eFront.com, heard of it ?

I've heard of them. I visit some of their network web sites. They bought a website of two people I know. Good luck!

Same thing happened to me and my network of sites (http://echowebhq.com/). I approached them with an advertising offer and they told me that they'd be interested in acquiring my site.

To cut it short, the deal didn't work out because I didn't like the terms of their contract, but I still hold good relations with most of the people on their team.

Anyway, they seem to be pretty serious about what they do and if you want to push your site to the next level, I guess the right decision would be to join them.

Just make sure that you get enough for your site and your time (the stocks that they offer are good, but at the moment they aren't even public yet, so the stock options worth $0).

Boris

I too, would be interested in knowing what the deal is with efront. Do you approach them, or they you? and what price did they offer for echoweb or Lyricsh?

Adam

I have experience with a part of the Efront community [ http://www.sitepowerup.com ] and what I can tell you from using the message services is that they impose some very ugly things on how you display banners. [On SPU they make it so that you have to have banner ads in the middle of the board.]

From what else I've seen they give you a lot of money, and I believe you have to be contacted by them.

They actually don't offer you alot of money. Nothing upfront, a low CPM (but higher then what's at some ad networks now) and stocks which may never amount to anything. The one main thing I highly disliked about the contract (and because I haven't signed it I am not under a NDA, but I won't go into detail) and every contract they deal with, is that its for a set amount of time (3 years nomrally) and after that three years is up they still own your website and they can get rid of you and replace you with someone else to run your website. Of course the person I was talking with says "you won't be replaced" when I asked him if its possible, he said yes. So I told him if he's so confident that after 3 years I won't be told to "get lost" then to put it into the contract. He's still working on it.

Ravi

Well, from what I have seen, Vor [the SPU.Com Administrator] is living a rather healthy lifestyle in Mexico.

However, he did say that in 2001 he's gone.

Sad, really, he's such a nice guy..

eFront offered to buy my entire Dumb Network (check http://www.dumblaws.com to see what that's about). They offered me quite a load of stock options -- about 20,000 shares if I remember correctly. However, I don't believe the stock options will ever amount to much (though I could be wrong). The actual cash offering wasn't too convincing, somewhere around $2,600 per month.

The terms of the contract were restrictive. Overall, I thought I could do better on my own. If the stock flies to $80/share one day, I'll have to eat my words, but that aside I think I made the right choice.

Think hard about it before you accept. I don't think the stock options will be a very good deal (but that's just my opinion) so I wouldn't let that delude you.

Andy
http://www.dumblaws.com

I agree dumblaws, I ran the contract by my lawyer (dad ) and he didnt like it at all. I decided to decline the offer. There was one main loophole which I really disliked. The contract is always for a set period of time (nor 3 years) but after those three years eFront has no requirement to renew that contract. They could bring someone else in to run your website and you would have absoultely no control over it. The guy I was talking to said they dont operate like that but "it is possible". I asked him if he was so sure it wouldnt happen to add it into the contract, and he said he couldnt.

not very promising. I wish them all the luck but eFront isnt the type of company Im looking to join.

Ravi

Dad as lawyer? I understand. I'm sixteen, so we're probably in a similar situation.

What website did eFront offer to buy anyhow?

Andy
http://www.dumblaws.com

lyricsh.com

I don't know whether any of you knew this, but eFront is the 21st largest web property according to PCDataOnline. That is pretty big guys! They get over 265 million page views a month from all their sites.

My site http://HomepageTools.com received an offer from them a few months ago, but we rejected it, as we did not want to sell it. They said it was the largest offer they had placed for a site our size. (It had 2million page views back then).

We are now speaking to them again and they will giving us another offer. We have now got 5million page views a month!

I know someone who sold their site to them and they are keeping the revenue from their site until 6 months after they go public. Which is a good thing to do!

I have been told that they will go public in the first quarter of 2001!

Yes Joel,

I think eFront makes any potential site, which they want, aware of the fact that they are the 21 st largest web property. However there were a few things I didnt like about the contract :

1) main reason, the contract is set for a period of time (3 years) and after that 3 years is up they are not required to renew your contract. Ultimately they will own your website and you have no control whatsoever over this.

2) if they DONT go public (which they have been saying they will for over a year now ..oh in 6 months..not now NASDAQ's not doing good...bla bla bla) then your "shares" will amount to absolutely nothing. And what happens if they do go public and their shares are worth only $1, thats 40 times lower then what they estimated.

3) the contract is poorly written, I would analyse your growth and determine how much more you think your site will grow, and also try and determine the income which you would receive if you DON'T join efront.

Remember once you sign that Contract, your site no longer belongs to you...

Ravi

[Edited by Ravi Pachai on 08-23-2000 at 11:23 AM]

Do you think that we would all be worried about the contract if the offer were from Yahoo? Probably not!

I know what you mean though about the points you mentioned. We were not 100% sure of it.

of course we wouldnt be worried, Yahoo is already a public company. It's already well established. There's no comparison between the two. If Yahoo offered you 3 million in stock (not saying me or Joel, or anyone for that matter got a 3 million dollar offer from efront, I just made it up) you would know that it IS 3 million in stock and their company has already been evaluated and is traded daily.

whereas eFront is making an educated guess as what they are worth. Just because they are the 21st largest property online doesnt guarantee anything. I'd put that out of your mind and ask yourself what else will you benefit from this contract? if they don't IPO, then there go your shares so I wouldn't count on that or they may even IPO and their shares turn out to be worth $0.50, then what ?

Ravi

[Edited by Ravi Pachai on 08-23-2000 at 09:17 PM]

I was approached by Brian, which owns several sites that he sold to Efront.com (bizbot.net, link-box.com) I was looking for some buyers for my old newsletter that I had. It had averaged about 4400 subscribers. I couldn't ever get it very big. I was looking for someone to buy it and Brian gave me an offer.

$1200 in cash and $1750 in stock options, which was 50 stocks valued at $35, which is what they hope it to open at.

Did I get a good deal?? Who knows, I have already received half of the $1200 and I will get the rest in the next couple of months, $300 each month. I guess you can say it isn't that much after you have to pay greedy sam, but I was tired of maintaining that site and worry about each issue every week, so I went for it. I now can concentrate more on my other business, which was bringing me much more business.

So, I'm hoping those messily 50 stocks will be worth something 10 years from now, who knows.

If they offer you alot of cash and stock options on the side, then I would go for it. You can always cancel the contract if they try to make you maintain the site.

Efront.com looks like they have a lot of potential, they are buying web sites left and right.

PS: The site I sold was http://www.imsnewsletter.com

Just my thoughts.

Curtis Stevens
Simple Solutions
http://www.1simple.com

Curtis,

Firstly the difference between you and the rest of us, is that it seems as though you were looking to get rid of your website. For me, I didnt want to sell it outright. eFront DOES NOT offer cash upfront. The only cash they offer is through monthly payments for advertising. And those payments are on a set 1.5 CPM (which I was told would not change with the ad industry (if they got higher or lower). So basically they are paying most people monthly what they are currently earning anyway.

Second, it would be stupid to just cancel the contract because then you would NO LONGER have ANYTHING to do with your website. Thats it, eFront will COMPLETELY own your website and you can do nothing about it.

I would join eFront if I didnt want my website anymore, but Im still actively involved and enjoy developing it.
I'll wait until eFront IPO, then I'll contact them.

Ravi