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Sold!

Winning Bid: $12,500.00

Congratulations to the winning bidder, who has chosen to remain nameless!

Bid History

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violentacres (60%)
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Violentacres.com. Extremely popular blog. 300-500k pageviews per month.

8500+ RSS subscribers

  • URL: http://www.violentacres.com/
  • Established: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:00:00 GMT
  • Uniques/Month: 180,000
  • Page views/month: 400,000
  • Monthly Revenue (USD): 1,250
  • Google Pagerank: 3
  • Listed: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:28:52 GMT

Description:

Violent Acres is a popular blog with observations on real estate, financial planning, child abuse, the fat acceptance movement, mommy blogging, and other various social and political issues.

Since debuting in October of 2006, VA has gained a strong, rapidly growing audience. The site has been featured in reputable online publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and MSNBC. It has also been at the center of internet dramas that have at times rocketed it to the top of Technorati’s top search terms, Alexa’s Movers & Shakers, and other popularity indexes. Over 30 articles have made it to the front page of Digg and seemingly half of everything that’s written makes it to the front page of Reddit at some point.

 

  • The site receives more than 300,000 page views per month. That’s in a slow month. When things pop on Reddit, Digg, Fark, or StumbleUpon it’s reached as high as 700,000. The average is in the 300,000 - 400,000 range.
  • Top 10k Technorati ranking. This has been as high as 1,500 at times.
  • Google Pagerank of 3.  It was 5 until the Text Link Ad hammer was dropped.  This could probably be fixed by someone experienced with SEO optimization.  A Google search for “violentacres” returns over 21,000 results.  This was a term invented by the author and every result has something to do with the site.  It’s also highly ranked when searching for “Nyquil” (4th) and “How to Fight” (2nd), for example.
  • 8500+ RSS subscribers.

When an effort was being made to monetize the site, monthly revenues were as high as $2,000 per month.  Lately that’s dipped quite a bit as the owner pursued other endeavors and hasn’t had the time to maintain and test out different monetization methods.   

Currently the site is monetized via Google Adsense, Feedburner Ads, Text Link ads, various affiliate programs, and private ad sales.  Screenshots of this year’s earnings can be found below.  Traffic has stayed steady throughout the year, so you can see how the owner’s attention has waned when it comes to optimizing revenue.  This could be fixed and surpassed by someone experienced in the field.

Recently the owner has had success bringing in guest authors to write content in exchange for plugs for their own blogs.  Many writers have been happy to do it for the traffic bump.  Significant traffic can be generated by hiring a motivated writer or by finding new ways to promote existing, popular content. 

Early on the author was approached by publishers looking to print the content in a book as well, though she wasn’t interested in that at the time.  You may be.  It’s great content; with a little work you could definitely get that going.

Recently the site raises $5,400 dollars for the West Valley Child Crisis center in Arizona through its readers.  The readers are a passionate bunch.

No work has ever gone into promoting content.  Zero.   Traffic is not reliant on relationships with other bloggers; there aren’t any to maintain.  All of the traffic has come from natural, viral methods.  Like I said, it’s awesome content and really strikes a chord with a lot of people. Read through the site’s Most Popular Posts. 

Outside of Sitepoint an offer of $13,000 has been made, so that’s where we’re going to start the auction.  If you need any other information, please leave a comment and I’ll try to answer your question. 

The auction is for the website and all of the content.

Traffic Screenshot

Adsense Screenshot

Text Link Ads Screenshot

Feedburner Screenshot

This is a prominent, infamous blog that is very poorly monetized and has had a grand total of zero SEO hours put into it.  There is significant potential here for both online revenue and offline publishing  revenue.   The content was very diligently crafted and has been and continues to be extremely popular in the social news communities.  Someone who knows what they're doing will make a killing with this stuff.

Will accept a cleared check or the buyer may pay any associated fees for Escrow.com.

Revenue Details:

Google Adsense, Feedburner, Text Link Ads, Private Ad Sales.

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Questions to the Seller

  1. How much exactly from Google adsense? and how often do you update it?

    Posted by:
    RexPowers (60%)
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  2. I have a screenshot of the Adsense earnings listed at the end there. This is the revenue with the default ads thrown up and then never optimized at all.

    Previously it was updated a few times per week. The last 4-5 months it's been updated about once a month or so.

    Posted by:
    violentacres (60%) (seller)
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  3. why has the rev dropped off so dramatically?

    Posted by:
    revolution1 (60%)
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  4. Lack of maintenance and interest from the author. She spent 6 weeks raising $5,400 for a charity and then after that, lost all motivation towards keeping the site running and making money.

    Like I said above, for the last 4-5 months, it's only been updated once a month or so.

    Posted by:
    violentacres (60%) (seller)
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  5. this is an amazing blog is there anyway the author would stay on to post afterwards. I am just worried about what will happen to traffic with a new author.

    Posted by:
    revolution1 (60%)
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  6. Good question, Revolution. A lot of people have asked that and the answer is yes, the author is open to posting in the future for a small fee. The reason for the sale is mainly that she doesn't have the time to maintain the site anymore and she'd rather turn that job over to someone else than see it decline. She also plans to write a few transitional pieces for free.

    Posted by:
    violentacres (60%) (seller)
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  7. I should also mention that even at the $2000 a month level, that was by someone who has absolutely no clue how to properly monetize a site. The potential is much higher, I'm sure.

    Posted by:
    violentacres (60%) (seller)
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  8. Those who are watching this auction should know that as recently as today, violentacres.com has been linked from Gawker.com in regards to an article the author write 2 years ago. So obviously, this content has a bit of staying power. Link here:

    http://gawker.com/5036064/tucker-max-businessman

    Posted by:
    violentacres (60%) (seller)
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