Jack of All Blogs » Blog Sales

Mr.Bloggy Starts 2007 with a Bang

Franky — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 05:48:38 +0000

I am proud to announce you that Splashpress Media has added another blog to its Mr. Bloggy network.

In the last hours of 2006 Paul Scrivens and Splashpress Media agreed the sale of Wisdump for an undisclosed amount.
The Wisdump blog will be moved to our servers in the next days and be eratizined as soon as possible, just like the other Mr. Bloggy blogs.

No details are known yet about Scrivs’ future plans, but it is rumored he will hold a sabbatical year and prepare a music vlog network together with Prince Campell, from former Chartreuse fame.
No one less than Cowboy David Krug brokered the sale.

Wisdump is expected to stay member of the 9rules network because of its quality and unique content.

More details to come.

And Now We Got One!

Mosey — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:03:43 +0000

Our latest purchase, under the Bloggy Network group of blogs and sites, has been Gadzooki.com. It was a private sale for an undiscosed sum. Gadzooki is perhaps most famous for it’s unforgettable tagline “I want one!”. It’s a truly excellent site that shines out in the extremely competitive area of gadget-related blogs. This is largely due to the insightful, cutting-edge content of its writers: “Quimby”, “Mr Butterscotch” and “Jackoozi”- all of whom have agreed to stay on.

Gadzooki was formerly in the portfolio of Blog Media, and one of the sites that David Krug, former owner of this blog, took away with him when he parted company with BM. It was sold privately via a sitepoint auction for an undiscosed sum last May. Despite slipping to a PR5 since then (expect that to go back up pronto!)- it only had about 80 visitors per day in those days. Now it has over 500 per day, on average, and it’s starting to generate significant search results.

This purchase comes hot on the heels of our acquisition of Biziki, as reported in a previous post. Given our intended design plans to use Chris Pearson‘s eratizine theme as the design “makeover” for all our blogs- we really had no choice but to buy Gadzooki! As mentioned before, the only other blogs in blogosphere that currently have this erazatine theme by Chris are yours truly (JOAB), Biziki and Gadzooki. We happen to think that Chris is the best WP theme designer out there and that erazatine is one of his most memorable and unique designs, although he has done excellent ones since. We are thrilled (with a caveat) to have exclusively captured the erazatine theme- especially as we feel that it will stand the test of time.

The caveat is, that although we have assurances from the previous blog owners of Gadzooki, etc- we’re pretty sure that, as with all “artistic” creations, the ultimate copyright reverts to the creator. As respect to Chris, we will be putting at the footer of all blogs: “A uniquely designed theme by Chris Pearson“. And we are encouraged (although saddened by the context of the thread: that someone had stolen Chris’ design; see Blog Herald’s take on it) by Chris’ (in not mentioning erazitine) comments when he says in his post:

“There are only three “living” projects in which I retain ownership — Pearsonified, Tubetorial, and Cutline.”

In his post “How Much Should A Design Cost?”- Chris says (dated last June)-:

At this time, blog designs start at $1500. This price is for a blog that has minimal graphical complexity, no customized icons, and no logo production. What you do get at this price is rock-solid, hand-crafted, browser-tested CSS, XHTML, and simple (but striking) graphic design. In most cases, bells and whistles like plugin support, unique page designs, and extra graphics push the price up into the $1800-$2000 range. From there, the price is largely dictated by page-specific CSS/XHTML production and custom graphic design. It’s totally conceivable that a pimped out blog could run as much as $3000. Rest assured, though, that it would be totally badass, and the recipient of the design would receive mad props for having such a killer online abode.

When I emailed Chris, I told him that we weren’t put off by his prices and wanted to be “pimped out”! Anyway, it didn’t end up happening as I explained in my previous post.

So what an expensive way for us to have gone about this plan! Even after spending the dosh on Biziki and Gadzooki, we still need to convert and customize all our other blogs. Currently we have 26 blogs in our network (which we own 100%) and a further 14 related Bloggy “service sites”.

I think all of this is a result of the fact that I am, on a personal level, completely obsessive-compulsive. If I want something, I have to get it- no matter the cost. I totally understood why Chris couldn’t help us out, so no hard feelings there. But I then had to find another way, by hook or crook.

Anyway, Gadzooki is a great site, as I said. So no regrets there….!!

[tags]gadgets blog, gadzooki,chris pearson,cutline,tubetorial,biziki,erazatine,blog design,blog skins,WP themes[/tags]

The Blog Network Stampede? Nonsense!!

Mosey — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 17:49:48 +0000

Matt Craven announced at the Blog Herald yesterday that Blog Media Inc. is rebranding itself into Problogging Inc. He goes into more detail about the whys and wherefores at the Problogging site itself. It does go a long way as to explaining why Blog Media (or now Problogging) have been so aggressive recently in selling up their blogs. To name just a few-: Biziki (which we bought), Gadget Bloggers, Mobility Watch and now Sporty Blog is on sale at sitepoint. To quote Matt-:

This is part of a deliberate strategy to move beyond the “wide & deep” network strategy that we have employed in the past in order to refocus our efforts on our consulting business and expand more into services for professional bloggers, including directly consulting in that arena.

An interesting comment was left by John Evans from Syntagma Media and then a futher observation in a post-:

As I’ve written here many times, I believe the blog network concept was over-egged because Weblogs Inc was seen as a network rather than two superstar tech websites. The charge out of this space is becoming more like a stampede. As I write, Steve Rubel is asking whether Weblogs Inc itself will survive within AOL now that Jason Calacanis has left.

I am not going to argue the semantics here of this specific scenario, but I would like to pick up on the general gist of it- as there’s been a lot written about the “rise and fall of blog networks” recently.

I’m sure that Blog Media/Pro Blogging know what they are doing and have good strategies in place.

And I’m sure that Syntagma are sure that they are going down the right path as well. Anyway, it’s not really any of my business and I loathe the childish bickering that one often finds in blogosphere. Each to his or her own. And looking over one’s shoulder is a waste of time. As is egoism. Where I come from, humility is a quality, not a defect.

But what I would say is that we are perhaps seeing an evolution of the “creators” of blogosphere moving out, and the offline, “commercial players” (who can ride out long-term ROIs and gain lateral, rather than direct, benefits)- moving in.

Unlike John Evans, I believe very much that blog networks will be extremely healthy long-term investments. Far from being a “bubble”, I don’t think we have even seen the tip of the iceberg yet. Right now the US almost completely dominates the space.

This, in percentage terms, will change over time- a great deal. Blogging will increasingly become more “mainstream” and less “tekkie”. So that people who don’t even know what RSS is- will soon be signing up on their TV screens. Who do I want reading my blogs long-term? People who don’t even know what “blog” means yet. So if this takes us 5 or 10 years, so be it.

I used to work in the stockmarket and we, on a daily basis, were so obsessed with the “technicals” and trading “the margins”, that we never saw the real profits from the bull market, always too eager to buy and sell, and failing to see the overall picture.

The senior expert on a 15th Century Flemish artist, Jan Van Eyck (most famous for his “Arnolfini Marriage” portrait)- was called Erwin Panofsky. He wrote volumes about the symbolism of Van Eyck’s paintings. My point? He yearned to own a Van Eyck and was often consulted for authentication purposes. After he died and his estate was being evaluated- to everyone’s utter amazement, a small (previously unknown and attributed to “school of Master of Flemalle”) iconographic painting by Van Eyck was hanging beside his desk! In other words, while writing books and books on his favorite artist, Panofsky had missed the fact that he owned an original Van Eyck himself all along!

This was my experience playing the stocks. I was “too close to it” and too quick to predict the peaks and troughs. And this I fear is the same thing happening with false predictions now of the demise of blog networks- from the very people who have helped build them up. They are too close to the action and unable to see that the movement is only just getting started!

I hate to repeat a cliché from a previous post, but here it is again-:

“Fools build houses for wise men to live in“.

[tags]blog media,problogging,matt craven,blog herald,blog networks,john evans,syntagma,van eyck,stampede[/tags]

Another Quick Blog Sale Example At Sitepoint

Mosey — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:48:06 +0000

As it’s the holidays (well, in the US, anyway)- I’ll keep this one short. It wasn’t on my intended list of three samples! And it’s mainly for the benefit and ongoing discourse with Matt Mickiewicz of Sitepoint and anyone else out there who is reading this, and likes to trade on sitepoint. Last week there was a site for sale here. It was EFXscripts.com. We wanted it because we like the scripts that it sells and wanted to merge it with a site of our own which has some great, unique scripts, but hasn’t been performing well-: GorillaScripts.com. Plus it was a PR6 with seemingly natural backlinks, so cheap at the price.

Now for one reason or other, we were late to the bidding and somebody else bid at the BIN price. That was $750. Rather annoyed with myself, I messaged the seller and told him that I was sorry to have missed the bidding and that if for any reason the other bid fell through, I was willing to pay $1,000. So $250 over the BIN price. The seller responds to my message and says that I’m not too late as he hasn’t accepted the BIN from the other bidder. So the site was mine if I wanted it.

To my mind, this was unethical behavior on behalf of the seller. I was really in two minds as to how to proceed. The other bidder had won fair and square. My message was in the spirit of “if the other bidder doesn’t pay up…” In this case, I was saved as I got a secondary message from the seller saying that the original BIN bidder had upped his bid to $1,050 – outbidding me. So I was able to gracefully exit.

This example, Matt, is intended to show you how your policies, in bending over backwards for the seller- have created a “black market” of behind-the-scenes bidding. It was the seller’s choice to create a BIN price- he/she didn’t need to. And if it was too low, tough luck. Plus this sort of sale will make future “valuations” practically impossible for buyers, as unlike in the past- one can’t really gauge the “going rate” for a particular type of site.

I do have some suggestions. Here’s the first-: sellers should be forced to sell to the buyer who does a BIN on their auction- if the buyer meets certain criteria (prompt payment, etc).

[tags]sitepoint,scripts,BIN,PR6,blog sales,ethics[/tags]

Blog Sales At Sitepoint. Example no.1

Mosey — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 15:28:51 +0000

In my last post, I explained why I feel that buying off sitepoint has become so deadly dull these days. So here is the first example of a recent blog buying experience we have had-:

Widgetoko.com

Okay, we really, really wanted this one. It was listed at sitepoint here with a fairly low starting bid. While it was listed as PR0, it had some fabulous backlinks- including from Digg’s frontpage, Scobleizer, Lifehacker, Wired and other mayor websites. Just a backlinks and a future pagerank check showed us that Bob’s your uncle!! A nicely customized design and short, slick, unique widgets. A perfect match for our own more content-heavy Bloggy Widgets.

So we waited and waited….two minutes to go. The current high bid was $1,001. So we put in the suggested bid of $1,050 (that’s us- “saloschin”). What happens? The auction extends for 4 more hours, automatically. We monitor it. Phew! We still won the bidding- got the email from sitepoint and take the “seller has not yet chosen to accept your bid” as just the usual red tape stuff. Hang on. We don’t hear from the seller- so we message them. And then we get the reply saying “sorry…site already sold to the previous bidder..”.

Now this was all wrong! Firstly, the previous bidder was “private” but had his username revealed to us in the message from the seller. A certain “Problogging”. Damn! We know that one. No less than the former owner of this blog, David Krug. Of all people to be pipped at the post by!! And beaten by a bid of $1,001- lower than ours? Weird!
Did we get a fair shot at winning the site? No. The seller should have indicated that a higher bid had been offered prior, giving us the chance to again increase our bid. How much did the seller actually get? Supposedly $1,001. That’s what it says. How much were we prepared to pay? Approx. $3,500. The seller sure didn’t get that.

In conclusion, neither the seller nor the buyer’s best interests were served by this auction. We didn’t get a fair chance to obtain the site and the seller didn’t get the opportunity to get the highest price that he could. And the whole thing was a rather annoying, frustrating “cloak and dagger” experience that left a bad taste in the mouth. Sitepoint’s policies, while clearly well-intentioned, are actually creating a fundamental lack of transparency- which cannot be good for trade.

Plus, where was the fun? If we’d known that “Problogging” was bidding against us- hell, we’d have paid double just for the fun of it!

And as a follow-up, I’m wondering if the blog sale even went through? Checking the “who is” on the domain now and it seems to still be with the old seller. I don’t know why this is, but what I do know is that such an experience will not serve sitepoint well, long-term- with the potential to lose both buyers and sellers. The current sales lack so much of the articulation and banter of the olden days- and I’m wondering if this will also give sitepoint less “search phrases” to be linked with- enquiries from the SEs in mind, and thus bring down their performance- at least in the marketplace. Time will tell!
[tags]sitepoint, widgetoko, lifehacker, wired, bloggy widgets, widgets, online auctions, david krug, problogging, digg, scobleizer[/tags]