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Want to buy a PR1 website? (In: I Want to Sell My Website)
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lpcherry
Joined: Jul 17, 2006
# Posts: 3
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Posted: 2006-Jul-17 20:06
Over the past 6 months or so, I have seen a number of search engines and meta search engines sold on eBay. The most notable was Jux2 which sold for over $100,000. Obviously there were a lot of bidders and lots of interest, but what is the business rationale for buying a search engine or meta search engine? Who would buy one and why? Would you buy one?
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Hampstead
Joined: Feb 20, 2001
# Posts: 2012
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Posted: 2006-Jul-17 22:06
How much?!?
[swoon]
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lpcherry
Joined: Jul 17, 2006
# Posts: 3
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Posted: 2006-Jul-17 22:28
How much is a good question but I'm more interested in why someone would buy a search engine? We know it isn't going to be to compete with the big guns like Yahoo and Google so what is the business proposition?
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-18 07:40
PPC revenue?
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-Jul-18 13:27
Oh jeez - DON'T get me started on meta search engines again...
I've off and on toyed with the idea of creating a specific engine for a specific vertical. trouble is, it'll never amount to much, simply because it's unlikely I'll ever bring anything to searchers that they cannot already find through the big three engines.
Rose mentioned PPC - great, and workable revenue stream, IF you can develop the traffic to the space to support the advertisers expectations.
Don't kid yourself either - saying there's no charge unless someone clicks an ad is hollow. As a business person, I expect a reasonable/quick return on my investments. Depositing $500 into an advertising account with www.johnnyslunchboxsearchengine.com and having that money sit there for months on end will NOT entice me to deposit more money later down the road.
If you are going to folloow this model, be ready to burn through some advertisers who will never come back until you actually have enough traffic churnign through to develop clicks on the PPC ads your advertisers run.
In the end folks think they can be the next Google - that's the basic, underlying thinking behind starting your own engine.
Sure, some folks think they have a better idea and work on it - but you have to ask yourself this:
If Google, with it's billions for R&D and hundreds of educated brainiacs on campus isn't doing it, is it worth it? I mean, just maybe, they already thought of that angle, built the business case and learned it wasn't worth pursuing...maybe... 
As for engines being sold on eBay for $100,000 - well, until someone shows me a bill of sale & receipt on that transaction, I'll choose to file that one under my "pending BS" file...
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jplane
Joined: Jul 23, 2006
# Posts: 2
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Posted: 2006-Jul-24 04:55
That is a great question. I have seen a number of different “search engines” for sale on eBay and wondered why someone would pay $100,000 for one. Anybody have any good ideas? How much traffic would you have to have to make that kind of investment? Could large companies use this internally to manage their info somehow? Sorry to ask more questions especially on my first post but I was just curious. Thanks!
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-24 06:47
Google certainly makes lots of money selling ads on their search engine so Yahoo bought out Overture and MSN has now launched their own ad platform.
Most likely many believe that they can get rich (or at least make a lot of money) with their own search engine. You can make money with any site as long as you can generate traffic. How much, of course, depends on how much traffic and the subject.
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jplane
Joined: Jul 23, 2006
# Posts: 2
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Posted: 2006-Jul-25 07:12
Thank you for your insight! Have you ever thought of purchasing one?
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-25 19:45
No, because I know the "big picture" and there are far easier ways to create an income online than competing with the established search engines. I don't currently have the resources or the desire to take on such a task.
If someone asked me how to make money online that would not be my recommendation.
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lpcherry
Joined: Jul 17, 2006
# Posts: 3
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Posted: 2006-Jul-25 21:19
While it doesn't make sense to compete directly with google, yahoo, etc., what about a vertical search engine?
I was thinking about aggregating information about professional conferences because it is difficult to find a resource listing thousands or tens of thousands conferences throughout the world. Typically, most companies allow many of their professional workers to go to at least 1 conference per year so my thought is that it would be helpful to have this information all in one place so business people can make better choices.
Of course the advertisers would be those groups who host professional conferences.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-25 22:22
Whether you call your site a search engine, vertical, or resource the challenge promoting it and attracting traffic are the same. I believe it is easier to get traffic to quality content so while I would also have search on my site it would be primarily content.
To me, the primary attraction of a site on any subject is shared knowledge and experience. The ability to return a list of conferences is not nearly as valuable as a site that offers information that assists in making a decision which conference I might want to attend and why.
If there isn't already a site that appears to be a subject matter expert on that topic I would definitely recommend becoming that expert yourself. That is primarily done through writing.
It is fairly simple to become "famous" online for a particular subject and that "fame" is useful to generating traffic and income. That is far more likely than having a niche search site become "the" place to go if all it offers is a list of every conference in the world in no particular order.
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Christian_SEO
Joined: Mar 02, 2001
# Posts: 127
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Posted: 2006-Sep-05 03:14
It looks like Jux2 is making money from ads that come from some other provider, so that's clearly the way they are generating income. I had not heard of them before, but if they are getting enough traffic and can produce the docs to verify what they are making, it could be that someone would pay that much.
It's pretty amazing how much traffic there is to go around. But I suspect that that site may have a couple of years to break even for that kind of sale price, but who knows? I DO know that some people will pay a couple years of revenue for a web property, just like they do for some physical businesses. I don't think it's smart, but I've seen it before.
Now, as far as vertical search engines go, I have 3. The second one was launched last February, and the first one a year before. Then this July I launched another one. All are very small, very vertical, but doing ok. The investment consisted of maybe 8 hours of work. The first site took longer, but I have reused the basic template for the next two. All three are on specific topics, all accept submissions, and spider and index sites that I first visit and approve. Revenue comes from Adsense and currently does not ammount to much, call it breakeven. Oh, all three use a spidering and indexing application that I paid $100 for.
I also own 2 directories now. One has been in place for about 3 years (10,000+ listings) and is my biggest money-maker. I started a directory on a specific topic because I thought others on the same topic were rip-offs. I don't charge for listings or collect any personal information. No link-begging either. It's sad to see so many sites charging for links, since I feel it limits a site's potential to gain content. It's also hard to reject submissions when someone is paying for it. Since I don't charge, any junk listings I accept are of my own free choice, and there arn't many...! I also like that I can do what I want with the site and noone can complain since they didn't pay anything.
Anyway, if someone has any interest in directories or search engines they can contact me. My main job is SEO and working with these has really helped me to understand search engine and directory owners much better than before.
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