

Selling my startup - freescreencast.com - jaskew
http://freescreencast.com
I have given it a good run.  I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it.<p>But I no longer have the time.  I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone.  The primary reason is family.  The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.<p>So I want to sell:  buyer gets several items: source code for both client software and for the website, and the domain.<p>Most importantly, however, is the buyer inherits the userbase, the user accounts, and the content created by the users.<p>Search is primarily long tail, but we're top ten in many, many searches.<p>So...  any takers?  Any advice?<p>The alternative is a shutdown, which I just don't want to do.
======
jaskew
I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great
developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it.

But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up
to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several
other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to
over come the bump on freescreencast.com.

So I want to sell: buyer gets several items: source code for both client
software and for the website, and the domain.

Most importantly, however, is the buyer inherits the userbase, the user
accounts, and the content created by the users.

Search is primarily long tail, but we're top ten in many, many searches.

So... any takers? Any advice?

The alternative is a shutdown, which I just don't want to do.

I will gladly answer any questions.

~~~
imajes
and what language/platform, hosting costs, etc...

~~~
sho
It's PHP, for what it's worth. I know because the first thing I do at any site
is look at their error handling. Here's theirs, trying to load
<http://freescreencast.com/screencasts2>:

    
    
      Missing controller
      
      You are seeing this error because controller Screencasts2Controller could not be found.
      
      Notice: If you want to customize this error message, create app/views/errors/missing_controller.thtml.
      
      Fatal: Create the class below in file : app/controllers/screencasts2_controller.php
      
      <?php
      class Screencasts2Controller extends AppController {
         var $name = 'Screencasts2';
      }
      ?>
    

Not a very professional effort IMO.

Here is the server string:

    
    
      Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) PHP/4.4.7 mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.7e mod_fastcgi/2.4.2
    

And it's on a Dreamhost IP so probably debian (if I remember correctly?)

update: Man, I really don't like CakePHP's error messages. Check this one out:

    
    
       Fatal: Confirm you have created the file : /home/.quintuplet/prodfsc/freescreencast.com/app/views/pages/getstarteds.thtml
    

Great, now we know the dir structure. This is something that just should never
be displayed. Doesn't CakePHP have "production mode"?

~~~
qeorge
_Doesn't CakePHP have "production mode"?_

Yes, its a matter of changing the debug value to 0 instead of 1 in
/app/config/core.php. If this were set you'd be getting 404's instead of error
messages.

@OP - This probably isn't the best place to sell your site, but you're going
to need a lot more stats if you want to sell it anywhere. At the very least
you need to show proof of revenue over time. A good place to start your asking
price is 8 * monthly_profit.

~~~
sho
6 hours later and debug mode still hasn't been turned off, even though you
told him exactly how to, in his own thread. Unbelievable. Most of the web devs
I know would have panicked, fixed the setting and redeployed within minutes of
learning they'd screwed up in a visible and embarrassing way.

Inspire confidence this does not.

------
jacquesm
<http://alexa.com/siteinfo/freescreencast.com>

how about some hard data then ?

It looks like the site has very little traffic, a few hundred users / day at
best. What is the businessmodel ? Revenues ? Expenses ?

If you really want to sell it wouldn't take more than 10 minutes to collect
the most important metrics.

~~~
rythie
Sounds about right, there is a graph here...

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/freescreencast.com/>

------
Zarathu
Put it up on eBay.

Actually, let's just start bidding right now. I'll put up $50. Anyone for $55?

~~~
petercooper
I bid $400 :P Thing is, this is still nowhere near what the OP wants to hear,
but we haven't been given any real data yet so it's like sticking a flag in
quicksand.

~~~
dshah
I'll bid $500. For real.

HN is likely one of the worst places to try and sell something like this. We
all believe we can rewrite 80% of something like this in a couple of weekends,
given sufficient caffeine.

The $500 bid is based on the likelihood that if you find a buyer on HN, some
tech bloggers will likely pick up the story, and the PR value itself might be
worth it.

Let's see.

