FacebookProfile Site Sold, $5,500
20 Aug
A little while I go I was selling FacebookProfile, a site which I started in May 2006 as a small little side project. Traffic quickly rose on it as the popular social networking site Facebook got ever more popular.
Despite my lack of attention to it, I had managed to get the site to make about $100/month with just Google Adsense, but I was just letting the site sit there. It had tons of traffic, and therefore lots of potential for someone to take the reigns.
So I posted it for sale on the SitePoint forums and started getting lots of serious bids through private message. However I started the bidding way too low. Even before I posted the site for sale I had serious buyers trying to pay $3,000 for the site. Therefore all the normal bids on the auction I ignored, and only spoke with buyers who sent in much higher private bids.
The highest bid I got was $6,500 but I was wary because the buyer was dragging their feet and didn’t know much about the transfer of the website or how to operate it. I wanted a quick sale and quick transfer, so I sold the site to someone who knew what they were doing and could transfer everything without a hitch.
Within three days of posting the auction I had my $5,500 via Google Checkout, and less than a week later the full website and database were transferred over to the new owner without me doing much work (this is why I chose to sell to someone who knew what they were doing).
This profit tally doesn’t include the Adsense revenue the site brought in…probably somewhere in the hundreds of dollars range.
For me the transaction is over, but it’s nice to see the new owner is actually drastically improving upon the website. He added a whole slew of new features, posts, articles, re-structured the advertising and even added a Facebook Forum for developers and users.
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So from a random idea last year, I got some good experience, several hundred dollars in adverting revenue and a nice $5,500 payout this year!
Congrats, Neville! That’s really cool, how that worked out like that. Unless, you actually wanted to have that website succeed long-term ;)
In any event, still enjoy reading about your exploits, “financial” or not. I’ve moved back to Austin after being in Charlotte for two years, so maybe we can meet up and chat sometime like we talked about oh so long ago…
Congratulations, yet another case of you proving the skeptical Anons wrong!
Congrats Nev, you moneymaker you! :
)
Amazing, and good for you, but i’m wondering how the buyer plans to make any revenue off this site. You stated that you only made a few hundred over the lifetime of the site. I wonder how this guy plans on making over $5,500 from it?
Wow, congrats on the sale! I doubted you… but you seem to be able ot work miracles.
Going through your posts I found quite interesting.
First of all just wanna to Congrats you Neville!! That was really an appreciable job. You have a good idea on Marketing Strategy.
What are the main things you have done for that site?
glad to see you’re back to making some cash and you were able to take something you were looking to dump and getting a solid cash out of it.
Holy crap! Good site flip man! I’ve tried flipping a few sites but my max sale was only $300, I must admit though your Facebook site was a good site.
Congrats again
It’s lucky for you that the new owner still has up the Body Monkey and House of Rave “ads.” Congrats on the sale.
that’s so awesome
congrats on the successful flip
Don’t forget taxes. Is this income or a capital gain?
Hello there! You have a rather interesting site! So many odd but creative money making ideas.
You probably should have kept Facebook Profile…might have been worth so much more in the long run now that there are talks about Facebook being acquired by a larger company. Deeper pockets = greater potential payout for related sites! :)
-Raymond (MONEY BLUE BOOK)
Why are you staying with Blogger…have you considered a switch to WordPress? It offers many more functions as is more customizable!
-Raymond (MONEY BLUE BOOK)
Hey Nev,
Thanks for sharing this. Reading this was what motivated me to put two websites I owned and ran, up for sale. I sold both sites for over $5000, but if I hadn’t read your post, I probably would not have pursued selling my websites.
Thanks for the inspiration and resources!
HI Nev,
Congrats on the sale but just wanted to ask you one thing. Why was the hosting expense 0. where did you host it. Was it a part of Facebook or you used another company to host this site
I’m selling off my facebook related website too! it gets 11,000 uniques a month.
I just don;t have time for it as I am focusing on a local web project for my city.
J