BankRate.com has acquired the bankaholic.com blog for $15 million according to recent reports.
Financial info site BankRate is expanding its financial product listings, as it’s acquiring Bankaholic, which provides info on deposits, savings accounts, and money market accounts. The company will pay $12.4 million up front, with another $2.5 million possible earnout over the next 12 months.
Bankaholic’s sole employee John Wu will assist in the transition and remain for an unspecified period of time. BankRate, of course, is exposed to some of the nastier aspects of the economy, though it’s held up fairly well and continued to grow.
Google Trends reports around 8,000 visitors per day to Bankaholic. What do you think? Is it a bargain at $15 million?
With a team of professional financial journalists working on the blog for 12 months it could be worth twice as much this time next year.
Blogs have huge value, we all just need to wait until the world realises just how valuable they are and then there will be a lot of rich ex-bloggers around.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Patrick Gavin’s title to his blog post was quite attractive – The most expensive wordpress blog ever sold..
Its overpriced if you ask me. Did BankRate think about the earnings and every other aspect before spending that high number on buying it?
Whoah. $15m? That seems pretty insane for a blog like that. It’ll be a great asset to them, but how will it fare after the founder leaves? Generally when that happens the product goes down hill. Think of all the companies that Google has swallowed who then lost their most potent employees.
I don’t really think this is a BIG bargain.. you don’t have to acquire a Banking Blog by paying so much!! Just spend time analysing the market and with a decent domain + a team of professional financial journalists .. they could achieve the same effort..!!
$15M – Insane.. totally Insane! Grow up guys..
Wellll….. If I get 1 million, I can raise my traffic from 20k daily to 200k daily
Anyone interested? 
That’s a bloody steep price for a blog with relatively low traffic.
My hedge fund blog got 11,300 hits on Tuesday – I would surprised if someone offered me a $1M for the site. $15M is a gross over payment unless the bankrate website already has so many ways to convert each visitor that it simply led to them being able to pay over the top like that.
- Richard
Richard Wilson
Hedge Fund Blogger.com
What is the fuss about? There’s always a market when there buyers and sellers who are willing to make transaction at a “price mutually acceptable to both parties.” Could these unecessary vernom coming be a result of jealousy?
If you rejoice with the seller you might be the next one with such a mind blowing deal. Smile
everyone!!!
$15 m? Hmmm Don’t think so.
Wow this is amazing. I hope someone buys my blog for that much one day!
Well for those happy to start with US$50, please enter the competition at Nudgeville.com.
Insane! And over priced is my opinion too. But I absolutely agree that if there is a mutually agreed upon price, it could be anything. The buyer didn’t know the actual market value? lol it could happen!
Smells of linkbait…
whats funny is silly blogs get sold for so much all the time, this one sold for 8 figures as well recently and if you read it it sounds like an 8 year old wrote it
http://www.yournobody.com/
perez hilton makes 54,000/day for petes sake
Mosrt of the commentators on here are jealous. They have no idea how much it was worth because they don’t know how much revenue it was generating for the buyer prior to purchase.
And Richard Wilson, not only are you confusing hits with visitors, one glance at your blog tells me it will be a long long time before you get any offer for it my friend.
Time to grow up kiddies.
I’m sure John Wu is stoked! Obviously Bankrate know that the domain is worth a lot, the backlink portfolio is strong and they are confident that they can make even more revenue from it despite all the financial woes.
A very innovative viral marketing ploy by BankRate.
They are counting on all of us to write about it, thus promoting those keywords and their corporate identity even further.
A little more ingenuity:
http://bankaholic.blogspot.com
Wow, I pray that one day, someone would buy my site too.
Would be interesting to know if they’ve made their money back or when the investment would turn profitable. I doubt the blog was turning over anywhere near that amount??
Such an interesting story and luck.
Good stuff, he put a lot hard work in his blog.
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