The most expensive blog ever sold cost more than RM50 million
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!
