Darryl
01-12-2004, 05:19 PM
Hi all,
Times change and it's now become time to move on. As such, my partners and I have decided to give away AdProject.net to a new, loving family.
For those who don't know, AdProject is a self-serve advertising system. It's pretty much fully automated - registration, sales, serving, reporting, billing, etc - all we do is send out cheques every month when people hit the $50 threshold. More details available at the site.
Let's see...information you'll probably be interested in:
URL: http://www.adproject.net
Age of site: 2 years. The first ads were served in beta on January 26th, 2002.
Why are we selling/giving it away: Essentially, we just don't have enough time for it anymore - and realistically, haven't had enough time for it for a while now. The three of us that run it are all going our seperate ways - one has taken a full time job at Microsoft, another at RIM, and I'm mulling over a few different offers, one of which I'll accept. We'll all soon be in different corners of the continent with different focuses.
Not only that, to be honest, running it has gotten frustrating in some ways. We're owed thousands of dollars from advertisers who haven't paid and I don't have the time to keep harassing them. I haven't even had time to follow up on new leads that come in constantly. We've also had a nagging server problem that we've thought we've fixed a few times, but somehow it keeps coming back and crashing the server.
Why GIVE it away? Because really, it's probably not worth that much - maybe a few thousand to the right buyer - and for that small amount of money it doesn't really matter to us. We'd rather see it go to a good home than to the highest bidder (though maybe they're one and the same).
Revenue and expenses: Assume that site makes no money - which has pretty much been the case recently due to bad debts.
Hosting costs us $139/month for a dedicated server with Tranxactglobal (www.tranxactglobal.com), which can easily be transferred. The server is an AMD Duron 1GHz with 1GB RAM and a 40GB hard drive, running Red Hat 7.2 with a monthly bandwidth allocation of 500GB. You could easily upgrade the server to a better package with no setup fees with the same company and pay the same rate - that server's two years old. We also pay for a merchant account and credit card processing, which I'm told is not easily transferrable - so you'd want your own system for that.
Members: Currently there are 473 members of the service, and, oddly enough, 473 sites.
Traffic: Currently we're only serving about 20,000 ads per day. Back in the good 'ole days, we were well over a million, but as I said, we've had our problems with the server and lack of attention has cost us. I'd love to see someone else get back up to those levels, and much, much higher. PageRank is 6, if that matters to you.
Tech: The site runs off JSP with a mySQL backend, using Tomcat as the connector. CVS system is installed.
What you'll get: The domain, server, all the code for current and in development features (there's lots of stuff that's been added on the back end but doesn't have a front end yet; like the site directory, flash support, popup support, new Member's Area, geotargetting, etc. etc. etc.), and whatever else we can give you to make your life easier.
I've put the site up on eBay to see if there are any takers, with a $50 reserve to make going through the selling process worthwhile. If nobody bites, it'll be given away to whoever seems to offer it the nicest home.
The eBay aution is at:
(URL removed)
Go to it, all. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at darryl@adproject.net.
Times change and it's now become time to move on. As such, my partners and I have decided to give away AdProject.net to a new, loving family.
For those who don't know, AdProject is a self-serve advertising system. It's pretty much fully automated - registration, sales, serving, reporting, billing, etc - all we do is send out cheques every month when people hit the $50 threshold. More details available at the site.
Let's see...information you'll probably be interested in:
URL: http://www.adproject.net
Age of site: 2 years. The first ads were served in beta on January 26th, 2002.
Why are we selling/giving it away: Essentially, we just don't have enough time for it anymore - and realistically, haven't had enough time for it for a while now. The three of us that run it are all going our seperate ways - one has taken a full time job at Microsoft, another at RIM, and I'm mulling over a few different offers, one of which I'll accept. We'll all soon be in different corners of the continent with different focuses.
Not only that, to be honest, running it has gotten frustrating in some ways. We're owed thousands of dollars from advertisers who haven't paid and I don't have the time to keep harassing them. I haven't even had time to follow up on new leads that come in constantly. We've also had a nagging server problem that we've thought we've fixed a few times, but somehow it keeps coming back and crashing the server.
Why GIVE it away? Because really, it's probably not worth that much - maybe a few thousand to the right buyer - and for that small amount of money it doesn't really matter to us. We'd rather see it go to a good home than to the highest bidder (though maybe they're one and the same).
Revenue and expenses: Assume that site makes no money - which has pretty much been the case recently due to bad debts.
Hosting costs us $139/month for a dedicated server with Tranxactglobal (www.tranxactglobal.com), which can easily be transferred. The server is an AMD Duron 1GHz with 1GB RAM and a 40GB hard drive, running Red Hat 7.2 with a monthly bandwidth allocation of 500GB. You could easily upgrade the server to a better package with no setup fees with the same company and pay the same rate - that server's two years old. We also pay for a merchant account and credit card processing, which I'm told is not easily transferrable - so you'd want your own system for that.
Members: Currently there are 473 members of the service, and, oddly enough, 473 sites.
Traffic: Currently we're only serving about 20,000 ads per day. Back in the good 'ole days, we were well over a million, but as I said, we've had our problems with the server and lack of attention has cost us. I'd love to see someone else get back up to those levels, and much, much higher. PageRank is 6, if that matters to you.
Tech: The site runs off JSP with a mySQL backend, using Tomcat as the connector. CVS system is installed.
What you'll get: The domain, server, all the code for current and in development features (there's lots of stuff that's been added on the back end but doesn't have a front end yet; like the site directory, flash support, popup support, new Member's Area, geotargetting, etc. etc. etc.), and whatever else we can give you to make your life easier.
I've put the site up on eBay to see if there are any takers, with a $50 reserve to make going through the selling process worthwhile. If nobody bites, it'll be given away to whoever seems to offer it the nicest home.
The eBay aution is at:
(URL removed)
Go to it, all. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at darryl@adproject.net.