Forum for sale

Discussion in 'Water Cooler' started by geebee, Sep 3, 2014.

  1. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    Sorry, not mine. Hope this is the correct forum. I noticed generalforum is for sale on Flippa. Any thoughts on this? I'll declare that I'm interested in it, just wondered what peoples' thoughts on buying it are.
     
  2. petertdavis

    petertdavis Old Timer

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    I had a look at it when it was first listed (I actually knew about it long before then, back when Brandon was running it), and my impression is that it's a nice looking forum and obviously a lot of work has gone into it, but I wouldn't be interested in buying it. There are a lot of posts, and lots of members but it seems that there aren't that many active members and for a forum like that to be sustainable you'll need lots of activity and tons of traffic. There's no clearly defined niche, so for a site like this you're competing with big sites like Reddit and that's not a challenge that I'd personally want to tackle. YMMV
     
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  3. zappaDPJ

    zappaDPJ Regular Member

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    I'm also keeping half an eye on it. Would anyone care to guess at the reserve price? I'd say the current bid of $2,100 is way off, perhaps by a factor of x5? If the bids stay low I'll probably make a bid but I can't see it making the reserve.
     
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  4. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    Yes, I was thinking the same. Didn't Brandon run a different one though? Hyphenated, I could be wrong though.
     
  5. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    Are you thinking of the price with the poker and chat add-ons?
     
  6. petertdavis

    petertdavis Old Timer

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    I don't recall well enough to say, but I seem to remember some name changing and merging of different forums. Maybe @Brandon himself will pop in and give us the skinny, seems he still occasionally visits this site.
     
  7. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    I believe it was this one @Brandon had. I recalled it as I signed up to ask about the forum theme. http://www.general-forums.com/ I just noticed that this and that share the same fav icon too :)
     
  8. GTB

    GTB Regular Member

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    Brandon ran "general-forums.com". But that forum has been dead doing nowt for years. If you mean "generalforum.com" is up for sale on flippa, then that one has been around a long while, well before @Brandon started that other one - then sold it on later. I can see that one listed on flippa looking now, a 14 year old forum it says.

    $2000 doesn't sound that bad for it, it's a large forum. That forum must have died though since, it used to be pretty busy.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2014
  9. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    Aside from flippa, what other sites are good for forums for sale?
     
  10. Andy R

    Andy R Lurker Administrator Admin Talk Staff

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    There are some big brokers who can ping you when a large forum is put on the market. Latonas also has some listings every so often.

    If your intent is to find a forum to acquire, I think the best option is to look for a poorly managed forum where you can add value and approach the owner. Most of the forums that I have acquired from websites were duds. Inversely, most of the communities that were adopted from the founders while the site was not actively being marketed for sale remain strong, active and high quality forums (not all but most).

    If you have a limited budget (most do) then it's really important that you choose well. Buy a dud and you are hosed, buy a high quality site and together, with the community, you can build it into something special.
     
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  11. zappaDPJ

    zappaDPJ Regular Member

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    Yes, plus all of the content.
     
  12. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    Plenty of content in the post, but the articles are not included.
     
  13. zappaDPJ

    zappaDPJ Regular Member

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    Yes I saw that but I'd also want the articles or a list of exactly what was to be deleted.
     
  14. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    Me too. To be honest, I find the sale confusing as I'm guessing most people are not that interested in the chat and poker scripts. The couple of times I've been on, they've been dead. Better off just putting up the forum and articles for sale. As it is, although I'm interested, the lack of clarity over what's included is off-putting. Also, using the declared revenue, say $70 a month x 24 values it at $16 to $1700?
     
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  15. zappaDPJ

    zappaDPJ Regular Member

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    I've been trying to decide what it's worth to me since I saw it was up for sale. There are some aspects of the site that are particularly attractive (to me at least) and I suspect I'm not the only one looking to cherry pick those parts. Regardless of income, I'd still say the current bid is nowhere near what the owner has set as a reserve. I could be wrong though, it has been known!
     
  16. petertdavis

    petertdavis Old Timer

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    Yea, I think what you're dealing with there is an owner who values the site at what he's put into it rather than what it really is.
     
  17. zappaDPJ

    zappaDPJ Regular Member

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    Well it didn't sell, the top bid of $5,000 failed to meet the reserve. I suspect the owner was looking for a substantial amount more.
     
  18. BamaStangGuy

    BamaStangGuy Administrator

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    $5,000 seemed way to much imo.
     
  19. geebee

    geebee Honcho

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    I suspect the $5K offer plus the reserve were for the forum plus licences. I watched with interest but would only be interested in the forum and certainly not at the $5K mark. Good luck to them, I'm sure they'll work something out.
     

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