MikeHo

This is what I woke up to --

Thank you Team Treehouse for starting days off with a smile and going beyond expected.

..Amazed by the friend-like fast responses.

Team Treehouse is an excellent service that teaches web design through videos. I signed up as I am a non-technical entrepreneur who have been meaning to learn how to code, or to even develop more understanding at the least. Life has been very busy as my luxury vehicle export company is wrapping up for the year and I haven't had much of a chance to really go in depth with the videos and I noticed my subscription had automatically renewed. I wrote a simple email asking if I could put my account on hold and request a refund. This is the response I received --

---------------------------------

Hi Mike!

No problem :) Per your request, your account is paused until March 31st. On that date it will automatically unpause unless you login and extend the pause duration, cancel, or unpause your account. Get in touch with us if you need our help!<p>Attached is a copy of your receipt :) I also show that you barely used your account in December, so I added a 50% off credit that will be applied to your subscription fee when you unpause your account.Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks for being a member :)

Best,Elizabeth

Below is copy and pasted from my local business craigslist ad and from flippa.com --

What am I missing? Is my valuation way off?

Are there any aspects of the sale I should be careful or weary of?

I've never sold a business before and the closest I've come to consulting/selling a business was a couple years ago when I gave a $2,000 course on craigslist to teach people how to make a fair financial earning through conducting and reselling of virtual goods based on just personal selling on forums.

"AccountsDen

Bidding Starts at $5,000

Website Statistics and Collected Data Site Visibility Google PageRank 0 Alexa Rank 273,992 Links in Google 13 Links in Yahoo! 3,785 Domain Registration Date 2nd Feb, 2010 Compete Stats Compete Ranking 0 Trust Neutral SEMRush Stats SEMRush Rank 4,417,088 Keywords in Google 14

Description

"AccountsDen.com is a company which offers services related to World of Warcraft accounts. We have supplied hundreds upon thousands of satisfied customers with secure, premium World of Warcraft accounts. All of our accounts for sale are either purchased from Original Owners who have went through our extensive verification process in order to sell their account, or is a Pre-Made account hand leveled by us.

Our prices are set accordingly to accommodate the average Joe. We here at AccountsDen understand not everyone can shell out half a paycheck on a World of Warcraft account, and in order to serve our customers better, we are the ONLY World of Warcraft account sales website to offer a Payment Plan. Please refer to our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for more information on this service.

AccountsDen.com is located in Canada. We are amongst the select few World of Warcraft sales websites which offer Phone Support -- 1-778-709-0285."

As our home page states, we are an ecommerce site solution focusing on World of Warcraft (American opposed to Europe, however all infrastructure is in place to accommodate WoW EU as well) -- however, growth potential is not limited to just WoW and can expand in to any MMORPG as well as captivate on CD Key sales.

Simply put -- veteran players who come across our site, can create an account in a matter of seconds and click on "Sell Account" which they fill out a brief form. The form translates to an efficient page on our back-end where we can directly pull information from wowarmory.com to see what the character is equipped with and offer the seller a quote based on their account. Once an account is purchased, the account is moved to our inventory section and is listed under "Buy Accounts".

What is included?

- Domain

- All site content and rights

- Current / Existing Inventory

- 2 Day training anywhere in North America (We'll come to you)

- Ongoing support / training for 365 days

- Consulting available after that

Monetization can be furthered with --

Ad Sales for a related product such as Virtual Game Currency (WoW Gold)

Affiliate services

Other MMMORPG

World of Warcraft: EU

CD KEY Sales (In which we have a 15-20% margin)

+ more! Revenue Details

Revenues have varied due to the ongoing process since launch of SEO.

Revenues of equivalent caliber of site have potential for $10,000 - $40,000 / month gross based on sole adwords traffic generation -- figures are of existing competitors.

With word of mouth / forum advertising, site was averaging $3000 - $4000 which has not been consistent lately as we have halted SEO/Advertising/Pursuit of this site. (Have PayPal records going in and out dating prior to 2009 when this was just a sole forum based operation)

Margins are still existent on products, and majority of all related products are marked up 100% of cost. Traffic Details

During our peak of SEO where we were on the first page of Google for the majority of our targeted keywords such as "Buy wow accounts" and "sell wow accounts" we were averaging roughly 150-200 unique visitors per day.

Our traffic is considered to be very condensed and specific as those who visit a site such as ours has a purpose of either selling or buying a world of warcraft related product.

During our peak SEO period, we had a page rank of 195,000~.

SEO has halted, however, can commence with the right interested buyer."

Two weeks ago, I sent a suggestion in to GroupOn in regards of a direct referral model to compensate the user. Allowing the user to market directly within their own social circle and receiving compensation for their contributions.

Today, GroupOn implemented the Referral-A-Friend compensation type plan for a limited duration.

Original message (February 22, 2011):

"Social Peer Marketing --

For each GroupOn member, allow them to share today's deal with an incentive, users who purchase from their link result in the posting GroupOn member receiving compensation -- a % of the savings to cost ratio, etc. can be in the form of credits or GroupOn dollars.

This will allow GroupOn to tap in to a buyer market in which otherwise haven't heard of GroupOn (rare case these days) or a buyer in which originally would not have purchased.

Instead of allocating marketing funds towards another ppc/google campaign, this allows the GroupOn member to leverage their own social circle through Facebook, Twitter, or their personal blogs -- which can be very effective nowadays"

Message GroupOn sent out today --

"Hi [GroupOn Member Name], It's always been easy to refer friends to Groupon. Now it's more rewarding, too. For a limited time, refer friends and you'll earn $20 Groupon Bucks for each friend who buys their first Groupon.* That's twice the normal reward! Here's how it works: ...

Your personal referral link: http://www.groupon.com/r/uu1500####"

It'd be naive to say this was implemented solely due to my suggestion, but I thought it was neat nevertheless.

However, the simple response with no follow up after "Hi Michael,

Thanks for the suggestion! If you'd be interested in sharing additional suggestions you can share them here: suggestions@groupon.com.

Regards,

Jordan-Leigh support@groupon.com

Please, rate my reply here: http://www.nicereply.com/groupon/6397436/###2849" is discouraging for further suggestion input.

If anyone is working on a group-buying type start up, knows someone who is, etc.. and would like suggestions, I have a couple which I believe would be cutting-edge in which the larger sites do not even have implemented yet.