HI CAN U POST ANALYTICS? THANX
Amazing Free Hosting Community With Huge Revenue
Huge traffic, $2000 a month net, a great opportunity!
http://www.hosthelpers.com/
Auction
Congratulations to the winner!
- Winning Bid:
- $12,900
- Bid History:
- 2 Bids (0 Pending)
- Listed:
- Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:30:53 GMT
Accepted Payment Methods: PayPal, Western Union, Cheque
Description
HostHelpers.com is a free hosting community that provides ad free cPanel hosting for webmasters. This sale includes the domain HostHelpers.com and freecp.net which is used for free hosted sub-domain accounts. Months of preparation and traffic building went into making this site; and it has payed off. The site already has top listing on some of the most popular free hosting directories and more are in the works. The site is currently page-rank 3, but since the last update many links have been added to the site, so expect that to go up to PR4 or PR5 next update. Alexa rank just dropped under 100k for a 3 month average and in the last weeks has kept dropping to a 59,390 weekly average. This is a rare opportunity to own a great money maker at a great price. The BIN price is only 7.5x monthly net revenue due to the young age of the site.
The main site HostHelpers.com is currently hosted on a shared account. I would recommend moving the main site to a VPS for the ability to send large newsletters to the user base, which is restricted by the current shared hosting limits. iPanel is used to manage free hosting accounts and ties in with the forum software installed on the site. The new owner will need to lease or buy a license to use for this software; I currently lease it for $9 a month. Users are required to register on the forum before they can sign up for a free hosting account.
The free hosting accounts are hosted on a quad-core dedicated server with 8 GB's of RAM that I lease for $155 a month and will transfer to the new owner. The server has lots of room left for growth before a second one will need to be added. The iPanel software on the main site connects remotely to the hosting servers to manage accounts.
There are currently over 12,500 registered members on our community forums and over 2700 active free hosting accounts. Inactive accounts have been pruned after 45 days. Currently the site receives 100-200 new free hosting account sign-ups daily. Users are required to sign up on the forums first, before they can fill out the free hosting application. Of those about 50% are approved for free hosting accounts. I have been very strict with moderating sign-ups to prevent abuse. If the sign-up details are not 100% accurate or have fraudulent details they are not approved. The important thing to remember is that a huge amount of free hosting accounts does not make money. Driving users to your ads and affiliate links makes the money.
Managing the site requires half an hour to an hour daily tops, and it can go without maintenance for days at a time; I just disable new sign-ups if I will not be available (disabling sign-ups does not affect revenue as the traffic that makes money is still hitting the main site). I spend about 10 minutes twice a day processing new sign-ups. It takes 10 to 15 minutes a day checking forum support posts. Every few days I spend about 10-15 minutes checking out the server, scanning logs for certain files and reviewing CPU/Memory stats to identify sites that may be abusing the service. I would highly suggest that the buyer is a competent system administrator, preferably with cPanel systems; or a hosting company with staff to maintain the server(s).
After purchase I will continue to help the new owner learn every aspect of running the site and continue on as an administrator for a few months. I have put a lot into this site and I will do everything possible to help the new owner be successful. If the site is purchased at the BIN price I will throw in 3 months of emergency system administration work. Also, I will always try to be available for routine questions and advice within reason.
Revenue Details
All revenue from the site is generated by advertisements and affiliate links on the main site. The site was designed for high conversions, and it has proven to be very successful.
Adsense: The site currently makes $500-$600 a month in adsense revenue which always provides a solid financial foundation for the site.
.CO.CC: The site makes about $200 a month in free .CO.CC domain referrals. They pay $0.10 for referal for standard domains and 40% commission per sale on their "premium" domains.
Hosting Affiliates: The site makes $1500 month in hosting referrals. I currently have been using the FatCow affiliate program primarily, as it is a strong performer with a long solid history. I use links for them from their in-house affiliate program and Commission Junction depending on what ad formats I want to run. They pay $100 per hosting referral.
You could use whatever hosting affiliate you like, although budget hosting companies perform better on these types of sites. There are a number of high converting options via cj.com that pay $100 per referal. I have just pushed FatCow as it has performed well. Figure on a sale for every 100 clicks you send.
You could most likely increase the revenue of the site substantially by running your own ad server and rotating the adsense ads with affiliate ads. The site sends thousands of clicks monthly to hosting ads from adsense which would generate more money from affiliate ads. I have just not had the time or the expertise with ad serving software to set this up.
This site would also be a great investment for a budget hosting company; you could easily generate 15-20+ paid hosting sign-ups a month. It would also be great for SERPS, PR and generating traffic to your hosting site.
Also, there is a huge potential with sending mailing lists. This is a completely untapped revenue stream as i have never sent a mass mailing due to the limitations of the current shared hosting plan the main site is on.
Traffic Details
Site traffic comes from free hosting directories, forum postings, search engines and an ever growing list of other organic sources. I have spent many months building listings on the top free hosting directories, and also building the site is such a way as to have the highest rankings on these directories. Currently the site has top ranking on Free-Webspace and Free Hosts Finder and a number three ranking on Free Webhosts (which will be going up soon as I have submitted new features to him). There are also many submissions that have not been listed yet, so traffic will continue to increase. I will also continue to work on building links to help the new owner for a couple of months.
As the site gains popularity the number of links, forum postings and word-of-mouth continues to grow and traffic should steadily increase from these streams. I have been working on building SEO for certain search terms like "free cpanel hosting" and already have first page rankings in search engines for these terms. Also, all error page traffic, not found sites, suspended site traffic etc. is sent to the main site.
Attachments 18 public (0 verified)
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June Stats
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July Stats
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Adsense July
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Fatcow July commissions top
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Fatcow August commissions top
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Fatcow July commissions bottom
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Fatcow August commissions bottom
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Fatcow July Clickthrough
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Fatcow august clickthrough
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Commission Junction July
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Commission Junction August
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Connections
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Countries
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Search
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Adsense August
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.co.cc signups 1
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.co.cc signups 2
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Users
Questions 20 public, 2 deleted
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:15:46 GMT
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:35:28 GMT
I do not use analytics on the site I use AWstats. If there was specific details you needed from the stats, please let me know.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:14:36 GMT
I have send you a private message! Is this website custom coded? Or is it
a premade script like layered panel?And is it possible to automatically set the accountcreation since now people have to wait for you to accept them?
Highly interested but cautious because of the young age of the site!
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:58:02 GMT
The signup section of the site is not custom coded. As mentioned it uses iPanel to manage accounts. The actual hosting servers use cPanel control panel. It is possible to set the accounts to auto-create, but I would not recomend it, otherwise you will wind up with a lot of abusers and scammers.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:39:15 GMT
All PM's have been followed up with.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:15:44 GMT
Nice site, how long has it been online?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:17:40 GMT
Officially went online May 1, but months of planning and preparation went into it.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:03:31 GMT
There have been 2 more sales since stats were posted, that brings affiliate sales for August 2 $1600 and total gross revenue to about $2300 gross for the month.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:20:25 GMT
Could you post the screenshots from awstats for August showing:
a. the countries that visitors are from
b. the top 25 pages
c. the origin of visitors (Direct address / Bookmark / Link in email/Links from an external page)
d. Search Keyphrases (Top 10)
Thanks!
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:17:33 GMT
@dotcomdude - I have added the stats as requested. Keep in mind that a lot of raw hits go to the error page as I redirect all error/not found/suspended site traffic to the main site so as not to lose that traffic.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:34:01 GMT
I have also updated the August stats overview.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:58:42 GMT
You say Fatcow brings in 1500/mth, I only see 900 and 1000/mth in your screenshots.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:08:47 GMT
You need to combine the amounts from the Fatcow affiliate program and the commission junction. I use both programs (in-house and CJ) depending on what ad formats or landing page I want to send clicks to. Also, I am slowly phasing out the in-house ads and switching over to just using CJ as they have more formats available. P.S. Deleted my message above as I wanted to add to the comment.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:21:26 GMT
Have you been paid by CJ yet for these sales? What sort of a holding period do CJ impose ?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:24:04 GMT
Yes, I have received checks from CJ. The holding period is set by the affiliate, and most hosting affiliates in CJ do a 45 day period. The nice thing with the fatcow plan is it's a cheap yearly plan, so you get very few people that cancel after a month like you do with monthly hosting plans.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:58:17 GMT
BIN has been reduced to $13000. That's less than 7x net revenue. Good luck and happy bidding.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:15:39 GMT
Justin: I've looked through the site and it's very well put together. Would you please explain your Post 2 Host program, verify that the forum moderators are volunteers and tell us why you're selling the site?
Thanks!
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:22:02 GMT
@BRS1 - The Post 2 Host is a method to drive up activity in the community. Basically users can get an upgraded hosting plan in exchange for making 50 posts monthly on the forum. So the forum gets more activity, and they get some perks. There are like 10-12 post2host accounts now. We have been very strict about not letting people who spam useless posts get the upgrade. And yes, the forum moderators are all volunteers. Only a few are active at the moment anyway, one is away on holiday, and one's internet connection has been down for ages. It would probably best to replace the inactive ones by promoting more active users. As to why I am selling the site; simple, I need money for some life expenses that popped up. Also, I need to free up some time to work on some other projects that are not hosting related.
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