22 Year Old Kid Sells WP Site for $15 Million..

[derekwong28]

Lance, I am aware of that but I have seen lots of non-webmaster related sites with the same sort of Alexa rankings that receives less than 10,000 visitors. If you look further back, the supposedly "rich jerk" website that was sold for $385,000 had an Alexa of less than 10,000. That site promoted paid surveys, mystery shopping, government grants, and paid to drive cars. These niches are unlikely to be ones where the users are likely to have Alexa Toolbars installed.

This is the sort of price that would be expected of sites like plentyoffish.com that has an Alexa ranking of 496, again in a non-webmaster related niche. Even Shoemoney and Patrick Gavin agrees that the site is not that large. Besides, the old owner is supposed to stay on "for a unspecified period of time" and also more than 2M are reserved for performance related targets.

[Dave777]

Here's a news article with an interesting critique on Bankaholic...
$15m blog sale shows importance of content

Could be an opportunity here to become the competition with Bankaholic version #2...
Maybe not $15 million... But working off of the buzz in the media etc. you just never know!

Dave

[yaz8888]

I hope its true because its stories like these that keep me going and going

[najmiyusoff]

What a story. Makes me feel sorry for myself. Haha. Thanks for sharing!

[Dixiebelle]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

I have to say that a bank with a software development staff with any brains could have built a much better site in less than 6 months for less than 20% of the cost. Well, that's what happens when you have more money than brains. I hope the same thing happens to all of us someday

TomG.

....and you wonder why the finacial industry is in so much trouble. I wonder if he is friends with the person who wrote the check? It happens, you know.

Dixie

[anymato]

That's an incredible amount of money for that site...

Anyone know what kind of traffic he was getting I noticed his site was a pr5.

Sean

[xlfutur1]

Originally Posted by JamesW

Good luck to him, he deserves it. After all anyone who can write about banking and bank rates for 2 years deserves that kind of money :-)

I actually left a comment on that site a few months ago and just figured it was another run-of-the-mill financial site. I had no idea is was worth $15m.

I agree, unless you are really into banking, that would be a long haul to write good content about that topic for so long. And I'm sure he had no idea it would eventually be worth 15 million. Then again, the guys at youtube were probably not thinking a $1.65 billion pay day either.

[Alex Sol]

guess I gotta get off of the forum and go make a blog

[Lance K]

Originally Posted by Alan Petersen

His blog was bought by Bankrate.com they are not an offline bank. They're a portal of sorts that provide financial rate information.

According to Forbes, Bankrate has Sales of $133 million and Net Income of $20 million. With 5 year growth averages of 29% for Sales and 8% for Earnings Per Share.

[VegasVince]

Awesome stuff. Great story. Living proof that the big score is always available.

xxxVegas Vince

p.s.

If any of my former girlfriends ended up having a kid I don't know about...and it ends bein' this kid.....please contact me asap....cuz daddy here wants to get reacquainted. And get my cut of the action.

[rose64]

Anyone read about his backlinks trick?

[Chris Monty]

He's saying that he used some less-than-white-hat methods to get links to his blog.

Deceptive or creative? You be the judge.

[Colin Klinkert]

Yeah this is a good motivation. Get in a niche that is crowded and has crazy values and big companies, build a site with a tonne of traffic from organic sources, then sell it off at 30 yrs revenue to a tycoon looking to dominate and monetize your traffic as only they can

[camforbes]

yeah baby!

[sheryll]

wow that's pretty amazing, I think his blog looks pretty good.

interesting about the backlinks...

[ragnartm]

Yeah I read this story a while back on a different site, truly an amazing profit he made o.O Anyone want to guess how many % back on all his investements?

[Jared Alberghini]

If you didn't know, there is a bunch of controversy over how he got so many backlinks, using blackhat techniques... do some research on it, it's very interesting...

Whadya think about this?

http://www.jaankanellis.com/bankahol...-link-building

1 Man Blog Sells for 15 Million Dollars | John Chow dot Com

Blogger Hits Jackpot with Sweet Deal from Bankrate | WebProNews

Inspiration is the first thing that comes to mind... Not on the blackhat shady link building part, but selling a blog that has good organic traffic for 15mil is quite inspiring.

Your thoughts?

- Jared

[blase40]

He used to use the same affiliate program that I use for credit cards and my affiliate manager had told me to look to the bankaholic.com site for tips when constructing a blog I built.

He told me that in credit card commissions alone this guy was making around $600,000 per month - not to mention any Adsense revenue.

Truly an inspirational story

[xlfutur1]

Take a look at the footer of this site and you'll see the link. pretty ingenious actually. do a search for that phrase in the footer and you'll see ALOT of results.

http://deviate.ctrlsave.com/

I didn't realize that there was controversy surrounding his tactics - it sort of makes me feel cheesy for actually finding this inspiring.

[Lashley]

This is a great story. Thanks for putting it together. This may sound like a throw-back to the old dot.com days of irrational investment, but I think this will prove to be a sound financial move for Bankrate, not just a huge pay day for Wu.

[eutykhia]

Such an inspiration to start blogging.

[precious007]

Amazing, 15% million for a single blog? I wonder who the new owner of that blog will be, and the reason for selling it. I would never sell such a valuable blog.

[Diana Lane]

Originally Posted by precious007

I would never sell such a valuable blog.

It's only that valuable if there are people around prepared to pay that price. If those people lost interest tomorrow then the blog loses it's value. I'd be taking the money while it was still on the table, unless I had concrete evidence that the blog was worth that much to many people and gaining every day. Otherwise you're just waiting for the site to become more valuable (I think $15 million would be quite sufficient for me!), when it could very easily go the other way.

I can't think why anyone would want to hang on to it if that kind of money was on offer. 'No thanks - keep your $15 million. I'll just stick to spending my days finding content and building backlinks for the joy of owning something valuable!'. It might be someone else's approach, but it sure wouldn't be mine

[xlfutur1]

Originally Posted by blase40

He used to use the same affiliate program that I use for credit cards and my affiliate manager had told me to look to the bankaholic.com site for tips when constructing a blog I built.

He told me that in credit card commissions alone this guy was making around $600,000 per month - not to mention any Adsense revenue.

Truly an inspirational story

$600,000 per month!?.... So his total take on this one blog was well into the $20 million something range, maybe more. You only need ONE of those in your lifetime. The link strategy certainly didn't hurt.

I did a little research and found that the site ranks #1 on the big G for 216 bank type of keywords. And hundreds more are in the first 5 spots. No wonder he gets the traffic he does.

[yommys01]

inspirational. I can't believe I am the same age with that guy, I hope to get there one day very soon.

[yommys01]

inspirational. I can't believe I am the same age with that guy, I hope to get there one day very soon.

[TheRealDomainer]

Internet Marketing Dymistyfied.
As a domainer and site flipper, I am happy and proud of this... Nice motivation to press more... There are a lot of possibilities online

[Eliska]

That is unbeliavable. Really amazing story.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by blase40

He used to use the same affiliate program that I use for credit cards and my affiliate manager had told me to look to the bankaholic.com site for tips when constructing a blog I built.

He told me that in credit card commissions alone this guy was making around $600,000 per month - not to mention any Adsense revenue.

Truly an inspirational story

Cheesus H.! This explains a lot. Insane.

[Karen Blundell]

fantastic! this inspires me to build up 4 or 5 other domains I own that are very targeted niches, using WordPress.