I'm a college student that created a site just for fun that ended up turning into a lucrative business. I'm finishing up my bachelor's degree and will be doing an internship and then starting a master's program and I doubt I'll have the time to do graduate school and business at the same time, so I'm considering selling the business.

The business site is www.ibosystems.com (http://www.ibosystems.com). What I did was develop a completely automated system (called IBO Portal) that creates replicated websites for Quixtar IBOs (independent business owners) which are hosted on my webhosting account. There is a working demo of our flagship service IBO Portal on the website. Quixtar is the sister company of Amway and there are currently around 1 million IBOs which are potential clients.

We are the only 3rd party provider of IBO websites and we have a working relationship with the Quixtar corporation. I would be happy to provide our point of contact to interested parties to verify our working relationship.

IBO Systems launched the beta version of IBO Portal in July, 2003 and the official version in January, 2004. The system has run flawlessly with little involvement on my part. The system uses basic PHP and a MySQL database. Each client has a personal folder where they can upload images or files that they need to link to. Total space used on the hard drive for all 86 clients is 93MB and 1.4MB for SQL. As you can see, even a small web hosting account is capable of running this system.

We use 2checkout for our billing so they handle most billing issues like updating credit card info.

IBO Systems currently has three sources of income: websites (IBO Portal), domain registration, and free business cards (through VistaPrint.com).

Now for the good stuff:

Quarterly clients: 56 at $49.95 = $11,189/yr
Monthly clients: 30 at $19.95 = $7182/yr
Total clients: 86 for $18,371/yr

Domain registrations: ~ $1700/yr
Most of our clients use our domain registration service which charges $29.95/yr. We used to use Enom but we recently switched to Domain Discover as they provide a better wholesale cost ($10 total, no transaction fees), they provide 24/7 toll free support to our clients (so we don't have to provide any tech support), and finally they created a system whereby our clients' domains are automatically configured to work with IBO Portal (so niether the client or us has to do anything). It's all about automation ;)

Free business cards: ~ $100-200/yr

Total revenues net of 2checkout transaction fees and Domain Discover wholesale price is ~ $19,000/yr

Here's the best part...the ongoing cost to run everything is only $35/mo for our hosting account! Presumably you already have a hosting account, so it wouldn't cost anything but a small amount of server resources.

We occassionally will use Overture or Google Adwords for the keyword "quixtar" and that runs about $.10-15 a click if used. Our current SE rankings for key terms are as follows (G = Google, M = MSN, Y = Yahoo):

quixtar presentation (G=1, M=3,4, Y: 2,3)
quixtar tools (Y=2,3, M=4, G=9)
quixtar ibo (M=3,4, Y=7, G=16,17)
quixtar opportunity (M=7,8, G=8, Y=13)
quixtar website (M=7, G=15)
quixtar business (M=7,8, Y=15,17, G=34)
quixtar business cards (M=1,2, Y=1,2, G=10)
quixtar prospects (Y=1,3, M=6,7, G=20)
quixtar (M=39, Y=60)

What is included in the sale:

ibosystems.com and iboportal.com
all files and images (about $5000 in stock photography)
all 86 clients
domain registration account (enom and domain discover)
business card account
I'll stay on until May to make the transition seamless


What is required to run the business: Just basic PHP and MySQL skills...nothing fancy. Everything is automated so the only thing to do is maybe add a new design template once in a while and answer basic support questions. Of course a webhosting account is needed.

What is the cost: $15,000 minimum offer to be handled through escrow.com to protect both parties. Interested parties should PM me or contact me at adam@ibosystems.com. Serious inquiries only please.

I spent two years puting this system together in such a way that it would require minimal work on my part. Virtually everything that can be automated is automated. I've found that with my school load as an honor's student I don't even have enough time to add new design templates or add new site features, and I would really hate to see all my hard work be wasted. Unfortunately I have to decide between keeping my business and being mediocre at my future profession, or selling my business and being at the top of my game in my future profession. It looks like in the end my education has to take precedence.

Awesome looking site/system. Good luck with the sale! :)

Very interesting, I'll keep an eye on this thread.

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention one of the greatest aspects about this business. Since our clients are network marketers and constantly recruiting new people into their business, their constantly recruiting new clients (their downline) for us. It's like having a built in sales force that costs nothing ;) This is why we don't do a whole lot of paid advertising anymore. Once the snowball gets started...

You should advertise on DNFORUM.COM, some big spenders are there :).

Thank you Camp2Win, I'll definately check it out.

Here's some additional stats on how many clients we got per month for the last year. We did a lot of PPC advertising early on during the first 6 months and very little in the last six months.

Jan(04) - 18
Feb - 20
Mar - 35
Apr - 17
May - 24
Jun - 12
July - 5
Aug - 18
Sep - 18
Oct - 14
Nov - 10
Dec - 7
Jan(05) - 9


Total clients signing up = 207
Current clients = 86

Network marketing companies have turnover rates of 95%+, but our turnover rate is only about 58%, indicating that our service must be adding value to our clients' businesses. Furthermore, we still have many of our original clients. With little or no PPC advertising over the past 6 months we've been able to maintain about the same number of clients. Spending $200-300 a month on PPC will only increase the client base.

For months where we used PPC advertising we made 3 times as much in revenues as we spent on the advertising! And that doesn't take into account that it is recurring revenue ;)

This is indeed very interesting and a very nice site and program. Good luck.

Adam,

Thanks for posting this additional information. Certainly helps anyone who is evaluating your offer.

By the way, the site is extremely well put together, I want to commend you on a job well done.

Good luck with your future ventures.

On 12-10-04 we started a new PPC advertising campaign via Overture. Since then we have spent $268 on PPC, aquired 16 new clients, and earned $619 in additional revenues.

Since we started using PPC in January, 2004 we've found that we bring in $2-3 in immediate income (ie not including recurring revenue) for every $1 spent on PPC advertising. We've found Overture, Google Adwords, and Findwhat.com to be very effective advertising for us.

That's a great return on investment! Wow, I wish the hosting world could yield such a return.

That's exactly why I didn't get into retail web hosting. Too much competition and too little profitability. Why maintain servers when I can net $20k on 100MB of harddisk space ;)

:( Now that you put it that way!! That's not bad at all. You definitely got yourself into the right business. I tell you what, I can run it for you while you stay in school and split the revenue with you!! :) How about that?

I've received an offer for $15,000. I'll be setting up my escrow.com account tonight hopefully. Let me know if you want to make a higher offer.

In the meantime I just started using PPC advertising on Google Adwords, and Findwhat.com again, along with my current Overture campaign. Maybe I can drum up some more business to sweeten the pot ;)

Good luck with the sale my man and good luck in school. Let us know how things en up with your sale. Hope you find someone who can carry your good work forward.

I use 3dstats for my stat tracking and it occured to me that I can export stats to Excel format so I've put together a couple stats files for those that are interested.

2004 Search Engine Info (http://www.ibosystems.com/ibosystems_se.xls)

2004-2005 Visitor Stats (http://www.ibosystems.com/ibosystems_stats.xls)

Enjoy ;)

So that I don't have to repeat myself so many times in all the emails and PMs I decided to put together screen captures of my 2Checkout account payments since we started the business, and my domain registration account payments for the last 6 months. This is probably the best way to provide income verification. The screen captures are in a zip file (305kb).

Income verification (http://www.ibosystems.com/income_verification.zip)

Enjoy ;)

Upon reviewing our income verification posted above and looking at the income stream for the last six months for websites and domain registrations, we have decided to increase the minimum offer.

Revenues for last six months: $11,415.75

That means with zero growth (highly unlikely) we should expect around $23,000 in revenues annually give or take. At an asking price of $15k we were 50/50 on whether or not we would decide to actually sell the business. In light of my analysis it's unlikely that we would choose to let the business go at $15k. Instead, for me to feel reasonably confident of being willing to sell the business I need to raise the asking price. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

New asking price: $20,000

I just got my 1099s from my domain registration partners and it turns out my annual domain registration earnings wasn't $1700, it was $3200 :)

For interested parties who have not already received this Word .doc via email with all the details about the business, here it is:

Full Business Details (http://www.ibosystems.com/description.doc)

We've had quite a few interested parties at the current asking price of $20k, but I would like to close a deal and complete the transfer before my mid-terms and class projects begin so I'm going to lower the price to $18,500 which will start you off with a positive net profit.

Because I need to get this done asap this will not be done in a bidding format. Instead, the first offer of $18,500 will win. If we receive multiple offers, your offer will be accepted in the order it was received. If the person ahead of you falls through, then your offer of $18.5k will be accepted, and so on.

Good luck everyone ;) Offers can be emailed to adam@ibosystems.com. I'll notify you of your position (or winning offer) within 24 hours of receiving it.

An updated Word .doc file is available with more info and proof of income and costs. You can get the Word doc here: Business Info Update (http://www.ibosystems.com/description.doc)

I did an analysis of our PPC advertising over the past 19 months and found that we spent a total of $4713 or $248/mo on average. Most of that was spent early on when we first launched the business of course. More details like this have been added to the Word .doc so be sure to check it out :)

have you gotten any offers? My offer still stands on working a deal where I run the business and you get paid out within time!!

As always good luck.

Always a last resort!!

Thanks for the offer cahostnet, but if no offers are received I could just let the business run on auto pilot and still collect the recurring revenue. I've been doing just that for the last year and I would make more in the next three years (while I'm in school) doing that than selling the business for monthly payments ;) In effect I'm getting monthly payments in perpetuity as it is. Now I'm offering to sell those payments for one lump sum payment.

Well I tried :)

Hi Adam,

Did you sell this yet?

I haven't sold it yet.

Hello adam,

Sorry to open up an old thread. I was wondering if you sold this bussines or not?

Yes, the business has been sold. But thank you for your interest.