After several months of negotiations, I have finally agreed to sell the Pinoy Top Blogs project. It’s a decision that was very hard to make but I figured that the future of the project will be more secured with the new owners.
Several thins prompted me to move into making this decision and I’d like to share that with all bloggers who are involved and been part of the project in the last 2 years.
- I have encountered, on numerous occasion, problems with the server. It was mostly a scaling issue as more and more bloggers join the site, server capacity is also affected. I’ve also indefinitely suspended the service in the past due to this recurring problem.
- I could no longer manage the site and have found less time to review submissions, monitor violating sites and suspending them as well as checking for daily spam comments. I’m way too far behind the backlogs.
- The software I used to run the site (evoTopsites) has not been updated for about 2 years now.
- I’ve been spending a considerable amount of my personal money to continue running the project. The site has been bleeding close to $200 per month for a year now and has not generated any revenue at all (well, if you can call a few dollars from AdSense enough revenue).
It also made it easier for me because the new owners, Enthropia Philippines, was also the sister company of the developers behind evoTopSites, BlogFlux and iBegin. They know the system very well and can fast-track it’s re-development. I am confident that they’d be able to continue running the system in top shape. They were also the ones who donated the current domain/s to me after I transferred it from this site to its own domain.
For the existing users, rest assured that all private information stored in the system will be guarded by the new owners. An email will be sent to everyone to inform them of this change and will allow them ample time to opt out of this if they want to.
On a personal note, this is my very first sale of an online real estate and I really didn’t know how to go about it. The sale price is still undisclosed unless Enthropia is willing to disclose it.
Super-Duper site! I’m loving it! Is again – taking you feeds also, Thanks.
Sana magpa starbucks ka ulet haha..
… although it isn’t the same without you.
WOW! Daming pera nanaman para kay yuga. $$$$$$$ pa! yuga mo eh!
Congratulations. Letting go of a pet project is hard, but it’s for the best here as you’ve explained — to let it survive and grow.
Thanks to PTB, Showbiz Intriga? Get It From Boy! validates its place in the Pinoy blogosphere as No. 4!
Mr. Olandres, you’re a visionary.
mr. abe olandres,
pinoy entrepreneur!
looking forward to your next ventures, bro!
Congratulations Kuya Abe! And thanks for maintaining the topsite while starmometer.com was on top. I definitely gained a lot of visitors because of PTB!
Interesting. This is the first local Web 2.0 service acquired by another company? Looks like we’re all moving towards the new IPO (which is really a misnomer, since nobody wants to go public anymore nowadays)
* – new IPO: start a new company, be big, and sell away! Hahahah
A few people have asked Enthropia’s reasoning behind buing the domain. Our response:
We didn’t make the site to make money. It may make us some down the road, but really this was about us connecting with filipino bloggers. We created the original BlogTopSites.com, which tracks over 5 million pageviews a day. By taking over Pinoy Top Blogs we aim to promote friendly competition between pinoy bloggers.
Furthermore – we are a Filipino company. You can see on our homepage all of our sites are .com.ph – we build filipino-centric websites for filipinos on the filipino domain space – it is what we do.
We are working on an importer to move the data from the old site to the new one. We are aiming to relaunch the site near the end of September
Don’t worry brother, it’s one of your achievements. Be Proud! Congratulations!
Jaypee – Wow! You’re like the answer to my prayer — except that I don’t pray and if I did it wouldn’t be for an end to dating spam since there are much more important things. So I suppose this means you’re like the answer, period. :) Thanks!
@Gigi – No problem. Btw, the answer to your question would be, “you’d still find those dating spam posts but you won’t see them for long coz I’ll be deleting them as soon as I see them.” Hehe :D
Jaypee – Oops, my bad. Thanks for the correction (and now I know what the unfortunate answer is to my question. Oh well…) :)