Established Literature Website & Forum - 85,000 Page Views, 39,000 Posts

[nrep]

URL : http://www.historicalfiction.org

Age of Site : Almost 1 year

Monthly Page Views : ~84,300 last month

Monthly Uniques : ~10,600 last month

Stats : http://www.historicalfiction.org/stats.gif

Traffic Details : Much of the traffic has come from word of mouth referrals along with links in Blogs and other historical fiction websites. No heavy promotion has been done at all, all growth has been totally organic.

Links in Google : 10,800

Details :

This website was set up to cater for a lack of forums based upon Historical Fiction and has grown massively in the past year. This website was set up purely as a hobby site by my partner, however due to increasing work commitments she is no longer able to run the site as she would like to. There will be a huge potential in monetizing the site as there are about 40 book reviews (freely created by members), which could be linked to a US/UK amazon store. No attempt has been made at all to make money from the site so far, although I feel a combination of adsense and amazon aff schemes would work extremely well. The monthly book club means that many members buy at least that book per month (often more), which could generate significant revenue though amazon commission.

The site is based on static PHP files for the content pages and vBulletin as the forum software (license not included). The forum has a dedicated team of moderators in place that I think would remain, and book reviews are freely submitted by forum members. A system that allows members to automatically submit reviews to the site would greatly increase the submission rate I am sure (a fantastic way to gain free content on the latest books).

This is a very reluctant sale from my partner as she has spent a long time creating and designing the site and forums. Traffic has been increasing almost linearly for the time the site has been online.

Starting Price : $1000

Payment : (via Paypal / direct bank transfer)

 

[HSNetwork]

Great looking forum, and I'm interested, but the starting price is a put-off for me, especially for a site with only a PR1 homepage, and no revenue.

Also, your stats link doesn't work and I'm also curious why Alexa has no traffic information.

Thanks.

 

[nrep]

Sorry, the stats are active now (I thought I had already uploaded them). Most links point to the forum which is a PR3 - although this site isn't sold for the pagerank it is more the community and potential

 

[HSNetwork]

Thanks for fixing the stats. Gonna go talk to the partner (read: woman) and have her take a look.

 

[avanti]

I will make an offer of $500, I know its not near your starting price however its a good offer and mroe than you have at the moment. It's a forum where only 25% of the membership is active and the majority of posts (more than 70%) are generally off topic. Also the loss of only a couple of key posters would seriously reduce the number of new posts.

The forum needs a lot of work to focus on its main reason for being there.

 

[nrep]

Thanks for the bid avanti, although it is below the asking price and there are several other interested parties. No harm in it though :D

The following questions were asked at Digital Point forums, so I am posting them here for all interested parties:

So I would say the future of this forum largely depends on what these 6 or 7 people will do - will they stick around?

Obviously I can't be sure, but if the transfer was handled in a sensible way then I don't see why there would be a problem. They are calling for an expansion of the site and I think they would like to see the site gain some additional features which I just don't have time to program. As long as the new owner didn't charge in and not introduce introduce them selfs, then I think it will carry on as it is at the moment.

Have you told the members the site is up for sale?

No, mainly because if the sale didn't happen then it would be an awkward situation.

How will they react to ads appearing on the site?

I don't see why they would have a problem, as they don't pay anything (although have offered to pay running costs before). No such thing as a free lunch, and I think they would understand it as it would lead to the sites growth.

The other admin, Rebecca, seems to be the main person in charge of the site. Will she still continue doing what she has been doing or will the new owner need to replace her as well? What about other staff members?

Rebecca is my partner that runs the site, and the reason of the sale is she just doesn't have time to administer things. She does want to remain part of the community but only as a regular user that posts when she has time.

Can I get the following:

I've taken screenshots of the requested stats below, but there are a couple of things I should point out. PhpBB was used for 2 months before upgrading to vBulletin, hence stats only starting from Dec even though the site existed before this.

- posts per day last 30 days
- posts per day monthly for all time
- user activity per day last 30 days
- registrations monthly for all time

 

[nrep]

Another member asked to see top user posts:

User Activity Stats

I'm adding a BIN price of $1500 if this site goes before tomorrow morning (GMT). Feel free to bid from the $1000 starting price, but the first one to go for the BIN price gets it

 

[nrep]

$800 offer at DPF

http://forums.DigitalPoint/showthread.php?t=142861&page=2

This sale ends tomorrow at 8PM GMT (about 24 hours from now).

 

[nrep]

2.5 hours of bidding left

 

[Maximus_]

Has this been sold?

 

[nrep]

Yep, this sold a month or so back.