- Posted by:
- Edman (60%) (seller)
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GossipRocks.com - Giant Forum, 1 million+ posts, 3 million+ pageviews, $2000/mo
Very active large celebrity gossip forum with a lot of traffic
- URL: http://www.gossiprocks.com/
- Established: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 14:00:00 GMT
- Uniques/Month: 350,000
- Page views/month: 2,500,000
- Monthly Revenue (USD): 2,000
- Listed: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:22:13 GMT
Description:
GossipRocks.com is a large celebrity gossip site and forum. The forum is the main attraction in the site.
Forum Stats
The current size of the forum is:
Threads: 60,684
Posts: 1,092,829
Members: 5,969
Members are pruned regularly to ensure that the current member count reflects the active member count.
The forum averages approx. 450 - 500 users online per day, as well as thousands of guests.
Here is an activity sample from March:
March 01, 2008 411
March 02, 2008 425
March 03, 2008 478
March 04, 2008 480
March 05, 2008 483
March 06, 2008 467
March 07, 2008 457
March 08, 2008 413
March 09, 2008 402
March 10, 2008 486
March 11, 2008 462
March 12, 2008 462
March 13, 2008 467
March 14, 2008 455
March 15, 2008 400
March 16, 2008 437
March 17, 2008 492
March 18, 2008 486
March 19, 2008 479
March 20, 2008 609
March 21, 2008 523
March 22, 2008 468
March 23, 2008 443
March 24, 2008 509
March 25, 2008 519
The forum averages well over a thousand posts a day on any day, and on some months averages above 2000 posts a day. I have not noticed a correlation between traffic and number of posts - the number of posts mainly depends on how much celebrity gossip news there is coming out and how interesting it is. January, for example, was a very high month simply because of this reason.
March stats have not yet fully aggregated, obviously. There are still 6 days to go in March, so the estimated total is 53,000 posts in March.
July 2007 31852
August 2007 37175
September 2007 36541
October 2007 41664
November 2007 41862
December 2007 45122
January 2008 63038
February 2008 52622
March 2008 53000 (est)
Registration statistics
September 2007 170
October 2007 168
November 2007 171
December 2007 166
January 2008 236
February 2008 253
March 2008 482
Traffic stats
Traffic screenshot from Google Analytics is attached to this listing.
On average the site is getting approx. 10,000 unique visitors a day, and approx. 80,000 to 90,000 pageviews a day.
Access to Google Analytics stats is available for those with serious interest in buying.
Trends
We have owned the site for 6 months. When we got it, it had pretty much hit the bottom, and has been improving since. The number of posts being made has increased from approx. 32,000 in July 2007 to approx. 53,000 in March 2008.
Traffic has increased from 196,000 uniques per month in the first month to 375,000 uniques per month in the last month. Pageviews have increased from 1,800,000 per month to 2,500,000 per month.
This means that not only have we managed to generate more activity on the forums, we have not done this on the expense of alienating guests. Each user is also more profitable, as they don't rack up pageviews as quickly, so the server load is smaller while capitalization is higher.
Revenue
Currently the site runs a combination of Adsense, Tribal Fusion and Chitika Linx. Instead of Chitika Linx we used to run Vibrant Media's IntelliTXT, but they soon ran out of inventory.
Revenue has been as follows:
2007 October: $1000,74
2007 November: $1212,00
2007 December: $1045,73
2008 January:
Adsense: $886,56
TribalFusion: $480,04
Vibrant: $239,44
Total: $1606,04
2008 February:
Adsense: $448,84
TribalFusion: $806,93
Vibrant: $42,27
Total: $1298,04
2008 March (first 25 days):
Adsense: $403,27
Tribal Fusion: $764,69
Vibrant: $12,54 (stopped use on 5th)
Chitika: $782,38
Total: $1962,88
Expected total: $2433,97
The reason for lower revenue in February is the drop in Vibrant Media income. Vibrant was replaced by Chitika in March, and has so far shown great results.
Advertising is shown to guests only. Registered members see no ads at all.
Expenses
The only expense is one server for $324 from Liquidweb, which is a bit of an overkill and we keep quite a few sites on it anyway. In case of purchase you can choose to either keep this server, in which case we'll move our sites off it, or move to a different server of your own.
Why are you selling?
Between me and my partner we own a lot of websites with a total valuation of our portfolio being over a million dollars. This is the only celebrity site we have, and it is completely out of place with our other projects, and is therefore almost completely neglected. We did commission a website to be built for the site, but it hasn't really taken off so much.
Other than that, we haven't been doing anything with the site. We haven't even made an account on the forums, and haven't made any posts at all.
Additionally, I have been on a tight schedule round the world trip for over 2 months now, so the site has been completely neglected over this period of time.
What is that huge traffic spike?
I really don't know. This occasionally happens, now and then, traffic would spike up and we'd get a day of $200 - $350 earnings. Its got something to do with a forums thread being really popular.
Ultimately, what these spikes show is the potential of the site. If you are able to get traffic to latest news pieces like the occasional thread does it already, you'll be able to have these $200 days literally every day. Unfortunately, I know nothing about celebrity gossip, I live 10,000 km from USA, I've just not been able to do much at all.
What do you think the future of the site will be?
If you are looking to invest without further development, you can expect to make $1500 - $2000/mo profit without a doubt. With the current growing trend, in 12 months you'd be at well over $2000/mo profit.
The best thing about this site, however, is the potential if you do further development. If you are able to make a latest news site, you'll be able to get those $200/day times repeat all the time. In that case you'll make $6000/mo and be able to cover the BIN price of this auction in about 10-12 months.
Why such a price? Why not lower/higher?
The price is based on the following factors:
1. Site is of a very high quality. It is old, has a large community following, but at the same time receives a large number of guest visitors. It has been neglected for 6 months and traffic has only improved. The risk of such a site going downhill in the next two years is minimal.
2. The current revenue.
3. Unexploited revenue potential. Only 4 ad companies have ever been tried on this site. No advertising is shown to registered users.
4. Lots of development potential. It is a forum lacking a strong main site. If you buy to develop to sell later, this is a perfect opportunity, as an up to date news site would easily increase income and with it the resell value.
Ultimately though, we are not selling based on potential, but on current revenue. We bought this site for approx. 20 months revenue, and would like to sell for approx. 20 months revenue. The potential is merely something any buyer should keep in mind.
Revenue Details:
See above
Traffic Details:
See above
Attachments
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- Thumbnail:
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Google Analytics
And obviously, we are open to any and all reasonable offers. Feel free to contact me through PM.
Please do note that I am still on that round the world trip (going to Galapagos Islands now), please don't get impatient if I don't immediately reply.