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bla.st - Advertising Network and Directory
Automated payments, awesome domain name
- URL: http://bla.st/
- Established: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:00:00 GMT
- Uniques/Month: 3,500
- Page views/month: 10,000
- Monthly Revenue: No regular revenue, depends on promotion
- Listed: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:52:22 GMT
Description:
The bla.st advertising network allows advertisers to advertise totally free, and optionally upgrade their ads or "cards" for higher visibility. The site has been operating about 18 months, and has served over 37 million cards to visitors, both on the bla.st site, and over the bla.st network.
The site is fully automated, although we currently check cards placed onto the site manually. Card upgrades are handled automatically through PayPal.
We are selling the site because it needs more work and marketing to be truly successful and are now busy on other projects including wordjot.com, a simple newsletter system.
The sale includes:
- the "bla.st" domain name. (Costs 35 euros/year with http://www.nic.st/) Only one character longer than the shortest domain name possible. http://bla.st/
- the bla.st network, a referral based widget network
- the bla.st directory main site
- DNS, handled at http://www.everydns.net/
- bla.st email accounts, currently hosted with Google Mail
- All site source code, including PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, and the Apache config.
- The site database, currently MySQL
- Original source graphics and advertisements, mostly in PhotoShop format.
- Full access to the bla.st statistics (currently in Google Analytics)
- Assistance moving and setting up the site on another server. Hosting currently on a Dedicated Virtual Server, $60USD/month at MediaTemple, but it could be hosted on a cheaper account easily.
- The bla.st blog, included with the main site
The hosting requirements for bla.st are:
- Linux, FreeBSD or MacOSX
- Apache
- MySQL
- PHP5 or greater with GD, and MySQLi modules installed
- A paypal business account
MANUAL MAINTENANCE REQUIRED
- Upgrade peoples card when they blog about bla.st (this promotion can be stopped)
- Referral Payments are done manually through PayPal once a month
The numbers are small, but the site is profitable and could easily scale with proper marketing. The past year we have done pretty much no promotion of the site, and it ticks along nicely by itself.
UNIQUE VISITORS (from Google Analytics)
Last month: 4,241
Last 3 months: 11,765
Last year: 67,146
Note these stats do not include the bla.st advertising network which serves considerably more cards.
OTHER STATS
Cards Online: 1,640
Registered Advertisers: 2,185
Total Cards Served: 37,541,280
Cards served on bla.st site 10,933,834
Cards served on widget network 26,607,446
Total clicks: 91,160 (Very conservative number, due to the javascript tracking used)
Sites using the bla.st widget: 69 - huge potential for growth here.
EXPENSES TO DATE
Hosting: $425.00
Referal Payments: $139.44
1 month advertisement on John Chow.com: $499
StumbleUpon advertising: $40
For full visitor statistics see:
http://www.google.com/analytics/
Login Email: stats@bla.st
Password: bla.ststats
Conditions of sale:
- The site should remain operational for at least 1 year due to the existing paying customers.
- Code sample is available on request
Revenue Details:
INCOME TO DATE
From upgrading of free cards
Total ad sales: $3973.69
from 266 upgraded cards.
Approx 10% of advertisers choose to upgrade their cards, and pay anywhere from $2.50 to $500
Revenue fluctuates greatly, and depends on promotion.
Traffic Details:
From the past month: Search Engines 1,543 (42.93%) Referring Sites 1,390 (38.68%) Direct Traffic 661 (18.39%)
for the amount of traffic, and profits the site is attracting, i think the min bid is higher than what the bin should be...