Reports have surfaced that Bankaholic.com, a WordPress blog run by Johns Wu (alone) is selling for $15 million to BankRate. That’s quite a deal for Wu, I’d say. According to paidContent.org, Wu gets $12.4 million up front, with another $2.5 million possible earnout over the next 12 months.
Darren Rowse who knows a thing or two about blogging success says, “If this price is true it’s a fairly decent sale for Mr Wu (understatement of the year) – the blog has an Alexa ranking of 42,168 and averages less than 20 comments per post. The blog does seem to rank very well for a lot of bank terms and I’m sure drives targeted traffic and would convert well with affiliate products – but this is still a fairly inspiring sale!”
“Inspiring” is an understatement itself. If ever there has been motivation to make money blogging, this should be it. This is even more inspiring than the Wine Library TV guy getting on Conan and Ellen. His story was impressive. He did turn it into a $45 million business, but it was already a $4 million to begin with.
As far as I can tell, Wu just started a blog, and here he is sometime later selling it for $15 million. I think most bloggers would find that very impressive. “I was looking at this deal and was thinking if this isn’t the highest price tag paid for a single WordPress blog than it must be the most profitable WP blog ever sold!” exclaims blogger Patrick Gavin. “A deal estimated at $15M, seemingly all organic search traffic (so no cost for the traffic, the site is highly ranked for many top banking terms, ie ‘CD Rates’), and one employee! Well done John[s] Wu.”
BankRate confirms that natural search ranking was indeed a factor. “We have been working with Bankaholic in a co-brand relationship since July and have seen first-hand the volume and quality of its traffic,” stated Thomas R. Evans, President and CEO of Bankrate. “Bankaholic is ranked high in natural search for both deposit and credit card keywords. We believe their organic traffic will increase our deposit and credit card revenue, and with a high composition of free traffic, will help to improve margins,”
John Chow talked to Wu and confirmed the $15 million price. I have contacted both Wu and BankRate with some questions, so hopefully I will get some more info on the deal from one or both of them. If so, you’ll be the first to know. According to a press release, Wu will stay attached to the blog during the transition period, and for an undisclosed amount of time following that.
