Large Mobile Phone forum for sale - 80k visits monthly

[thealpha]

After attempting to list this on Flippa a while back, I decided listing it here might bring some more interest.


The site for sale is http://www.XperiaX1.net (the domain, and all the contents), and is centered around Sony's Xperia mobile phone. We have also expanded the forum to allow discussion of the X2 and X10, although neither have been released yet.

Sony has also recently announced they are expanding the Xperia line, with the Xperia X2, X10, and Pureness. See links below:
Sony Ericsson - Products - Mobile phones - Overview - Xperia? X10
Xperia Pureness unboxed, performs for the camera (video) -- Engadget
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 first hands-on (with video!) -- Engadget

I have also registered XperiaUsers.com, and will transfer this to the winner of the auction. This is a great time to get an established, well visited site on this amazing mobile line. This would also be a great line to work into the Android niche, as the X10 will be running Android.

I originally planned on getting the Xperia X1, however I never got around to actually purchasing it and generally lost interest in maintaining the community. This site was a partnership between me and one other guy, and we both have our hands full with other projects. This is a great opportunity for anyone looking to own a great community with tons of potential. Last month the site received over 80,000 visits, and over 280,000 pageviews! We have never done email marketing either, and currently have over 27,000 members!


The software powering the site is Joomla 1.5 on the frontend, and vBulletin in the forum portion. I will however help transfer the site over to the new host! The look was created with a Joomlart (Joomla Templates Club - Professional - High quality Joomla template) template, and is listed as a registered site within my account.

Cost of running the site: The domain is currently registered through 1and1, and under a shared hosting plan at about $5 a month. The vbulletin license is leased until October 10, 2010. We upgraded to the latest version of vbulletin about 8 weeks ago, and had a small hiccup (failed nospam addon) where user registration was disabled for about a month. This issue has been resolved, and the forum is currently running the latest version of vbulletin (3.8.4 PL 2)

Revenue Details

I have never really got around to properly implementing ads, however my partner ran adsense in the past (I do not have revenue details, although he said about 200 a month) We have been running a mobile affiliate (Omio.com) from the start, which has generated £598.28 (almost $1,000/ about $70 a month). I am not sure if they are accepting new affiliates, however an alternative is Mobiles4Everyone. (Mobile phone price comparison). No email marketing has ever been done, so this would be great opportunity to show off deals on the new Xperia's coming out!

A few things I would recommend to the new owner to increase revenue is:

Adsense or Any CPC: This goes without saying really, but just another revenue suggestion for those curious on how the site could make money.
Amazon Affiliate – This is something I wanted to implement for a while, however never got the time. Pushing accessories and the phone itself would be highly relevant to the userbase.
Software Affiliate – There are 2 that I know of, Mobihand (https://www.mobireach.com) and Handango (Mobile Software and Games for your PDA or Smartphone : Handango affiliate link at the bottom).
I have not actually ran these networks on the site, these are only recommendations. You must have an account at these affiliates to run their ads.

Traffic Details

Traffic comes mostly from serach engines, and is all organic (no PPC). Roughly 80% comes from Google, from a multitude of keywords (Xperia X1, Xperia Forum, Xperia, Xperia Software). About 15% of the traffic is direct, and the remainder is from Yahoo, Bing, and referrals. Over the last 30 days we have received about 85,000 visits, and over 375,000 pageviews. The top 2 countries sending traffic are the UK and USA, and the remainder is a general mix of international traffic.

Analytics access can be provided to those interested, let me know if you have any questions!

Asking price is $3500 or best offer!

[lawstudent]

I offer $200

[thealpha]

I offer $200

Declined.

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Can you please send me detailed statistics including last 6 months Analytics data + Forum Activity statistics

[thealpha]

Can you please send me detailed statistics including last 6 months Analytics data + Forum Activity statistics

You got PM

[thealpha]

Price lowered to $3000 OBO

[shortbus]

I am interested if it is not already sold.

[petertdavis]

I am interested if it is not already sold.

I bought it a couple months ago. I have made some substantial changes to it, and the new monetization is just beginning to bear fruit. If you're interested in buying, send me a PM.