1 Man Blog Sells for $15 Million Dollars
Just saw over at Problogger who saw over at PaidContent that Bankaholic, a blog run by Johns Wu, was sold to BankRate for $15 million!
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.
The story goes to say that Bankaholic has a staff of one and Johns (both Problogger and PaidContent got his name wrong. It’s Johns, not John) will stay on to keep the blog running. Johns and Bankaholic are advertisers on John Chow dot Com. I’ve sent an email to Johns to confirm the story. I’m waiting for his reply. If it’s true, then I think I’m going to raise his ad rate! 
Joking aside, if Bankaholic did sell for $15 million, then I’m offering Johns my huge congratulation. Drinks are on him at the next meetup!
*Update – Just got an email back from Johns. He has confirmed the sale of Bankaholic for $15 million. Huge congrats man!
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If it is true that the blog was purchased for 15 million dollars, this is going to inspire a lot of bloggers. There will probably be a flood of new blogs in the blogosphere here in the next couple of days!
Awesome ! Gives all of us aspiring bloggers something to shoot for!
I’d love to know the revenue being made from that blog! Because $15million is a lot of money to pay!
He must have had tons of sign ups for credit cards and other bank products online
Some bank bonuses and brokerage account bonuses could make a pretty cool amount in a short amount of time provided that you had the quality level of traffic needed to achieve it:-)
Well he had about 7000 unique visitors/day. But do not forget that this is a one man enterprise. I do think that the price might be too high – even if he made $700-$1000/day from his blog that’s about $365,000/year. $15,000,000 is about 40 – 50 times earnings which is insane for a business but I guess ok for the online world.
Kinda reminds me of many similar stories 8-10 years ago
I was trying to do the break down on that too and was shocked when I saw the traffic break down vs the payout. That is a pretty high payout when yyou break it down. But on the other hand the blog has gone from 50k uniques monthly to almost 300k in about a year so he must be doing something right.
This is where i get the data from:
http://www.quantcast.com/bankaholic.com/traffic
Wow! that sounds real nice trust me
a huge amount. :O wow.
truly, companies are recognizing the value of a significant blog, and the influence that bloggers can wield.
wow 15 million. im astonished. How could a blog reach such value? Johns made an excellent deal. he gets the money but keeps the job.
@Debby: There’s already a flood of new blogs everyday for the good and the bad..
If true, not only is it very motivational… but also increasing the value of big name/brand blogs out there! (so let’s hope it’s true
)
I didn’t think about that. Ya man. Seeing that Interney web sites are selling for real money makes South Park’s complaint more and more false (that the estimated value of something online is a joke).
Zac,
It definitely shows you that you can make it online.. But the competition is indeed fierce.
That surely is an impressive number…for a blog. Congrats to the man!
It’s true, and it’s not too much money. The little I know is that they probably didn’t pay even a 10x yearly income multiple which is very reasonable when looking at classic buy out’s. I think both parts in the deal are winners!
Congratulations!
Daniel,
Would you care to disclose where you found out that the blog sold for 10 times earnings? I am curious to find out more about this deal, which would make it easier for everyone to value their blogs.
Dividend Growth Investor
Congrats Johns on hitting the big pay day.
Yeah no kidding, I read about it this morning too and didn’t really know what to think. The blog doesn’t even look that busy.
….ouu…wow…in my little country this can be just a dream…:D:D….15 millions…my congratulations too:)
Not sure I buy this, show me some proof.
This is just an unbelievable amount of money for a one man operation. It is hard to believe that a company would gamble that much with such a high variable.
If this is true it is absolutely awesome.
$15 million dollars for a blog unbelievable….
It’s not really unbelievable to be honest – the blog obviously had great rankings for the financial niche, not to mention made tens of thousands+ per month in affiliate revenues, and on top of that an extremely healthy amount of traffic. 15 million is great, but in the bigger picture, it’s not that much, and was a great deal for bankrate.com
Ryan,
Would you care to disclose your sources about the blogs revenues? I could only find 7000 unique visitors/daily..
I don’t know. I was offered $50,000 for one of my sites a while back. I was like seriously? Really? I’m not sure if people realize how much work goes into a site and they think ‘hey, if I buy this site I’ll make millions, no, billions’.
And after checking out that bankaholic site I’m like ‘eh…I could make that’. But making a site and marketing a site are two different things.
Good luck to the new owners and congrats to Johns.
I heard about that too, I think it’s true. Congratulation!
WOW 15 Million Dollars! My congratulations although i would love to know how much revenue is this blog making.
I’d love to see the proof that this blog sold for 15 million because that’s an unbelievable sale.
Good luck to him!
Kind regards,
Carl
heh readers,
I would say it is a costly deal. Lucky fella!! I think the offer could have never reached a million dollars.
i own a couple of domains – suggest.pro and matrimony.pro.
Any idea where to sell them? I can tip you for the lead.
all i have to say is wow
yes josten i also surprise.
holy sh**, how much traffic was he getting? i wonder how much i can sell my blog for.
that´s bad news for all who don´t believe there is no money in blogging isn´t it ? lol nice job
LOL, I just spotted a huge influx of traffic from johnchow.com
BIG thanks for getting my name right. Very few sites, including our very own Bankrate press release guy got it down correctly. Jeeeeez.
And yes, drinks are on me next time!
Hey Johns Wu… congrats on the big deal ==)
Johns,
Congrats on your deal. Would it be too rude to ask about P/E ratio on the deal?
Free drinks, cool! When’s the next meetup?
it’s true, johns is my friend and it was a very sound deal. while it was built on wordpress, it wasn’t just a traditional blog. but a wise seo can do similar in a few years. @zacjohnson it’s definitely motivational!
here is the press release
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080923/cltu104.html?.v=76
Sweet mother making momma mocha! Now that’s a sale to brag about in this industry.
Best regards, Matt Thompson | Mattheosis.com
Original Orthodox Hubby @ Home Dad
Congratulations to Johns, thanks for replying my email for confirmation, you are the man of the whole blog world at the moment.
I have been wondering how much does my blog cost? :0)
i think it depend on your PR and how long your blog exist.
His PR is 5.
Wow..Nice..15million..Can do a lot with it. Anyway john chow, if someone want to buy yours are your selling it? This is a personal blog maybe if you were to open one that related to any field. What you would do?
are we living in a dream world?
Thats huge money for a blog run by 1 man…..congrats to Johns
i find this hard to believe.
Well it is sure needs a lot of hard work before it can sold at that number. And yes it is true that it will be inspiring a lot of blogger out there so they can be more professional to blogging
yes off couse.i agree with you.
wooho… thats great
john use to buy lots of ads, he bought from me too.
He’s such a lucky ass bastard!
Steven,
Don’t confuse hard work for luck. The blog is about 2 years old and it proves that the best way to make money online is to find a niche you know something about and are knowledgeable about and then keep producing and updating original content.
I hope it is true and I would love to see the blog owner too
wow great news john.15 million?it very high price.
after i read your article it has burn my motivation to the high level.thnks john
wow, that’s a big amount, how I wish I could sell my blog to 20 m…
When one goes to this blog it is hard to see why it would sell for so much money I would like to see just what all the stats for it are.
Every time I read about Johns I’m in awe. Great job Johns & John
gotta love it… apparently for the whois info states the domain was created on 14-jul-2006 not bad for a 2 year old domain…
OMG Outstanding!!! I read his blog weekly….. You should post his story, its really cool how he started and the advertisers he uses. WOW to him
The value of the site is all about how much it’s worth to the person buying it. For them, it might be a good buy because of the platform if gives them to further their existing business in the niche.
For someone like me, it’s probably only worth 8-10 times the monthly revenue…Does that mean he ripped them off? I don’t think so. I think it shows how bad they wanted it.
Not unheard of… Last I heard Techcrunch was worth 35 million.
I wonder what JohnChow.com is worth? John- do you sometimes regret using your name for your blog? You can never sell… (well I guess you could but giving up your name .com would suck!)
Congrats to Johns!
Good for him. It just goes to show the power of blogging these days. What a nice amount of money to have in your bank account.
I could imagine blogging for a cool $7.5 Million a year salary…
Seems good to me
Holy cow, that’s awesome. Can we get an interview or post about what Johns did to make the blog that valueable?
“Johns” as a name that sounds plural, but infact not, is rather special in its own light!
This is incredible and a good example of what you need to create if you want to make a website that has some value to sell to someone else. Content that people want that is useful and not tied 100% to a personality or social marketing. There are a lot of niches that are pretty much untapped plus of course this particular HUGE niche that made this man a lot of money.
FWIW, I think most of the full-time bloggers I know do something in the financial field.
If you believe that, I have some swamp land in Florida, I’d love to sell you.
Wow…This is really a great news for the bloggers, which will inspire them….
WOWWWW…$15 million. I wonder how these companies just find sites to buy lol.
-Mike
Blogging does a bank account good!
Kudos to Mr. Wu for creating a blog worthy of such an enormous sale.
Wowww….very fantastic price….Good,,,,go ahead bloggers…
Congrats to Johns, this has surely reset the bar on the worth of a good blog.
can’t hardly believe if this true…
Congrats to Johns. Does this make you wonder what kind of offers you might get for John Chow dot Com?
that’s a lot of money for a blog
Though I think it’f be hard for me to get rid of my blog.
But for that much money, oh, what the heck… except if it’s still growing, of course
Wow, that’s some serious cash! But since, Johns is staying on, he’s just getting paid $15 mil to do what he’s already been doing. Nice payday.
Any chance of Johns giving a guest post telling his ’story?’ I’m sure that’ll inspire some
It is cool to know a blog can sell for 15 million. But it is a common in internet business to get that kind of amount of money for a blog?
I have been to that blog already i saw it in an article already, i believe it was on chitika success stories..
Wow, what a trailer load of cash. it’s really great news.
Sheer insanity by Bankrate and HUGE PROPS to Johns. Crushing Cash!
That’s great to hear. Congratulations to Johns, and gives me more incentive to grow my blog
and what are we doing about it?
And what a timing….those CEOs of walstreet also got away with millions of $$.
Great…
That is awesome. What an inspiration to the rest of us!
The procedure leaves one wondering if the price paid was a deal for the buyer and a future loss for the seller. It looks to be quite a fair deal from an outside perspective, but the limitations on the seller might be such that he is less able to provide that which he desires to provide.
I can say Quite good niche he selected to start with.
This is big party niche. Hoho