A recent offer... and my decision
Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 12:59 pm
Some of you are aware of the recent offer that was proffered to me for the purchase of www.ay-ziggy-zoomba.com. To those of you who gave me your opinions, I greatly appreciated it. All your opinions went in with my thoughts and helped me come to the conclusion I've made.
For those of you who don't know, I was approached several weeks ago by someone wanting to purchase the site and the membership and incorporate it into a sports portal that he's building. The original offer was intriguing, but I turned him down right away, thinking he might have been some fly-by-night kind of deal. He returned and increased the offer by a couple thousand dollars more... it was a sizeable (to me) amount and was a difficult decision to make.
In the end, I've decided not to sell though. While this site does give me a lot of headaches, I think the benefits of keeping it independent and fan run, both for the fan-base as well as the University, far outweigh the personal financial gains I could have reaped. Plus, it would just feel weird to not have it be "mine/ours."
This being said, there may be some changes afoot before too long. I'm currently investigating a method to keep the current forums in tact, but then also add some premium forums that only paying subscribers would have access to. This would not only benefit the site financially, but also keep down some of the "noise" by making a pay section more exclusive.
So, I just wanted to share this decision with the masses and let you know, that for now at least, www.ay-ziggy-zoomba.com is going to remain the independent, fan-owned and fan-operated site it's always been. As much of a pain and a headache as the site and some of the posters can be
it's still unique in so many ways on the net, and still the best college fan site I've ever seen! Thank you all for helping make it so!
Continue rolling along.....
For those of you who don't know, I was approached several weeks ago by someone wanting to purchase the site and the membership and incorporate it into a sports portal that he's building. The original offer was intriguing, but I turned him down right away, thinking he might have been some fly-by-night kind of deal. He returned and increased the offer by a couple thousand dollars more... it was a sizeable (to me) amount and was a difficult decision to make.
In the end, I've decided not to sell though. While this site does give me a lot of headaches, I think the benefits of keeping it independent and fan run, both for the fan-base as well as the University, far outweigh the personal financial gains I could have reaped. Plus, it would just feel weird to not have it be "mine/ours."
This being said, there may be some changes afoot before too long. I'm currently investigating a method to keep the current forums in tact, but then also add some premium forums that only paying subscribers would have access to. This would not only benefit the site financially, but also keep down some of the "noise" by making a pay section more exclusive.
So, I just wanted to share this decision with the masses and let you know, that for now at least, www.ay-ziggy-zoomba.com is going to remain the independent, fan-owned and fan-operated site it's always been. As much of a pain and a headache as the site and some of the posters can be
it's still unique in so many ways on the net, and still the best college fan site I've ever seen! Thank you all for helping make it so!Continue rolling along.....
