How much this UBB community costs?

[Nam]

This is the most popular Viet site on the internet, using UBB with about 15,000 members. I'm going to buy this if the price is right and convert it to vB (of course ). Just wondering if you could give me some opinion about how much should I offer and most importanly, how much it costs to maintain per month. Here are the stats:

Traffic: Over 100,000 visitors per day
Email: over 60,000 users.
Chat room (chat space): Over 2000 concurrent user connections (Approximately 60,000 people get in and out of chatrooms each day).
Bulletin board: UBB 15,000 members, but the traffic is extremely hight that each member can only post 1 topic a day.

Other include friend connections (50 new profile per day), poem site (500 new per day) and postcard (10,000 per day).

Opening since 1997. Now the site is really suck, outdated content (no updated for year), ugly design, terrible post card system. But it still a most popular site due to its community board, chat and email systems. I guess that's the reason why the owner wants to sell it, because so much maintainance fee but no time to keep it update.

Anyway, as I've seen the bigger site (purehonda.com) in other thread that sold in Ebay for $6,000. How much should I offer for this one? Note that although purehonda.com has higher community traffic, this site is still beat that with its chat, community and email system combined. And how much could you guess to maintain it per month? Thanks for you input.

[George L]

value depends on the buyer

but you'd have to take into account costs of running such a site.

I'd guess you need at least 2 - 4 dedicated servers

- 1 as web server and
- 1 as database server and maybe
- 1 for just a chat room server and
- 1 for an email server

each server being

dual p3 tualatin 1.26ghz
4 gb ram
3 x 36GB 10k scsi hdd raid

bandwidth i guestimate

100,000 visitors x 6 pageviews/visitor x 60kb per page x 30.5 days = 1047.1 GB/month

+

bandwidth related to - Other include friend connections (50 new profile per day), poem site (500 new per day) and postcard (10,000 per day).

+ bandwidth from email being sent i.e. if you send 2 emails per day at 4kb each

that would be like

60,000 x 8kb x 30.5 = 13.96 GB/mo

running costs somewhere around US$3500 - 8000/month depending on number of servers - whether they are rented or purchased and colocated and bandwidth costs per GB

all above is guestimates of course

[chrispadfield]

the value of the site is so dependant upon the genre. if that site is about films/movies etc it is worth 1/10 of what it would be worth it is was about computer hardware etc...

[chrispadfield]

p.s. what chat software are you using that can suppotr 2,000 users? that must be worth a lot in itself.

[nuno]

Originally posted by eva2000
value depends on the buyer

but you'd have to take into account costs of running such a site.

I'd guess you need at least 2 - 4 dedicated servers

- 1 as web server and
- 1 as database server and maybe
- 1 for just a chat room server and
- 1 for an email server

each server being

dual p3 tualatin 1.26ghz
4 gb ram
3 x 36GB 10k scsi hdd raid

bandwidth i guestimate

100,000 visitors x 6 pageviews/visitor x 60kb per page x 30.5 days = 1047.1 GB/month

+

bandwidth related to - Other include friend connections (50 new profile per day), poem site (500 new per day) and postcard (10,000 per day).

+ bandwidth from email being sent i.e. if you send 2 emails per day at 4kb each

that would be like

60,000 x 8kb x 30.5 = 13.96 GB/mo

running costs somewhere around US$3500 - 8000/month depending on number of servers - whether they are rented or purchased and colocated and bandwidth costs per GB

all above is guestimates of course

*ouch*

[Nam]

Originally posted by chrispadfield
p.s. what chat software are you using that can suppotr 2,000 users? that must be worth a lot in itself.

As I've already mentioned, he (not me) uses http://www.chatspace.com

And good lord, I've just received the reply from him, the asking price is... $250,000 .

The maintainance fee, eva2000 was very close, is $2000-$3000, using multiple T1 lines.

What an insane person, seriously that guy is so so overestimate the site. I wouldn't even pay $10,000 for it.

Here is that sucky site, check it out vietfun.com. It will pop up msg for sale including other sites: VIETFUN.com, VIETFUN.org, VNCHAT.com, VUONTHO.com, VIETNAMLOVE.com, BINHMINH.com, DUYTAN.com.

I know it's depend on the buyer, but $250,000? lol, better kill myself...

[Prolex]

lol...If he could sell that for 250,000 I better get crackin and make myself a huge community and then sell it and buy myself a nice car

[chrispadfield]

while $250,000 sounds an awful lot (and is almost certainly too much) i would think it is a more sensible price than $10,000 if those stats are correct. Just converting 0.1% of those 60,000 users to pay $10 for a years access to the email would give you $6,000 without trying and that dosen't even consider the othe aspects of the site.

[Nam]

Originally posted by chrispadfield
while $250,000 sounds an awful lot (and is almost certainly too much) i would think it is a more sensible price than $10,000 if those stats are correct. Just converting 0.1% of those 60,000 users to pay $10 for a years access to the email would give you $6,000 without trying and that dosen't even consider the othe aspects of the site.

too much?.... that's crazy... think about how much you can get back with that kind of site, suppose all the stats are correct (which I don't think so).

The email is free, there is no charge for it. And why would I choose @vietfun.com email for $10/year while there are so many free email services out there.

There is no banner in community forum. No banner in chatroom. No donation asking page like other sites. Take a look at advertising info page, he charges $500/month, but I don't see any clients.

$10,000 may be worth it? May be, but I don't understand why the site like purehonda.com went so cheap at $6,000 which has much more traffic in the forum. Btw, I don't think computer/hardware site is worth more than movie content site, in my opinion.

[chrispadfield]

Just because there is no advertising/sponsorship there now does not stop you adding it. You would need to find a reason to get people to pay $10, if he managed to get 60,000 users using the domain they must like it a lot.

On the movie v hardware, maybe maybe not but I think you will find that computer hardware, tech sites etc get a lot more money than do movies and other general chit chat type sites.

[Nam]

Let's think about this, it's hard to find a good sponsor since it's not an English site, although people use English mainly in the UBB forum, yet 95% are Vietnamese ==> Sponsorship has narrowed to very small number, because only Vietnamese companies can advertise there.

about the email I guess he exaggerate a lot about email users, I remember the free email was open at the end of 1999 ==> so 60,000 can't be in 2 years because it means close to 100 emails signing up a day ==> impossible.

That site was stand out since by the time it was open (1997), there was NO Viet sites around, now I can think of 500 just in my head, that's why it's the most popular.

Anyway, unless he is out of his mind, I think he was just testing to see how many people ask to buy it.

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Nam
Let's think about this, it's hard to find a good sponsor since it's not an English site, although people use English mainly in the UBB forum, yet 95% are Vietnamese ==> Sponsorship has narrowed to very small number, because only Vietnamese companies can advertise there.

That's a good point, but not necessarily a handicap. You could say the same about any site that caters for an audience from a specific country. A site tailored for US visitors is limited mainly to US sponsors... etc. Admittedly, the US, Australia or Europe maybe more consumer-centric than Vietnam (I'm guessing here), but there must still be plenty of opportunities for a site with such a wide audience.

[Fred]

Wouldn't give you more than $1k for it. The board is dead with 3000 members. No big deal.

[Nam]

fastforward, it's handicap, cuz Vietnamese people, as well as other people in the world can read English, but can't vice versa .

Originally posted by Fred
Wouldn't give you more than $1k for it. The board is dead with 3000 members. No big deal.

Are you talking about this board?

http://loves.vietfun.com/cgi-bin/ult...=1&DaysPrune=5

If you are, I think there are some problems with your vision , j/k. Remember, each member can post only 1 topic per day and 300 seconds for every reply. If it's open like this board, I bet it would be much more difference.

[George L]

well my guestimates of running costs were close again

anyway as i said the value depends on the buyer - to me the site doesn't have value but the right buyer would be willing to pay what is asked. Think about how much work and effort went into 4 yrs worth of running the sites etc.

hell last year i was offered US$390+ k (cash/stock) for all my sites and domains but turned it down cause i don't plan to give up ownership of sites (my babies) which i spent 2+ yrs working on which i still have more plans for (anyway the company that made the offer went under due to dotcom bubble bursting )