My long time readers remember when I posted several months ago on how you can sell a blog for far more than it is worth. Well, it looks like someone was reading my article and decided to get out early.
The blog I am talking about this time is called SiteFever dot com and was just another blog in the crowded "make money online" niche. This particular blogs only real claim to fame was being linked to from the money maker himself John Chow.
The other claim to fame this blog had was misreporting its page views on its advertising page. This one caught my eye right away because he was claiming under 300 visitors a day but over 8K page views daily!!!
Let's do a little bit of simple math. 8K divided by 300 equals about 27 page views per visitor. I don't think even Yahoo gets a per user page view that high.
According to the site The blog was sold for $1,250 to someone from a non-English speaking country. I have to feel bad for this new owner because this site was never that good and is not going to be very good judging by the new posts I have seen there.
The original owner says he is leaving the country and that is why he sold the site but I don't know if I believe him. There is no "great" content on the site as it stands now. In fact most of the content is just a cheap rehashing of content you will find on any other make money online blog out there today.
With him selling the site I have to wonder something, what about his contest? Yes, he was running a contest for a 1TB external hard drive. Will he honor the contest now that he is gone?
From the dealings I have had with him I tend to doubt it. I think he was just looking to make a quick buck like so many in that niche.
Remember the blog I talked about months ago that was sold for a huge profit? I was looking on Alexa the other day and acording to their stats it peaked right about the time it was sold and has since fallen off a cliff.
When buying a website it is always buyer beware. Don't buy based on two or three months worth of traffic. Like my investment agent always tells me, "past performance should not be used as an indicator of future gains."
At the rate the new guy’s posts are going, I doubt I will be visiting it anytime soon.
Yeah, I took a quick peak in to see if any response ever came to my ranting comments and was surprised to find the site sold. I guess the gravy train was running out or something. If he realy did make the $1.1K or so over 11 weeks most of it probably came near the tail end. Maybe I scared him into dumping it?
You never know. The previous owner may found another source of income, more profitable. Don’t pounder over it too much.
Also, I think the new owner will need to settle quicker if he wants to maintain readers there.
The new owner listed it for sale on SitePoint immediately after buying it. I think he was just trying to flip it quickly, but now can’t find a buyer. The high bid on SitePoint was $1550, so maybe he will at least make a quick $300
But I agree with YC, I won’t be visiting anymore. I have already removed SiteFever from my feed reader. What a shame.
Did it get flipped again? All of the new posts have been deleted!
Registrant:
Neon Lim
259 Kim Keat Ave
Singapore, Singapore 310259
Singapore
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SITEFEVER.COM
Created on: 19-Jul-05
Expires on: 19-Jul-08
Last Updated on: 23-Sep-07
Well, a fellow Singaporean bought it from this info here :) But I also noticed the ‘new’ posts have been brought down, the ads removed. I wonder how the advertisers who paid a full month would feel.
Also, what about the guy who won the bid for the headline banner - I wonder if he had already paid for the $100.
You know, everything is possible. While there are many of us who wouldn’t and couldn’t trick people for one or two hundred $, there are plenty of those you do only that.
Yet same datas there, as abovr. Intersting is that at least one (I`m to lazy to check others too) of new domains - from the 4 were used for those “4 new sites”-tools he said about on 18 september, silentip.com, is :
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SILENTIP.COM
Created on: 15-Sep-07
Expires on: 16-Sep-08
Last Updated on: 19-Sep-07
Administrative Contact:
Robinson, John jrobinson@sitefever.com
hmm ..
Also wonder if sitefever was 11 weeks old (as blog?), how is registred since 2005 ?
I think the entire site may have been a bit of a scam. One of his “advertisers” is nothing but a Pay-Per-Post blogspam type of blog. The type that goes from paid post to fluff back to paid post.
The guys was probably getting his spot free and using it to boost Page Rank.