I have re-listed the auction, because the previous higher bidder didnt seem like a serious person, kept avoiding in giving me even his phone number and when we had to go to escrow.com procedure dissapeared. Please serious bidders only.
14 Million Impressions Alexa 5000 Unique Image Sharing/Searching Social Portal Pictiger.com
100 Custom Coded. Unique Business For Sale.
http://www.Pictiger.com/
Auction
Congratulations to the winner!
- Winning Bid:
- $145,000
- Bid History:
- 14 Bids (0 Pending)
- Listed:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:20:06 GMT
Accepted Payment Methods: Electronic Transfer, Escrow.com
Description
Ok everyone; I am back and I am re-listing my baby for sale – Pictiger.com
For real-time traffic stats: go to www.google.com/analytics
P: pictiger123
Back in January I listed Pictiger and there was huge interest http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/auctions/18774
I received the bin hours after I created the auction and I had like 10 people calling me after that asking to sell the site to them even on a higher price. Some people even got mad at me, because they claimed that they wanted to buy the site first and it was their right to do that.
The problem is that even though the buyer wanted badly to get the site, he obviously had some problems because he failed to deliver the money for more than 2 months! And even though I am a really tolerant person in general, I just want to sell the site so I can free up some time and energy to focus on my other business ( pandela.com ) I have talked with him a thousand times and sent thousands of emails. I had set a final deadline for him, and he didn’t manage to close the deal in this final deadline.
A brief of the site (PLEASE READ http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/auctions/18774) : site is a transformed really popular image hosting service into an image sharing/search network, with a lot of social elements. 100% custom coded. With a super fast search tool to search through the million uploaded pics for photos (again custom coded…its pretty darn hard to make such a fast and bug free tool when you have millions of images). State of the art technology.
People create profiles, post comments etc. It is a very stable network which is enjoying a gradual growth. In February it hit 16 million pageviews and then dropped a little, because there was a minor technical glitch which we didn’t notice at the beginning, because I guess I was more focused in communicating with the previous “buyer”. Anyways, I am going to refrain myself from posting negative things about him, because I am sure he is a great person. The only problem is that he didnt manage to pay me.
I strongly advise you to read through the previous auction as there is a lot of detailed information about the site which I right now don’t have the motivation to write.
I have been thinking for over a week whether I should keep the site, because it keeps growing more than I expected, and for only the time since the previous auction and now it gained like 12k-15k registered users. Was 26,000 in end of Jan, currently they are 37,000. The average mean for new registers per month is 4k – 5k. This means like 60k new members for a year with the current rate, which is increasing as well. This means NO promotion at all. Just pure auto pilot.
The site is not monetized. And I give advice to the person who buys it to keep it that way for another year or so. It’s just my opinion that this way it will pick up some great momentum and then after a year when it reaches 20-25 million and more pageviews per month, and around 100k registered members, you can directly enter into a dialogue with any advertising network.
I said this in the previous auction, and I am saying it again. Adult content is strictly forbidden and there is a login area for reviewer to review newly uploaded pics. It is very optimized and can be done in 1 hour a day. You can really pay any person from India to do this. I have been doing this myself sometimes and it is very easy.
This game of cats n mouse with the previous buyer, has drained me and I now only want to move on like I wanted to move on 3 months back. I love this site, but it must go. I hope I don’t regret this, and I do believe that I just have a better alternative right now on which I should really focus (we built a totally custom control panel for our hosting…we invested tons of time and energy there).
The Possibilities here are endless. You can further develop the social part of the site, add messaging...dating, games...videos..forums...chats. Or just leave it like this and it will continue to grow.
I would appreciate if only serious people contact me with inquiries.
Payment will be done via Escrow, so both parties are protected. If your country is not supported by Escrow, you call me and we will think of something.
I accept Bank wires.
BIN this time is set at $185,000. I believe the site is worth a lot more, because this is not the ordinary type of sites which are normally for sale here. This is a “tiny giant” business which you are looking at, which was designed to grow from day 1 of its existence. It has the capacity and technology to do that.
It is very stable and is not google dependant.
For traffic stats: go to google.com/analytics
P: pictiger123
Revenue Details
Site is Not monetized. (I have just received an offer from fellow member of sitepoint to place a tiny 90x200 banner for a price which almost covers all the expenses the site has. I have not confirmed yet, because I want to see what the new owner will want) This user wants to sign a contract, and asked me to forward his inquiry to the new owner.
And theres room for at least 3 more ad spots on the site, of which 2 are prime and will cost twice as much.
Attachments 2 public (0 verified)
Questions 22 public, 0 deleted
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:32:14 GMT
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:58:50 GMT
I would not recommend you to give out your google analytics in front of everybody , many scammers are here who can change ur passwords.
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:02:52 GMT
"other" seems to be a huge chunk of your traffic. Is that people who are viewing an image somewhere else but not going to your site?
How do you monetize that?
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:15:22 GMT
muzical: this is not my google analytics account, this is a slave account to which I have given permission to see the stats of pictiger
tekmiester: what do you mean? People come to pictiger with 3 purposes:
1. Upload images, create albums and distribute links. They also post comments etc.
2. They see an image on a forum, and clicked on the image, then taken to the image page (where there are ads and number of other cool things on that same page).
3. Come and use our super fast search tool to find high quality pics for other purposes. -
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:59:50 GMT
Nice site, good luck on your sale!
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:14:45 GMT
all the best with sale.
nice portal altough!
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:11:13 GMT
Not sure what you mean by this statement as you don't have revenue, you suggest the person who buys for $185,000 Bin don't extract any revenue for over 12 months etc., - 'It is very stable and is not google dependant'.
Your hosting costs must be burning a hole in your pocket. Please let us know what the server requirement is and your current outgoings to maintain this site.
My interest is in the traffic, but nobody wants to invest in a black hole that sucks in money that is to be never seen again.
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:26:19 GMT
dalt: What I meant by advising the person who buys the site, not to extract money from the site, and to focus more on promoting the site service and member registration. This will increase the registered users and will provide even more growth.
As for the hosting costs, the site runs on : 1 Main server which holds the database and 5 storage servers. Total cost per month is $1250 and it is not burning my pocket at all. In fact the hosting is very optimized and can withstand 5 times more load and 2 times more bandwidth with the current servers. The only thing needed would be additional HD added to the storage servers, but this is done very easily and the platform is designed for this.
The site is not a "black hole" this is a ridiculous statement. The site is big enough and of good quality so you can directly negotiate with sponsors for placing banners. I have mentioned in my auction that a fellow SP member offered me a fixed amount of money per month for placing a tiny 90x200 banner on the site, which will cover 85% of the costs of the site. And there is room for 3 more spots, which are larger and can be priced 2 times more. There is room for popups even
You have additional 40k registered members, which grow with 4.5k - 5k new members per month. You can earn alot from simply sending a newsletter...or renting ads on the newsletter.
You can enable paid memberships as well.
Basically this site is not for a person who can barely afford to buy it. The buyer must be aware that this is a sound investment, which after a year will be 2 times more valuable. It will have 60k more registered members and traffic will be more than 20 million if it keeps increasing with the current conservative trend.
this is not a "Buy and put google adsense on" website. This is a image sharing portal, with 100% reviewed and high quality safe content. With huge members base, which is growing rapidly.
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:28:06 GMT
And btw this SP member insist on me to forward his inquiry to the new owner of the site. And I will, this is why I havent given him an exact answer yet. I want the new owner to decide. For me the money is not good enough, and I think such a spot is worth more.
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:00:13 GMT
If you don't sell this time, i would highly suggest you start to monitize it with adsense, your website is awesome and could potentially make hundreds of thousands of dollars! Good luck with the sale :)
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:14:58 GMT
Nice site. Good luck.
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:29:20 GMT
tjsocr1: thanks for the advice. However adsense is the worst sponsor for such sites. This is the reason why not a single out of the popular and big image sharing portals do not hold such ads.
The good thing with this site is that you have enough volume to seek for exclusive sponsors. The profit then will be much higher then.
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:37:25 GMT
There's a traffic drop since January although sign-ups are up. Any explanation for it?
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:34:11 GMT
There was an absolute record in February when we hit 16 million impressions. Then the traffic dropped a little because its normal for a site not to go up constantly. The traffic increases with such sporadic spikes, which in the end of the year gives a good average increase rate.
Another factor which affects the traffic of such mid volume site is the industry activity. Over the year the activity on a given type of sites shifts, which is absolutely normal.
I have personally analyzed the image hosting industry trends and it seems that in the beginning of 2008 there is a low activity on these sites. For example http://www.google.com/trends?q=image+hosting Google trends explicitly show that the activity of image hosting related web sites is on the low, which means that in the next few months it will most likely rocket, which will bring some marginal amounts of traffic to pictiger as well, as it has a small share of this traffic.
Hope this asnwers your question.
Nik
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:44:46 GMT
How much bandwith and space required in the server ?
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:21:03 GMT
That's good question muzical! Really interested in the site
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:23:50 GMT
Also can you show us the admin? Can we send email to all trough the admin?
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:12:24 GMT
muzical: The site sucks approximately around 210 gigs per day. It runs on 6 servers, of which all have 1800 GB per month limit.
So the limit is 10,8 TB per month, while it currently uses approx. 6.2 TB per month. The current hardware can withstand 3 times more load and almost 2 times more bandwidth without going in overcharge. The only thing needed will be additional storage hard drives to be added, but this is done very easily and cheap. And the platform was designed so this can be done smooth and easy. -
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:15:29 GMT
joeit79: You can see the sections from the Admin panel, by looking at the first image which I have uploaded (with registered members). You can see the options from the navigation menu wich reveal what functionality the admin has.
Mass emailing is not possible directly from the admin section, however this is a very simple module which can be written in like 1 hour by any coder. You have the database, and the only thing needed would be to add the function to send emails to them.
Or you can use a third party software to send the email by using the list of the members.
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:27:12 GMT
how much do you pay for the hosting at this moment?
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:09:23 GMT
You must be paying around $1000 A month right ?
-
- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:26:07 GMT
I'm guessing the statement of...
[quote]Total cost per month is $1250...[/quote] would answer that question...
Ask a Question
If you were logged in you could post a question.
Does this auction violate the Flippa Terms and Conditions? If so, please report it.
