UNIQUE 100% Hand-Coded Resource Website with Automated Tools - 1,700 UV/Month

RaHelper.com

Site Being Sold at:

SitePoint - Click Here to see Acution


This is a 100% hand-coded website which took mine 9 months + worth of custom design and work to complete. It is a mix between a resource webpage and a social networking site for college resident assistants.


About College RA’s:

College Resident Assistants are students who work and live with other students providing programs, putting up bulletin boards in living quarters, enforcing policy, and creating the residential community within college campuses. As an RA myself, I was frustrated with most of the inefficiencies in the paperwork of the position, specifically the reports and un-automated processes. I spent 9 months building this site which went live in August of 2008. RA’s duties typically include: writing reports for when they are on “duty” for their area (the “duty log”), writing weekly reports, creating programming reports and evaluations, and putting up bulletin boards and name tags on doors. By my best estimates, there are 100,000-150,000 college RA’s in the U.S. and Canada currently.


Services RAHelper.com offers:

RAHelper.com is a unique, one-of-a-kind website which addresses many of the inefficiencies of the position, including: an automated program proposal and evaluation tool, a staff budget tool, an automated duty log, and a scheduling tool to organize duty days. There is a comprehensive area for bulletin doors and door tags which other RA’s post to and can use for their own benefit (requires little to no maintenance). In addition, there is an entire community section where a staff can post their documents, pictures, announcements, duty log, etc. This RA website has the most breadth of coverage in terms of organizers and tools to help RA responsibilities.


Website Background:

I am a college senior who put a tremendous amount of time and energy into this website. There are a couple other college RA websites, but none that offer the same level of report automation, scheduling tools, and community building options as RAhelper.com does. I know as an RA, it has made my life much easier with the level of automation it employs. That being said, I am graduating and in my job search, have not put in nearly as much time as I could have in marketing the website. I went through the initial processes of link submissions (there are approximately 830 inbound links at the moment – many from other .edu websites), posting on social networking websites like facebook, and a minimal amount of SEO. That being said, with only a few hours of marketing work, the site is a PR3, gets approximately 50 unique visitors daily, and earns approximately $20/month from a single banner of text ads from Google. It is a fantastic product, and with a true SEO/emarketing enthusiast, could truly earn a significant amount of income.


Why I am selling:

I’m selling for two reasons. First and foremost, I am graduating college and will be starting my career within a couple of months. Almost all of my energy has been devoted to a job search and finishing up school, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to take the time to continue working with RAHelper.com. Secondly, I know that it holds a tremendous amount of potential. With all the time I’ve spent, and knowing first hand how much easier it can make my life as an RA, I would like to see someone with emarketing/SEO experience give it the attention it deserves.

Site Specs:

On average, we get approximately 50 UV/day, which translates into approx. 1,700 Unique visitors/month.

I’ve done very little trying to monetize the site (a forum could easily be added to increase traffic/revenue), but with the one adsense banner, we get approximately $15-25/month.

There are currently approximately 300 fully registered users with the website.

No ad campaigns have been done with the site, so the traffic so far is 100% organic. Clearly, with some well placed campaigns, and some additional marketing, the traffic could skyrocket.

What you get with the Sale:

www.RaHelper.com Domain Name.
Custom Designed Logo
Entire Resource Library (bulletin boards, door decs, etc.) submitted by other RA’s.
Contents of database (all current members, etc.)
Website and all tools/coding.

Additional Info:
If there is any additional information, please feel free to PM me and I will be happy to provide as much information as I can. Thank you very much and happy bidding.

 

Also, any generic feedback on the website would be much appreciated.

 

It is a cool site, but talk about a nice market...

I am not sure if you can sell this at a profit, it looks like you put a lot of effort into this, but traffic and revenue is not great and due to the size of the nice might be difficult to grow. It seems to be a great fit for a RA though and it could develop into a community for RAs with a little bit more time.


I honestly think you should keep this site instead of selling it for a few thousand dollars, you might regret it considering the considerable amount of time you have spent on developing it.

Matthias

 

Matthias,

I appreciate the comments. It is a niche market, no doubt - but it is the best at it. I highly wrestled with the idea of keeping it but I do need the money at this point of my life.

I'm obligated to sell the site at sitepoint.com since there is a legal auction running. However, out of curiosoty if people could post what they would be willing to pay for the site, it would give me a better idea of a pricepoint. Thank you very much.