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View Full Version : $200, $250, $1,000........$100,000!?


Joshimitsu
04-26-2007, 07:07 PM
Hey,

My name's Josh Buckley. I'm basically going to be telling you about my website sales.

1. The beginning
It all started with the first website that i made on my own. It was a media portal that i coded, developed, designed all by myself in PHP and MYSQL, boy was i proud. If i now check the code - i'd probably faint. It was not secure at all!
I was running the site for about a month, and i loved it! It gave me my first taster of what running websites for a living would be like. I had run forums with a friend before, but that's totally different to a full website.

However, after time - i realised that it was time to move on. I had tried adsense on the website. It wasn't making much. This wasn't helped by getting banned a few days later for "invalid clicks"
So I put back-flip on sitepoint. At this time, i would be happy with any amount of money.
I got many bids, a few days later - somebody paid the BIN price for $200.00 and I was ecstatic! This was a lot of money for me at the time.
The site is now down, it was called back-flip.com I can't also find the sitepoint auction thread. It should be easy to find after a bit of searching.
aged 14

2. Wow, that's a nice bit o' cash!
The back-flip sale was a taster of what I could earn off of the internet. Site flipping seemed like the ideal business for me!
After this sale, i took a short break from website sales. I decided to do freelancing. Through this freelancing, i had raised around $2,000. However, that's not the path that i wanted to take.

I decided to outsource a design for a new site i had an idea for. It was basically a pixel2life.com clone, with added web 2.0
I found an auction, and won a great design that was coded for only $30! So, i started making the website. This took about a week as I was in school holidays.

After running the website for about a month, I got bored with the site. There wasn't much user activity and I had no motivation to do anything with it.
I knew that I would list the website on sitepoint, it was just a matter of time. After speaking to bryan le (http://bryanle.net) for a bit, seeking his advice. I decided to list it. He was confident that I would get a great price for the site. He was right.

I listed the site at about 10pm at night, stayed up til about 11pm. I put it up with a $1,000 BIN.
Like neil's story that was posted I went to bed, then waking up to find the website sell for BIN price. This made my day!

Yibbe sale (http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/2964?)
aged 14

3. I didn't really care about this one
You can read about my devtrader sale here (http://www.joshbuckley.net/2007/03/17/so-long-devtrader/)
aged 15

4. Ok, this is getting a bit out of control
Great to see that you have made it to this point, I can now write in present tense. I could write so many pages on this part, but I'm going to try keep it short. I'm pretty sure that I've written tons so far.

Whilst browsing around the digitalpoint forums, I found a domain for $2.00 It was very strange. But it was $2.00.
Why did I buy it? I checked it out, and realised it was pagerank 5. and it was $2.00. I didn't even have any intention of using the domain, but i could easily sell on a pagerank 5 domain, or sell links.

The domain was menewsha.com (http://www.menewsha.com) - Check out the site for yourself. I've been working my ass off on this website since January.
I don't want to get into the revenue details of this site, because I don't want users to find out. But, it's coming extremely close to $5,000 monthly.
I've got some great artists working on this website, and it has brought me quite a lot of online fame. I've been interviewed about it, won awards, had many people curious about it and i've currently got a company putting in an offer on it.

As i write this, the menewsha stats are:
Population: 4,473
Total forum posts: 406,441

A few weeks ago, tyler cruz (http://www.tylercruz.com) had asked me how much I would sell the website for. I wasn't sure, so I asked him how much he thought people would pay for it. He advised me to sell for $100,000 in a few months.

Then, a few days ago - a company based in manchester contacted me about buying the site. I've come across some of their websites before, you may have aswell. They are going to be placing an offer this week, and i know that it will be high $xx,xxx (to $100k [maybe])
I will keep you guys updated on this one.

aged 15

Thanks for reading to this point. I didn't expect this post to end up this long, but I guess an internet entrepreneur's life cannot be summarized :)

p.s. i haven't proofread it, too long :) so, there may be many spelling/grammar mistakes

newhen
04-26-2007, 07:15 PM
holy shit, man im 14 i hope to be like u someday

maggot
04-26-2007, 11:45 PM
Im about the same age. I would like to know the feeling of buying a domain for next to nothing and selling it for a huge amount of money. Anyway keep us posted on the progress of the sale.

Neil
04-27-2007, 04:32 AM
Extremely impressive. Nice work man.

Thanks for sharing your story with us :)

Numb3rs
04-27-2007, 12:28 PM
Where/How did you learn to code?

moneyballs2
04-27-2007, 05:36 PM
congrats on your sucess :)

/me goes green with envy :p

Alex
04-27-2007, 06:46 PM
Im impressed also! Well done on that, and you have a very interesting story. I guess having good web programming skills is very important, and you basically saved lots of money by coding the sites yourself.

Joshimitsu
04-28-2007, 10:48 AM
Thanks for the responses.
The easiest way to learn to code is by doing it...

flopper
04-28-2007, 09:19 PM
Congrat :)
Thanks for sharing the story..

Keagle
04-29-2007, 09:45 AM
Very nice! I'm only 13, so I have 2 years to make my fortune. :)

Swordude
04-30-2007, 02:52 AM
Wow, thats a whole lot of money to make in one year, especially at your age. I'm around your age and I can't imagine making that much. Hopefully sometime I can make a success story though :p

Joshimitsu
05-01-2007, 06:56 PM
Hehe, i'm sure you will be able to. Just put in the hours

mullerrwd
05-05-2007, 11:47 PM
dduuuh, does someone have a towel:P

SticKer
05-08-2007, 02:23 AM
wow very impressive, gr8 stuff man i wish you luck

LoserXP
05-08-2007, 07:41 AM
That was interesting. And please do keep us updated. At such a young age, I really do envy you. xD

TeenZine
05-09-2007, 02:48 AM
very nice site. Also whats your email I may submit a mid $xx,xxx offer though it will have to be a week since I spent over 1k already this week.

Joshimitsu
05-09-2007, 04:00 PM
Sorry TeenZine,
mid $xx,xxx is too low.

stereofreak69
05-11-2007, 08:54 PM
Ok, you said it could sell for 100,000 dollars. Well, did it?

odin
05-13-2007, 01:03 PM
wow that is so awesome, i just need to raise abit of founds then im goig to start creating sites and hopefully i can creat one as good as you.

Yoshi
05-13-2007, 01:13 PM
Extremely good for a young boy :)