Questions 43 public, 11 deleted

1. 

   Posted by:

   chechnya (+3)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:52:35 GMT

   Nice site. Can you list your net profit now? Would be about $2,506 a month correct?

   Can you also list the amount of storage and bandwidth used a month? I see on your stats screen shot it says 250gb for January?

   Why are you selling?

2. 

   Posted by:

   rachelle123 (+5)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:04:12 GMT

   please verify site.. why are you selling?, how much training you will provide to new seller? reserve?

3. 

   Posted by:

   kalisekj (+6)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:14:18 GMT

   Thanks
   correct, net profit is about $2,500. The 250gb youre seeing there is the stats for the main server (where the scripts are hosted), so not much bandwidth is taken in comparison to the file sharing servers (where videos are hosted). on avergrage the last month took about 6TB of bandwidth from all file server. these past few days we switched to un-metered bandwidth servers, so getting bandwidth overages isnt a factor anymore.

   About why i am selling, thats what i do :) buy, develop, promote, sell websites. Truth is i would keep it a bit longer and sell at a better price but i also have other projects running that need all my attention.

4. 

   Posted by:

   Thomas_Fisher (+3)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:18:48 GMT

   Hi, I've used DivXVine before, and would be interested in buying, but a few questions -

   VReel is also currently listed at the moment (as you probably know) - you've a lower alexa ranking than VReel during their downtime, but you state you have twice as many unique visitors? I find it very hard to tell DivXVine's popularity from as a visitor, as it's a very "hidden" website, no easy way to browse or see how popular things are.

   Also, I remember you had large issues with people embedding files and hurting your servers, so you switched off embeds recently - is this why there's such a large traffic drop according to alexa?

   What are the running costs? And do you use a CDN?

   Are there any user created videos on there, or is it mainly copyrighted content? And is there any way to "feature" content for users?

   Finally, could you please add Google analytics? AwStats is unreliable to measure visitor counts.

   Thanks

5. 

   Posted by:

   kalisekj (+6)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:21:15 GMT

   site verified. Reasons why i am selling is stated above. I can cover the new owner fully, the web admin can train you on various aspect of the website and will always be available via email or chat. If you would like to know more technical issues about the website i have a developer who can explain.

6. 

   Posted by:

   rich_uk (+6)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:44:36 GMT

   @Kalisekj - Is your upload script by Sibsoft.net?

7. 

   Posted by:

   kalisekj (+6)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:45:55 GMT

   I am aware of vreel being up for sale, the difference is that we had a balanced traffic 2 resources effort. vreel had more traffic but no working site where as divxvine actually delivered content.

   im not sure what to say about alexa, except you should take some things into consideration, look at the 1 wk average to see a more current ranking. Also i should point out that vreel has United States 25.5% where as DivxVine has United States 48.1% traffic. i can give full access to all statistics to any serious buyers and check things for themselves. In any case this auction is for DivxVine and not vreel

   The embedding was part of the learning experience, the bottom line is it uses a lot of bandwidth and the visitors weren't enough to compensate.

   We dont use a CDN we use independent un-metered bandwidth servers. This is the most cost effective method, $2,500 is able to run DivxVine with its current traffic and not have to face bandwidth overages. Mst videos are user videos, gamers, personal home videos, etc, etc... copyrighted videos get taken down.

8. 

   Posted by:

   kalisekj (+6)

   Date:

   Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:47:04 GMT

   @rich_uk - its upload functionality yes, the rest is custom made.

9. 

   Posted by:

   silverwrapper (+7)

   Date:

   Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:17:13 GMT

   I would like to add to this piece and say that in favor of the seller, Alexa many times has nothing to do with how strong a site is or its traffic. Using Alexa in some ways is a bad guide for traffic.

10. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:22:42 GMT

    on the contrary, traffic boomed when embedding was disabled. Like i said i have full stats to website and being the owner, i trust my server stats way more than some outside website like alexa. As requested Google analytics posted. There is no way a user can access the full list of videos as this was not intended from the very start. personally i think with this website you can explore different paths. for example, if you feel community is the way to go, then i can get you in touch with a top developer who can do this for you, he charges $20 an hour and is the original programmer for this website, easier and cheaper solution add a forum. The other way is to either build yourself a second website or (just wait for one to appear) that its sole function is to search DivxVine.

11. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:33:35 GMT

    come to think of it a forum is installed on the server, we just haven't gotten around to adding categories and the like.
    I am stepping out for a few hours, will respond then.

12. 

    Posted by:

    Thomas_Fisher (+3)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:21:32 GMT

    Thank you for posting :) Can I have you add me to the analytics account? thomas.fisher07@gmail.com Thanks!

13. 

    Posted by:

    vlaze (+5)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:45:02 GMT

    I just checked our comscore numbers and they show 258k uniques for last month. Comscore is notoriously low but its one of the first sites Ive seen at sitepoint that actually ranks in comscore. Looks like one of your major traffic sources is megavideo.

14. 

    Posted by:

    Site Masters (-17)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:50:57 GMT

    currently embedding disabled ?

15. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:24:20 GMT

    @ vlaze - not sure what comscore is but if its telling you our traffic is coming from megavideo then i wouldnt call that too reliable. Why would a competing website send us traffic?

    @ Site Masters - embedding feature was used for about 6 months (user uploads video - code gets generated - user uses code to watch his videos directly from his website/forum/blog). of course this was active before unmetered servers, so enabling it wouldn’t cause any problems. Also any video that gets embedded to another site, can be used for more advertising, there is a section under the video that is used for that.

16. 

    Posted by:

    Thomas_Fisher (+3)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:19:25 GMT

    Hey, kalisekj I never got a response in regards to the google analytics.

17. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:27:25 GMT

    Hi Thomas, i sent you two pm's earlier on today.

18. 

    Posted by:

    Thomas_Fisher (+3)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:48:49 GMT

    Oh, Sorry about that, I didn't see those! :)

19. 

    Posted by:

    stockey (+5)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:07:44 GMT

    Can I please see the referring sites for the traffic in awstats?

    Thanks

20. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:26:07 GMT

    Hi stockey, sent you a pm

21. 

    Posted by:

    Trevorc (+3)

    Date:

    Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:05:05 GMT

    Nice site :)

22. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:32:50 GMT

    thank you Trevorc :)

    I need to correct something I wrote earlier about the bandwidth, its 6TB of bandwidth (per day) giving an average of 25TB bandwidth/month per server. This is not a problem as I mentioned these servers are unmetered and never need to pay the dreaded bandwidth overcharge.

23. 

    Posted by:

    vlaze (+5)

    Date:

    Sat, 07 Feb 2009 02:12:08 GMT

    If you would like I can send you comscore data. Comscore is considered the gold standard for uniques and traffic. Its what many agencies use. Its similiar to Nielsen. I didnt know Mega was a competitor but it is your number one referrer.

24. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Sat, 07 Feb 2009 02:52:23 GMT

    vlaze: there is no way megavideo is a referrer, i dont even think there is a way to link from that website. i would be interested in seeing the comscore data
    thanks

25. 

    Posted by:

    buckchoris (+4)

    Date:

    Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:57:47 GMT

    great site! do you have a bin in mind?

26. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:22:20 GMT

    hi buck, i dont have a bin in mind, i will let this play out over the next few days. This will give me a clearer picture.
    thanks

27. 

    Posted by:

    Thomas_Fisher (+3)

    Date:

    Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:04:10 GMT

    I've been watching the stats on your website, and you claim to be getting "70,000 uniques per day!", from the sources I have, I have seen no more than 65,000 uniques in a day. Also, that was the max, it seems to be more averaging at around 40,000. Also your claim of 48.1% of users being American, I find hard to believe as for 18 hours out of the day, America. is less than 30% on the stat site you gave me access to. Like right now. 6AM EST. America is under 9% of users. I have a screen shot at around 9:30PM EST. where America is only 18.2%.

    Moving forward, I would like to point out, most of your reffers seem to be known pirate websites. as a matter of fact, I found a single PAGE linking to over 200 copyright movies on your website. I would also like to ad, that website, is one of your top 10 referrals. Also, the most accessed webpages on your site are copyright material. Infact, Other than a few trailers, I haven't found much that wasn't copyright.
    Due to privacy reasons, I am not willing to share the screenshots of the statistics information. However I am more than happy to point everyone at http://ipb.quicksilverscreen.com/index.php?showtopic=98739 as that does not jepordize any privacy.

    Also, looking at alexa statics for Divxvine there has been a sharp decline in users in the last few weeks, while looking at other stats there has been roughly a 25% drop in the last 2 weeks compared to the first week of January.
    I'm not sure if this would be a sound investment due to all the possible legal issues this webpage can bring, and also.

    And one final question. Did DivX give you the legal use of DivX in your website's name? As I have heard of many websites having to close down due to legal issues with this.
    Thanks, and sorry for the hassle!

28. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:45:26 GMT

    Hi Thomas,
    You really giving me a hard time for no apparent reason, if i didn't know better i would think you are trying to sabotage my auction. You seem to be looking for a reason for people not to buy, especially for a person that has joined the marketplace a day before this auction went live. In any case i will answer your questions. You claim to know DivxVine and vreel and the like, if you know them why do you seem so surprised about piracy? You don’t that this is a very big problem with these websites? The 200 videos you mentioned 'on that one page' can be uploaded in a matter of 1-3 hours by our users, also checking what 100,000 users have in their account is a little difficult and of course 200 is nothing is you’re dealing with 63,000 videos. If you had taken note you will see in the description that divxvine is not searchable, so you think by finding around 200 maybe 300 video from illegal forums and blogs you can paint a clear picture of what divxvine has on its servers? I think not. On closing this concern of yours, we have done mass purging of videos in the past, but this has backfired in our face and a lot of community forums would write the worst reviews because of this. So now we prefer to take the standard removal method of the DMCA, it gets reported, it gets taken down. For example, you have just reported 200 videos which have been queued for deletion. Thanks! This however does not mean we dont do random checks on user accounts.

    Now about the stats, your "sources" that you claim are probably Alexa and maybe some other 3rd party stat website, if i am not mistaken i have also given you access to StatCounter which logs the last 500 visitors and gives as well as an overview of general stats over the last few months. The sharp decline you mention on Alexa (sigh....) is wrong, check StatCounter so you can get a real idea of what is going on. Like i told you before SERIOUS bidders can have access to Google analytics and NOT people that have no intension in buying in the first place. A user before (vlaze) claimed that our primary referrer is MegaVideo and also claims that his data is "gold standard" but you know what the truth is, its not. By the way vlaze, I am still waiting for that data…

    DivX has been in direct contact with me from the first months of owning this website, I cannot get into detail about what was said during these conversations as I was asked to sign a privacy agreement. All I can say is they were looking for feedback, they also gave me information in what to expect to see in their future DivX Web Player version. They also told me they like DivxVine and its concept I think I can safely say that no other DivX hosting website has been given this type of information. We also don’t write misleading information such as “Thanks to DivX for making this possible”, im sure that rings a bell. We were also given 100 DivX pro licenses to handout to our users as a good gesture for providing them with feedback.

    The website is running for almost a year now, you think DivX doesn’t know about DivxVine? People seem to be confused about why DivX has gone after other websites for using their name, firstly making users think they are affiliated with DivX directly or indirectly, giving off the wrong image for DivX is very important criteria for DivX and will come after you. If however you are projecting the correct image, you shouldn’t have a problem. After all you are promoting their technology (yes, this is from the horse’s mouth).

29. 

    Posted by:

    ahoura (-7)

    Date:

    Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:53:29 GMT

    well first of all nice auction, wish I had the money for it to buy it and second of all divx has a very friendly staff as I had a chance to contact them myself about a website of mine, and third of all, megavideo is the biggest video hosting website for illegal movies and stuff and they DO NOT remove the contect unless you provide proof on having the rights to that video even if the video is a famous tvshow or a movie (usually copyrighted contents get deleted in about 1-3 months) so kalisekj is right about how he is running the website.

    @Thomas_Fisher - vreel got into trouble with divx only because they made it sound like they were affiliated with divx, otherwise divx is a technology that is free for any user to use.

    just thought it would be usefull to mention the above points.

    Thanks,A.G

30. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:04:15 GMT

    ahoura, you are absolutely right. DivX isnt the bad corporation everyone makes them out to be. Thanks for your comments

31. 

    Posted by:

    dccjam (+5)

    Date:

    Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:06:25 GMT

    Please respond to my PM. Thanks.

32. 

    Posted by:

    kalisekj (+6)

    Date:

    Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:45:58 GMT

    pm sent dccjam, thanks