I Bought a New Site
April 8, 2011 Posted by Tyler CruzThis is a bit of a teaser, but who doesn’t enjoy a good teaser every now and then?
A few weeks ago, I posted about how I sold my largest money making website. In the post, I mentioned how the sale was bitter-sweet because it meant that a good chunk of my recurring income each month was now gone.
Well, today I just released escrow payment on a website I purchased a little over a week ago.
Part of the reason I sold my poker site was because I was already so busy with all my other projects and I wanted to free up some time to allocate to them, so purchasing yet another site didn’t really help in that regard.
However, I did feel the need of replacing some of my poker site’s lost income, and I’ve never run a site like this before so the idea of owning it intrigued me.
Since this is a teaser, I won’t be revealing the website’s URL in this post. I will reveal it soon though, perhaps in 1-2 months from now. I don’t want to reveal it now because frankly, it’s in pretty rough shape and is a bit embarrassing. I’d like to reveal it once I’ve spruced it up at little.
A bunch of you already know what the site is, as I’ve told you personally, or you’ve found out through other means. Please don’t reveal it in the comments if you do know what it is. Consider it your own special little insider knowledge for now 🙂
The Cost
I ended up paying more than I had originally planned to for the site, but it was necessary if I wanted to secure the sale.
Although I paid in the low 5-figures for it (more than $10,000; less than $30,000), there’s a lot of added costs that I will have to pay. Apart from hosting (see below) and transfer fees, I’m going to be spending a fair penny on a complete design revamp and a ton of custom programming.
I also have a little ad campaign idea in mind once the site has been revamped.
The Hosting
As you know, I absolutely love HostGator and highly recommend them. They are perfect for 99% of you.
However, their most powerful dedicated server, which I currently have, is not powerful enough to run my new site… at least not with any growth. That’s saying a lot, because the Pro Dedicated Server at HostGator is pretty damn powerful.
I got a quote from HostGator to upgrade my server, but it was too expensive. HostGator excels with their pre-packaged servers, but cannot offer good prices when you want a custom one.
So, I ended up going with LiquidWeb and ordered the following BEAST of a server:
I still highly recommend HostGator, but if you need something more powerful than what they offer (which will be 0.01% of you), I recommend LiquidWeb.
Forget quad core, this is 16x core!
It’s actually only $334 a month, but I’m paying $100 extra a month for the Guardian remote backup package. 57 retentions mirrors… 1 for every hour for past 48 hours, 1 for every day of the week, and 1 every 2 week.
Worst case scenario if my site ever crashed or anything – I lose 59 minutes of data 🙂
However, this isn’t cheap. I now pay $10,000 a year in hosting fees. Ouch!
The Traffic
Check out the traffic for this site from the past 2 weeks:
Half a million unique visitors and 2 million pageviews. That’s a million unique visitors a month! And this is mostly US-traffic, too.
Now I can actually log into Analytics and feel real good about my numbers for once, heh.
So, are you curious yet? What type of site do you think it is? I’ll give you a hint… it’s not an image or file hosting site… not exactly anyway 🙂
Wow, that’s insane! Congrats Tyler 😉
I would say that you got a cheap deal but it depends on the niche. You could at least tell the niche …please!
It has to do with money.
What’s the long-term vision for the site?
I know, you have bought johnchow.com! 🙂
Now we got to wait for 1 more month until you reveal this new site. looking forward to read more about it!
Are we guessing? This is my guess https://flippa.com/126357-Thriving-Productivity-and-Work-Blog-up-to-1819-75-Income-pm-NO-RESERVE
Congrats…
Not sure how you got $10k a year in hosting though for it.
$434*12 = $5208
You’re not paying the set-up for every month are you? 😉
I think he meant for all his sites.
That would be correct. I didn’t replace my current servers with the LiquidWeb one. It’s my third one.
Hmm something to do with personal finance? That’s a pretty popular niche, so I could see you getting those views if that’s the case.
Can’t wait for it to be revealed! Congrats.
Yeah, a site in that industry with 1M uniques/mth for a 30k max 😐
Good job on that purchase, Tyler.
My guess. Wallpapers?
What do wallpapers have to do with money? 🙂
Missed that comment you made. Hmm can’t think of anything else.
using adsense may be?
Congrats on buying a new site it looks like you did you research before deciding to buy it. It is sad you need to replace some of your income regarding the poker site but I am sure you will fill the gap before too long.
Wow! That’s a lot of traffic! I think you just moved up to the big time! You go Tyler!!
I didn’t move up big time. I moved down if anything. I sold my poker site which was > my new site in terms of value.
Congrats on the new site. quick question is each site you have on a single dedicated? or do you just have 1 dedicated for all your sites?
80% of my sites are on my HostGator server. The new site is on the LiquidWeb server all by itself (it needs it), and the rest of my sites (my affiliate sites that I don’t divulge) are on my other HostGator server.
Interested to see the site. I hope you’ll show us sooner than a month or two though 😛
Interesting.. I owned a file sharing site before but the costs to keep it up was wayyy to much for me however it was getting a lot of traffic and ad income..
Congrats on the purchase Tyler. Just wondering though, how did you determine that your current dedicated server wasn’t going to be powerful enough to run your new site?
I asked the previous owner, who seemed to have more server knowledge than me.
Congrats m8. Can’t wait to get some traffic stats like that 🙂
Lou
P.S. TELL US!!
I’m guessing you bought either palmbux.com or 1upads.com.
Speaking on the fact that you probably wouldn’t spend $400 on hosting for a measly $900 a month in net profit.
My guess is you bought palmbux.com with a cool 15-17k revenue per month.
You’re right, it’s 1upads.com 🙂 Check the twitter acount: http://twitter.com/#!/1upAds and it’s now hosted on liquidweb 🙂
The site certainly has a lot of potential, and it looks to be quite a cheap buy according to flippa! Congrats.
i visited 1upads.com and it’s a gaming site? he said its related to the ‘ Make Money’ niche!
Congrats on the new purchase, good to hear everything went well.
Can’t wait to hear what site it is.
I guess it’s a ptc site? how the heck can you have that much traffic?
I think it is a health site..
If not, your should consider to buy one. Its evergreen…
I’m guessing some kind of URL shortening service, but with a twist that it will show some kind of advertisement (interstitials) before being sent to the URL.
Tyler, would be interested to know what kind of due diligence process you went through when purchasing this site? (verifying traffic levels are organic/real, verifying income, etc.). Did you use a lawyer to assist with the transaction? Be an interesting post if you could walk us through the process!
Congrats on the new purchase and the new time commitment. Hope it works out well for you though and I hope to see some of the results from it.
Wow thats so nice congrats Tyler…..
The domain OneUpAds.com is available to register.
Congrads Tyler.
I’ve been reading your blog for a while but rarely left comments. Good job on the sale of PF and good luck on the new site. Looking forward to it being revealed.
Are you hiring local help to do the upgrades, doing it yourself, or hiring from Elance?
Wow.. It’s a big money for hosting. I think your new website is about video sharing like youtube?? Is it right?
Although – https://flippa.com/126585-1up-Ads-Games-Advertising-Website – appears to be a great site, I do not think this is it. Again, Tyler stated it has something to do with “money.” Cannot wait to hear the truth on this!
Was the site bought through Flippa? I’ve had a few dealings on there and to be honest have never had a great experience (as a buyer only I have to add). Congrats on the site look forward to an update.
It’s 1UpAds.com 🙂
Good luck with the new site! 🙂
How could it be 1upads.com though? The flippa auction states 4 million uniques with 10 million total page views. He told us that the site was going to get approximately 1,000,000 page views.
I know tyler is having fun behind and laughing at all of us watching us play the game of guessing. And I also do think it’s 1uPAds..It’s an advertising company which deals with ‘money’..Right ?!
The twitter status used the word “beast” to state their server migration on 7th April. And this post also uses the word “beast” for telling the same news and this post occurs on 8th April. And this doesn’t looks to me a coincidence. Hence FINALLY found. It’s 1UpAds.com
1UpAds.com? That’s looks very logical and a great purchase! 🙂
Looks pretty boom-or-bust to me… the way this industry is going he is likely to go completely out of business very fast, but the flip side is that if he runs it well he will get bought out by a larger media company — those are really the only two options, and while the upside is a lot less likely it would have a HUGE payout.
My bet is; it is an arcade site to feed robotwarz? 🙂
It must be spanxformen.com? Oh wait, no that’s my new niche site.
Going to have to check out the 1upads to see if people are right… that could gibe with the money hint.
Wow, there’s a huge number of visitors. I think you bought the site because it gives good traffic though there’s more need to fix up the website. It is expensive to make up the website but you can achieve more than it cost you. Keep it up!
Damn it! Am I the only one who clicked on your link.
If you’re referring a comment that gave a link out, that was not me, that was somebody pretending to be me. If it was a malicious link, then I would never do anything like that. Anyhow, I just deleted that fake comment.
Well yes, the site seemed malicious (did not let me close itself) but no harm done. All’s good. 😉
I had a good feeling that was someone else misusing your name too. It sucks that people would do that sort of thing.
I like the look of the new site.
haha tyler i knew it wasnt you that did that comment, some people are mean.
u should link me up to that high traffic site 😀 jking
That site is getting a hell of a lot of traffic it sounds like a very worthehile investment as long as you can monetize it properly which I am sure you have covered looking forward to seeing what it is.
Congrats to the new website Tyler!
Wow. This website must be really on top form.
Half million uniques! Wow
I think it was a bit too costly but congratulations!!
Congrats on the new purchase. It’s look like its a heavy traffic sites and i think your site will be run smoothly on your new server.