So lately I have invested some of my valuable time into an RSS-based news aggregator called World News Planet. It was the first website I made with the intention to sell and the first one I sold.
After I finished the designing I bought a $2.88 .info I had in mind already and wrote the auction text. I bought a SitePoint Marketplace listing for $10 and posted a cross-promotion at Digital Point. The minimum bid was quite low, $40 but I thought people could go all the way up to the Buy-It-Now price of $100.
After correcting some small errors I started waiting and within 10 minutes I received a PM from some guy asking how the site worked. I explained it to him and a minute later I received an email saying he had placed his bid… at $100!
So I PM’d him back explaining the details of the deal and then read another PM of someone who wanted to just buy the script I used. I promised the buyer the exclusive rights to it so I denied and told him to place a stand-by bid. 30 minutes after I had received the first bid, two stand-by bids of both $100 had been placed.
As I’m writing I have been paid and the domain name has been transferred, so the webhosting needs only to be changed. In just one hour I have made a $87.12 profit, generated a lead to my PHP coding business and learned not to underestimate myself and to use BIN prices wisely.
Update: I just learned that the winning bidder is now trying to sell the site to at least one losing bidder for $400, 4 times the price he paid for it. I feel sorry for Jimmy Wales.
