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Username:
kshaikh (60%)
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FlyUpload - Share Video, Music and Photos (1M Uniques/month)

YouSendIt Competitor ($34M in funding). Established since 2005. 1.2M Google Links. 1M uniques/mo. Profitable.

  • URL: http://www.flyupload.com/
  • Established: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 13:00:00 GMT
  • Uniques/Month: 1,000,000
  • Page views/month: 3,300,000
  • Monthly Revenue (USD): 4,000
  • Google Pagerank: 4
  • Listed: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:44:17 GMT

Description:

FlyUpload is an established profitable web business in a proven market.  FlyUpload makes it easy for people to share photos, videos and audio.

FlyUpload has been running since 2005 on 18 servers located across 5+ ISPs in the US.  It has about 1 million unique users a month and an alexa rank of 8,000.

Available upon request, Google Analytics charts.

Revenue ranges from $48k to $72k/year while costs are $36k/year.

Extensive SEO has generated over 1.2 million links in Google.  We over 30 000 active unique participates on a daily basis.  We have over 5 terabytes of active user data downloaded on a weekly basis.

The founder of YouSendIt (www.wikipedia.com/yousendit) is selling this business at an extremely competitive price. 

YouSendIt has been funded $34M from Alloy Ventures, Sevin Rosen, Sigma Partners, Emergence Capital, Cambrian Ventures and the Stanford Technology Fund.

$100 000 has been invested into FlyUpload to build a scalable architecture that can support 10s of millions of users.  Automated systems to deal with abuse.  Employeeless operations.  Redundant hardware systems, relying on 5 different ISPs.  A loyal userbase that maintains itself without marketing costs.

A new owner can add social networking components or build additional product value to build a viral application that competes with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, YouSendIt, etc.

 

Revenue Details:

A diversified revenue stream from 4+ advertising providers as well as a subscription revenue stream.

Traffic Details:

- Referring Sites  682,276.00 (69.50%)
- Direct Traffic 292,650.00 (29.81%)
- Search Engines 6,706.00 (0.68%)
- Other 3 (> 0.00%)

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Questions to the Seller

  1. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 09:01:58 GMT
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    #1

    I'm curious as to why a business making a minumum of $12,000 per annum, with $100,000 invested, selling for a BIN of only $100,000?

    Posted by:
    Matagascar (100%)
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  2. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 09:05:34 GMT
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    #2

    You invested $100,000 into flyupload? But the But It Now price is $100,000?

    Posted by:
    TheKage (60%)
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  3. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 11:34:06 GMT
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    #3

    How much profit for each year since 2005? Some years $12k profit? (Revenue ranges from $48k while costs are $36k/year.). I'd like to get an idea on the history of the profits.

    Posted by:
    zymic (0%)
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  4. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:42:49 GMT
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    #4

    I would like to see a break down on the expenses please (as best you can from say hosting costs, people costs, licensing/software costs, or any other major category). I.e. how much would overlap with an existing entity that could syngergize so to speak.

    Posted by:
    thirdrailholding (100%)
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  5. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:56:50 GMT
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    #5

    Well being from silicon valley investors put in large sums of money to build the next facebook, twitter, etc. I put in a long of money hoping for the revenue to skyrocket. YouSendIt for me was making $1M/year at its peak. It now makes $7.5M/year with a burn rate of well over $10M/year, this is how silicon valley works.

    I put in money, I lost money, I know that. At this point I need to move on.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  6. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:03:38 GMT
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    #6

    The profits can be $12k/year and they can be higher or lower based on the quality of service you give to the customer. You can easily cut down the servers to half and give poorer quality of service to the customers and increase the margins. Lots of things can be done with this, or you can just operate it as it is and try to make money off that.

    There is a high value to creating a web site with 1.2M incoming links that have passed Google's Sandbox.

    There is also tremendous value in the ISP relationships I have which have negotiated bandwidth & hardware included down to $4/mbps. Companies like YouSendIt are paying well above $10/mbps and rack costs of $3000/mo per cabinet + Dell servers.

    The expenses are
    $2712 in back end servers in which we use about 600mbps of b/w on a 24 hour period. 2 ISPs.
    $440 in front end servers. 3 ISPs.
    Plus there is about 1 or 2 VPSs which are used for "control". (Check free disk space, etc).

    That's it. You can drop down the front end servers from 3 to 1 to reduce your costs, but you increase the risk of downtime. You can drop down the back end servers, bandwidth and throttle users based on their quality and you can reduce your back end costs.

    Finally I can also provide you a reference who created www.eatlime.com, they are 21 years old and received $400k in funding for something with a smaller userbase based on the dream that they have disruptive technology.

    http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/21/video-startup-eatlime-raises-the-bar-on-upload-speeds/

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  7. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:04:01 GMT
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    #7

    There are zero people costs.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  8. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:04:20 GMT
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    #8

    The software is 100% open source. Zero software costs.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  9. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:12:19 GMT
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    #9

    The servers updated:
    10 back end, 3 front end, and 2 VPSs.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  10. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:48:47 GMT
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    #10

    I just received a phone call with an offer and I will be furnishing revenue data to him. Also 30 days ago I received an email about an acquisition but I declined that I was not ready. It seems the site is going to go, it just seems to who and for how much. Feel free to contact me if you need more information.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  11. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:06:16 GMT
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    #11

    How did you invest $100k if the site is running on free open source software. You can startup a upload site for $200 with a simple script and once it gets popular scale it and spend more money.

    Posted by:
    NextSite (0%)
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  12. Posted date:
    Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:52:41 GMT
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    #12

    I am extremely interested in this ability to buy a simple for $200 and scale it. Would you please help me? The market is over $10M/year in revenue. I suggest we partner up and create a few million a year. Please contact me.

    In all honesty, there is difficulty in marketing it and obtaining a loyal userbase, if it were that easy, then I'd be making $10M/year and be selling it for significant more then $100k.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  13. Posted date:
    Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:48:34 GMT
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    #13

    please pm me rev and other details.. I run 5 different file/video sharing sites, with approx 100k PV a day combined

    Posted by:
    net_hed (100%)
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  14. Posted date:
    Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:47:16 GMT
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    #14

    this sounds so fishy,

    Posted by:
    chris07 (100%)
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  15. Posted date:
    Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:10:51 GMT
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    #15

    I invite you to visit myself in Silicon Valley if you are interested. There is nothing fishy about it. I can walk you through MRTG charts, the source code. Google recently did a due diligence with Digg and didn't purchase them. This is exactly how large investment works, there is nothing fishy about it. If you are interested, feel free to visit me on a date and I will show you everything is legitimate. I also invite you to speak to the corporate attorney whom is on the board of Meebo. Ideally I'd prefer to sell assets and IP, taking over the corporation would involve significant legal costs. These lawyers charge about $625/hour.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  16. Posted date:
    Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:42:00 GMT
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    #16

    I am still curious why you would sell such a solid website for only 100k. Can you explain?

    I did some basic googling on the seller to check claims of cofounding yousendit. I was thinking
    that it was fishy as well, but there are plenty of links referencing Khalid Shaikh as the founder...who
    I am assuming the seller (kshaikh) is.

    http://www.google.com/search?q=yousendit%2Bshaikh&btnG=Search&hl=en&sa=2

    Posted by:
    1imran (0%)
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  17. Posted date:
    Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:14:04 GMT
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    #17

    R u really "Khalid Shaikh"? u also own yousendit?

    Posted by:
    Asif2BD (100%)
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    DK-BD
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  18. Posted date:
    Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:02:32 GMT
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    #18

    Yes, I am, but I do not own YouSendIt. Go check out their web site, it says Ranjith Kumaran is the founder. I started it with Amir Shaikh and Ranjith Kumaran. Little did I know that he would join hands with the VCs and stab myself and my brother in the back. Alas the world of business. Even if you build something that was a top 500 site in the world in middle of 2005, people will take it away from you and give you nothing in return. This is the world of business here in the valley.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  19. Posted date:
    Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:49:10 GMT
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    #19

    are you still talking to the offer guy. very interested and have emailed you re contcat details to progress rapidly

    Posted by:
    georgebailey (67%)
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  20. Posted date:
    Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:03:22 GMT
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    #20

    I am talking to several buyers. Yesterday I delivered a network & server diagram to one. And today an opex excel sheet projecting the next 18 months of costs. Feel free to email me for any further information. khalid@flyupload.com

    Also I can give you a brain dump of anything I learnt around here about fund raising, etc.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  21. Posted date:
    Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:22:53 GMT
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    #21

    Terrific project, Khalid, perfect technical execution as well.
    Would have loved to pick this up. Unfortunately my funds are tied up in another venture.
    Good luck with the sale - you shouldn't have problems getting your mark price.

    Posted by:
    Artashes (60%)
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    Montreal, Canada
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  22. Posted date:
    Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:16:42 GMT
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    #22

    Hello Khalid,

    Your project sounds very interesting and we might mostly bid on it. Looks like a good deal to me.

    Before that I would like to know your network layout and where your servers are located (have you leased them? colocated them?) and what type of servers your use and whether it would be feasible for us to shift them to a different location.

    Also some more info on how much Harddisk space you use/bandwidth graphs etc would help us more in analyzing it.

    If you have any more technical information, do pass it on.

    Best Regards.

    Posted by:
    Win Z (0%)
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  23. Posted date:
    Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:13:14 GMT
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    #23

    Thanks for all the compliments guys. I am negotiating with a few buyers at this point. I have finally collected my revenue details and cost details for the last 12 months. Feel free to PM me or email me at khalid@flyupload.com for them.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  24. Posted date:
    Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:58:22 GMT
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    #24

    A buyer as sent me a check of $5k to lock up the web site for 1 to 2 weeks while they do their due diligence. Any winner of this auction will have to be secondary to the primary buyer. Feel free to contact me for additional information via PM, email, 408 712 3580 or locally anywhere near San Jose / San Francisco, CA.

    I've been distributing site revenue and costs for serious buyers only. I am looking to sell this between $25k and $100k to the highest bidder. Idea is to close by end of September or October.

    I have also flown out to meet serious buyers as well. Please contact.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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  25. Posted date:
    Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:32:42 GMT
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    #25

    Buyer one has first dibs until Wednesday. Then we will go down from there. Please place your bids via PM or email to khalid@flyupload.com.

    Posted by:
    kshaikh (60%) (seller)
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