URL: http://www.zeldauniverse.net - Big Board #1243 Zelda Universe

Age of site (months): 5 Years, 3 months

Monthly revenue: $4,000+ (over past 12 months, average income is approximately $4,269.45 a month)

Revenue details: The site has consistently made about $4000+ a month for the past year. There has been a slight drop in the past few months due to my lack of time to continue with my monetization efforts. Revenue comes from YPN, Tribal Fusion, Adsense, Vibrant Media, Azoogle, and link sales. I have included MANY screenshots below as I normally do. I want to be upfront and as helpful and informative as I can!

Revenue Overview:
Prior to July 2005, the site would earn a solid $2,000 - $2,500 a month without effort!
July 2005 - $2,650
August 2005 - $2,765 (this month I began to test new ad networks)
September 2005 - $4,033
October 2005 - $5,082
November 2005 - $3,566
December 2005 - $3,299
January 2006 - $6,246
February 2006 - $10,535
(I got busy with travelling and other numerous projects, thus a drop off in earnings in months following.)
March 2006 - $4,299
April 2006 - $3,227
May 2006 - $2,786
June 2006 (Partially through the 18th of the month) - $1,542

Monthly Earnings Spreadsheet
Monthly Earnings Breakdown Aug 2005 - June 2006

Adsense Screenshots
All Time Adsense Spreadsheet

Yahoo Publisher Network Screenshots - Totals since I began in September!
Archive Channel
Site Pages Channel
Forum Channel

Vibrant Media Screenshots
June Totals
May Totals
Impression & Click Totals

Tribal Fusion
All Time Earnings

Azoogle Ads
All Time Azoogle Earnings

Links Sales through Paypal - I also have IGN as a yearly advertiser. They bought 3 links for $800 for one year.
A few link sales - These bring in an average of $100+ a month with no work!

Monthly unique visits: 260,000 - 390,000 Unique Visits

Traffic details The site has consistently average 8,000-12,000 unique visits DAILY for the past year or more. I basically quit working on the site and promoting it about 2 months ago. There is a new game "Twilight Princess" coming out in the next 3-6 months and traffic will absolutely explode at that time as during past new releases, traffic has double or tripled. I would estimate traffic to jump to at least 12,000-15,000 visits a day when the game is released.

Stats By Month
Daily Stats for June
Daily Stats for May

Links in Google: 3,630 (using link:www.zeldauniverse.net )

Pages Indexed in Google: 227,000

Keyword Rankings in Google: Zelda - #2

Page Rank: PR6

Forum Stats
Registrations Per Day: Averages 35
Posts Per Day: Averages 1,200+
New Threads Per Day: Averages 40-60
Members Online Per Day: Averages 550-650

Who's Online Stats
Members Online At One time: Normally between 50-100+
Guests Online At One Time: Normally between 75-150 throughout the day!

Total Registrations: 25,170
Total Threads: 42,720
Total Posts: 868,261

Forum Features
~ vBulletin Forum Software (license included)
~ Joomla CMS - Hundreds of content pages for everything related to Zelda! (well integrated with vBulletin)
~ Wiki - Zelda Encyclopedia - large source of user submitted Zelda information
~ Gallery - OVER 3,200 PHOTOS! A very popular part of the site!
~ Active IRC Chat Room with 10-40 people chatting at all times!
~ Clan Tests - A unique feature of our site and something fun for the users.
~ Behind the Rupees - Extremely well known writing team in the Zelda world.
~ Zelda Mailbag - another popular feature, a Q&A for the users.
~ Multiple customized skins on the forum with custom graphics.
~ Zelda Music, Artwork, Wallpapers, Ringtones, and More!

Other Details
There is huge potential for this amazing forum with so much history. It is clearly the ultimate Zelda forum on the web in terms of size, member base, and quality content. I think there is plenty of traffic to be gained from SEO work, but this is not something I know how to do. The simple reason I am selling is that while running multiple "Big Boards" is exciting, I simply don't have the time needed for this anymore (I have been neglecting the site recently). The staff (of nearly 30 moderators, global mods, super mods, admin, and webmasters) is absolutely amazing and very much dedicated to seeing the site continue with its success. I have a fantastic assistant admin/webmaster (volunteer) who leads the site staff and handles basically everything outside of the monetization of the site. You see I maybe only visit the site a few times a week now days, yet I have complete confidence in the fantastic team of staff to handle things. The site really needs a new owner that will promote the site and manage it to prepare for the coming growth in the fall of 2006 when the most popular and most expected Zelda game, Twilight Princess, will be released.

Licenses: Owned vBulletin (included)

Expenses: Server space. I currently have the site (along with several other sites on a 2 server set up with an additional media hosting server (cheap one). We have the main server, a DB server, and the inexpensive media server. This site would perform well on a single dedicated server if it had plenty of RAM and it sat on the server alone.

Bandwidth Usage: Typical month is between 400-500GB, high month was around 800GB.

Starting Price: $40,000

BIN PRICE: $65,000

Ending Date: June 26th, 2006 @ 3:00pm CST

*I reserve the right to not sell the site if an offer I don't like is made, and I reserve the right to sell immediately if an offer is made I am happy with.

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$40K wow, good luck with the sale Lee. The site is very well worth it.

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Christ on a bike, thats impressive, good luck with the sale.

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Nice looking stats. Good luck with the sale.

Lee, could I ask a quick question? Would this site need to be owner-operated and personal involvement or is this more of an "invisible" owner?

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LOL James.. you want to be a silent partner eh?

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I am just asking. As my mom said, always look to expand your horizons.

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Good luck with the sale, Lee - you've definitely got a nice one for sale there

btw - your revenue spreadsheet is not up, in case you'd like to fix that

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I have been more of the invisible guy for sure. The current mod team is truely marvelous in terms of running and updating the site. I stick to what I am good at, monetizing.

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I have a pending offer at BIN (from someone I know) and a backup offer at the BIN price if the 1st falls through...

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Pending Sale with Spdude at the BIN price. Deposit to come and I will post a status update if anything changes.

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