A few days ago I posted that the seven year old domainer forum DomainState.com was for sale. I also mentioned that I placed a bid on the forum. Well, I just received the following email from the owner’s of DomainState in response not only to my offer, but all offers. To sum up what you are about to read, DomainState will hold a private auction on their forum Wednesday, January 13th at 12pm EST and end 48 hours later. Bidding will begin at $10,000 with bidding increments of $500.
My previous starting offer was $5,000 and yes, I registered to bid.
To read the email response from DomainState owners click below.
Thanks for your interest in the site, please note the following information about the sale,
General site info:
Started: 12th Sept 2002
Vbulletin Version: 2.2.7
Total members: 12238 registered and confirmed Total posts: 480,595 Domains included: domainstate.com, domainstate.net, domainstate.org.
Revenue: currently unmonetized
Traffic stats: We haven’t kept stats as that wasn’t something of use to us how we ran it at the time but that as several people have asked for them we are adding in Google analytics. Obviously the amount of stats available before the sale will only be around a weeks worth.
Note also we currently block google from crawling the site via robots.txt.
User registrations:
Dec 2009 – 127
Nov 2009 – 109
Oct 2009 – 110
Sep 2009 – 116
Post numbers:
Dec 2009 – 1490
Nov 2009 – 1940
Oct 2009 – 2192
Sep 2009 – 1859
Other details: Vbulletin has been modified with some hacks (whois, showcase etc). You may or may not want to keep those features.
Bandwidth usage:
September 09 – 1.25gb / 10.02gb (In/Out) October 09 – 1.21gb / 9.07gb November 09 – 1.32gb / 9.92gb December 09 – 1.01gb / 8.01gb
Method of sale:
Due to a fairly large number of inquiries we have decided to sell the site via auction. The auction will be on site but will not be publicly viewable and bidders will be asked to provide contact details. It will be held in a private section of the site that only bidders will be given access to. Bidders will be screened and we reserve the right to refuse any potential bidder.
A list of the usernames and real names of each bidder (but not contact
details) will be available to other bidders in an effort to make the bidding process as transparent as possible.
The auction will take place from Wednesday the 13th to Friday the 15th of January 2010 (48hours) starting at 12pm EST (eastern standard time) ending at 12pm EST on the 15th.
If any prospective bidder is not a current member of the site they will need to join.
The starting bid will be $10,000 USD and increments need to be $500 or larger. Bids under $500 will be deemed invalid. There will be no reserve.
If a bid is received within the last 10 minutes of the auction the auction will continue until 10 minutes after the last bid. (example if a 2nd bid is received that will extend the auction for 10 minutes after the time of that bid).
We reserve the right to extend the period of the auction if the site experiences downtime during the running of the auction.
Other terms:
Posts in the administrators section of the site will be removed before transfer. (approx 17,000 posts).
Payment needs to be made within 3 business days of the conclusion of the auction.
Method of transfer:
The successful bidder will be required to move the site to their own server/hosting account within 2 weeks of receipt of payment.
After receiving payment we will immediately work with the buyer to transfer the domain names and the site.
We will do everything we can to make sure a stress free transfer is achieved from our end but the purchaser is responsible for the setup of the site on their end. We suggest bidders become familiar with the method of transferring a vbulletin forum.
http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/moving_servers
Please note also the site is currently administrated and moderated by the three owners and we won’t be continuing in that role after the sale.
Please respond to this email stating you domainstate username, real name and company name (if applicable) and contact details and we will setup access to the bidding thread for you.
For any further questions please email us,
Best regards
Paul Cotton
Paul Shaw
Matt Purtell
Domainstate Admins
Chef, will you be placing another bid? Good luck if you are!
I just updated the post to answer that question. One thing I may consider instead of spending $10,000 on buying the forum, I may just invest the money in starting a new one from scratch. I really have a lot to think about over the next few days.
The equation should be very simple.
Alexa for domainstate.com is 67000. This means close to 160.ooo visitors (not page views) a month, 35% US (high click value). Worst case scenario (google adsense) should net around $200 monthly.
A website investment should pay itself in no more than an year, since is very volatile. My guess at $10.000 is slightly overpriced.
nobody on a domain forum is going to click adsense and it will make the site look tacky and unprofessional. direct advertising would be the way to go
Why would you spend $5,000 on a forum when you don’t visit domain forums, Patrick? The DS sale is like selling a lame horse before it dies; the auction scheme is yet another bullshit attempt in generating some traffic to the site before the plug is pulled.
I was an active member on NamePros for a while, but projects, travel, family and this very blog have taken all of my time since. I am wrapping up a few projects and about to start some new ones which a forum MIGHT fit into them. I don’t know. All of this was very short notice. Plus, it seems there a few members of the community that beleive I’d be a good forum owner.
We’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out.
Patrick if you get DomainState.com consider joining the
UnitedForums.com network … we haven’t yet launched
and will be doing some very interesting things with it.
Anthony
Yeah, i just got an email from DS about their selling the site as i am one of the forum members there.
Chef, if you fail to get the name, you can always build a new forum on a cool, “okay” name. I got okaynames.com, contact if interested.
Patrick, you would be a great forum admin, but I can’t think for the life of me why DS can be worth in excess of 10k. It’s not even half way to bigboard.com status yet after 7 years
Seriously though, I’ve ran a big board before (which I started from scratch in 2003), and the time and effort required versus the returns makes it a crazy business decision to BUY one. I’ve always been of the opinion that running a big board was a labour of love, and not a business opportunity. If you buy this, it will take up ALL your time and you will be unlikely to recoup your investment. If it was the industry leading forum then perhaps it would be worthwhile, but as it stands you will be competing with the likes of NP, DNF, DP etc. Unless you have some radical new ideas I would say DS is a non starter. Much more attractive opportunities in this economic climate for throwing 10k+ at
Forums are definitely not easy. I would agree that $10k+ is a bit much to ask for this particular forum. I do believe it will sell for over $10k and depending on how much over that will determine my bidding. I place a value on the database. One good domain sale out of the database could pay for the forum.
Patrick, if you decide to go it alone and start a new Forum from scratch I got some nice “DN” Forum type Domains that are just crying out to be developed, anyway if your looking for a great forum name drop me an email and I will send you what I got. Good luck with the Auction.
Thanks Chris, just sent you an email.
Chef if I was you I would go from scratch. You already have made a name for yourself in the industry so I’m sure you would have many people joining up and also all that money could be spent on developing new features and I’m sure you have loads of original ideas.
I agree with Daniel.
Domain State is a unique website with a very strong base of loyal followers whom may not take too kindly to a change in landscape, be it monetisation or design etc.
Starting from scratch means that whoever does join up, will do so knowing what they are getting and over time, if you are good enough (which I think u just might be) you could turn the forum industry on its head – its archaic, buddy buddy and a whole lot of newbies quickly get turned off by the clicquiness of it all.
Its time for change, and I think you can make a go of it.
Starting from scratch demands courage, but taking over DS could bring as many problems as it brings solutions.
The version of Vbulletin they are using is ancient and has multiple security holes. I don’t know if you can even upgrade to a recent version from one that old!
Yeah what version of Vbulletin is out now lol?
v4.0. It’s been through about 10 versions in the 3.* series
That would suck if it wasn’t upgradable. Thanks for pointing that out Michele.
True indeed that one good domain sale can bring back the investment…
Although DomainState members may be conservative, I guess they will prefer changes to the forum rather than seeing it being shut down allthogether.
Adam Dicker (dnforum.com owner and godaddy VP) is on the bidding as well……….hope you got deep pockets !
I can’t see Adam bidding too much for this. He already has the database
I’m sure most members of DS are also members of DNF.
@ Patrick, I have a couple of VB licenses just lying around doing nothing. I’d be happy to donate one for free to a new forum start up by yourself.
@Jim – That’s awesome, thank you so much. We’ll know next week, I might take you up on that offer.
@Stu – If for I don’t get the forum then Adam would be the next best person. Either him or RJ from NamePros. It makes sense for them to secure their place, but of course at the right price.
I might be bidding as well.
I would like to know if would be best to rename it from domainstate.com to multiforums.com if I ever win the auction? Basically rebranding the forums.
What do you think?
@EM – I don’t think re-branding is a good idea. It has a good name that people know.
@Chef
Thank you.
James Barclay is 100% correct IMO. Forums are tired and boring. They need a shake up in a big way. Go with a new one and save the $10,000. Best of luck.
Completely agree with that. What we need is a forum for the industry, not just another marketplace for peddling $10 domains.
A forum with no marketplace for selling or buying would be great. We don’t need any more platforms for buying and selling, it has been done to the death, there are plenty of other places to buy and sell, or “flip”
I would definately join a new forum if I was guaranteed not to be bombarded with threads such as ” my domain is worth 20 thousand, but today only I will sell it for $10″ etc etc…
It’s just sooo hard to start a forum from scratch.
Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate it.
Patrick-
This is PokerPie from NP and DNF. Shoot me an email if you want to discuss strategy – I’ll be bidding too. Maybe we can work together somehow.
-William
Well, I decided not to participate in the coming auction of domainstate. Instead, I open up my own forum … YetAnotherForum.com. If you guys have time, join me.
Cheers,
EM @ KING.NET
Buying domainstate would be a waste of cash, maybe if someone is minted they could just redirect traffic to their own forum before it finally keels over and dies. there were only a number of cliquey members there and the admins, that was the traffic. all members are members elsewhere anyway. just let it die naturally imho. Please visit Internetual.com , it’s just opened. I think you’ll agree the design and conscept is unique. I’d be privileged if you’d come on join, goes for you Patrick and everyone else who reads your blog. Getting started is hard on forums but i think is nice for domainers and webmasters to be new to a place and lay the foundations.
See you there i hope.
10K is not a lot to pay for a site with this much content. The site has not been spidered by google. Once spidered DS traffic will increase 10 fold. Sound like a lot of these posts are coming from NP, DNF, DP which obviously want one competitor out of the picture. Go for your dreams and take this baby over.
Good luck.
I don’t think the forum would be worth the money for someone just starting out with a domain forum.. Someone with a decent amount of relivent traffic and following like Chef here could probably get one off the ground without too much crazyness and expense from scratch… I’d say an attractive name for the forum would be one of the most important things to think about at first.. People are already likely to join from the following, the name just makes it look more serious. I do however think that it would be worth acquiring for one of the larger forums like Adams as far as market share, reputation, backlinks, etc… In a case like this, your not only making a point, but your more likely to make the money back quicker as an established forum is already profitable and is likely to already have solid revenue streams in place.
So what happen to the auction, any update?
http://www.chefpatrick.com/domainstate-com-auction-is-canceled/