One of my favorite blogs to read has just been sold. TC broke the news last Friday that popular tech blog Ars Technica was bought by Conde Nast.
The site will become part of Conde Nast’s Wired Digital Group, the same company that earlier bought Reddit.
The sale priced wasn’t revealed but it’s rumored to be within the vicinity of $25 Million. This is the same amount Wired.com as sold for back in 2006 as well as Jason Calacani’s 80-plus strong WeblogsInc blog network back in 2005.
For a single website attracting about 3 million readers a month generating close to 19 million pageviews, $25 Million is a steal. Ars is like the Methuselah of blogs — it’s already a decade old.
I have had a couple of offers before for several of my blogs and I know that feeling of getting to that level when others are willing to put a price (and shell out the cash) to the value of your blog. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on where you stand), I didn’t sell. The guys over at Ars Technica can now comfortably retire.
Well, I do agree with Ars that conde naste, publisher of The New Yorker, is as great a parent company as any. I wish Federated could do us, too. I’m not sure how they can justify their CPM, though. Seems really bloated. Some sites they handle have pageviews and bounce rates (a guy in one site showed me his if I promised to show him mine) no better than the site I handle but CPM at Federated is like three times mine.
Can’t believe it too but I checked with their agency, Federated Media, and their CPM is at $40. At 19 Million PVs a month, that’s about $9 million in annual revenues. There’s Adsense too. I guess their valuation was at 36x which is high.
When WebLogsInc was sold for $20-$25M, it was raking in only $1 million a year in Adsense.
Come on Abe, 25 mil? Maybe pesos but dollars? Three million unix a month? Do you think a Fox exec would get out of bed for 3 million viewers a month? The show won’t even make it to the 3 AM time slot.
I got an offer before for about Php500k for one blog. Rejected it. :D Can’t say really but if it will allow me to retire early, why not? :D
I hope this acquisition doesn’t ruin AT.
But I’m curious sir Abe, at what price would you sell one of your blogs? :P