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In my last article on this subject, I outlined some basic steps you can use to assess a Website’s potential, and identify ways to increase its value. By no means am I an expert, but having just bought and sold my third site for a substantial profit I feel it is time to update what I’ve learned as an elder tribesman might impart wisdom to a younger tribesman. So, bring me my coffee and we’ll get started!
在有关该主题的上一篇文章中 ,我概述了一些基本步骤,您可以使用这些基本步骤来评估网站的潜力,并确定增加其价值的方法。 我绝对不是专家,但是我以高额利润购入和出售了我的第三个站点,我觉得现在是时候更新我所学的知识了,作为一个长老部落的人可能会把智慧传授给一个年轻的部落人。 因此,请带上我的咖啡,我们将开始!
快速回顾 (A Quick Review)
As we discussed previously, the main thing you need to do after you’ve bought a Website is a serious evaluation of the whole concern. We invented the TERM analysis (Target audience, Effectiveness for users, Return users and Mining untapped resources) and this is still my primary evaluative tool, used both before and after I purchase a site. It allows me to clearly see the flaws of a given site.
如前所述,购买网站后您需要做的主要事情是对整个问题进行认真评估。 我们发明了TERM分析(T ARGET观众,E ffectiveness用户,R E打开用户和M都进不去未开发的资源),这仍然是我的主要评估工具,之前和之后我购买网站使用。 它使我可以清楚地看到给定站点的缺陷。
我们的新工具 (Our New Tool)
While being able to see the flaws of a site is a good thing, we need to go further than simply looking at a site’s weak points. When you’re in the market to buy or sell a site (as with any property or investment), you need to know the value of what you’re trying to sell. Five key aspects that I evaluate (though I realize there likely more than these five), are the:
能够看到站点的缺陷是一件好事,但我们需要走得更远,而不仅仅是查看站点的弱点。 当您在市场上购买或出售网站时(与任何财产或投资一样),您需要知道要出售的商品的价值。 我评估的五个关键方面是(尽管我意识到可能不止这五个方面):
Potential,
P otential,
existing Income,
现有我 ncome,
the value of the Software that runs the site,
的价值oftware s表示运行的网站,
Traffic and
Ťraffic和
What information you can gather to form a TERM analysis.
您可以收集哪些信息以形成T ERM分析。
购买网站 (Buying the Site)
I stumbled upon the site for sale in the Site Exchange section of SitePoint Forums back in May, and picked it up for a good price. RingQuest was a fairly popular Lord of the Rings Website with a rather active and devoted community.
我在5月份的SitePoint论坛的“ 网站交换”部分偶然发现了该网站进行出售,然后以高价将其购得 。 RingQuest是一个颇受欢迎的指环王网站,拥有一个活跃而忠诚的社区。
进行中的PISTT分析 (The PISTT Analysis in Action)
Before I bought the site, I went through the PISTT analysis. Here’s what I came up with.
在购买网站之前,我先进行了PISTT分析。 这是我想出的。
Potential
潜在
The potential of a Lord of the Rings site is actually huge. This particular site was launched after the release of the first LOTR movie. Thus, it missed the original wave of exposure that many other sites enjoyed, yet it performed better than many of these sites (mainly as a result of the community’s passion for the topic).
指环王站点的潜力实际上是巨大的。 该特定网站是在发行第一部LOTR电影之后启动的。 因此,它错过了许多其他网站所享受的原始曝光热潮,但其效果却好于许多其他网站(主要是由于社区对该主题的热情所致)。
I figured that by the time the third movie came out, this site could easily be 10,000 members strong, pulling in millions of page views per month. The potential for a solid newsletter and decent advertising revenues had remained entirely untapped.
我认为,到第三部电影问世时,该站点就很容易成为10,000名成员的强大成员,每月吸引了数百万的页面浏览量。 稳定的时事通讯和可观的广告收入的潜力仍未完全开发。
Income
收入
The site’s current income was actually quite low. The previous owner freely admitted that generating income wasn’t really his strong point — and this was one of the reasons he’d decided to sell the site. At the time of the sale, he made a monthly loss of roughly $100, and simply couldn’t afford to run the site anymore.
该站点的当前收入实际上很低。 以前的所有者自由地承认,创造收入并不是他真正的强项-这是他决定出售该网站的原因之一。 在出售时,他每月亏损约100美元,根本负担不起再经营该网站。
The reason the income was so low was that the site relied entirely upon affiliate sales through Amazon.com. While there is nothing wrong with affiliate programs providing the key source of a site’s income, as Chris Beasley has explained before, the fact that the site’s target audience is teenagers means they weren’t likely to be buying much with mom and dad’s credit cards. So the potential for revenue had been largely unexplored.
收入如此之低的原因是该站点完全依赖于通过Amazon.com进行的联属销售。 正如克里斯·比斯利 ( Chris Beasley)之前解释的那样 ,尽管联盟计划提供了网站收入的主要来源没有什么问题,但该网站的目标受众是青少年这一事实意味着,他们不太可能用父母的信用卡购买很多东西。 因此,尚未充分挖掘潜在的收入。
Software
软件
One of the key values of any site is the worth of the software that makes it run. For many sites this is negligible, but this site was run using some rather pricey software modules.
任何站点的关键价值之一就是使它可以运行的软件的价值。 对于许多站点而言,这可以忽略不计,但是此站点是使用一些价格昂贵的软件模块运行的。
These included vBulletin, an Image Gallery script, and a Knowledge Base script. Together, these inclusions totalled nearly $500 in value — $500 that I would have needed to spend were I to start from scratch.
其中包括vBulletin,图像库脚本和知识库脚本。 这些内含物加起来总共价值近500美元-如果我从头开始,我将需要花费500美元。
Traffic
交通
Traffic was perhaps one of the site’s biggest strengths. When I was looking to buy it, RingQuest attracted 300,000 page views per month — well beyond what all my other sites were achieving combined! I figured that the site represented a good opportunity to gain considerable exposure for the rest of my network, and I was right.
流量也许是该网站最大的优势之一。 当我打算购买它时,RingQuest每月吸引了300,000次页面浏览量-远远超过我所有其他网站的总和! 我认为该站点代表了一个很好的机会,可以让我的其余网络获得可观的曝光率,我是对的。
TERM
术语
A quick TERM analysis revealed the following:
快速的TERM分析显示以下内容:
Target Audience: teenagers, a notoriously difficult market from which to make revenue.
目标受众:青少年,这个很难获得收入的市场。
Effectiveness for users: very effective for users, though the lack of health and maturity of the community was definitely something that needed changing.
对用户的有效性:对用户非常有效,尽管社区缺乏健康和成熟绝对是需要改变的事情。
Returning Users: users were returning a lot, as is the nature of a good community site.
回头客:用户回头率很高,一个好的社区网站的本质就是如此。
Mining for untapped resources: the untapped resources included community health, a sense of purpose, enough revenue to be self-supporting, and the potential for a newsletter.
挖掘未开发的资源:未开发的资源包括社区健康,目标意识,足够的收入以自给自足以及发行时事通讯的潜力。
Results of PISTT
PISTT的结果
The PISTT analysis showed that the site was a good buy. I was able to pick it up for more than I’d ever spent on a site, but less than I figured it was worth at the time (let alone how much it would grow if I could fix some of the problems within the community).
PISTT分析表明该网站是不错的选择。 我能够以比我在网站上花费的更多的钱来购买它,但比当时的价值还低(更不用说如果我能解决社区中的一些问题,它会增长多少) 。
The site’s biggest drawback wasn’t that it was losing money, though this was an issue. The greatest issue was that the community was full of rot. The members had stagnated, there was no leadership, and there was little true sense of "community" (most of the active threads were related to how nice Orlando Bloom’s (Legolas’) rear end was). There was definitely room for improvement within the community.
该网站的最大缺点不是亏损,尽管这是一个问题。 最大的问题是社区充满了腐烂。 成员停滞不前,没有领导,也没有真正的“社区感”(大多数活跃话题都与奥兰多·布鲁姆(Legolas)的后端有多出色有关)。 社区内部肯定还有改进的空间。
建立网站的价值 (Building the Site’s Value)
There were literally hundreds of little changes that were made to the site, but there were four key changes that I instigated before it was made available for sale:
实际上,对该网站进行了数百项小的更改,但是在将其发布之前,我曾提出了四项关键更改:
- ensuring the community grew up a little, 确保社区成长一点点,
- implementing a leadership group and structure which was healthy and active, 实施健康活跃的领导小组和结构,
- starting a newsletter and 开始时事通讯
- improving the income through simple advertising initiatives. 通过简单的广告计划来提高收入。
Today the community still has some of the old Orlando Bloom discussions, but there are many more interesting discussions going on all the time about a variety of LOTR-related subjects. The leadership group is coming into their own now, as they implement new features and ideas that I could never have come up with on my own.
今天,社区中仍然有一些旧的奥兰多·布鲁姆(Orlando Bloom)讨论,但是一直以来,关于LOTR相关主题的讨论仍在进行着更多有趣的讨论。 领导小组现在正在发挥自己的作用,因为他们实施了我无法独自提出的新功能和新想法。
The newsletter subscriber base is now 50,000-strong, the site receives more traffic than any other Lord of the Rings site, and it is now profitable.
时事通讯的订户基数现已达到50,000人,该网站获得的流量比任何其他《指环王》网站都多,并且现在已经可以盈利。
进行销售 (Making The Sale)
This step was definitely the hardest. With previous sites it was easy — after all, they were just some code and a few images — but with RingQuest I was effectively selling members and friends into the care of another. That buyer might not have the same sense of honor or care that I had for the community. They might be someone who’d sell the site on in just a few short months, causing irreparable harm to the community. Or the buyer may be someone so inexperienced they would simply break the site. How could I avoid this?
这一步绝对是最难的。 使用以前的站点很容易-毕竟,它们只是一些代码和一些图像-但是使用RingQuest可以有效地将成员和朋友推销给另一个人。 那个买家可能没有我对社区那样的荣誉感或关心。 他们可能是短短几个月内就出售网站的人,对社区造成了无法弥补的伤害。 或买家可能是一个没有经验的人,他们只会破坏网站。 我如何避免这种情况?
I decided that I would sell the site only to a purchaser who had the community in mind. Once I found someone, I put together a plan for the hand-over, which we agreed would need to be a long-term process.
我决定只将网站出售给考虑社区的购买者。 一旦找到某人,我就制定了移交计划,我们认为这将是一个长期的过程。
The hand-over is still ongoing, but the new owner has now registered and is becoming active in the community. The leadership team has been informed of the sale, and information has been leaked through to let the members know that a new admin will be "arriving" in a couple of months, while I will be stepping back.
移交仍在进行中,但是新所有者现已注册并在社区中变得活跃。 领导团队已获悉此次出售的消息,并且信息已经泄漏出去,让成员们知道新管理员将在几个月后“到达”,而我将退后一步。
Within the next few weeks the new admin will become a "Guide" (similar to the Mentors at SitePoint forums) and 2-3 weeks later will become a Leader (mini-admin). After about 3 weeks in a leadership role I’ll promote him to co-admin for several weeks so he can become familiar with the powers, responsibilities and inner workings of the site and its userbase. Then — and only then — will I slowly step back in much the same way that he stepped up.
在接下来的几周内,新管理员将成为“指南”(类似于SitePoint论坛上的“导师”),而2-3周后将成为领导者(小型管理员)。 在担任领导角色约3周之后,我将提升他与他人共同管理数周,以便他熟悉该网站及其用户群的功能,职责和内部工作方式。 然后-直到那时-我将以他站起来的方式慢慢地后退。
这值得么? (Is it Worth it?)
Absolutely. By buying this site, I was able to turn a hefty profit in just a few months, make a community healthy, and gain incredible experience in community management. But, more than anything else, I gained friends and had a lot of fun.
绝对。 通过购买此站点,我在短短几个月内就获得了巨额利润,使社区变得健康,并获得了令人难以置信的社区管理经验。 但是,最重要的是,我赢得了朋友,并获得了很多乐趣。
I doubt that this experience is rare. After all, to really build up a site and add value to what’s there when you make the purchase, you must be extremely involved with that site. Through this involvement, you’ll have the chance to learn, enjoy, and make new friends. Buying and selling Websites is well worth the effort!
我怀疑这种经历是罕见的。 毕竟,要真正建立一个网站并在购买时增加价值,您必须与该网站密切相关。 通过这种参与,您将有机会学习,享受并结识新朋友。 买卖网站非常值得!
So to those who are looking to buy or sell a site, the PISTT and TERM analysis may well be the best tools you will ever find… and all credit for the PISTT analysis goes to the crew at SitePoint Forums! Until my next endeavour, keep your eyes open for value and your heart open to dream!
因此,对于那些打算买卖网站的人来说,PISTT和TERM分析很可能是您找到的最好的工具……而PISTT分析的全部功劳归于SitePoint论坛的工作人员! 在我下一次努力之前,请睁开眼睛寻求价值,并敞开心to去做梦!
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