Mobilitysite.com is For Sale
Posted by Chris Leckness on 05/17/08 in Site Items
Ok, so yeah, this is a joke. James Kendrick posted about JKontheRun being for sale for a cool 2 million, so I thought I would reflect on some actual thoughts. While James seems to be poking at the rash of major online outlets being sold recently, I have actually been in talks about a sale of Mobilitysite. First off, this sale is not going to happen and second, it was obviously not the same magnitude of the Ars Technica or Cnet sales. Let me tell you a little about it.
The story starts back in the Fall of 2005 when I got an unsolicited email from a company that was interested in buying our forums out. This was back when Aximsite was just Aximsite. iPaqHQ existed, but it wasn’t in the mix really. I had never thought of selling and I really didn’t want to. I said what the heck, tell me what you offer. They came with a 100k offer. At that time, Aximsite’s Alexa rating was around 5k-10k and the forums had anywhere from 300-600 members and 1000’s more guests online at any given time. I don’t regret saying no thanks now. Fast forward to January 2008….
I had another company contact me interested Mobilitysite. About that same time, I saw a link to a website that values websites based on number of items and posted it jokingly on my personal blog. (if you follow the links there, they are no good now as it seems that the site moved on to another idea) This unsolicited contact came at a time where I was frustrated with all the responsibility running a site. The frustrations revolve around all the emails, the management of staff, and dealing with server issues and such. Since I was looking at all these issues, I decided I would give this a serious look. I talked to A LOT of peers, staff members, and my family and decided that if the price was right, I would be able to cope without all that I do.
Luckily for all of you and me, this group never really came with an offer. During that time, I did shop around a little trying to get an idea what was fair and what would be able to afford me the end result I had thought I wanted. I was looking at a normal lifestyle where I went to bed before 2am and got up at 6am to go to work. I do get up at 6am now, but normally do not get to bed before 2am. I work all day and come home and do it again. I was looking at what it would be like having the time after the kids get in bed (8pm - 10-11pm) to do something else. I kind of decided that it would be boring and that I would definitely miss playing with all the gadgets this gig allows me access to. I thought that I could stay in the loop by hopping on board with another established website to stay involved, but I couldn’t see doing things someone else’s way. I like the way I carry on now. In the end, the lack of an offer, gave me more time to reflect and it’s better off this way.
During this time, I did shop the site out a little and got some bites. There were 2 pretty nice offers, but I just can’t see taking them. As the owner of this site, knowing all the hard work others and I put in to this over the last 5+ years, I value the site more than an investor does. We don’t quite have the same traffic we did in the past since the Dell Axim passed away, but we are gaining steam in other areas and our numbers are picking back up fast. We are averaging (according to Google Analytics) about 460,164 unique visitors and 997,429 page views a month. For this, I thank everyone that read the sites, that helps out, all my friends that run other sites, and all the companies that support what we are doing here.
Of course, after reading all this, I will say that if someone does come with an offer similar to the offer that James and Kevin are looking for, I’d be a fool to pass.
Ok, I can’t stop rambling. All this site sale stuff had me thinking obviously and I forgot to mention that I have been killing off side projects and I did sell my SEC Sports Site, SECTALK.com recently. (still in the process of transferring ownership) All this is in effort to streamline my maintenance and administration to allow me more time to focus on the content that I used to have time to right. The choice to move all the forum traffic for both Mobilitysite and Aximsite to one central forum alone provides a great deal of relief. There are issues with search engines, server load, and upgrades and maintenance that this move fixed. I am happy with this choice. Thanks to everyone for supporting me and our WONDERFUL STAFF as we grow.
Written by Chris Leckness · Filed Under Site Items
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I am glad I read the entire story. If it would be on April 1st I wouldn’t have blinked. Thanks for all you guys offer the community.
Well THAT made an interesting RSS title read!
Chris,
Thanks so much for all you do with the site. I recently started working for a company that uses blackberries. I have reluctantly made the switch but continue to read the site. Thanks again and keep up the great work!