Chris Hooley’s -ThinkBait-

I recently received an offer to buy www.mcpmedia.com for 65k. It was my first REAL website, and the site that got me into SEO, web design, and all things web. It does have sentimental value, but I have not monetized the site for almost a year… with hundreds of leads not being sold or worked. It’s a shame really, but there’s more to it.

This domain, registered in 2002, has 51k backlinks according to Yahoo. Most of those are pretty darn old. It has a few DMOZ listings, and ranks really well for a ton of terms (mostly web design, dev, and SEO terms with the local modifiers AZ, Arizona, and Phoenix).

The site also recently spent almost 6 months at #1 on Yahoo! for the phrase “web design” (with no quotes) and at that time I was trying to overcharge and sell the domain for a million (dude’s gotta try!). It is ranking first page on Google for phrases like “web design quotes” which has to be worth something to somebody.

All of my email addresses for logins are mcpmedia.com. My IM handles are all mcpmedia. There are a few pages with really old links to other sites that I am interested in. If I sell it, I’ll lose some strong links, some history, and I’ll have a TON of work ahead of me…. screwing around with a ton of my online accounts.  Also, my little brother sometimes grabs some of these leads to get his feet wet with project management and monetization of the web.  It’s great learning for my little bro, which alone could make me want to hold on to this thing.

I dunno, what would you do? I don’t need the money, and I have been squatting on this thing for quite some time. For 250k it would be an easy decision for me, but I think the offer the guy made was pretty scientific. Somehow he made the offer just barely high enough for me to think about it…

I guess this is some REAL ThinkBait. Can anybody help sell me either way on why I SHOULD or SHOULD NOT sell this website? If so, I need some solid guidance.

Jarrod over at TextLinkBrokers and David Wallace from SearchRank put together a cool “meeting of the minds” last night at Rock Bottom. After having a few drinks one thing became apparent to me: Phoenix is a hotbed for SEO, and whoever owns this SERP must be the best of the bunch (neener neeener neeeeener!!)

The boys from Submit a Website stopped by to spread the love, and my favorite Elite Rereat buddy Cygnus (Joe Sinkwitz) blessed us with his awesomeness as well. Jenny (Text Link Brokers’ Sales Manager) was the token female Phoenix SEO PubCrawl representative (crappy camera phone picture below)

As a group we decided that “Whatever happens at Phoenix SEO PubCrawl Stays at Phoenix SEO PubCrawl” so I will not be able to give you an in depth recap of all the juicy stuff that was shared. But I can say this, I’ll be going to the next one.

More is in the pipeline from this group. BTW: Phoenix SEO. (score!)