Humor Site For Sale

[EMINEM79]

Hey Guys,

My motivation with this net stuff is running low due to lack of time and well... I have trouble sticking to things... :P

So I'm selling one of my humor sites WebGiggle.com

Information is as follows:

Name: Dave

URL: http://www.webgiggle.com

age of site: Approx. 6 months.

traffic: I haven't updated nor sent anything to the mailing list in about 2 months so traffic is un-normally low(About 5000 - 10000 uniques) a month without the use of a newsletter. Last time I constistently sent anything to the newsletter was March when the site recieved Approx. 30k uniques and 80k pageviews. I'm sure if the new owner sent out a newsletter at the same frequency I did(4 times a week) traffic would be similar.

Due to the auction i decided to send out a newsletter on Sunday nite to show potential buyers what to expect. You can view my tracker by going to:

http://extremetracking.com/open?login=webggigl

Asking Price: My site is up on Ebay, reserve is 3 times regular monthly income.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2540804231&category=11763

Email address: RetardedHumor@clubvibes.com

Gross Revenue: Site hasn't made me much lately due to lack of updating but In March I updated regularily and feel I should post that data to show what potential buyers to expect. Site made me easily $150 - $200 a month.

Fastclick - $61.29 http://www.webgiggle.com/Fastclick.jpg
TafMaster - $24.85 http://www.webgiggle.com/TafMaster.jpg

I also made a total of about $75 off affiliate networks like ShareASale.com , Fineclicks.com and AffiliateFuel.com. Contact me if you would like to see more screenshots.

Only expense is hosting, I currently pay $10 for the site which I also use the hosting to run a mailing list script to send newsletters out.

Other Imprtant Info:

Mailing list - There is currently 2541 subscribers. They are 100% double Opt-ins. I ran an affiliate program on fineclicks to gather these addresses. Building this list costed me Nearly $315USD.

Affiliate Program - As mentioned above I have an affiliate program on fineclicks for the site, it isn't active yet but if the new owner wanted I could transfer over the account to him and he could add $$ into it and the offer would become active again, there is 354 webmasters signed up to it.

CMS - the site uses the hinzie.com CMS system for updating and site functions. The script license will come with the site, It costed me $75 USD.

[jdsalr]

cool site...good luck!

[c3r3br0]

Can you post the income for January, February, April, May, and June?

Thanks.

[iwinweekly]

I would also be interested in recent months fastclick earnings.

Edit - After looking further your goggle page rank is "0" and alexa has you in the millions, and your not listed on any search engine. Did you get banned for some reason, or is that traffic from March paid traffic?

Thanks

[mccollin]

Where does the content for this site come from, and how long does it take to maintain it?

[EMINEM79]

Originally posted by iwinweekly
I would also be interested in recent months fastclick earnings.

Edit - After looking further your goggle page rank is "0" and alexa has you in the millions, and your not listed on any search engine. Did you get banned for some reason, or is that traffic from March paid traffic?

Thanks

No the site isn't banned from anything. I'm pretty sure its in some search engines, but I haven't submitted to any.

March's traffic is very relevant because I mailed to the newsletter 15 or so times that month. I havent mailed anything to it since about April, but I did send something out on Sunday and Monday to show potential buyers what to expect in the way of hits. I feel that since the newsletter is included in the sale, the site's traffic should more reflect what it gets when you update semi-regularily.

Heres is a breakdown of Previous month's revenue for FASTCLICK only.

February - $57.08
March - $61.29
April - $21.32 (Only 1 Newsletter Sent Out This Month)
May - $16.86 (No Newsletters Sent Out)
June - $9.26 (2 Newsletters Sent Out This Month)

As I mentioned before the site gets its majority of the traffic from the newsletter. Send out its newsletter equals = $$ and traffic. I have been busy and lost my motivation to due it which is why I'm selling it... Someone can take over this site send out the newsletter and make what I made in February/March easily...

Thanks
Dave

-Edited to put in Fastclick Info-

[EMINEM79]

Originally posted by mccollin
Where does the content for this site come from, and how long does it take to maintain it?

Content is pretty much safe to use if it isnt watermarked with a Copyright or say a URL of a website.

You can find content on other humor sites.

Not to mention many humor webmasters who make their own original content offer free content. I have a list of people who do this and could share it with the new buyer if they wanted.

Dave

[EMINEM79]

Originally posted by c3r3br0
Can you post the income for January, February, April, May, and June?

Thanks.

Heres the stats since February(When I added ads on the site)

February- $170
March- $190
April- $85 (I sent out 1 newsletter that whole month)
May- $55 (No Newsletters were sent out that whole month)
So far In June June - $49 (2 Newsletter sent out this month)

The revenue figures should be a bit higher but I cant manage to get my fineclicks past revenue data since I always just trasnfered the money from my affiliate account into my merchant account, so take that into consideration. I also didn't check out every one of my affiliate network accounts where I probably made a few bucks with.

You can check out my past newsletters to proove when I sent out last, etc.... I can stress this anymore NEWSLETTER = TRAFFIC...

http://www.webgiggle.com/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi?flavor=archive&list=webgiggle&start=0

Thanks
Dave

[Czar]

Originally posted by EMINEM79
Content is pretty much safe to use if it isnt watermarked with a Copyright or say a URL of a website.

You can find content on other humor sites.That's a big legal no-no, I'm afraid. Your comment concerning sourcing traffic from the authors, with permission, is of course valid however.

If you don't mind, could you let us know how much of the content on this particular site has been 'borrowed' from other humor websites, and how much has been created as an original work or reproduced with permission/appropriate licenses?

[EMINEM79]

Hey bud,

I don't wanna go into huge detail but 99% of the content you find on humor sites is public domain - meaning no known author, so its safe to use. Plus with the disclaimer on the site not much trouble could be had. You do have to be careful with what you use as like I said if its copyrighted watermarked,etc then its not.

I've been doing it this way for about 3 years and have had no trouble, once in awhile you will get an email from a author asking for the photo to be removed.

I'm also part of the http://www.humorweb.net community for us humor webmasters and have followed others guidance to do it right.

Dave

*edited to fix humorweb URL

[Czar]

Maybe that community is more accommodating than others in the entertainment industry, but that doesn't change the fact that commercially reproducing someone else's intellectual property online without their explicit permission is illegal under the DMCA.

I have no doubt that you'll remain safe from prosecution, as the likelihood of an amateur cartoonist or comedian taking a webmaster to court is remote to the extreme, but that doesn't justify claiming to a prospective buyer that content can be freely taken from other humor sites to propagate this one. Some in the field (and we have a number of funpage authors, photographers and digital artists in the Village) would take offense at the suggestion, having invested a great deal of time and effort into creating such works only to have them stolen by competitors.

Public domain and freeware distros are another issue, but you should still have confirmation from the author that a work is available for commercial use or has been relagated to the public domain before using it to make money for your own enterprise. In the days of newsgroups, digital artists, fontographers, programmers and so on occasionally used to explicitly state that their works were free from copyright. The same is the case now with open source software, plug-ins and the like. You can't, however, make that claim on the author's behalf unless several decades have elapsed since the creation of the product or the death of the author (and with the Sonny Bono/Mickey Mouse copyright extension debates happening at the moment, the length of time that must elapse is ever-expanding in the US). This is regardless of whether you are aware who authored the work or not. If in doubt, leave it out...or contact an IP lawyer.

In any case, I was merely making a cursory comment about the grey legal area into which you were stepping. I'm sure you'll find a buyer nonetheless who sees value in the domain name, design and ad network contracts. I'm presuming, of course, that the buyer would replace the existing content with material sourced legally in order to protect themselves and the rights of artists.

[EMINEM79]

Czar maybe Im not explaining myself well enough or something, what i meant from taking content from another site is would be one site with public domain content to another.

I REALLY should mention that a large amount of content gets submitted in by people.

I feel that this thread is somewhat ruined now, Im just trying to sell my site but now I feel like im selling something illegal like 8 illegal cuban aliens with pockets full of coke each carrying SARS LOL

Dave

[Czar]

I apologise for that.

I only raised the issue since your response to a question above seemed to suggest that content may be taken from others without their explicit permission. If most of the photos/pics hosted by the site have been submitted by the authors, or acquired from confirmed public domain sources, then of course the above criticism does not apply to you, or to this site.

This is why I posed the question in my first post asking how much of the content on this site is being used legally. If it's all clean, then the website's value will likely increase markedly. If not, then the buyer would have to factor in the costs associated with replacing these, in terms of time or money expended to locate appropriate content.

Can you estimate how much of the content on this site falls into the permission-confirmed category?

[EMINEM79]

Czar

All content on the site is public domain content.

Any original pieces on the site were used with the author's permission.

Dave

[Czar]

Great stuff. In that case, it's a bargain at 3x monthly revenue.

Best of luck with the sale!

[EMINEM79]

Thanks

I jsut wanted to add even if the new owner wasn't comfortable with the public domain content I know several webmasters who devlop their own pieces and give webmasters permission to use them for free, I know one who gives away several hundred of his cartoons so that stream of content could last for years...

Dave

[mccollin]

I've just started looking at the idea of buying established sites. After seeing this here, I went to eBay to check it out. I'm a long time user of eBay but never saw websites there. I've got to tell you... there is some real garbage for sale on eBay under this category. (I'm not talking about webgiggle... that looks like a great site and a good investment)

A lot of the sites for sale are just mockups with no active use... others are clearly lying about their traffic and such when you look and see no content at all... and there are the ones that you have to pay to see anything.

Yep... webgiggle looked to be the cream of the crop on sale at eBay.

<Admin note: split thread. The last 2 posts were great but are better suited to a seperate thread. See:

http://www.geekvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21527

Thank you>