country that I will do a sale with.

Although this question wasn't asked, I like to let everyone know that my traffic is 100% organic. I have never once paid for incoming traffic to the site.

Thanks!

Ethan

 

Hey Ethan,

I can only see adverts for google on the site. Also noticed you didn't show any Yahoo revenue for 2007. Am I able to see the trend in revenue for a whole year? Are the snapshots for thehotfix.net alone or have you included revenue from other sites? Has your site always been ranked 5/10? Are all your paypal earnings monthly subscriptions or once off payments? How much do you get per month through those?

btw, you're affiliating with 2 of my sites

 

Hi,

You mentioned that the staff would stay on in a silent transfer. My question is, don't they know you by your name and/or email address? If you give them gift cards, do you just sign the gift email as admin? Also, it looks like some of the links to your site from the big PC magazines are because of your position at work and not the site itself. Is that accurate and if not, have you been contacted directly at the site and not at work?

Thanks!
FG

 

Hi, currently I have been tweaking with what works better: Google vs. Yahoo. I even installed GeoTargeting scripts a month ago or so that had an improved revenue lift, and I'd be willing to give those away with the sale. I wasn't approved for Yahoo Publisher until 2006, that is why you don't see any revenue before that.The revenue listed is for thehotfix.net only and I will be posting some more detailed trends later today of my revenues month-over-month. I think at one point in 2005 I got as high as PR7 (because of a few major news articles) but have been at PR5 since then. Many of the PayPal subscriptions are weekly and some are yearly. I also have some that are one-time fees (the Ultimate $20 subscription). Again, with the exact money on the PayPal stuff, I'll be posting those numbers later today as well. Keep an eye out for them.

BTW, what sites do you own that thehotfix is affiliated with?

Thanks!

Ethan

 

My staff know my e-mail and IM, but not my address. We will need to tell some key staff members of the switch (and I can do that) but there is no need to blast the whole site with that info. When I send them the gift I put no return address and just sign Ethan. The links from the PC magazines are not for my work but rather because the site had some exclusive content at the time. My work has nothing to do with the site (no, I don't work at Microsoft, although I used to pre-2005) so any magazine article is actually focusing on the site content, which is a good thing. I contacted the magazines to see if they wanted to do articles, they did not contact me. I will give you their contacts of some key people at those magazines when the site is transfered as a bonus.

Thanks,

Ethan

 

Just a heads up:

PayPal is in maintance right now. As soon as it's back up I will be posting the monthly numbers with trend graph and projected earnings.

 

I was inquiring about Yahoo revenue after 2007. Are you approved now? If not, why was approval removed?

Also, my affiliated sites are http://www.freedecentdownloads.com and http://www.worthbookmarking.com

 

Yes, I am still approved. You'll see my 2007 revenues in the stuff I am about to post. I have experimented a lot with Yahoo so you will see some flucuations.

 

As promised, here are some more detailed revenue numbers month-over-month. I can provide screenshots of payments made on a private PM basis for only serious buyers please, but the screenshots will just be more proof to backup the numbers that I list in the attached shot.

Some things to take note of: Most months I'm above $2000, I'm never below $1000, and I average near $25k/year. With some motivation I bet people could easily increase this. Also, PayPal History isn't working for me right now so I will update those numbers later tonight. The dip in March 07 is due to some site downtime and redesign.

Thanks for the interest everyone.

Ethan

 

I am now accepting offers outside of the eBay auction. If you would like to make a private offer, please PM me and we can skip the auction and I'll just end it early. Thanks.

MSN -
AIM - EthanWA

 

I've recently gotten offers at $7.5k and $12k. In my opinion, those are lowball offers (no offense). I could earn the first in ~3 months and the second in ~5 months. If you're a serious buyer who wants to bypass the eBay auction, please PM me with an offer between $20k-$40k and we can negotiate from there. My eBay auction starts at $19.9k and I already have 10+ people watching with 8 days left.

Thanks,

Ethan

 

I will be posting the PayPal stats today.

 

Here are my PayPal subscription stats.

http://www.thehotfix.net/sale/PayPal-thehotfix.xls

Ethan

 

I'm changing the auction a bit to be more realistic for a sale.

Auction ends in less than 2 days now. Reserve has been lowered and the BIN is now at $29k. Good luck. This will be my last post unless anyone else has questions.

 

Sent you a PM