The 10 most expensive blogs of all times

If you would sell your blog today, what will be your price? It can be surprising for many people, but blogs currently have a lot of value and many companies or individuals agrees to pay the big price to own a successful blog.

In this article, I’m going to show you the 10 most expensive blogs of all times and discuss the story behind each sale.

This post was edited to correct some mistakes. Performancing.com, which have been forgotten, has been later added to the list, which explains that there’s now 11 blogs instead of 10.

11 – BlogOhBlog.com : $10,000

BlogOhBlog.com was founded by a Malaysian blogger named Bob Jiwakacau. In november 2007, only five months after the blog launch, it was sold for the sum of $10,000 to Jai Nishal Verma, an Indian web developer.

Althought BlogOhBlog was young, Bob released many free WordPress themes and the blog was earning almost $2000 per month. The sale of such a young blog for $10,000 made people talk a lot about it, which lead to many articles and backlinks to BlogOhBlog.

Three years after the sale, I can definitely say that Jai did a great job on the blog and that the sale was a good thing for readers.
» Visit Blog Oh Blog

10 – Ensight.org : $15,000

In 2004, when blogging weren’t as popular as now, Ensight.org was sold for the sum of $15,000.

Althought many blogs have been sold for bigger amounts since then, it was definitely the most expensive blog ever sold at the time.

» Visit Ensight

9 – JohnCow.com : $50,000

Ain’t John Cow a funny name? In fact, this blog was started 2 years ago as a parody of the well known blog of John Chow. Once again, this blog made money really quickly and was finally on sale a few months after being created.

This time, the blog was sold for a very big sum : $50,000. The new owner, Jason Katzenback, have successfully took the blog to a higher level. Today, the blog have approxiamtely 32000 RSS subscribers and bring a mensual income of $3000 to his owner.
» Visit John Cow

8 – WpDesigner: $65,000

WpDesigner was probably the first blog dedicated to WordPress. It can sound funny now, because there’s billions of blogs related to WordPress (This include mine) but in 2006, WordPress weren’t as popular as it is now.

The blog grew with WordPress popularity and a few months before the sale, the owner created a paid theme club. This made the blog earn over $900 a month. It was sold on March 2008 for $65,000 to an entrepreneur named Pawel Ciszewski.

Quickly after the sale, the blog started to die. Pawel Ciszewski did nothing exepted his well known (and well mocked!) “Hello, I am the new owner…” post. Finally, some month laters, Pawel Ciszewski put a bunch of affiliate links on the site. It was the only update.

A loss of $65,000 for the buyer and the loss of a popular blog for the WordPress community. Note that 901am.com was purchased for the same amount.
» Visit WpDesigner

7 – BlogHerald.com : $70,000

Founded in March 2003 by Duncan Riley as the first “blog about blogging”, Blog Herald remains the largest standing resource of its kind.

In February 2006, the Blog Herald was acquired by Problogging, Inc., after which it was sold to Splashpress Media in the same year. The blog, which was already making lots of money, was sold for $12 million. I know it’s a GREAT blog, but $12 million is really a lot of money!
» Visit Blog Herald

6 – Performancing.com : $100,000

Performancing is a blog dedicated to help bloggers reaching online success. Lots of well-known bloggers, as such as Brian Clark, Brian Gardner and Nathan Rice published posts there.

Performancing was acquired for $100,000 by SlashPress Media (also owner of the Blog Herald) in 2007.

» Visit Performancing

5 – TheConsumerist.com : $7 Million

The Consumerist was launched in December 2005, with Joel Johnson as editor. The blog focus on consumerism and consumers’ experiences and issues with companies. They also provide many “promo coupons” which made the blog very popular among US consumers.

It was sold for the incredible sum of $7 million to the Consumers Union in november 2008. Today, the blog is still very well maintained, but damn, $7 million is such an investment!
» Visit The Consumerist

4 – Deadline.com : $15 Million

Founded in March 2006 by Nikki Finke, Deadline.com – which was called DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com at the time of its launch – is a blog about Hollywood movies news and it was an instant success.

On June 23, 2009, Mail.com Media Corporation acquired the site, for $15 million and hired Nikki Finke to maintain the blog.
» Visit Deadline

3 – Bankaholic.com : $15 Million

Finance is a profitable niche, and John Wu, the man who created Bankaholic.com probably knew it while he launched his blog. Though, he was far from guessing that Bankrate would like to buy his blog some time later for the incredible sum of fifteen million dollars!

Currently, the blog is authored by Bankrate, a bigger website about finance, mortgages and all that stuff. Bankaholic looks like a very profitable blog, but honestly I’m not sure that Bankable will get their return on investment within a few years. However, some many people talked about that incredible sale that it was a real buzz for both Bankrate and Bankaholic.
» Visit Bankaholic

2 – ArsTechnica.com : $25 Million

Ars Technica (Latin for Art of technology) was founded by Jon Stokes and Ken Fisher in 1998. It receive 4,4 million of unique visitors every month.

After 10 years being independant, Ars Technica had been finally bought by Condé Nast in 2008 for $25 million, the same sum that Condé paid the previous year to aquire Wired.com.
» Visit Ars Technica

1 – PaidContent.org : $30 Million

Journalist Rafat Ali founded PaidContent.org in 2002 as an online media hub that covers news, information and analysis of the business of digital media.

PaidContent.org, along with its related company ContentNext, was purchased by Guardian Media Group for $30 million.
» Visit Paid Content

And you, would you sell your blog? How much?

Tagged as: sell your blog