Archive for December, 2008
Thursday, December 18th, 2008
Johns Wu, 23 (born November 1985), used to own and run, all by himself, bankaholic.com, a blog about deposits, savings accounts & money market accounts.
He started the site in July 2006.
His sources of revenue were adsense and Bankrate.com’s partner program, which he became part of in July 2008.
His main source of traffic were from organic search (relying on search engines); meaning no advertising costs.
The site was (and is) highly ranked for top banking keywords like “CD rates”.
Then back on 23rd September 2008 it was announced that financial information site Bankrate.com has acquired bankaholic.com for about USD15 million.
BankRate.com’s President and CEO was reported to have said:
We have been working with Bankaholic in a co-brand relationship since July and have seen first-hand the volume and quality of its traffic. Bankaholic is ranked high in natural search for both deposit and credit card keywords. We believe their organic traffic will increase our deposit and credit card revenue, and with a high composition of free traffic, will help to improve margins.
Blogging guru Darren Rowse said:
The blog does seem to rank very well for a lot of bank terms and I’m sure drives targeted traffic and would convert well with affiliate products.
Noah Kagan lists the moral of the story:
Focus: Johns started out just doing cd rates and became the number 1 term for it on google. Then he expanded to other banking categories.
Relevance: There are thousands of personal finance sites out there. Most of the people just consume some information. You go to his site to find deals and sign up for them. That’s the point.
Monetize: Johns picked a lucrative category where clicks will pay out $50+.
In Wu’s interview with webpronews in October, there’s this interesting Q&A:
Question: There’s been a lot of criticism of blogs as credible news sources. What is your position on this?
Johns WU: I trust blogs WAY more than mainstream media. Some people will say that corporate media is more accurate b/c stories are screened by editors and lawyers, but this is also one of the flaws. I like to read articles that are raw and unedited by people who are qualified to write about the topic. The perfect example is the Iraq war. Who would you trust more? an article from Fox News or a blog post from a Marine on the front lines?
Other expensive blogs sold in 2008.
Source
paidcontent.org, 23rd September 2008
Webpronews interview, October 2008
… RM50 million? Wow, that surely can buy a lot of treadmills!
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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Not many 23-year-olds have this much in cash. Probably even on-paper 24-year-old youngest billionaire in the world, Mark Zuckerberg does not get to hold this much paper money.
Stark details of Wayne Rooney and his wife Coleen’s income were recently made public due to the company which represented them (Proactive Sports Management) suing for unpaid commission & credit card bills. The company has been representing them since 2002.
Basic salary
GBP90,000 per week salary as a footballer with Manchester United i.e. GBP360,000 per month, GBP4.32 million per year
Image rights
GBP1.52 million a year for image rights, paid by Manchester United (including the amount that goes to his agent)
Endorsement deals
GBP1 million a year from Nike for advertisement
GBP118,689 every 6 months from computer game makers Electronic Arts Sports, with which he has appeared on 4 straight UK-version covers of the company’s FIFA series from 2005 to 2008 i.e. about GBP240,000 per year
GBP600,000 from Coca Cola for a four year deal. He also has deals with Nokia, Ford and Asda. I’d assume
Books
GBP3.55 million for 12 books. On 9th March 2006, Rooney signed the largest sports book deal in publishing history with HarperCollins, who granted him a GBP5 million advance plus royalties for a minimum of 5 books to be published over a 12-year period.
For simplicity’s sake, I won’t include the money from Coca Cola & the books.
Still, it still adds up to GBP7.08 million a year.
Assuming GBP1 equals RM5, that means RM35.4 million a year, or RM2.95 million A MONTH.
His wife’s income was also revealed, and even though she makes much less than Rooney, some are really eye-popping, not bad for a former supermarket checkout girl, like the fact that she’s being paid GBP41,667 every month (GBP500,000 per year) for her column in OK! magazine, indirectly making her one of the most highly paid journalists in the United Kingdom.
The Rooneys live in a GBP4.25 million mansion. They also own property in Florida, USA.
Yep, should they ever it, those would buy a lot of top weight loss pills…
Source
Wikipedia
Guardian (UK)
Daily Mail UK, 9th Dec 2008
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Friday, December 5th, 2008
For its 2008 edition, Forbes has named China’s Peng Xiaofeng, 33 as the world’s richest self-made Asian, and the world’s 462th richest person, being worth USD2.5 billion.
33 years old? USD2.5 billion? Tha moving companies San Francisco exercise should be no problems at all.
He made his furtune from solar energy.
Don’t be fooled by the uncool look:
- Started out with a trading company
- It flourished into a family-run company with 12,000 employees: made safety products eg gloves & exported worldwide
- realised no Chinese company made solar panels, so he did.
Lessons:
- No matter how much you’re making, SAVE. In 2005, Peng used USD30 million of his own money (not borrowed) to make solar panel-making factories. Heck, most people would’ve considered living the slow life if they had USD30 million (about RM100 million) in cash!!!
- Never let up: in 2007 he took his solar company into Nasdaq. Internal management problems surfaced, but he held on.
And sorry ladies, he’s married.
Source
Forbes
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Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
Apparently, it is Mahadi Badrul Zaman (born 1983).
He made his fortune selling unit trusts with CIMB Wealth Advisors, achieving “Million Dollar Producer” level for 3 consecutive years starting 2004, later become its youngest Agency Manager.
If you thought the company sounded familiar, yes, it’s the same company with which The Amazing Millionaire Sisters, Nor Akmar & Aida Nurlin (Elynn) Hanif made their fortune too.
As a result, by the age of 23 he had became Malaysia’s “youngest Jaguar owner,” costing RM500,000. The car, not the animal. He also has a condominium valued at RM600,000 and a SIX figure (in RM) monthly. Now it’s quite common nowadays to hear of people earning upwards of RM10,000 per month but I think a six-figure monthly income is still quite rare, in Malaysia at least.
Wow, that should be able to pay for many European cruises!
Later he moved on to the training field, and is now “Chartered Master Trainer” with Lawrence Walter Seminars and also “Chief Change Instructor” with Jag Leadership Institute.
Have you noticed that many entrepreneurs end up in the education/motivation arena? Definitely it’s very lucrative. I have personally seen RM3,000 per day and RM1,000 per hour rates.
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