So I recently sold one of my forums. This was my first. The payment and info sharing is already done. I'm just curious...now what? Do I just forget my site? Also, what if the buyer hasn't done anything...yet?...not even login as the forum admin once...not change the randomly generated password for cpanel and such? I mean the buyer paid for it but why is he doing anything? Sorry for the stupid questions..i'm just new.
Let me pose this scenario to you. Lets say you just sold your car to your neighbor. You notice he does not drive it. It sits on the driveway, unlocked with the keys in it. You sold it. He paid for it. Its his. Are you now going to get in it and drive it again? Its his. If he wants to do something with it, great. If not... Whatever. Now what? Go build another site and sell it! Move on.
Hehe, thanks for the clear scenario...it was very very vivid. I'm already starting a new MMA forum project. Hopefully I'll be able to sell it as well. Again, thank you for the clearing it up.
I agree with Mia, however occasionally if it something like a forum on which you spent hours and have a great community you may feel inclined to not let it die. In that case sign up with several different accounts and keep things going.
you sould it, he paid -> none of your business anymore. If I would sell a site, I would start a new one right after making the deal because I got free capacity But of course you can check how he is developing the forum but don't intervere
Going back to Mia's metaphor. If I spent hours working on the car..inside and out. Got new wheels, carpet, cleaned it daily. I will feel bad. And now what pimpinkid said is get your friends to tell the owner to do something with the car! Ok enough of that. Yes, that's exactly how I feel..I'm so attached to the forum..I don't want to see it die..that's not why I sold it. It just kills me to see it die..and I can't do anything about it...while I actually can.
In the end, if you made some corn off it... do it again, and again. Try not to get too emotionally attached to a project. That's what hobbies are for.
You should have offered to continue working on the site as an administrator. That's what I have done with most of my forums and as a result, they didn't die out. Usually users start leaving if they find out the Founder sold and left.
I know how you feel - your first project like this, it feels like your 'baby'. However, you sold it. It isn't yours anymore. Most of the posters here are right, that you need to focus your energy on building another site. Another option you may could consider is, buy it back. Sometimes people buy things on a whim and after the buzz of buying it is over, they don't do much & wish they wouldn't have bought it.
Start a new project and work hard on it and that will take your mind off your site that you sold on,you cannot do anything about it as its history.
My advice would be to stop thinking about what the new owner is or isn't doing with your forum, and move on and develop new sites and forums. It is not your concern what he or she is doing with it, on the other hand if curiosity is really getting the better of you then you could offer consultation and development services (paid, of course) to the new owner and see whether there's any interest. Paul