Established 11 yr-old Photography Site StudioLighting.net

[Singularity Domains]

StudioLighting.net
Registrar: GoDaddy
Creation Date: January 21, 2004
Expiration Date: January 21, 2016

Current Site Statistics
Domain Authority: 36
Page authority: 46 (home page)
MozRank: 4.87 (www.studiolighting.net)
MozTrust: 6.18 (www.studiolighting.net)
Pages indexed by Google: 5,168
External links to domain: 3,246
Alexa Ranking: 1,398,311
Visitors Per Month: 5621 (per month on average in the last 12 months)
Page Views Per Month: 9748 (per month on average in the last 12 months)
Top Country: United States
Top Source: Organic
Content: unique
Twitter followers: 4067 (@studiolighting)
Podcast episodes: 92
Lifetime earnings: ~$90,000*
Peak monthly earnings: ~$2500
Current monthly earnings: <$25

* I am including a screenshot of our AdSense and Adorama affiliate accounts to prove earnings, although during the years of 2006 - 2010 we also had other affiliate links in place that contributed an additional $100 - $400 a month.

Lifetime Adsense Earnings

Lifetime Adorama Earnings

2015 Adsense Earnings

12 Month Traffic Overview

Background
StudioLighting.net was launched in 2004 as an online resource for both amateur and professional photographers. What started as a small collection of DIY articles blossomed to include book and gear reviews, news, guest written articles, a podcast and more. In October of 2005 we launched Lightsource, a studio photography podcast, publishing 92 episodes through May of 2010. Each episode averaged 45 minutes in length and consisted of photography news and interviews with world class photographers and equipment manufacturers.

In 2010 due to personnel changes in our company, fresh content creation slowed to a halt. During the active years of 2004 to 2010, website traffic was significantly higher. In 2010, the site hit its peak at 3500 visitors per day.

With little new content and no attention paid any longer to chasing SEO, traffic has dwindled over the years, but remains significant. Earlier this year the site's theme and navigation were updated to reflect current search engine best practices. Some AdLink ads were placed in the new layout, but have not been optimized to the degree they were during the active years.

StudioLighting.net still places very well for many highly searched keywords. I've attached a csv exported from Google Webmaster Tools for anyone who wants to dig into them.

What's Included

The sale includes:

• The domain name StudioLighting.net
• Full rights to the StudioLighting name and identity
• Website Wordpress files, site content, and database dump
• @studiolighting Twitter account

IMPORTANT: While all of the content of the existing site will be provided to the buyer so the site can be republished as is, the sale does not include full ownership of all of the content. There are currently 5260 posts on the site of which 5168 are owned by StudioLighting.net. The remainder were published by permission of the authors, and StudioLighting.net does not have permission to use their content in any other manner.

Additionally, StudioLighting.net owns the 92 podcast episodes (except for the background music as credited.) StudioLighting.net does not own, but does have the right to publish the One on One Videos and Over Exposure Comic.

What Else is not Included

• Web hosting
• Technical support
• Affiliate accounts (AdSense, Amazon, etc.)

This site is being sold "as is."

Finally

I have tried to be as thorough as possible without being overwhelming. I would like to be as upfront and honest as possible in order to avoid any issues post-sale, so if you have any questions at all or would like to see additional reports, etc., please let me know.

If you are interested, please make an offer below or by PM. Thank you for your consideration.

 

[Singularity Domains]

I have updated the lifetime earnings of the site as I had previously underestimated them.

 

[domain hacks]

Whats the deal with a huge jump and a big drop in rankings during 2010. Was site ever penalized by Google?

 

[Singularity Domains]

The site has never been penalized by Google in any way, but the dwindling fresh content combined with Google's Panda update in the beginning of 2011 seemed to be a one-two punch to traffic volume. To be clear though, all of the site's traffic in it's entirety has always been natural. We never bought traffic or used any type of grayhat or blackhat techniques to manipulate the site's serps or otherwise gain visitors.

 

[Singularity Domains]

Also, mid-2010 was the end of the Lightsource podcast run. That was a huge traffic draw as well. I'm not sure I still have the stats since we changed where they were hosted, but it wasn't unusual for a show to have 20k downloads in the month it was released alone. Again, I'll have to look for the reports so I may not be able to back that one up, but to the best of my knowledge that's a very good ballpark.

 

[Singularity Domains]

I have tried to clarify the description of content ownership in the original post. It is not nearly as pessimistic as I originally made it out to be.

Current high offer by PM is $1000.

 

[Singularity Domains]

Current high offer by PM is $1050.

 

[Singularity Domains]

I would like to re-address the site's recent AdSense revenue. As I stated, the site is currently seeing less than $25 a month, but this does not give a complete picture of it's potential even it's current state.

The AdSense revenue for November 2015 was $16.89.

We did a total overhaul of the the site's Wordpress theme starting in July 2015. The original theme was created in house by hand in 2005. It was not mobile friendly, and it was tightly coupled to the content. We have made little effort to re-integrate Adsense into the new theme. Currently there are just link ads under the search box and the ad in the right column on the site. In the initial theme, we had spent a lot of time strategically placing and optimizing ads.

The last full month with the old theme was June 2015. The AdSense revenue for that month was $46.90.

Also, on April 21, 2015, Google began demoting serps of sites that were not mobile friendly. Our original theme, in place at that time, was not mobile friendly at all.

For March 2015, the last full month before Google updated their algorithm, our Adsense revenue was $127.45.

 

[Singularity Domains]

I have decided to sell this site through Flippa. The opening bid is $100 and the reserve is much less than the current high offer.

Auction link: https://flippa.com/5828226