Last week I posted about a business forum that I quite liked (not as a user, but as an investor)

It needs some work, but it’s fine. Only issue was that he bought the site like 9 months ago for WAY too much ($11k+) and is now trying to sell it again for even more, a starting bid of $12k and a reserve of $35k! I said in my post that I only valued the site right now at around $5k.

And I still stand by that, and I think other people agree, cause the general consensus was that $12k was too much, forget the $35k! So yeah, the auction ended with no winners, the guy either needs to keep it and monetize it like I said in my post, or he needs to come to grips with the reality that he overpaid, bigtime, and if he’s keen to get rid of the site it’ll be at a loss to him.

But yeah, overall I like it and I’d defiantly by it for $5k, maybe a little more. Oh, I think he got sold on the ‘domain is premium’ bit, he thinks’ it’s worth heaps, and it may be worth something, but it’s a .net to start with, so… yeah it’ll maybe weight the price a little higher, but still not near his $35k BIN…

I might open a dialoge with him and see if we can’t negotiate a fair price.

OK, before I start this rant, I warn you that I see something that I think is bad, I can be a real asshole, mostly because I think whatever it is I’m ranting about needs a serious reality check and while everyone around is saying good things and being supportive, I feel there needs to be someone dishing out the reality of the situation, and I’m prepared to be that person. Not out of hate, but to really give whoever a reality check in the hope that they see the error of their ways, and either change profession, or step up their game a whole heap (go back to school).

Today’s ‘why the fuck would anyone buy this’ rant, is about http://www.bidcheap2u.com/

It’s for sale over at sitepoint, http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/auctions/36780 with a BIN of $6,000… and starting bid of $2,500…

It pulls 500 page views a month – 60 uniques – which is about right for search engine bot traffic, not people… Mostly what’s being sold is the code, he custom wrote it, and honestly so what?

There’s heaps of ebay – auction style scripts around that do all that his would do – and probably more, and not to mention, since he’s the only developer and he’s selling the site with code as a once off thing, if there’s bugs, errors, issues, and anything else, then you can’t get support, you don’t have updates, you will have to hire a developer to decipher his code, and then work out the issue.

This site is a liability, not an investment.

He should be selling the code to other developers with resell rights, or an exclusive sale, not a site on sitepoint. Or he should be selling a hosted solution and a singular marketplace, a single auction site with your own code is just pointless, it’s like buying a Russian custom built one of a kind car which you will need to manually comply to drive in your own country, and then find a Russian mechanic who can fix it when there’s issues.

Actually, I might start valuing things for sale on sitepoint and wherever else I see them, because as a designer, developer, investor, business owner, and whatever else I am / have been, I think I have a good grasp on the value of a site for sale. I’ve built them, sold them, bought them, invested in them and disowned them.