IBforFree.com - Established Free Forum Site

[mccollin]

IBforFree - Established Free Forum Site
Site Focus - The site provides free Invision Power Board forums in exchange for a banner ad spot at the top of the page.

Website url: http://ibforfree.com
Domains included: ibforfree.com
Age of site: put into productive use 11/03
Traffic: (obtained from Awstats and Webalizer)
Month of February: 13,472 Uniques, 641,047 Page Views
Daily in February: Average Daily ~1,000 Uniques, 15,500 Page Views
Marketleap Link Popularity: 667

Details:
http://ibforfree.com/ibforfreestats1.jpg
http://ibforfree.com/ibforfreestats2.jpg
http://ibforfree.com/ibforfreestats3.jpg
http://ibforfree.com/ibforfreestats4.jpg
http://ibforfree.com/ibforfreestats5.jpg
http://ibforfree.com/ibforfreelinkpop1.jpg

Google PageRank: 5
Alexa Rating: 104,945
Total forums registered since start: 1612
Design: Site design is totally custom (one of a kind), and includes a custom IB skin/template to match for the support forum. Includes a matching Flash splash page.
Scripts included: SEB_Flipper Multiforum Pro license (bought), News rotation script, and Invision Power Board which runs the forums
How is content obtained: Not a content site... the site content is the discussion in the forums... many with thousands of posts.
Time to maintain: It takes nearly zero time to maintain the site, although someone fluent with Invisision Power Board could certainly exploit the site and do lots with it. Currently there is a support forum where the users help each other with problems. There is an FAQ that has some info to help people with initial problems.
Space / Bandwidth: The site doesn't use a ton of bandwidth, but does use a lot of space. Each forum takes approximately 2MB of space. Many forums go unused, so the script easily prunes dead forums to help with space, but you need several GB of disk space to run this safely.
Hosting Requirements: Runs fine on a Linux/Unix box, but requires a couple of changes to php.ini. Currently the hosting is being done in exchange for advertising. You can work out something with the current host, or move it if you like. This does require a little effort to move because of the size of the backup.
Income: I am running Google Adsense ads at the moment, and since they are part of a larger account, I don't really know how much its generating. I bought this site to add with another and create a forum related network. That deal fell through, and I've never really done anything to promote the site. It is well established, and one of the most original free forum sites out there.
Promotion: I have not done anything at all. The site gets about 10 new forums signed up on average each day just from word of mouth.
Help: I will assist with the move to the new owner and answer any questions that I can, but the new owner needs to have some idea how to move a site, setup mysql databases, and make a change to php.ini.

I am looking for offers above $2000.

[jane118]

what i want to know is the ad revenue u have..i was interested uptil when you said that you didnt know the income.

[mccollin]

The ad revenue is not huge at this point, primarily because I've not had the time to do anything with it. I have Google Adsense banners on it presently, and I'd estimate that they bring in no more than $50-100/month. If you have Adsense, then you know that you can't get detail by site with them... and so I'm estimating based on what I know of the traffic differences and income from my other sites.

But, Adsense is a poor performer for forums in many cases, because they through a lot of public service ads. You should go into this knowing that you are buying the traffic and established base, and that you will need to develop the revenue side. A few months back I looked at putting my ad network ads on here, but no go.. Tribal Fusion and Valueclick don't like forum only sites. I believe that the advertising income could be developed through second tier CPM advertising, and sold Hosting ads. There are a number of forums on the site with thousands of posts... which would be candidates for conversion to hosting.

You can count the free hosting that I'm getting for this as some revenue as well, but you'd have to assess that.

As I said, I bought the site a couple of months ago for another project that fell through, so it doesn't fit with my other projects at present. It costs me zero to run, and takes near zero time to maintain.

By the way, the high bid at this point is $1000, plus an unconfirmed bid of $1500 and several non-cash offers.

[smoothlime]

"Total forums registered since start: 1612"

what was the last time you deleted inactive forums?

[mccollin]

We do that regularly... just done a few days ago. I believe the total number of forums at present is around 400-500. I don't have all the login info with me to get at the admin panel that shows me that. I'll confirm it later and let you know.

[Darren06]

How much are you looking to get?

[mccollin]

I have an offer of $1100. I was shooting for $2000, which is what my opening post said.

[mccollin]

I have received an offer of $1500 by PM. I would prefer for everyone to post their offers here, but PM is fine too.

[RottenPug]

I posted the 1500.00 PM bid, now my question to you is when does this
"auction" end ?

Thanks Scott

I have received an offer of $1500 by PM. I would prefer for everyone to post their offers here, but PM is fine too.

[mccollin]

Hi Scott,

I had said that I would let it go for a couple of days, of which one has already passed. So, I will let it go one more day, and then reach a decision. It is listed on 2 other sites, and the high bid is here.

If this doesn't meet your timeframe, we can discuss it via PM.

[mccollin]

The $1500 offer still stands. I'll be concluding this tomorrow, Thursday, so get your bids in if anyone is interested.

[mccollin]

I have gotten a number of questions offline and one I wanted to clarify here. The number of forums that I listed up top is the number registered since we started. We prune inactive forums regularly, so the currently active number of forums is 357. This is something you can turn on and off, or set the threshold for. The forums take up space, so this helps keep the server requirements reasonable. If you like big numbers and want to just let it keep running up, you have that ability. I was speaking from memory in the earlier post... this number is what it is now... I just checked it.

[mccollin]

The site is SOLD... mods can close the thread.