How close are you to Area 51?!?!

I hope IB makes a lot of money on its acquisition of Corvetteforum -- just as I always hoped that Troy would make a lot of money on it. This is America. Enterprise, entrepreneurship and the profit motive is what drives our economy.

Profit is not a four-letter word. It's what allows us to buy Corvettes, rather than riding the state-operated bus or subway.

It would really be scary to me if IB bought the site for some purpose other than making money. That would make me think they had some other agenda to promote.

The fact is that the Forum makes money from selling advertising to vendors. To this point, we pretty much have taken the business that has come in over the transom.

The potential of the site, I think, is to actually start selling advertising, rather than taking orders for advertising -- that and using a central staff for efficiency in technical, accounting and sales activities while leaving daily operation to continue in its current decentralized mode.

 

 

That's

Looks like it's gone up in value by $1,700 since that thread was posted.

 

Those domain "value calculators" are far from accurate. I wish they were accurate

Tony

 

 

me too...I'd be sitting on $18k.

 

I think you will be able to find a very good client base around here

 

I hate changes

 

Since Troy has sold CF,

how can he have any say as to the content or any other condition?

Unless there is some other contingency that is not being addressed....

 

Dont get me wrong. I am all for free enterprise and making business work, BUT the thing is Corvette forum is more than just a business for the many people that have made this place what it is. That same people, me included, will not take kindly if business and profits takes a toll on the interaction possibilities and overall enjoyability of this internet community.
As some other people here have pointed out, there are several examples of internet communities that were bought out and in the next few months , slowly but steadily the new owners introduced improvements, (not changes, mind you) that bit by bit gave the sites a "commercial taste" that many users found unpalatable.
You do not need to believe me about all this, but I am sure you and I can agree that sucess stories like CF are not easily repeated. Changing the recipe can lead to undesired results.
I hope, I really do, that I am totally wrong. I would miss this place and its people a lot if it went away as we have it today.

And I live closer to Roswell, NM than I do to Area 51.

 

I don't have any say in the future. All I can tell you is that I communicated with several other people who have sold sites to IB. In all cases IB stuck by what they promised. They have no intention of changing the way we do things. It wouldn't be a wise business decision if they did.

 

According to this one it is worth about $16,000.

http://directory.sootle.com/website-worth/tata.php

 

For better or for worst.

PS. Although, I hope is for the better of CF.

 

according to the same site:
The estimated value of http://www.gm.com is: $1,104,000

So CF is worth 6x what GM is worth?

 

Different valuations ... for GM, their brand sites are probably worth a ton more than their corp pages.

 

Congrats on the sale of CF.

I just hope IB improves the site and not cause its demise.

 

I just wanted to check in with a hello from Internet Brands. My name is Stan Holt, and I work on IB's content, community and ad sales.

I've been following the reaction threads. I appreciate the concerns and am grateful to those either optimistic or at least willing to let us prove ourselves as a company. There are good, thoughtful discussions going on, and it reflects where the true value of CorvetteForum lies: in its members. We wouldn't have acquired CorvetteForum -- and Troy wouldn't have agreed to sell the site to us -- if we didn't understand that basic fact.

There are no plans to do anything radical; the site works extremely well as it is. We're not going to make it a paid site all of a sudden or start running popup ads. We don't do that on other IB sites because, frankly, the annoyance and aggravation isn't worth the money.

I don't want to pretend like we're angels either. As Jim noted, we're a business trying to make money. But CorvetteForum is as much a family or community as it is a revenue stream, and if you do dumb things to kill the community's enjoyment of the site, then the revenue goes away.

Instead, we're focusing on site growth. I'm excited about working with Jim, Troy, Eric and community leaders to make improvements where needed (e.g., better spam filters, faster servers). We're also discussing more CorvetteForum gear. The only thing not on the table is bringing back the babe site (I'd use the angel again but I don't want to get repetitive).

Let me know if you have questions. Ryan and Jonathan from IB will also be on the boards today, and we'll try to address as many posts as possible.

Thank you.

Stan

 

Stan,

Thanks for the response and congrats on the company's acquisition of CF. We, as members, all have our concerns, but we understand that CF is a business, and as you said, your company acquired CF to make money. I think the biggest thing we'd hate to see is advertising everywhere that would distract us from the generally clean operation of CF, but we also realize that advertising is how you make money. Change can be a good thing, and we all know there are certain aspects of CF that could be improved upon. However, there are certain aspects CF that we don't want to see changed, either.

I just hope IB truly realizes that CF is more or less a community, and not just some message board that talks about Corvettes. The Regional events sections are a good testament as to how CF operates more like a community/family, with get-togethers, mod parties, etc.. When push comes to shove, we all work together. We all enjoy helping good causes as well, whether it be donating to St. Jude or helping other great causes.

 

So this is your parent company (accordnig to Wiki)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealab

 

What he said.