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.

Digital point forums seem to have had a major issue today, don’t know about you but when I try to access it, all I get is ‘Database error’…

Good luck to them!, but on top of that sitepoint is down for maintenance!…

So my usual morning of having a coffee and checking out what’s for sale around town is dead in the water…

I might have to actually do some work… dammit.

There’s a forum for sale over at SitePoint, it’s actually a good forum, the url is: http://www.businessforum.net/

It’s making $0, it’s pulling over 500 uniques a day, 250,000 page views a month.

But his starting bid is $12k, and his BIN is $35k.

The reality here is that it’s over priced; it only has 7,000 members, 5,000 threads and 24,000 posts. It’s a bit, but not a lot for a 2 year old forum, so it’s been kicking along and slowly growing, but it’s not shit hot and taking off or anything. He’s put a lot of work into it, but it needs a lot more to get it really going, regardless, it is a nice foundation to start from, so it’s defiantly worthy of purchasing… but not at $12k-$35k

I think the main problem here is that he bought the site 7 months ago for $11,600… back then it has 4,000 members, 14,000 posts.

He overpaid 7 months ago for it. And he’s trying to sell it for more now, because in his eyes from the price he bought it for it’s now worth more.

The reality is that he overpaid, back then it was worth $3-4K, and now its worth about $5-6k tops.

There’s no revenue, there’s only 500 uniques a day and only 7,000 members. To really get this forum kicking and making any kind of money, it needs 20 hours a week put into it and more marketing cash invested into it, in 2-3 months you could if you’re lucky kick it up to 1,000 uniques a day, but even then from ads alone you would be hoping to bring in $500 to $700 a month. You won’t do it from adsense, you would be doing most of that revenue from private ad sales.

So after expenses, and all your time, you’re not making much. To keep it going you would be easily spending $200 a month on marketing, let’s say you profit $500 a month (after that 3 months of heavy marketing and time spent), and then you’re looking at a site worth $5k (10x revenue) probably more because there’s revenue and growth and a long history.

Still, not worth $12k minimum, if I was him, I’d spend $1k+ on promotions a month and start putting ads on the forum, sell ads for 3 months, get some revenue in and then sell, at least then you’re showing the potential buyer of the site that the investment is going to be worth it.

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.