Here is my initial response to some of the comments.

1) I would never use Alexa data as a basis for anything. I’ve seen a 30% drop in traffic on Alexa while our internal stats actually showed a 25% increase. This applies most sites I’ve run, sold, etc. Advertising clients are starting to understand the disparities.

2) I’ve run this site for FREE - going on 3 years now. It’s a one-man show. There is no venture capital. I created the site merely as a side project - something easy enough my parents could use. Something I could personally use to disseminate my calendar information in a simple and clean way so family and friends know what my schedule entails. Once they download my RSS Calendar feed, they are done.

3) I don’t have time to build out additional features so I thought I might try to recoup some of my time by selling the site (can’t just give it away can I). Perhaps there is someone out there with more time and ideas for RSSCalendar.com. There is also an opportunity cost as stake here - for other business that I own. I simply don’t have the time.

4) Aside from AdSense revenues and technology, I believe the value of RSSCalendar is in the userbase, calendar events, and page views. The site is rather popular and I get positive comments all the time - along with requests for a paid version (either minus the ads or hosted internally).

Regards,
John

On occasion you find a startup that truly hopes and wishes to stand as a solo success – a mega success, even. More often, though, you come across businesses which look to build themselves up enough to look attractive to bigger fish. So that when …

2004年製のオンラインカレンダー「RSSCalendar」が、eBayで売りに出されている。
RSSCalendarは、SynapseLife、Kikoに続いて、eBayを出口とした終末を迎えることになる。これで開始価格のハットトリ….

@Joel: Provisional patent applications are super easy to file and costs only $80… unlike regular patent applications. However they have ZERO value and expire after 1 year if they are not eventually converted to a regular patent application.

I’d definitely ask them how many months they have left on that provisional before it expires (so you have a chance to look it over and decide if you want to spend $15K on a regular patent appl).

This is a exit path to the founders but it dosen´t mean the end of RSSCalender. But only if they find a buyer.

As a point of reference, a few years ago I sold the IP for a web collaboration suite (individual/group calendar, mail, contacts, tasks, docs) with bi-directional Outlook/Palm sync and a list of 900 customers for $65k. Maybe I should have listed on EBay!

If you are going just off of Alexa, of course it would be a flawed purchase. However, he claims 2.3 Million Page Views per month and 800,000 Unique Visitors per month. However, the key item in this would be whatever that provisional patent is for. Since Google is so similar, they may actually be infringing on it - and that is where the ROI on a $50,000 purchase would lay.

Without that patent, this site doesn’t not appear to be worth $50,000. Maybe $20,000 though. Then again, it is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

$50,000 for an Alexa 250,000 site?! Come on. That makes techcrunch.com worth at least $500million.

Seriously who would pay $50k, for a site who’s functionality is replicated in google calendar? Okay, he makes a point it could be sold to universities as a smaller product, but seriously for $50k, you could start developing it yourself as a standalone product for Universities and organisations.

Pierce