Buying blogs must be in vogue
A sure-fire way to monetize an independent blog is to sell it.
US-based SFO Media has sold Jaunted.com and hotelchatter.com to CondeNet, the online publishing division of Conde Nast, for an undisclosed sum.
The plan is for the two blogs to sit alongside its concierge.com travel site, operating as standalone brands, cross-promoted where relevant on concierge.com. Jaunted and hotelchatter have nearly 1m unique users a month.
The press release added that ‘The Concierge.com sales team will sell placement on the blogs, both individually and included in packages with Concierge.com and cntraveler.com.’
Mark Johnson, founder of SFO, joins CondeNet as a senior director and will continue to run the sites.
The price paid is not disclosed, with none of the US wires covering the story suggesting a sum. What are a million blog readers worth?
TechCrunch’s coverage includes a graph, comparing visitor traffic to the three sites over the past year.
Coverage of the deal in the context of CondeNet’s digital strategy appears on paidcontent.org
Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution
4 comments:
I can see Darren Cronian's eyes light up, having won the Blog award last night. Trip advisor buys Travel Rants for an undisclosed Sum ??
It does make we independent bloggers dream of a sell out enabling retirement to a sunny beach with no more daily blog slog.
That gives us hope to sell our blog one day as well then. Having said that, you have to remember that Jaunted and HotelChatter are multi authors blogs.
That is some traffic to a travel blog. I have to add that multi author blogs seem to generate much more traffic than single author blogs, but it's a challenge that single author bloggers should be up for.
I am! ;)
I also have to say that they are some poor multi author blogs, where writers are paid peanuts and the quality of the content is poor.
It's all about networking and getting yourself out there. I find nowadays I spend less time writing and more time promoting and networking Travel Rants.
I'd be interested to find out how much the deal was for. I've DM'd Jaunted on Twitter but I am not expecting a response! ;)
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