As most of you will know i’m developing my own social networking site so i tend to keep up to date with any big sales or news.
I find this quite incredible myself, but myghetto.com has just been sold for $105,500.
Ok, it has 230,000 members and about 7.5m unique views/month, pushing $5k/month in advertising revenue, but step back a second and look at the site.
Look at the homepage.
It’s a complete and utter mess. In fact, part of me thinks it’s almost a deliberate attempt to take the piss. Firstly, we have an autoplay video on pageload – that’s one of my pet hates.
We then have the repeated background which looks woeful and hides the footer text.
We move on to 5 distracting banner/square ads. I can deal with one or 2, but 5? Come on. These also feature in members profiles – all 5 of them 
a major no-no. And to think i gave out about bebo placing one banner ad on people’s profiles 
Don’t even mention the flashing navigation text, 1998 would be proud 
This is the sort of stuff that seperates the big guns from the mediocre wannabes. It’s just not cool to have a website with a design like this in 2008. Where’s the gloss, simplicity and symmetrical layout?
Have i gone mad all together, or do people agree with me?
$105k this site sold for. Surely none of that was for the design. 
About Sean MacEntee:
I'm a 23 year old Irish student, blogger & IT addict. I love building websites & then playing with them!
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Ha, agreed! And what kind of a tag line for a networking site is “We got the hottest chicks!”? Reads more like a porno site
It’s a good niche site and at less than $0.50 a user not bad value. The going rate is well over $1.00 now. With a small bit of work you could turn that $5k a month into $10k or $15k a few months time and you are rollin’ in it $$$
The number of ad’s on it now means that when you start optimize you don’t need to be afraid of losing user due there being “too many ads.” Also a design front its not hard to improve and everything on it is so clichéd it would be dead easy to design.
I guess they probably got about $1 per active user?
That’s not a bad return. Does anyone know how old the site is?
Amazingly enough, I don’t mind the design ….. the market they’re after can take it.
I would never have considered using such an in your face repeating background in a site design … but I think the graffiti works ‘cos the centre area has a white background.
I don’t think it’s too bad ….. the music etc. isn’t my taste so it’s not a site I’d be rushing to join.
The character used on the site remind me of Beerchief’s bouncers! The angular jaws look familiar …. Beerchief’s design mightn’t be all that far from MyGhetto
Would I pay $105,000 for it? Nope ….. I wouldn’t feel passionate about the music/style so it would be a lack lustre development. And ‘lack lustre’ development would be rather expensive at $105,000!!
Beerchief has lots of markers by which it can be measured/developed …. looking forward to its launch …. only hope google and microsoft don’t have the net so sewn up between them that all others will be unable to compete against the mighty conglomerates.
Roll on BC ……………
interesting how people look at this.. i know the site boasts 220k members, but like any site, i’d say 50% at least have just signed up and never visited again.
50c a user ain’t bad when you put it that way, but it needs to be complimented by a decent site imo. A new design and layout wouldn’t cost a bomb, so it begs the question why they haven’t gone for it? Lack of interest perhaps.
i know for a fact if i were to clone that design and layout, put the ads on it etc.. i would be hammered on any webmaster forum and probably by you guys
Anyway, fair play to the owner who’s gotten a great deal 
OK… FIRST THING FIRST… I WAS ON GOOGLE AND DECIDED TO TYPE IN “MYGHETTO.COM SOLD”. THE FIRST THING THAT CAME UP WAS THIS BLOG.
NOW… AS FAR AS MYGHETTO.COM GOES…
SOMEONE ASKED HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN UP? IT HAS ONLY BEEN UP FOR 1 YEAR.
I HAVEN’T SPOKE TO THE OWNER “JAY” ABOUT THE ACTUAL SELLING OF THE SITE YET… BUT THAT WASN’T A BAD MOVE OR A BAD PRICE. 200k+ MEMBERS, AND 3-5k REVENUE PER MONTH. LIKE “CIARAN” SAID… IF THE PERSON WHO BOUGHT THE SITE ACTUALLY PUTS SOME WORK INTO IT… THE SITE CAN GENERATE MORE MONEY THAN IT IS CURRENTLY MAKING.
SMEMON ATTACKED THE AESTHETICS OF THE SITE. WHO CARES ABOUT HOW IT LOOKS? THOSE MINOR ISSUES CAN BE CHANGED EVERYDAY IF THE OWNER WANTS. “JAY” WAS CURRENTLY IN THE PROCESS OF UPGRADING TO WEB 2.0 AND GIVING THE SITE A COMPLETE FACELIFT. THE AUTO-PLAY VIDEO WAS REQUESTED BY THE MEMBERS… SO HE GAVE THEM WHAT THEY WANTED.
MYGHETTO.COM WAS NEVER EXPECTED TO GROW THIS FAST. IT STARTED OFF AS JUST ONE OF JAYS PROJECTS. IT LATER GREW TO BE A HUGE SUCCESS. I BECAME A SITE ADMINISTRATOR FOR MYGHETTO.COM WHEN I WAS 17 AND NOW THAT I AM 18… IT FEELS GOOD TO KNOW THAT I HAD A HAND IN HELPING THE SITE GROW. IF YOU FEEL IT IS A “MEDIOCRE WANNABE” SITE… THEN SO BE IT. EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO HIS OR HER OWN OPINION.
MY OPINION:
MORE ADS = MORE MONEY!
FLASHING TEXT = DRAWS ATTENTION TO FEATURED PLACES ON THE SITE!
REPETITIVE BACKGROUND = CONSISTENCY!
MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS: MIAMIS_HARDEST@YAHOO.COM
FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME IF YOU DON’T AGREE WITH WHAT I TYPED OR IF YOU WANT TO KNOW SOMETHING ELSE!
=]
Well done on the ranking Smemon, your actually no.2 though behind MyGettho.com so not bad.
Hi Khris great to see someone from the site come buy and comment. (NO NEED TO SHOUT THOUGH.) I have to agree with here, the last thing the person who bought this for was the design. Another $10,000 -$15,000 will make it into an awesome web2.0 site, which is nothing relative to the price they paid for it.
Have to disagree with that though, Solid background = Consistency, Repetitive Background = Distraction.
I don’t think Smemon was attacking your site though, he was more commenting on the fact how he finds amazing that a site
with such poor design could sell for so much. But then he does say …
So here I have to agree $105k for the user base and revenue stream well worth it and congratulations Khris. I hope you got a piece of that.
hey khris, you make some good points, but having put up with myspace for so long, anything that remotely resembles myspace in terms of design just makes me sick.
it has to be one of the worst designed, but most successful sites ever. take that as you will, i cannot speak for their entire community, but i know if i seen myghetto.com randomly, i would not register, and if i did, it would only be for the purpose of research.
what influences me most is design – it’s the first thing people see, as a casual browser i don’t want flash based sites, i don’t want intros, i don’t want flashing text, too many ads, poor use of colours…. myghetto.com doesn’t have all of those, but it has some and they are what i’d regard as basic common sense when it comes to design.
if the video autoload was voted for by the members, fair enough, i can’t argue with that, but having music autoload when i leave my speakers accidentally up on high volume – that ain’t something that gives me a good first impression
if all of these things are liked by the members, i guess i can’t complain.
more ads = more money, but you cannot develop as a site with that attitude. at the very least that cash should be re-invested in to the design work.
smemon I agree with what you are saying in general. But at the same time you have cater for your target market and the target of this site is clearly people who like autoplay and flashy banners. They probably hate site’s with no gangster music playing and are plain and boring with nothing flashing.
Like it or not the most important thing in this game is distancing yourself from your preferances and going with what the target user would like. I have done many many designs that I personaly dislike but performed very well with the target users.
yeah well put ciaran, i guess that’s what it boils down to – keeping the communtiy happy.
no doubting these guys have built up a huge community and worked hard at it, but my first impressions were that the site was either hugely inflated price wise or else hugely under priced.
i’m sure whoever bought it done his homework and can see the potential in it… it’s not like $100k is an impulse buy
Greetings one and all.
My name is Jason Rose, and I would like to let you know that your cries have been heard. I am a part of the development team tasked with revamping this website, and we have been quietly tinkering in the workshop.
This website does cater to a niche, and has a great deal of potential. We started the new version of the site from scratch, based off of widely accepted social networking interfaces and feedback from users.
Looking forward to seeing future comments after we release the new site