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Re the emails / support / whatever being stressy... dude. It's been like no time at all, and you had a spike. You don't have to reply to EVERYTHING ASAP. All th

Re the emails / support / whatever being stressy... dude. It's been like no time at all, and you had a spike. You don't have to reply to EVERYTHING ASAP. All things in moderation. Set up an autoresponder politely telling folks that you're a single person and the spike in requests is a bit overwhelming. ask their forgiveness and let them know that you'll get to people as soon as you can. With that out of the way, congratulations on the spike in traffic. After having been on the front page of multiple programmer sites I can tell you it's just that. It's a good day. You may even get a good week out of it. Unless you are incredibly atypical the spike in traffic will not last. There's absolutely no basis for assuming that traffic will continue at the spiked rate. It tells me your either naively optimistic (sorry to inject an unpleasant reality) or trying to sell it quick to someone else who is naively optimistic. The upside is that the onslaught of requests is that since it's a spike, they will die down and you'll be able to catch up. The longest, and hardest, i had was a project that ended up with me stuffing envelopes every night and making daily trips to the post office sending of letters to people around the world because my offer started getting passed from message board to message board. It lasted about a month. I'm very dubious of the belief that adding "more advantages" would get you a 10-15% conversion without any evidence to back it up, especially when you can't even be sure of the 1% conversion rate you think you can get for the current state of things. You can't extrapolate an enduring income stream (or even an amount of work) from a single small spike.

patio11 12y ago
Everything in this comment is correct. If I may also give a brief suggestion, coming from a place of a lot of love for bootstrappers and sympathy for your situation, there is a line in your post which suggests that people compensate you for the 2.5 years you put into this when making an offer. I am afraid that this is at variance to how the world works generally and how acquisitions of small websites work specifically. People pay for their future revenues, not your sunk costs. In the world of small website acquisitions, you'll be valued at something like 1X your previously proven annual revenue, not at a linear projection from what spike day looked like. If that number is -- let me pick a representative example -- $100, then you have a $100 site, not a $60,000 site, even if $60k is a reasonable approximation of the cost of duplicating it using market labor. Also, as someone who also has struggled / struggles with depression: it is much much better for yourself and the world on net for you to just say "I am under stress and cannot email today, therefore, I will not email today." than for you to be adversely affected trying to get people replies to their questions about a browser game. Some people may be discomfit by this. That's fine. There is an entire Internet full of browser games. There is only one you. Do whatever you need to to not have this adversely effect you and your loved ones. Congratulations on shipping, by the way. Very few people can do it. You demonstrably can. That's awesome. You've got a lifetime of shipping successful software businesses ahead of you, regardless of what happens in the next short while.
- ntaso 12y ago
  Is it really that low? 1 times annual revenue? So BCC would be worth only a mid-five-figure number (not sure what your last reported numbers were)?
  - peterjancelis 12y ago
    1 times annual revenue is actually a bit high. I've seen affiliate sites sell for 4 to 6 months of revenue. The reason is that after paying for the labor to maintain it there is very little profit in those websites. You are buying a job basically. Also, it's not unheard of for a small physical business to make 10% profit margin and to sell for 10 times profit. So that's around 1 time revenue as well.
    - prostoalex 12y ago
      There's a premium for established sites (user community, backlinks, PageRank) compared to brand new sites.
  - patio11 12y ago
    It really is that low. BCC might get a slight premium because I have better options for buyers than Flippa, it has an exceptionally long history, and there's some value from association with me, but websites are not valued like businesses or startups. There exist plenty of excellent reasons why this is true: extreme risk from sites which are overly dependent on one or two traffic sources, implicit cost of operation often not being counted as a cost by the owner (BCC runs itself... It only requires the very occasional attention of a Rails-competent Ubuntu sysadmin. That's "free" to me but not free to the new buyer, and that sort of stuff adds up quickly when compared to five figure revenues.), transaction costs (time, training new owner or staff, etc) having to get recouped, a risk premium because it is a market for lemons and buyers feel that sellers may sell because of material no disclosed information like "I recently pissed off Google and the site may vanish from the Internet", etc. Ultimately of course things are worth what a buyer will pay you for them, but market is about 1X for "typical" sites at the moment.
downandout 12y ago
>Unless you are incredibly atypical the spike in traffic will not last. The spike won't last, but it doesn't mean that it won't grow consistently from where it is into something much larger than it is today. > It tells me your either naively optimistic (sorry to inject an unpleasant reality) or trying to sell it quick to someone else who is naively optimistic. That's pretty judgmental. This obviously has the potential to grow. If he doesn't want to deal with it or maybe needs the money now, he isn't doing anything wrong by trying to sell it to someone that sees the same potential that inspired him to spend 2 years creating it. Maybe he won't get $60K, and maybe he'll get more. Maybe somebody will offer to invest in it and allow him to draw a salary while he grows it. Maybe he'll be hired by someone that has a use for the talent and dedication he displayed by building this. Regardless of the outcome, it's clearly worth something, and if he wants or needs to sell, I hope he gets a fair offer.
- gus_massa 12y ago
  If it grows slowly and consistently you have time to automate some of the repetitive task, find a revenue source, hire an (helpful) assistant, ... Some solutions are not abaiable during a spike. For example, if you hire a moron to help during the spike, you still have to pay him after the spike has gone or fire him. (And you have even more problems during the spike, because you have to find him and coach him.) So it's better to wait until you know if the traffic increase is permanent or it's only a spike.
- RogerL 12y ago
  > The spike won't last, but it doesn't mean that it won't grow consistently from where it is into something much larger than it is today. That is absolutely true, but investors don't invest based on "doesn't mean". The equation is discounted future free cash flow minus risk premium, and usually, minus how desperate you are to sell. If you are big and threatening (can take away Facebook's customers), then that adds some plus to the equation. If you are trying to sell Apple we can talk about projecting future growth - the equation changes dramatically. A PHP game with a one day spike? No. This could be the next minecraft, but more likely it'll make 1K this month, $500 next month, and so on into obscurity, is the thinking. Disagree? Show us the numbers. You'll get about 1x on those numbers, as others have ably pointed out. I think we all agree he has done extremely well to get to this point, and that we hope he gets fair value. But I can't imagine spending that much money to basically buy myself a job in the hopes of a revenue stream that the owner has not generated for himself. I think the advice he has gotten to take a breather, and take stock in a few weeks is extremely sound. If he can make a case for his revenue #s he will get a nice price for his game. But he needs to understand what investors are thinking about his pitch. That is not bashing him or being judgemental, it is merely echoing what the market is going to be thinking. How else will he get fair value? The goodness of the investor's heart? tl;dr - the things being written may be painful to read, but they come from people with experience and a friendly desire to explain how to do business valuation. It in no way implies an assumption of a limited upside in the future of the game.
elwell 12y ago
> trying to sell it quick to someone else who is naively optimistic That's the vibe I got from this post too.

patio11 12y ago

Everything in this comment is correct. If I may also give a brief suggestion, coming from a place of a lot of love for bootstrappers and sympathy for your situation, there is a line in your post which suggests that people compensate you for the 2.5 years you put into this when making an offer. I am afraid that this is at variance to how the world works generally and how acquisitions of small websites work specifically. People pay for their future revenues, not your sunk costs. In the world of small website acquisitions, you'll be valued at something like 1X your previously proven annual revenue, not at a linear projection from what spike day looked like. If that number is -- let me pick a representative example -- $100, then you have a $100 site, not a $60,000 site, even if $60k is a reasonable approximation of the cost of duplicating it using market labor. Also, as someone who also has struggled / struggles with depression: it is much much better for yourself and the world on net for you to just say "I am under stress and cannot email today, therefore, I will not email today." than for you to be adversely affected trying to get people replies to their questions about a browser game. Some people may be discomfit by this. That's fine. There is an entire Internet full of browser games. There is only one you. Do whatever you need to to not have this adversely effect you and your loved ones. Congratulations on shipping, by the way. Very few people can do it. You demonstrably can. That's awesome. You've got a lifetime of shipping successful software businesses ahead of you, regardless of what happens in the next short while.

ntaso 12y ago
Is it really that low? 1 times annual revenue? So BCC would be worth only a mid-five-figure number (not sure what your last reported numbers were)?
- peterjancelis 12y ago
  1 times annual revenue is actually a bit high. I've seen affiliate sites sell for 4 to 6 months of revenue. The reason is that after paying for the labor to maintain it there is very little profit in those websites. You are buying a job basically. Also, it's not unheard of for a small physical business to make 10% profit margin and to sell for 10 times profit. So that's around 1 time revenue as well.
  - prostoalex 12y ago
    There's a premium for established sites (user community, backlinks, PageRank) compared to brand new sites.
- patio11 12y ago
  It really is that low. BCC might get a slight premium because I have better options for buyers than Flippa, it has an exceptionally long history, and there's some value from association with me, but websites are not valued like businesses or startups. There exist plenty of excellent reasons why this is true: extreme risk from sites which are overly dependent on one or two traffic sources, implicit cost of operation often not being counted as a cost by the owner (BCC runs itself... It only requires the very occasional attention of a Rails-competent Ubuntu sysadmin. That's "free" to me but not free to the new buyer, and that sort of stuff adds up quickly when compared to five figure revenues.), transaction costs (time, training new owner or staff, etc) having to get recouped, a risk premium because it is a market for lemons and buyers feel that sellers may sell because of material no disclosed information like "I recently pissed off Google and the site may vanish from the Internet", etc. Ultimately of course things are worth what a buyer will pay you for them, but market is about 1X for "typical" sites at the moment.

downandout 12y ago

>Unless you are incredibly atypical the spike in traffic will not last. The spike won't last, but it doesn't mean that it won't grow consistently from where it is into something much larger than it is today. > It tells me your either naively optimistic (sorry to inject an unpleasant reality) or trying to sell it quick to someone else who is naively optimistic. That's pretty judgmental. This obviously has the potential to grow. If he doesn't want to deal with it or maybe needs the money now, he isn't doing anything wrong by trying to sell it to someone that sees the same potential that inspired him to spend 2 years creating it. Maybe he won't get $60K, and maybe he'll get more. Maybe somebody will offer to invest in it and allow him to draw a salary while he grows it. Maybe he'll be hired by someone that has a use for the talent and dedication he displayed by building this. Regardless of the outcome, it's clearly worth something, and if he wants or needs to sell, I hope he gets a fair offer.

gus_massa 12y ago
If it grows slowly and consistently you have time to automate some of the repetitive task, find a revenue source, hire an (helpful) assistant, ... Some solutions are not abaiable during a spike. For example, if you hire a moron to help during the spike, you still have to pay him after the spike has gone or fire him. (And you have even more problems during the spike, because you have to find him and coach him.) So it's better to wait until you know if the traffic increase is permanent or it's only a spike.
RogerL 12y ago
> The spike won't last, but it doesn't mean that it won't grow consistently from where it is into something much larger than it is today. That is absolutely true, but investors don't invest based on "doesn't mean". The equation is discounted future free cash flow minus risk premium, and usually, minus how desperate you are to sell. If you are big and threatening (can take away Facebook's customers), then that adds some plus to the equation. If you are trying to sell Apple we can talk about projecting future growth - the equation changes dramatically. A PHP game with a one day spike? No. This could be the next minecraft, but more likely it'll make 1K this month, $500 next month, and so on into obscurity, is the thinking. Disagree? Show us the numbers. You'll get about 1x on those numbers, as others have ably pointed out. I think we all agree he has done extremely well to get to this point, and that we hope he gets fair value. But I can't imagine spending that much money to basically buy myself a job in the hopes of a revenue stream that the owner has not generated for himself. I think the advice he has gotten to take a breather, and take stock in a few weeks is extremely sound. If he can make a case for his revenue #s he will get a nice price for his game. But he needs to understand what investors are thinking about his pitch. That is not bashing him or being judgemental, it is merely echoing what the market is going to be thinking. How else will he get fair value? The goodness of the investor's heart? tl;dr - the things being written may be painful to read, but they come from people with experience and a friendly desire to explain how to do business valuation. It in no way implies an assumption of a limited upside in the future of the game.

elwell 12y ago

> trying to sell it quick to someone else who is naively optimistic That's the vibe I got from this post too.