Scorpiono sold MyLOL.net for $10,000 USD
June 17, 2008 at 6:11 pm, ScorpionoThe experience is unique, the feeling is great, I’ve stepped out of web anonimity with struggle and perseverence. I’ll share the story with you guys for motivation purposes.
My website, mylol.net – was started back in november 2006, it was my idea to create a new social network, something like hi5.com (the european myspace.com if you’d ask me) but without copying anything from them, simply my ideas that were to come over the weeks and it would stress out my friend niflostancu which handled the PHP development.
I’ve learned from this experience:
» Putting all your eggs in one basket is bad, so bad that Google kicked me in the nuts hard in 2007 after a competitive webmaster got me screwed over (will blog about it, I’ll call it “The Google Assassination Technique”).
» There is always a solution, might not be the best, but if it’s a working one, it will do.
» Building up relationships with fellow webmasters from the same niche is crucial
» Knowing the guy from the hosting tech, and have permanent MSN is a must. *shouts to Jamie*
» No matter how much you would like to see something developed and uploaded, niflostancu will do a perfect job, but only after you have already bashed your head 10 times on the laptop because of the deadline delay.
» Never, but never ever ever take the first offer that shocks you. I was one click away from missing $5,000 because I’ve got a BIN offer and well, though I’ll do the deal. Luckily, the way things evolved made me open eyes and take the BEST offer.
The reason:
The reason I have sold it, was because I am going to the university this summer, I need money for taxes and for renting a decent appartment.
The moment:
It took me 2 weeks to press the “Submit Auction!” button on SitePoint — basically the trigger was pulled when I have purchased the market points (paid $20) and well, had to do the rest!
The goal:
I was aiming at finding a serious buyer, the BIN was set to $5000 – and just after 2 hours the bids started to roll.
The great part (*for me*):
I was shocked – people were sending me constantly messages by the forum asking for details. That night, I slept 0 hours, I was in a constant typing back and forward.
By the next day, I would have met 2 very serious bidders – I have chosen Greg (*shouts*) for the amount of $5,000. He was very open and friendly, and we had everything roll on fast, we discussed and we agreed on the BIN. I have not canceled the auction at SitePoint.com because I wasn’t use with SitePoint honestly – so I accidentally let the bids roll.
While waiting for the hosting provider – my friend Jamie – a new bid of $6000 came along, I refused as I have promised the website to Greg – he rebidded $7000 just to have it, I refused again. The next day, I had a chat with the overbidder on MSN.
His name was Anthony, and Anthony is the guy the would have been purchasing the website on 11 June 2008 for the amount of $10,000 – shocked!
The price:
I definetly knew the site worth it’s money, it had a good traffic, unique script, unique design, and a very loyal community with over 14,000 members – but to get double the price asked in the BIN, was impressive.
The reason of the overbidding is that Anthony is a well known web developer, and he has similar websites, I have my full confidence that he is going to recover the investment in 8-12 months based on his experience on the web. He is a big fish as you might want to name him, and I really want to see mylol.net go to the next level.
The flow:
The money transfer to Romania was difficult, one of us had to trust the other guy as we have done it by wire transfer and not escrow.com – Anthony did the first step by sending 20% up-front. Several days later, I had the rest of the amount.
Right now, the community is thrilled because of the upcoming development, and I hope the best to the new owner of mylol.net.
Official news about the takeover:
» http://forum.mylol.net/breaking-news-mylol-net-has-a-new-ownership-t834.html
Right now, looking 10 days back, I know that the difference of $10,000 or $5,000 was so little. I advise anyone selling a SitePoint.com — which have been proven to be the best webmaster marketplace world wide — to allow the auction to go for several days, and always aim higher.
I’ll invest $2,000 USD in a website project, very soon, so stay tooned on the blog.
This is my road to dotcom mogulness
Scorpiono, 18 years old web developer
I’ve recieved hundrets of messages, and I’m not exagerating, it was a constant flood of messages from people I know and from people who know me.
It looks like the press (BBC/Skynews/YouTube) is full of the mylol.net phenomena – that the website might be a paradise for pedophiles – and when I’ve first checked out the online press, I was stunned.
I asked my friend Rez (gamecheats.eu – I’ll keep mentioning this until you get a blog mate!) about his opinion on this, and he says “wonderful! I’d pay for something like this to happen to me!” – I had a big “WTF?!” for him. Then he replied, it’s free publicity, do you know why mylol.net is down? – Well it was down because of the huge traffic incoming, the VPS couldn’t hold it.
That being said, look at myspace/hi5 and it’s mylol at a huge scale. I do admit that I’m pretty disappointed it the way the new site is being managed as for the moderation staff. Back in my day I had my friends and my people over there, and there were 7 people from differite timezones to check out the profiles. Nowdays I’ve found a pretty sexy one with a teen once on the first page, and well, BBC has it’s right to publish this, but it’s a social network and there is no possible way to fully-control it instantly. Yes, you can have moderators, yes they should do their job better, yes you should have report-abuse and other functions to keep children safe, but other than this, you need to keep the uploading of the files instant, otherwise you’re not as good as the big fishes, and you have to stay on top.
Personally, I’m a bit ashamed about how they moderate things now on the website, but also the BBC is a bit exagerated. Here I go flaming myself from both sides, but I guess this is my nature…
Update on 17.Jan.2009: I went back to see what’s cooking on my old website, I’m pretty much disgusted. The first profile I see is pedobear69, ouch?! We have a problem here. I totally find it unappropriate right now, the moderation team has a lot of work to do.
Category Featured, Projects, Succesful websites | Tags: DotCom Mogulness,Make money online,scorpiono
You have read the article, you have enjoyed it possibly and you have commented on it, so what's next?
Well the best thing you can do if you really liked it, is stumbling and digging!
SubZ says:
On June 17, 2008at 6:27 pm
Hey Scorp,
An excellent sale. I knew you would do it, and it is great to see you making money from your hard work, as well as my company
Keep up the good work, wishing you the best for University.
Congratulations!
SubZ
Rez says:
On June 17, 2008at 6:32 pm
Congratulations Scorp, well done. I always knew you will make your way to it. I was not expecting the auction to end at 10k but wonders happen
. Use this money wisely and replicate it by investing into some better projects.
InSe55ion says:
On June 17, 2008at 6:37 pm
After hard work here is the reward, 2 years of hard work and here is the final result.
Good Work Scorp !!!
Scorpiono says:
On June 17, 2008at 6:40 pm
Thank you guys for the wishes, expect for more!
Subscribe to the blog feed, there will be upcoming events!
Falconety says:
On June 19, 2008at 11:14 am
‘Grats,
You have made your first step on the “be a tycoon” road.I’m sure that in a couple of years we’ll hear about your “scorpiono club” or “scorpiono inc”
Good luck!
Anthony says:
On June 20, 2008at 9:19 am
It was a long journey Scorp, but we finally did it in the end. I knew you just couldn’t resist 10k, even though you are “a man of your word”. It will be interesting to see what I can do with the site. Got a lot of new things planned to take it to the next level, some very interesting new features that are unique in the Social Networking niche. Pleasure doing business with you my friend.
Anthony.
Scorpiono says:
On June 20, 2008at 10:42 am
Thanks for reading my blog Anthony,
I really hope you are going to take the website to the next level, I’ve put alot of soul and effort, do the same!
GiorgosK says:
On June 21, 2008at 12:26 pm
Scorpiono
Very inspiring indeed
good luck with your studies and your new ventures
Mayank Rocks says:
On June 24, 2008at 5:21 am
Congrats!!!
$10,000 is awesome and you deserved it!
You rock!
D95 says:
On June 30, 2008at 8:52 am
Congrats on your sale and great to hear that you are happy!
I think you have learned something from this story, don’t ever aim too low. You have (had) a great site and you could probably get even more out of it.
WLD says:
On July 8, 2008at 9:39 am
$10k is a good price. You could have asked more because the revenue posibilities are huge, not only from ads & stuff
But anyway, that was your work and you enjoyed it when the bid was huge
Nice indeed
Thanks,
WLD
Web Directory List says:
On July 11, 2008at 10:34 pm
10.000$ ???
I think you are in Hawaii now
Carl says:
On July 18, 2008at 2:32 am
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/the_p_word/newsid_7512000/7512463.stm
Heard this on the radio today, remember seeing it on SitePoint… glad you got out?
Paul Treggs says:
On July 18, 2008at 7:29 am
What an idiot £5000 for a for a social networking site on the up, you could have put adds on it and made more per month than that. youtube sold for $1000000000 and you get $10000, I presume most of these are your mates giving you congratulations well I suppose it may seam like thats a lot of money but if you dont get another good project off the ground and you start hearing about your old site you will be gutted and skint
Tim says:
On July 18, 2008at 8:01 am
Hi,
I work for a TV news channel called Sky News. You may have heard about child safety camapigners criticising of mylol.net as a potential playground for paedophiles. Do you think that is fair? Please email me to discuss this.
Scorpiono says:
On July 18, 2008at 8:55 am
@Paul Treggs: It’s true mate, but the reason I sold is also because I’ll go to university, and well no time to administer and make sure it gets highly moderated. And moderation is big problem!
Scorpiono says:
On July 18, 2008at 8:55 am
@Tim Okay sure..
Scorpiono says:
On July 18, 2008at 2:23 pm
@Carl Yes, I always knew to moderate it needs a bit of common sense on photo approval. Anthony is a wild spirit, he allows more than me, I respect him for that but on the other hand it’s not good because he gets this kind of exposure.
aks says:
On August 20, 2008at 3:46 am
do u know how much is shaadi.biz worth
shaadi.com is worth more than 3 million $
Scorpiono says:
On August 20, 2008at 4:00 am
@aks : You should develop the .biz in a shop or something related to matrimonials and then think of value. Meanwhile park the domain, though you won’t get that much traffic on a biz I think.
Cheers
Greg says:
On August 20, 2008at 4:44 am
Aks stop asking same stupid question everywhere on the web. It is worth NOTHING, go get yourself a real job, you sure don’t understand how domaining works.
Scorpiono says:
On August 20, 2008at 11:34 am
@Greg Sure you have your point, but there are literally 99% whom would have asked this question.
aks says:
On August 20, 2008at 3:17 pm
Scorpiono thanks for answering – can u tell if i develop it and install script marriage script – then how much it can be worth
Scorpiono says:
On August 20, 2008at 3:31 pm
I’m not sure how you’re going to drive traffic to it, and also creating a similar site won’t be any good. Try to fill in what the main site missed and create this as a service (charge $5 for some application of some sort)
Cheers!
aks says:
On August 20, 2008at 9:33 pm
thanks Scorpiono sir
and sir which are the places i can sell domains can u tell
KushMoney says:
On August 28, 2008at 12:20 pm
Nice flip. $10k. Man I would be over joyed.
Scorpiono says:
On August 28, 2008at 3:00 pm
@ KushMoney – that’s what happend to me, until I found out I still need 6,000 E to buy the new Audi A4 with all the other savings but I guess it’s good motivation to continue
Webhost Guide says:
On November 11, 2008at 12:25 pm
A truly inspiring story. Thanks for sharing. You have a lot in store for you in the future.
abcd says:
On November 23, 2008at 2:37 am
can anyone tell http://findupdate.com how much it is worth if developed .
and what are the ideas of developing it
Scorpiono says:
On November 23, 2008at 4:24 pm
mister abcdefg,
I’m afraid I’m out of ideas but doesn’t look very bright, might be good with some driver update service of some sort or just re-list at the domain aftermarket.
Casaannonce says:
On December 15, 2008at 3:28 am
My problem is how to get traffic. Can you pleae share your experience on to how to get traffic?
Thank you in advance.
Scorpiono says:
On December 16, 2008at 2:19 am
To be honest, you won’t see much effect unless you start investing some money in link building that will increase the organic traffic on a keywords. This is how I got #1 in teen dating even though I was quite a cheese cake, I managed to spend about $50-70/mth in advertising as the site made more and I was still on +
Key point is to partner with sites and buy ads for 1 quarter year at least to see any effect.
Emit says:
On January 1, 2009at 10:51 pm
Hi Scorpio,
Just came across your site via this blog and wanted to say thanks for sharing the story and your modesty. You did a good deal! Good luck for the future.
emit.
Scorpiono says:
On January 1, 2009at 10:58 pm
@Emit: Thank you very much for your kind words, I like the design of your website, I might start a banner/advertisment business soon.
PHP Tutorials Blog says:
On January 10, 2009at 3:07 pm
Esti bogat si printre singurii care ii aud !
brava
Paul says:
On February 20, 2009at 3:28 am
I want my bloomin ipod!
Liza says:
On March 5, 2009at 8:51 pm
Awesome man! it’s nice to hear a realistic and not over hyped story. Keep it up! next time its $100.000
Scorpiono says:
On March 5, 2009at 9:00 pm
Thank you very much, follow me on Twitter
acosmin says:
On March 14, 2009at 12:47 am
Nice story
I am glad romanians have success on Sitepoint!
Cheap Review Sites says:
On June 2, 2009at 4:47 am
I remember this being on SitePoint, put up for an auction. I also remember saying “Wow, this guy did a great job with his website”.
Congratulations man. That’s really great!
Scorpiono says:
On June 2, 2009at 4:56 am
Cheers, nice to hear this!
UstillUp says:
On July 13, 2009at 8:12 am
I think you should have held out a bit longer. Your site could have been worth 10 times that if you would have made it a bit more popular.
Harsh Agrawal says:
On July 13, 2009at 8:58 pm
Hey Scorp
Man First visit to your blog and I’m njoying reading it. Not because you talking about money but because you are talking about your personal experience. Things which Happened to you and moreover you left message in the post. Will see you around
Regards
Harsh