Mr Lucky
Well-known member
Is that bad?
VerticalScope Inc Headed toward Bankruptcy?
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Mr Lucky
Well-known member
I’ve seen a couple that seem to be fine. Maybe it’s worse with (possibly smaller) forums where the users had a more personal interaction with the owners.
Suzanne O
Well-known member
Can you please link us to these reviews you've seen?
I've only seen some bad ones myself.
rickhz
Well-known member
I turned down his offers for years as well as offers from IB. I am very glad that I stuck with it.
I've never understood this. If you have an active forum and you are basically done with it. Why shut it down when you know you could sell it and make some money?
tajhay
Well-known member
It's for the greater good for humanity. I assume you have never seen what gets discussed at an AFL forum comprising of 1 admin and 2 users who agree with the admin for fear of getting banned.
Ha ha. Didn't even check before I replied.
MySiteGuy
Well-known member
Keep in mind his comments come from the point of view of a forum that has no monetary value beyond perhaps selling the Xenforo license.
I totally get that but he wasn't the only that has thought that and actually did it. I know of 2 or 3 forums that had huge amounts of traffic and posts/threads that I was hoping to buy. Instead of selling them, they decided to just close it down eventually. They could have made decent money on selling the site, but instead shut it down. That just doesn't make sense to me.
Charlie G
Member
Some people are indeed strange.
I get it to a certain degree, but what is the difference between the new owner possibly destroying the forum in the future rather then the original owner destroying it now by shutting it completely down? This is were it makes zero sense to me. The difference there is the original owner has money in the bank then nothing at all.
mjda
Well-known member
I'd agree with this. I sold one of my forums a few years, or so, ago. The only changes that have been made are the updates I've made to the custom add-ons that are there and the additional ads on the site, including some of those annoying ones that stick to the page that you can't scroll by.
Anyways, the point is, I wish I would have never sold the site. If I had it to do all over again, it wouldn't even be a consideration. I would've either kept it going or just shut it down. At least then I wouldn't have to watch as members complain about this and that while being absolutely powerless to help them even though I know how to fix the issue.
It was a life lesson, though. One that I won't have to worry about making again.
mjda
Well-known member
Some people don't really care about the money. I've never started a forum hoping to get rich off of it. Hell, most of the forums I've run ended up not making any money at all because I always overspend on my server because I want the site to be as fast and responsive for the users as possible. I've also paid extra for CDN services for this same reason (until recently when I switched to Cloudflare because my CDN provider stopped their CDN service offering). I do it because I genuinely love forums and love learning to code new things.
So without money being a consideration, the primary difference for me (the reason I'd rather shut one down now than sell it) is that if I shut one down, it's over...done...finished. If I sell one, chances are I'll keep checking in on it and if the site starts going downhill, I'll have to watch it happen knowing there's nothing I can do about it anymore.
Of course, this is all just me...and I'm sure I'm in the minority with most of my thinking...but you asked.
I sold a site a few years ago. Of course there is always some regret but I'm glad I did, for several reasons. Money helped and got me where I am today. The site was on the down curve and eventually tanked. Even if I never sold it, I would have never shut it down.
mjda
Well-known member
As I said, I'm sure my line of thinking isn't the most popular. I probably would have ever taken the site offline. I would have simply turned off posting and registration. I would have removed all the ads and, basically, had the site there for archival purposes (read only).
To be clear, though, the site I sold was an active, growing community. Now, it's just mostly stagnant with the same members that have been posting there for years and nothing new happening. In fact, the other site I gave to a friend has picked up a lot of the members from the site I sold because they're more active and doing things to encourage activity and growth while the site I sold has a new owner who isn't active in the community at all. In fact, there's a thread where someone needs something done and the moderators are saying only the owner can do it, but the owner hasn't even logged into the site since September 25th. It's something that could be cleared up in less than a minute. No, I don't expect anyone to be online every day monitoring their site. But this isn't a one-off circumstance. This guy goes weeks at a time, regularly, without ever even logging in. I bet you if that revenue stream stopped for a few days, though...
It's just very frustrating for me because of the work I put into it. Even worse is how bad I feel for the members of the site...members who I made genuine friendships with. I couldn't care less about the money. To see it in its current state kills me.
Again, lesson learned...not a mistake I'll make again...
TPerry
Well-known member
Maybe because in the back of their mind they might be thinking that they could bring it back again once they are over whatever reason they wanted/needed to shut it down?
Wildcat Media
Well-known member
I was going to post a separate thread but, there is some forum "group" out there, not VS or IB, that has acquired two forums that I used to frequent, one of them an acquaintance of mine (he ran his own forum while also moderating for a much larger one that I am an admin for). What I can't get over is their new owner and admins' tactics for fundraising. It's very pushy and crass. And the amount of money they are asking for each of the two forum is very similar. One of my smaller forums has similar traffic to the one my acquaintance runs, and the out of pocket costs to run it are about $3,500 to $4,000 less than what they are asking as their fundraising goal.
The saddest part is that I would have gladly taken over these communities myself, if I'd had the funds to purchase.
As for the VS forums, there is one I've found somewhat useful which I visit every so often. No issues with it, really, but it's still not as good as when a privately-owned forum used to offer the same topic. (That owner was a bit weird, as he used phpBB and, after the final time it was hacked, stopped answering emails and never put it back online.) But I noticed in the automotive field that the second a new car model is introduced, VS starts up a new forum for it almost immediately. Aside from some news posts, the forums mostly sit unused. Seems like a desperate attempt at grabbing at straws.
The saddest part is that I would have gladly taken over these communities myself, if I'd had the funds to purchase.
As for the VS forums, there is one I've found somewhat useful which I visit every so often. No issues with it, really, but it's still not as good as when a privately-owned forum used to offer the same topic. (That owner was a bit weird, as he used phpBB and, after the final time it was hacked, stopped answering emails and never put it back online.) But I noticed in the automotive field that the second a new car model is introduced, VS starts up a new forum for it almost immediately. Aside from some news posts, the forums mostly sit unused. Seems like a desperate attempt at grabbing at straws.
Mendalla
Well-known member
That's kind of my thought if WC2 ever shuts down due to lack of interest. I will keep the domain and license for myself and maybe spin up something new eventually.
Now I'm curious what those 2 forums are...
