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I’ve Just Bid On A New Site
By Max | June 28, 2007
I am probably shooting myself in the foot here, but I wanted to let you in on my thought processes as I try to purchase a site. Calling your attention to the auction might run the price up, but I don’t care too much either way. There are always more sites going up for sale. I can guarantee you that few (maybe none) other people are going to be this transparent about their business. If one of you does decide to bid against me, please let me know. I promise I won’t get mad, and I am sure everyone that reads this site would love to know how things eventually turn out.
The auction is here.
The site is a CounterStrike forum community. I don’t know much about the video game franchise itself, but the one major concern I have is that I need to know CounterStrike is going to exist as a franchise for awhile. This site has been around for 5 years, so the developers must have long term plans for the franchise. So that’s something I need to look into. If one of you is a CounterStrike fan, please let me know what you know about the future of the franchise.
Right away I noticed two things I like very much about this sites potential as a purchase.
#1. It is a forum getting good traffic.
I like forums because there is a lot less pressure for me to create content. The users do it. I don’t have to spend much time with the day to day upkeep of a forum site. I just have to keep the users happy and they’ll keep coming back to write posts which in turn drive traffic. Once a forum has momentum, it is very hard to slow it down. Another nice thing about this site, is that 60% of the traffic is coming from search engines. Thats pretty good for a forum. The regular visitors to a forum don’t click many ads. They don’t convert well at all. What they do however is create content that the search engine users find. Search engine traffic definitely converts.
#2. This site appears to be under-monetized.
I saw a few google ads on this site, but thats all. The google ads that are there could be better placed for further monetization. Many of you are aware that the 300×250 block is much better converting than the smaller ad sizes, especially when its placed smack in the middle of the content. Further there are no CPM ads. In fact, adsense is the only revenue stream he has. This is a huge mistake. He’s getting over 4000 unique vistors per day. He should definitely be making more than $600-700/mon.
My plan is simple. I want to buy this site, change the adsense placement and add CPM ads and maybe some other streams like link sales, Kontera, or Auction Ads. Hopefully within a month or two I can boost the revenue up to $1000/mon or more. (I think $1000/mon is conservative) and then sell it for more based on those earnings. If I am lucky, I think I could double my money in two months. 100% ROI in two months! Thats not bad at all. This of course all depends on how much I am able to purchase the site for.
I have already bid $6000. I am willing to go higher, but not too much higher. I’d rather not pay too much of a premium based on potential. That cuts into my profit. If I find out that Counterstrike is indeed a healthy franchise with lots of future plans, then I can go a bit more than that.
Topics: Buy Alert, Website Flipping Experiment | 14 Comments »
June 28th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Thanks for sharing. This one is too rich for me at this point so I won’t be bidding against you.
I have noticed a lot of blog posts about success stories but not all of them let you in on what the site actually is. I understand sometimes you need to not post that but at times it would help me to understand the process and execution better.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
The problem with sharing is that you’ll invite a lot of competition for yourself. I decided that I’d give it a shot and hope none of the readers here compete with me directly. It is a public auction however, so they could compete with me anyway. Because of that I thought I might as well write about it. If this goes poorly, then I’ll have to be more secretive next time.
June 29th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Why did you bid twice?
#
28 Jun 2007 15:14
$10,000 – maxtower
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28 Jun 2007 08:31
$6,000 – maxtower
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28 Jun 2007 05:51
Where you afraid someone would take the site at the last minute?
June 29th, 2007 at 9:54 am
congrats max
looks like you got the site, was going to bid on that site before I found your site yesterday , but it was filled with a good chok full of info
I’m in the business of buying and selling websites myself, lets chat and share ideas
got email/icq/aim?
June 29th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I bid twice because I contacted the seller directly and we negotiated a BIN of $10k. That was a little more than what I wanted to pay, but if everything goes according to plan I think I can still profit.
The last three sites I have bought have all been done that way. A lot of times if I just bid in the auction, someone else will come along and snag it at the BIN. Or they will negotiate behind the scenes like I did with this one. It kind of defeats the purpose of an auction, but thats the way it goes.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Jack,
I tried emailing you my contact info, but the address you listed didn’t work.
My email address is mxt196@yahoo.com and my AIM is ‘maxtower’. I also use MSN which is the same as my email address.
June 29th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Counterstrike rules! My favourite game ever I’d say.
I think games are evolving, but Counterstrike is something that will be around for a while.
But I guess you’ve already bought…let me know if you wanna go a few rounds
June 29th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
[...] I’ve Just Bid On A New Site | [...]
July 1st, 2007 at 3:38 am
[...] difficult to prevent someone from defrauding you. Then this week I revisited the idea while I was buying a website. Sending a lot of cash to a complete stranger over the internet is definitely a leap of faith. I [...]
July 1st, 2007 at 7:26 pm
AuctionAd’s do well on videogame websites. It’s something to consider speaking from experience of course.
Nice website and i’ll be emailing you soon
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:36 am
Chris,
Thanks for the tip on auction ads. Can you elaborate a little on their performance on video game sites?
What products do you think are best to advertise? Would you show ipods on video game sites? They might do better than just showing games because of the higher sales price.
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:10 am
I made $30 in a week from auction ads on a low traffic video game website so it’s good.
On a counter-strike website i used the keywords ’steelpad’ but auctionads seem to only display 2-3 products when theres alot more on ebay. Of course there are affiliate programs like http://www.steelseries.com
Selling gamer specific equipment.
Chris,
July 4th, 2007 at 1:52 am
[...] I got the details to the new server I ordered for the Counter Strike site that I bought last week. The previous owner performed the transfer for me which is awesome. I always ask. It can’t [...]
July 5th, 2007 at 3:00 am
If you’re looking for a fresh design, holler at me