Robson

Type: Normal Sale
Domain: BidJam.co.uk - Reverse Auctions: The Lowest Unique Bid Wins!
PR: 4
Sale Price/Budget $: 10,000
Monthly Revenue $: 200
URL: www.bidjam.co.uk

Uniques/Month: 1,000+

Established: December 2006

Page views/Month: 80,000-100,000

Description: BidJam is a reverse auction website. Reverse auctions are a relatively new gaming concept, unlike traditional auctions, in a reverse auction it’s the person with the lowest unique bid that wins.

BidJam is the only reverse auction website in the UK that doesn’t use the “sealed bids” format, thus BidJam is a true game of skill.

The market for reverse auction websites continues to grow, one of the leading UK reverse auction websites is bringing in over £70,000 profit per month.

Currently BidJam has 423 registered members, several of which have made repeat credit purchases. This database can easily be expanded by utilising the “viral system” integrated into BidJam.

The backend was developed for around 8 months and cost close to $3,000. The script is very extensive and includes a lot of powerful features that other reverse auctions simply don’t have. As of right now, there are no turnkey solutions, if you’re interested in getting into the reverse auction market you would have to develop one from scratch. The value of this auction lies in the backend, I got a VERY good deal on this, I have since spoken to several programmers who have told me this code is worth closer to $10,000.

Feature list:

Managing auctions

When adding a new auction you can use HTML in the description, upload a product image, which is automatically resized and formatted. Other variables include the auction price (free, 1, 2, 5, 10 credits) minimum bids, max bids per person, dropdown size, buddy auction and auction start and finishing times.

Auctions can be paused, closed and deleted. Auctions can be edited in real time and auctions can be added for future listing. Therefore, it’s possible to automate the entire website, when one auction finishes another may start.

Managing users

Similar functionality to vbulletin, you can search by username, e-mail or IP address. Alternatively, you can use a quick search to see all users online in the past 24 hours or just unverified users. You can edit a users profile, manually send them a verification e-mail and ban them.

Managing static pages

How does it work?, Winners, Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy are all manageable from the backend, it’s also easy to create additional static pages.

Referral Types

This enables you to add refer types to the registration page, currently we have things such as “Google Adwords”, “Word of Mouth” etc. From within the admincp you can see a graph showing what percentage of registered members came from where.

Buddy Credits

Buddy credits can be earned by inviting your friends to join. When you invite friends an e-mail is sent to them with a unique URL, if they decide to join you will earn credits when they register or purchase credits (depending on how the system is setup). These credits can then be used on special buddy credit only auctions, this limits your overhead as your only expense is the prize you’re giving away.

Promotions

Standard coupon code system, you can create coupons to have limited uses or start and finish dates. You can also create sign-up only, which credits a users account when they join without having to input a code.

Statistics

Similar feature to vbulletin, allows you to view stats on user registrations, bids placed, credits purchased between two particular dates.

Bulk E-mail

Ability to send HTML e-mails to your members or specify a particular group, e.g Subscribers only.

There are literally dozens of other neat features, including capcha code on registration, automated results page generation, forgot your password?, “ebay like” interface for bidding and lots more. It’s probably easier if you have a play around yourself by using the following login information. Unfortunately due to security reasons, the admincp isn’t available for demo.

Username: Test
Password: Test

In my opinion the design for BidJam really sets it apart. The design was created by Nathalie at www.4design.tv and consists of 8 individual pages including a complete forum skin and flash elements. Included in the design is a custom skin for the live chat software, a quick guide and e-mail newsletter designs. I have yet to come across another website that comes close to matching the quality of BidJam.

BidJam has generated £295 since it launched, however, BidJam has been on the shelf for the best part of 8 months, in the initial 3 months when the website was being marketed, BidJam generated £115, in the next 3 months BidJam generated £75 and from June to September BidJam has generated £95 (it must be noted, we had one player who purchased £40 worth of credits) so excluding this from the revenue, it would be £55. It’s also worth noting that NO MARKETING was done after February, all credit purchases were from organic search engine rankings.

BidJam is currently PR4, it’s optimised for the search engines and it holds several top positions in Google and other search engines for popular keywords, a quick search found the following key phrases and their positions in Google.

Number 1 in Google for "lowest unique"
Number 1 in Google for "lowest unique bid"
Number 1 in Google for "lowest unique bid auction wins"
Number 2 in Google for "lowest unique bid auction"
Number 3 in Google for "lowest bid wins"
Number 6 in Google for "lowest bid"
Number 2 in Google for "reverse auction"
Number 2 in Google for "reverse auction wins"

75% of traffic comes via search engines, other traffic comes through directories, blogs and referrals via the integrated buddy system. The only paid advertising that has been done for BidJam was a press release and Google Adwords for several weeks.

I am looking for offers in the region of: $10,000+

Once the website has been sold I will not be able to provide any support to the new owner with fixing coding issues but will happily provide assistance with getting the website installed and running.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to your questions.

Cheers, Rob.

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