Teen Social Networking Site 59,000 Users with Revenue HUGE POTENTIAL
http://www.mylol.net/ This site has been listed 1 time previously
Sold at Public Auction
$15,300
Bidding History: 10 bids- Started:
- Tue, Sep 8, 2009
- Completed:
- Fri, Oct 9, 2009
Website Statistics and Collected Data
Site Visibility
| Google PageRank | 0 |
|---|---|
| Alexa Rank | 130,836 |
| Links in Google | 38 |
| Links in Yahoo! | 14,342 |
Domain
| Registration Date | 15th Nov, 2006 |
|---|
Compete Stats
| Compete Ranking | 108,622 |
|---|---|
| Trust | 3 |
SEMRush Stats
| SEMRush Rank | 0 |
|---|---|
| Keywords in Google | 0 |
Site Content
| Possible Copies Found | 5 (view) |
|---|
Description
MyLOL.net is a teen-based online dating social networking site that is equipped with a 100% unique script. The site currently contains 59,000+ registered users, and is growing by an average of 130 per day. 90% of the sites traffic comes from the search engines as it is number one for the search term "teen dating", "teen dating site", "teen dating website", "teen online dating", and heaps more.
The site is currently PR0 but has had hardly any work on SEO or backlink work, the site was once PR4 but SERPS have not changed at all. The site's positions for those keywords remain even when its gone down to PR0.
TIME SPENT WORKING ON THE SITE:
This site is operated by myself, and 3 other moderators who work for free moderating the site and chat room. I typically spend about 30 minutes per day every morning going through emails from users and reported users, deleting suspicious profiles, nude photos, or ban people who are insulting others.
HUGE POTENTIAL:
The site was bought approximately 2 years ago for $10,000 USD when it had only 14,000 users and was making $250 a month. I am the only person who has done work on the site since then, working 3 to 5 hours per day adding new features and promoting the site with no extra money invested, and the site population has quadrupled and revenue has increased by over 500%. It just goes to show the massive potential with this kind of site if you had a bit of money to invest and had time to work on the site.
UNIQUE FEATURES:
This site works on a point system whereby users are rewarded points for performing various tasks around the site, which promoted more activity and creates more traffic, which allows more ads to be displayed, which generates more income.
Users can buy virtual raffle tickets with their points, and at the end of the month there is a prize drawn to a random winner such as an Ipod or a digital camera, then all tickets are removed and there is a new prize the next month. User's are always fighting to buy as many tickets as they can, so they are doing all they can to generate points.
This site is like a cross between Myspace, Facebook & MyYearBook with it's own unique twist.
WHY AM I SELLING IT?
I have a full time job in web development, and work on 2 other large projects and have absolutely no time or money left to invest in MyLOL. If I had an extra $20,000 to invest in this site, I would do it because there is such huge potential, but since I have no time to work on it, it will not expand. I think someone who has some time and money to invest in the site would do a much better job.
TESTING ACCOUNT:
Send me a private message asking for a testing account and I will send you the login details, or if you'd like you can register on the site and check it out yourself.
HOSTING:
The site is hosted with CaroHosting.com on a dedicated dual quad core xeon server which costs $289 per month to rent. This usually does well for the current site capacity, but if you are looking to expand I would suggest you obtain multiple servers as social networks use a lot of traffic.
EXPENSES:
At the moment the only expenses are the $289 hosting bill per month, and buying the Raffle prize for the user which is usually around $150 each month.
IF YOU DECIDE TO BUY:
If you are the winner of the bid, you will get a month's worth of free tutorials from me on how to use each and every feature of the site, as well as my suggestions for improvement and such. We can talk on Skype, MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger.
****UPDATE:
We have just released a new 18+ paid dating service as an addition to MyLOL. http://dating.mylol.net is a white label co-branded dating site that has access to over 4 million profiles. The idea is to give the 18+ users the option to have a more advanced dating experience through the white label site, as well as have access to the free original MyLOL site. The co branded site has an extremely good email marketing campaign designed to encourage users to pay that monthly fee to use advanced features.
This will be included in the package to the winning bidder. Also you will get the domains mylol.tv and mylol.info as well.
Revenue Details
The site generates all of it's revenue through CPM banner ads. I have an account with the Right Media exchange where I am linked to multiple different CPM networks which bid for traffic.
The site generates an average of $1400USD per month, screenshots are provided.
I have an ad manager installed for direct advertisers also. There has been a few companies in the passed that have run advertising campaigns on MyLOL.
Adsense is banned for this domain, but adsense ads can be run by third party networks as fillers, however Adsense does not perform well on this kind of site as users are mostly here for communicating with other users. CPM ads perform far better.
Traffic Details
MyLOL receives an average of 75,000 unique visitors per month, with 10 average page views per user, generating a total average of 1.7 Million page views per month. This equates to an average of 8 million ad impressions per month.
MyLOL has received media attention in the past which flooded the site with so many users that it crashed the server, any publicity is good publicity! If you can work on ways to keep users attracted to this site, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to generate 50,000 unique visitors per DAY!
I have no experience with website promotion or advertising so I wouldn't have a clue, all this traffic has come naturally with hardly any work!
Does this auction violate the Flippa Terms and Conditions? If so, please report it.
Comments 45 public, 1 deleted
If you were logged in you could post a comment.
Claimed Traffic
| Page Views Per Month | 1,700,000 |
|---|---|
| Uniques Per Month | 78,000 |
Claimed Financials
| Gross Revenue (per month est) | $1,400 |
|---|---|
| No profit is being claimed. | |
| Warning: The seller has provided estimates (read more) | |
Monetization Methods
| Advertising Sales | Yes |
|---|---|
| Product or Service Sales | No |
| Affiliate Income | No |
Site Uniqueness
- Content is claimed to be unique
- Design is claimed to be unique
Seller
Attachments 3
-
Verified Google Analytics PDF (8 Sep 09)
pdf file
-
Verified Google Analytics PDF (8 Sep 09)
pdf file
-
Verified Google Analytics PDF (8 Sep 09)
pdf file
-
Verified Google Analytics PDF (8 Sep 09)
pdf file
-
Year to Date Revenue
png file
Contextual Help
- The winner of this listing will be required to pay a 0% success fee to Flippa.
More Information ^ - Ownership transfer is safest when using Escrow.com (more information)
Seller also accepts payment using: Credit Card, PayPal, Electronic Transfer ^ - These attachments have been added to the listing by the seller to give extra information to potential buyers ^
I'm tempted to give you the 20,000! PM ME!
interesting auction
1) 130 registered users a day is 3,900 a month.
how is it that with 78,000 uniques it only gets about 4000 registered users a month?
2) what is special about the site? you talked about advertising and media, so since you know your site please explain to me what makes it different from the other gazilion community sites out there?
3) why is it .net and not .com?
Thanks
@amitcor
1. The site gets about 400 visits per day from the search engines from people searching for "teen dating", "teen online dating", etc, and about 130 them will actually register to the site. It get's new signups from users referring their friends also, but not many, so there is a lot more that could be done. All registrations are just coming naturally from the search engines. Unlike other social networks where registrations depend only on users inviting their friends.
2. The site is special because it has a very targeted niche "teen dating", and it is at position one for it's keyword. The site is a much more fun place having features like the point and reward system in place, a site celebrity section, site-wide shouts, site-wide birthdays, so it is essentially one big community rather than splitting people up into groups like all other social networks, that's why it's "where friends are made".
3. The previous owner registered .net because the .com was already taken, a foolish act by him. I would never have registered the .net, but the name can always be changed to something more appealing. As for MyLOL, it doesn't really mean anything, it can mean whatever you want, My Life Online, or just plain MyLOL.
All these users, and its PR 0 (zero) ..... how is that possible? I like the idea of the site has great potential, but there is a lot of SEO/Marketing work that needs to be done....
It used to be at PR4, but since no extra SEO work was done it dropped to PR0, but SERP's haven't changed at all so PR means nothing. When the site was first made there was very good SEO work done which gave it the number one position for "teen dating", that's where it got all of the users from.
I don't think any extra SEO works needs to be done, as it's already position one, unless you want to go for "online dating". But a lot of marketing work needs to be done. If you had some money to invest in this, it would be very successful.
I have sold the website 2 years ago to lip9000, since then he done a great job powering the user base, I'm quite proud the site got in his hands.
Leaving this message to let you guys know it was hard work and now it's pretty much grabbing the fruits.
Good auction!
What is the reserve price ? BIN price ? Can you tell me why Adsense is banned for this domain ?
Bests
Romain
@ Richer93, reserve is sitting on 14K, no BIN price.
The domain was banned from Adsense when it was owned by the previous owner, he explained to me that a competitive webmaster created several accounts and added nude photo's, and alerted Google about this straight away. When Google saw these nude photos with adsense ads, they banned the domain. They said it was a 6 month ban only, but it has been well over 2 years now and for some reason they haven't unbanned it, despite my several attempts to contact them about it.
But now, a nude photo will not last half a day on the site, as the moderators, including myself are monitoring all newly added photos and delete them if they are inappropriate, and the site is pretty much self policed as users are always reporting bad photos/fake profiles.
Serious question: how do you keep 50 year old perverts off the site? I am interested, I have a client who is looking for a community site with lots of growth potential
The only way to get rid of these users is to manually remove/ban them. We used to set a registration age limit of 29 years old, but have recently removed this because we have partnered with World Dating Partners whom have built us a co-branded website which is for all 18+ users. This is a paid service but it will act as a second social network which has access to over 4 million other users in their database, but it is branded as MyLOL. So the plan was to send the older users to this site, and keep the younger ones on the free site.
User's are always reporting whether they think someone is being suspicious or is lying about their age, they are very good when it comes to this. The usual action taken is a ban/delete from the site.
what script are you using for this site?
@mwilliams89
There is a 100% custom made script for this site. It does not exist elsewhere.
Hey :)
Couple of questions from the programmer:
1. What database are you using to store all the user's information
2. What kind of hosting are you using
3. What is the estimated monthly user bandwidth usage?
Thanks
-RW
@consult.richard
1. It is using MySQL for the database.
2. It is hosted on a dual quad core Intel Xeon 5335 with 4GB of ram.
3. Here are some screenshots of bandwidth:
http://www.mylol.net/bandwidth-graph.png
http://www.mylol.net/band1.JPG
Thanks.
How come only a few pages are indexed by Google compared to Yahoo?
Pages in Google: 38
Pages in Yahoo!: 14,342
-RW
@consult.richard
No idea :S, I thought there was about 6000 pages indexed by Google:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1B3GGGL_enAU343AU344&q=site%3Awww.mylol.net&btnG=Search&meta=
ill buy this and pay u monthly off for it...from the revenue generated.
@PassTech
I'm sorry but we really need this money all at once, there are two partners in this project so we are splitting 50/50.
UPDATES ***
- Reserve has been lowered to 13K
- Ending price must be paid in full amount, we are not accepting any ongoing payments.
- User count has just hit 60,640 as of 2nd of oct.
- Current bid stands at 10k, 6 days left in the auction.
Your previous auction with this site said that you had sold the site, why did that previous sale not work out?
@ jhadley,
I'm not sure what you mean....I didn't sell the site, I bought it from Scorpiono (whom you can see above in the comments). He was selling the site because he wanted to buy a new car.
PM sent with my info
Site seems really slow? Why is this? Will you offer support on an ongoing basis for lump sums and code updates once in a while and also, will you help out in case of disaster or crashing? I need someone to hold my hand a little bit with the website, can you do this?
If so, it's a deal.
Hi Lip,
Can you tell me what is involved to maintain the site? What do you have to do to keep the site interesting, what I mean if the site never changes, members will not be active and no new members will join? When you said members buy raffle tickets, do you mean they have to use money to buy the tickets? Is the 18+ website included in this auction?
How do you promote the site?
Thanks
Hi Lip,
I have one more question, what will happen to the moderators, when the site goes to the new owner?
Thanks
Sorry Lip, I have another question, will yoy be able to do the site transfer to another hosting?
Thanks
@gamlin
The site is slow in peak time due to such huge MySQL usage. Because of all the newest features that have been added are very database intensive, this causes CPU usage on the server to skyrocket. The first step after purchasing the site would be to add new servers, as you cannot just upgrade the current one. This kind of site needs to run on an array of servers to split the load like all big social networks. One of the main reason why users leave is because it the slow load times, so fixing this would keep a lot more users and increase traffic.
I will offer ongoing support for as long as I can, as the previous owner did for me. In case of a disaster or crash, I will be right there by your side to help you out, no challenge! You will have me on Skype, MSN & or yahoo.
@NetPizzazz
Maintenance of the site includes the following:
- Checking reported profiles and deleting/banning users with fake profiles, or are causing trouble around the site.
- Checking recently added photos and deleting nude or copyrighted images.
- Checking and answering emails from users.
- Deleting spam blog posts, videos or music. (Users sometimes post copies of the same post in a row to try and gain more points.)
To keep the site interesting you need to offer them new features, you must continue to work on building upgrades for them so that they don't get bored, and so that they have something new to play with while you are working on the next feature. I have a TON of new features written down, also user's can post new idea's for things they want. If I had the time and money to create all the features I have written down, this would be the funnest social network on the net no doubt!
Members buy raffle tickets with their own points, not with real money. Users gain points for performing various tasks around the site such as adding blogs, videos, music, comments, receiving views etc, basically the more active they are, the more points they get. This is a great way to promote more traffic around the site. I was eventually going to add a feature where people could buy thousands of points for a small amount of real money.
I haven't worked on promoting the site at all really, I have never used paid advertising or anything, traffic just flows in from the search engines for people looking for "teen dating". I have made a facebook fan page, and a wikipedia page, but that's about it.
When the site owner changes, the same moderators will be there. There is about 3 main moderators for the site itself, and 3 chat moderators.
I will be able to do a cpanel transfer to another web host, but this could take a while because there is 12GB of data to transfer, so it's not really recommended. CaroHosting has been pretty good so far.
I'm very interested, but i've accessed the site roughly 30 times almost every hour for the last 24 hours or so. It's always slow as sin. You should fix that before selling it, as that is the only reason I would not buy it immediately.
Cheers.
@gamlin
Try accessing it now, sometimes a standard apache restart speeds up the load time heaps and clears up any old open connections. I can't afford to add a server array at this point in time, I would be looking to add another 2 more servers onto this site. If I had another 20K to invest behind me, then it would be no problem.
Hey A.
I signed up as a user a couple of weeks ago. Im getting a lot of spam from random users (sometimes deleted) kind of like myspace in my inbox. Big issue? Thanks.
FYI I think the site is great and you should continue to run it or sell it to someone who has a stake in helping teenagers make friends.
@consult.richard,
That is one of the problems that this site faces, and is why the next owner needs to know about spam protection with these kind of sites, because I have no idea, and have failed to keep spam bots out. There are various areas of the site that need attention, things that I have no experience with nor have the money to invest in improving it unfortunately :(
Hi!
2 Questions:
1. Would you upload a new screenshot of revenue since the end of September so we can see how your site performed last month?
2. I'm confused about whether the 18+plus site is included and how much revenue is expected to be generated by that site. What are the expected costs of the 18+ site? Will it generate another revenue stream?
@findaniche
1. Here is a screenshot of sept earnings: http://www.mylol.net/sept_rev.JPG
You will notice that September earnings are much lower, this is because I have stopped all direct advertiser campaigns due to the sale of the site, also I haven't worked on the site for a month, nor have I sent out any mass mailing campaigns to draw the users back, that's why the traffic is lower. But once work on the site has started up again I can assure you that earnings will boost right back up. That is if you are with some good CPM networks, as you can see I am with over 30 different CPM networks. (Not including direct advertisers)
2. Yes the 18+ site will be included, this has only been added about 2 weeks ago. It is expected to generate even more revenue than the free site, World Dating Partners contacted me about creating a co-branded site for MyLOL absolutely free, they take care of hosting, management, administration and all that, you just need to promote it. The idea is to try and send all the 18+ users there, or to have it available as a 2nd option for a better service.
Here is the revenue calculator for the 18+ site: http://www.worlddatingpartners.com/calc/calc.html
If you can send 5000 unique visitors per month there, on average you are expected to generate $5000+ per month.
FATAL ERROR
MYSQL ERROR: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'LIMIT 1' at line 1
-- This is the result on your web page for click on vote! This is scary!! Sorry to say, looks like the code is not well debugged. I have no doubt that you have good user base but code, spam filters, page response and domain name (.net) are setbacks. Still I am interested provided the following can be met !
1. You continuous support for at least 3,4 months only when needed.
2. Fixing the above mentioned issues except the domain name.
3. Will have to improve the performance of the site without porting the code to server cluster.
Let us start some discussion on the payment also! I will pay most of it up front..
Thanks for sharing the latest revenue proof. It would be useful if you can send at least last 6 months. After seeing the current revenue, irrespective of the reasons, I have my own concerns on the rate I quoted.
I will max go by doing in in two ways which I will discuss if you are interested.
@briomaster,
Where abouts was it that you clicked vote and got that error? There are a lot of different types of voting on the site.
Yes there is a lot of work that needs to be done to the site, something that is entirely out of my field. That's why it needs a team of good programmers and a good investment.
1. I will provide continuous support for as long as I am available.
2. Once you have pointed out where the error is, I will try and fix it ASAP. What do you mean by "except the domain name"?
3. I have no idea how to make it any faster than it already is, besides removing some mysql queries, but they are all needed anyway. I am not a PHP programmer and have no experience with big sites like this, so I will leave it for the next person to get professionals to manage this.
As for the revenue, there is a screenshot above along with all the traffic of the revenue from previous months up until January.
I have a few questions - I'm definitely interested but I have some important questions.
* How many active users in September-09 (users that have logged at least once)
* What is the response rate to your e-mail campaigns (how many emails sent, how many click to come on the site)
* What is the average age of the users
Thank you.
@bobbyg,
- There was an average of 36,450 logins, but unfortunately I'm not sure how many of those are unique logins because I haven't got a script in place to count that data.
- I don't know exactly how many emails get sent out daily. Based on yesterdays traffic sources, it appears that there is about 500-600 visits coming from emails, the rest is from people going directly to the site, or coming from search engines.
- The average of users is 14 to 17.
The site is not loading for me?
Sorry, just doing some quick maintenance, I will comment when its back online.
Back online now :)
Has revenue changed for September now that we are in October? Thx
@consult.richard,
Revenue remains the same as it shows in the screenshots that were provided.