How much do you think Boards.ie is worth?

airetam_storm

Eh theres only 500million in europe?

\edit\ And 250million in US

garred

airetam_storm wrote:

Eh theres only 500million in europe?

\edit\ And 250million in US

Your probably right but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest

jank

Worth quite a bit imo, as a brand more then anything.

It has a very very good turnover that keeps the site ticking over, I was actually really surprised how much when i found out.

Saying that I dont know how much it costs to run so it probably eats away at 99% of that income.

airetam_storm

garred wrote:

Your probably right but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest

Must be broadcast in the US and and Asia aswell

What proportion on irish internet users would know of boards? Someone said earlier that 1/3 would but that seems awful high

garred

ah yeah I'd say its broadcast in other regions besides Europe.

Boards is a handy site. You can buy stuff, sell stuff and with so many different professions as members you get advice from a virus on your pc to a rash on your dingaling.

Anyway it will never be sold. The owners/developers, all the mods, super-mods, super-duper-mods, in their eyes we (the users) are priceless and no money in the world is worth giving us up for.

I'm right arn't I?

DeVore

|.Murderer.| wrote:

To me, boards.ie is priceless. But to a tycoon, boards.ie is worth very little and in order to transform it into a profitable business the site itself would change drastically into something that the majority of us may hate!

... and then you would all leave and its "value" would drop like a stone.

Boards is like smoke, its there you can see it but if you try and grab it, it evades you and moves somewhere else.

Also, if we sell it then the mods and miniadmins wouldnt do what they do (which is a LOT) and the place falls apart. And you all leave and its "value" drops like a stone.

Its the reason noone has sued us for the site too. They get the site and a bunch of people who then hate their guts. And its "value" drops like a stone.

On the other hand, with a little work and some inobtrusive commercialisation (like a shop we are planning etc) and some affiliate deals (like we are planning) we could make this a self perpetuating centre to the Irish internet. Which would be a really cool social experiment as well as potentially earn us a few bucks back from the 5 year set up costs. And its "value" continues to grow .... but we've seen that that value is ethereal and not actually "worth" anything in the long run.

So we find ourselves in a pleasant quandry, at the head of a site we have little control over either in monetary or content terms. Fun isnt it!
We cant make vast sums of money from it, though we all agree its got a high value and we cant really control where it goes beyond bolting extra bits on and expanding as we have been doing. To what end?

Well thats the interesting part isnt it. We don't know. 10 years from now everyone in Ireland might be on Boards. Certainly its expansion rate over the last few years would indicate that thats not all that unlikely. We could be powerful people but that isnt/wasnt our goal. I guess we are geeks, poking this with a stick and seeing where it leads us. In the last 5 years its led me to some very interesting places. I look forward to the next 5.

Oh, and you are wrong. We were offered about 750,000 USD for the site back in the CrAzY DaYs of Dot Coms and we didnt entertain the offer. Its "worth" a lot more to us and I suspect, to a lot of the others here.

DeV.

netwhizkid

I would but the long term valu of this site at over €250million it has nearly 30,000 users. If their was a share issue done i would invest heavily. This could be ireland's google. it's current valu is about €250,000 but i expect this to increase thousand fold. I might bid for it one day i'd look forward to help running it.

RuggieBear

DeVore wrote:

Oh, and you are wrong. We were offered about 750,000 USD for the site back in the CrAzY DaYs of Dot Coms and we didnt entertain the offer. .

John Romero?

Gone West

netwhizkid wrote:

I would but the long term valu of this site at over €250million it has nearly 30,000 users. If their was a share issue done i would invest heavily. This could be ireland's google. it's current valu is about €250,000 but i expect this to increase thousand fold. I might bid for it one day i'd look forward to help running it.

hahahahahahhaha
*ahem.

Im not dissing boards. Dev has said that this was never meant to be a commercial venture and a social experiment. Boards was never designed to make serious money. Self sufficient, in terms of advertising-perhaps.

Where did you get this 250M, netwhizkid?
Advertising and commercial interaction pay for bandwidth and related costs.
In fact, If Im not mistaken, boards has actually COST the admins money from their own pockets.
Hopefully, in the future they will be able to make a healthy profit from the site, as they obviously deserve it. There is potential for large scale commercialisation. But as DeV points out, they want to keep it unobtrusive. <SoppyGit>This is where I think Boards true value lies; not in its potential for profit, but in the community itself. </SoppyGit>

Then you say it has the potential to be worth 250 million?!
WTF.
Thats something a small toddler might say.

*hahahaha..

netwhizkid

I would be prepared to offer up to €10million if it wasn't tied up elsewhere (Magic beans ) for this site as it has even more potential i belive that charging to view is not the way forward although it is creeping in slowly just look at the honk forum. This site is an advert in itself for thousands of products and services plus it is also a huge feedback forum for everything from telescopes to toe-nail clippers.

Gone West

netwhizkid wrote:

I would be prepared to offer up to €10million if it wasn't tied up elsewhere (Magic beans )

Sorry, I dont mean to flame... But.. arent you like, 14 or something?

netwhizkid

No i am actaully quite older than this. Why does everyone think i'm aged between 12 and 14 ?

weemcd

because http://blogindabog.blogspot.com/ reads like it was made by a 12 year old with a freewebs account.

RuggieBear

netwhizkid wrote:

No i am actaully quite older than this. Why does everyone think i'm aged between 12 and 14 ?

14 and 3/4?

Shabadu

weemcd wrote:

because http://blogindabog.blogspot.com/ reads like it was made by a 12 year old with a freewebs account.

I'll have you know it cost €10,000,000 in Beans.

AdMMM

netwhizkid wrote:

I would but the long term valu of this site at over €250million it has nearly 30,000 users. If their was a share issue done i would invest heavily. This could be ireland's google. it's current valu is about €250,000 but i expect this to increase thousand fold. I might bid for it one day i'd look forward to help running it.

Irelands google? I believe thats http://google.ie

netwhizkid

Originally Posted by weemcd
because http://blogindabog.blogspot.com/ reads like it was made by a 12 year old with a freewebs account.

Ok my first ever attempt at publishing anything online might not have turned out the best. BTW i am 18 and a half if it is of any difference.

Originally Posted by Shabadu
I'll have you know it cost €10,000,000 in Beans.

lol, okay seriously though, the point i was trying to make is that boards.ie is a valuable asset and thus will hopefully for those involved appreciate in valu. It has potential no doubt and it could become a big thing perhaps. But is this what boards wants for both users and admins alike ? anyway it a great site and the only useable irish site that has an unbiased view and that gives very useful information.

Did some one log my blog address as i removed it from sig about two weeks ago now ? I must update it soon when i come back from the states. This will probably be my last post for 2 weeks

Regards netwhizkid

Gone West

You speak good england.

Ri_Nollaig

who started off boards.ie ? was a quake fourm or something?

daithi

Your Blog address will be waiting for you too by the looks of it netwhizkid
I think boards value could be calcuated in cents per page view per day quite easily, anyone care to work it out, im far to lazy.

Ri_Nollaig please read http://www.boards.ie/wiki/index.php/Boards.ie

andyman

danniemcq wrote:

servers = €300 a month
alcohol = €5000 a month
coffee = €50 a month
junk food = €100 a month
sheep = €500-1000 a month (depends on use and if Sarky_S is nearby(!))
protecting Pighead from angry boarders = €500,000 a month
staff = peanuts

boards.ie

[glow=9]priceless[/glow]

For everything else theres Mastercard!!

Sleepy

One thing I've always wondered about. Is it possible to add a parser to the posting script so that any links to amazon, cdwow etc are appended with a boards.ie affiliate reference?

I know years ago I had a David Gray fansite made a few quid for me in Amazon commissions. There could be a significant revenue stream acquired through a mod like this that would be completely unintrusive and wouldn't cost the boards.ie user community a cent. Surely that'd be the perfect form of commecialisation of the site?

Scruff

I've a differnet way for calculating what its worth:

SUM USERS( ((weekly_income/hours worked) * hours_spent_on_boards_during_work) * 52)

So in fact in the general scale of economics its actually a negative worth to the economy due to lost working hours to employers by their staff posting and browsing instead of being good company monkies and working:D

**** here comes the boss <alt><tab>!!!!

stagolee

i just had an idea for some small time revenue for boards without pissing off the users too much. bear in mind that i haven't put much thought into this and there is probably glaring holes in it's feasibility.
I have noticed the way people pimping their websites or services tend to get banned or their posts deleted pretty quick, how about an "ads" forum where entrepeneurs can post a topic for say €10 or €20 which they can use to pimp their product to their hearts delight and other users could respond with their opinions of these products.
if it was then allowed for posters in the other forums to link to the posts on this "ads" forum as long as it was relevant to the topic at hand or put a link in their sig to the "ads" forum then at least people clicking on these links would not be risking spyware/dodgy content as they would still be on boards. also they would be able to see what other boardsters thought of the product in question by the replys to the topic.
there would have to be a system where the topics on the ads forum did not go back to the top of the list when a new post was made on them or else people could just keep posting "bump" and get free advertizing for ever.if instead topics were listed by first post date then they would have to pay to post their ad again every time they got knocked off the page.

i was thinking this idea out as i was typing it and to be honest its starting to sound a bit daft to me now but sure ill post it anyway

Ri_Nollaig

daithi wrote:

Ri_Nollaig please read http://www.boards.ie/wiki/index.php/Boards.ie

thank you

Sleepy

That sounds like a good proposal Stagolee...

stagolee

Sleepy wrote:

That sounds like a good proposal Stagolee...

why thank you but like my shirt and pants this plan would need a lot of ironing out to be presentable , unlike my shirt and pants those yellow stains on it actually are curry

Gone West

stagolee wrote:

how about an "ads" forum

Sorry, but I stopped reading right there.
This has been discussed allready, and IIRC it was deemed to be a non-runner.
Who would bother reading an ads forum? Why would you bother? Do you read through all the pages of ads in the newspapers? What would make boards any different?

stagolee

FuzzyLogic wrote:

Sorry, but I stopped reading right there.
This has been discussed allready, and IIRC it was deemed to be a non-runner.
Who would bother reading an ads forum? Why would you bother? Do you read through all the pages of ads in the newspapers? What would make boards any different?

ah bugger i just spent about two paragraphs explaining how this could work and then deleted it because it just doesn't.

the problem is putting the ads where poeple will read them without forcing people to read them and pissing them off, and unfortunatley the idea of having people link to an ads forum doesn't work because it's in their interests then to spam the bejaysus out of every topic even if they get a banning.

ah well theres always plan B , now where did i leave that balaclava and map to the post office.....

PullMyFinger!

Where does Boards stand in the terms of real online value? Its not selling anything (as much as I love it), whereas the likes of Daft.ie must be worth millions at this stage (half a million visitors a month looking to spend money on somethinng specific. Its a goldmine)