footballforums.net huge site No1 in google, yahoo & msn

[BoyWonder]

Hi,

Site www. Footballforums .net

General description:
The site is a website dedicated to football (soccer in the US), the largest spectator sport in the world. The site primarily revolves around the forum, but there are other areas of the site.


Unique Points:
Search engine positions:
No1 in Google for “football forums” (results 16,000,000) http://www.google.com/search?q=football+forums
No1 in Yahoo for “football forums” (results 59,200,000) http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=football+forums
No1 in MSN for “football forums” ( results 8,161,099) http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=football+forums

The site has been rock solid at number 1 for this term for years and has never budged. The site obviously also comes high in the search engines for hundreds of other football related words.

The site is huge - Threads: 90,018, Posts: 1,362,891, Members: 13,374


Website Growth:
According to webalizer stats unique visits have increased from 31,000 in June to over 100,000 in November. This rapid growth is a direct result of a site upgrade which took place in July – that’s a 300% increase in 6 months (and it is still growing at the same rate)!! According to vB control panel their where 311 new registered users in November.

Website Stats:
Everything you should need can be found here : http://www.footballforums.net/stats.htm


History:
The website has been online since 2000 and was purchased in 2003 for approx $9,000 (which was a bargain at the time) – since then the site has more than doubled in size with regard to registered users and posts. In the past 6 months the site has gone ballistic in terms of unique users and has increase 300%.

Forums: Powered by vBulletin
Threads: 90,018,
Posts: 1,362,891,
Members: 13,374

Bandwidth:
Approx 35 Gig / Month

Site Sections:

Forums:
This is really the main section of the site and is powered by VB 3.06. We have also installed vbSEO for search engine optimization. (Threads: 90,018, Posts: 1,362,891, Members: 13,374)

News Section / Feeds/ Tables:
Script grabbing newsfeeds from BBC news on a team by team basis.

Club Portal: Custom-made script
This section displays league tables for all the english leagues (and any others you want to add), as well as fixtures, club history, player profiles, etc. This is completely maintained by volunteers.

How much time does it take to run?
None - I have set up a strong management team at the site, and assuming the new owner doesn’t come in and upset them all (as they are all voluntary) they run the entire site themselves.

How much money does it make?
The site has never been monetized.

Why have you never tried to make money from the site?
When I purchased the website I never intended to make money from it – it was purely for traffic for another project. I’m an MD of a large separate business that takes all my time.

Why do you want to sell?
Frankly I have never had the time to develop the site to its full potential and I can’t see myself having that time in the near future as I want to spend more time on another web project.

How could you make money from the website?
Quite frankly the world is your oyster with this site as it has so many was of potential income. Football is the largest spectator sport in the world. Over at DNforum you can see a couple of sites for sale (http://www.dnforum.com/f48/2-x-live-sport-member-sites-premiershiplive-net-freelivefootball-tv-pr5-pr4-thread-123022.html ) which sell subscription for live game feeds. They have no really content but have made over $10,000 in 3 months. Imagine if you could this up with the traffic and following that footballforums.net has ??

Aside from that there are hundreds of other ways, as with most sports site betting is very closely associated and the referral bonuses for betting and gambling sites are huge. There is also selling clothing and kit, direct advertising etc etc. Here are some links that may be of use:

General Sports Affiliates
http://www.affiliate-scheme.co.uk/Sp...eation/48.html

Bookmaker Affiliates:
http://affiliates.victor.com/ - various high value revenue share
http://webmasters.willhill.com/ - £20 sign up
http://www.bluesq.com/bluehaht/affiliates_page.shtml £15 per sign up and 1.5% of all staked money

Sports Kit
http://www.kitbag.com/stores/kitbag_...s/default.aspx
http://www.toffs.com/page/becomeanaffiliate


Match Tickets
http://www.soldouteventtickets.com/aff_login.asp

Hosting:
The site is currently hosted on one of the dedicated servers we rent. Any new owner will have 1 month to move the site.


Is this an auction?
Yes although I reserve the right not to sell if I feel the offers are not high enough. Auction ends 13th December.

Price (or starting bid): $15,000

Questions:
Unfortunately due to my position as an MD I do not have much time to answer questions, so only serious bidders please, and I would be grateful if they are posted in the thread to prevent repeat questions.

[Designcrowd]

I dont get it ?

This site is making no money and you have a starting bid of $15,000?
Basically you are selling 13,000 members. I would be interested but your pricing is way above my interest. If you should decide otherwise I will keep my eye on it

Good luck though

[spdude]

I would have also been very interested. You should have set up ads for a month and gathered some history before attempting the sale. The site is awesome. Good luck.

[SigRent.com]

Id be interested in purchasing for $4,000 but $15k is too high for a site not making any revenue.

[spdude]

I'll make the first official offer (below your asking price though) of $10,000

I'm a very serious buyer. So, if you want to move this forward (I'd be willing to increase my bid), please PM me your instant messenger address, and we can discuss over MSN.

[BoyWonder]

Start bid of $15,000 recieved via PM, however after advise from other webmasters and sleeping on this overnight I have decided to keep hold of the site for the time being and get in a developer to work on the site and monetize it.

Thanks for all the feedback and offers.

When the site has been monetized and developed I will contact all the interested parties again.

I apologise if I have wasted your time.

[Bender]

closed.