After two years of hard work and development, my most prized site has been sold for $62,000 to CrowdGather, Inc. At the time of the sale, the statistics were very impressive, and it was ranked the #1 Zune site in the world. CrowdGather understood the huge potential for growth under this site, and purchased the website for 62 months of revenue. The site was sold at SitePoint and you can see the auction and stats here.

In just a few months after the sale of ZuneBoards, I see that traffic has picked up significantly already on ZuneBoards. Shows really how fast the site can grow every year. As the Zune grows, the site grows along with it.

ZuneBoards was a experimental project of mine in the Summer of 2006, where rumors were flying around about a supposed “iPod Killer” from Microsoft. Immediately I picked up the domain, and I gotta tell you I don’t regret that decision at all.

Here are some stuff I copied directly from the sale page of ZuneBoards:

Staff
We have great, dedicated dedicated staff– all voluntary workers. We have a full lineup of staff, from editors, to multiple global moderators, multiple section moderators, Support Team, Hacks&Mods Crew, Graphics Crew, Programmers, and even a welcoming team. Without the staff, it’d be virtually impossible to manage all the content on ZuneBoards.

News and Articles
There are more than 400 articles written by me, and our writers. All articles are organized into smaller sections, for example, “Zune Accessory Reviews” or “Interviews.” Check it out for yourself on ZuneBoards.com.

Forums
The ZuneBoards forum should be given credit for the site’s success. The forums generate the most pageviews, and is loved by Google (indexed and ranked very well). As of today there are ~55,000 members with 250,000 posts.
Underneath ZuneBoards’ forums are 20, yes twenty, forums for staff and our team members. (Screenshot 1 2 3)

Zune Games
Very recently, Microsoft announced XNA support for the Zune. A few months later, they released the Community Technical Preview for XNA 3.0 and games for the Zune were (and are) being made left and right. ZuneBoards released the first “How to Install Zune Games” article and was featured in mega-blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo. Shortly after, ZuneBoards now have almost monopolized Zune Games. ZuneBoards is THE place to find games. We have the largest database of Zune games, submitted by developers themself. Take a look here.  The Zune games section was the fastest growing forum we have ever seen! To put things short, ZuneBoards is leading the world in Zune Games.

We also have a ZuneBoards Programming team, who released multiple games and application, including the worlds first Zune clock.

Our Reputation
Since July ’06, we’ve built up quite a reputation around the Zune community. We’ve been on huge websites like Engadget, Lifehacker, HackaDay, and even the frontpage of Digg. We are known for the first Zune hack, and many other multiple hacks, which brought us literally thousands of members and hits.

A list of hacks we’ve released in the past:

Zune Hacked for USB Use
Zune Guest Hack
Zune Guest Hack on Digg
Zune Multi-Extension Hack
Zune Hacked for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese Character Support
Maximizing Your Zune Software
Superior Zune Installation Program
A Valentines Gift to Zuners
Zune Marketplace Alternator
Z(une) M(edia) P(layer)
Zune Hacked for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese Character Support on HackaDay
Zune 2.2 to 1.4 Downgrade

Our talented programmers also released a few nifty programs and games:

zNav
zMeta
zStats
Official ZuneBoards Clock for the Zune
ZIM (Zune Instant Messenger)
Zune Textbook Reader
Metronome for the Zune
Zune Calculator
Sleep Timer for the Zune
Solitaire for the Zune
GoldChase
SIRTET (Tetris) for the Zune
Running Man Game for the Zune
Squadron Z

There are much much much more! Check it out for yourself here.

Zunecentive
For quite a while we ran a program called “Zunecentive”. It gave incentives to those who remained active and posted, with prizes as Zune accessories from our sponsors. In some occassions, some managed to even win Zune’s. I have a few accessories remaining, but I have temporarily stopped the program as I had no time to ship them out. More information on that here.

ZuneTV, now known as VidsforZune
Just recently we have launched a major project called “ZuneTV.” ZuneTV was featured on Mashable, The #1 Social Networking and Social Media News Blog, and a lot of other blogs and news sites. However, we ran into some legal concerns and decided to switch the domain name from ZuneTV.net to VidsforZune.com. Microsoft, however, is now perfectly fine with VidsforZune.com.

Podcast

Currently we have a “brother” site, whom we sponsor in their weekly Zune podcast. For more info on the podcast, check it out here.

Potential Growth
Potential, in my opinion, is one of the most important factor in selling a website. Well my friend, this website is chock full of potential. Here is a quote that pretty much explains the future of Zune:

Robbie Bach also stated that although the millions invested are many, the profit will come out only after five years (which means we’ll be seeing Zune even in 2011…). For the immediate period, the Redmond giant only expects losses.
According to the high ranked official, such initiative is to cost “hundreds of millions of dollars in investment over time,” making it a long term bet. He compared Zune’s case to the Xbox platform, which has also produced losses estimated at $1-1.2 billion to Microsoft, since its initial launch in 2001.
“It is something that is going to take time. This is not a six month initiative,” he added. “This is something that is going to be a three-, four-, five-year investment.”

That’s right. The Zune is here to stay, and is going nowhere but up. With a huge corporation like Microsoft, they will keep throwing more and more money into the Zune, until it finally dethrones the iPod. Take the Xbox 360 as an example. When the Xbox entered the console gaming market, it was criticized heavily with comments like, “They’ll never beat Sony.” Look at the Xbox now!

The same team that’s made Xbox the best selling console is now working on making the best selling music player–the Zune… and guess what? You have the opportunity to own one of the world’s largest Zune site. That really opens up a huge potential for ZuneBoards.com. Imagine how HUGE Zune will be in 5 years. Imagine how it’ll feel to own one of the largest Zune forum at that time.

YOU could be the owner of the “iLounge” of Zune. Take the traffic and revenue I have posted, and double, triple, or even quadriple that, and you’ll be looking at the stats in 3, 4, 5 years. Think of this as a long term investment. Trust me, if I could’ve, I would’ve held on to this baby for a long time.

This website is so content rich, it would take me hours upon hours to write about every single detail. The best way to find out, is to go to ZuneBoards.com for yourself and check it out.

For more information, feel free to check out this news article on the OC Register, or leave a comment.