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Duncan Riley sells Inquisitr for $330,000 (startupsmart.com.au)
49 points by Finntastic on May 23, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 31 comments



Here's the flippa listing: https://flippa.com/138899-The-Inquisitr-a-rare-opp-to-buy-a-... for stats and revenue numbers.

I had seen it while it was listed. Annual net revenue of ~$108,000. Which I presume was Duncan's salary.


It depends on how one looks at it. Since he gave three years of his life to it, I would be inclined to say that the sell price was low, especially considering his experience in the space. On the other hand, perhaps he has a job lined up already and this was simply a bit of housecleaning to get him back to the less stress role of working for someone else.

All that said, many people start sites, work on them for years and get 'no' payout, so him getting 'anything' could be seen as landing on the up side of what is usually a sad entrepreneur story.


Think he was living reasonably comfortably off the site prior to its sale.


Main image on the Inquisitr site is pixelated. Something I wouldn't expect from a site worth $330,000. Just saying.


No kidding. First thought was, autoblog?


What is technoratimedia ads and why do they pay so ridiculously high compared to adsense - Id be wary of that. If you lose that ad network deal, the bulk of your income is gone.


An eCPM of 0.43 is not ridiculously high. Their Adsense eCPM, in fact, seems to be ridiculously low. Only A$.04 eCPM.


He got $2.25 CPM, which isn't 'ridiculously high' considering there's 8 ads on every page.


Sale price equal to 22 months of revenue.

Is that low, high or just about right?


It's better than I did on Flippa last time I sold a site there, but mine was showing a downward trend in revenue. https://flippa.com/84185-11-000-month-revenue-no-1-in-market...


Dan,

I've been following your work for little over two years now. I'm so impressed by what you do. Do you have time this week for a skype chat? I'd like to get your advice on a product i'm working on.

Let me know if you'll be free! Email is on my profile.


Hah, nice. A long way from RoD :P


Realms of Despair?


Yep, I'm Poromenos.


Awesome, I never realized you made historious.


For a blog, it depends. By the standard conventions of "pricing" blogs, it's high, but when you get into true, professional blogs that have their own brand, an established name, and all the rest, the conventions fly out of the window. For example, the Huffington Post sold for 126 months of revenue.


Depends on the type of business, where the revenue comes from, age etc. but I'd say slightly on the higher end but fair.


I admit being ignorant to the site, but isn't it just a mash-up of various RSS feeds?

Or does it actually have uniquely created content? It looks like RSS stuff to me on the main pages but has writers listed on the about page.

If it is all new content hats off to them though as I would scarcely believe that so few could crank out so much content.


Most of the content is unique. The Flippa auction says they spend $3K/month on writers.


Good on him, it must have been hard yakka running a site like that.

I hope he got paid in AUD.


Nope, he lamented the skyrocketing AUD many times on twitter. I would not be surprised if that was a factor in the sale.


I think jacques was referring to the sale itself, which would be in USD, I believe.

[Below is an explanation of why he lamented the skyrocketing AUD.]

As for the revenue for The Inquisitr, it all tends to come from ad companies that pay out in USD. Having discussed this before with Duncan, on Twitter. Since his revenue stream was primarily in USD, as the USD and AUD came to and surpassed parity, the value of his income in the local economy decreased.


> I think jacques was referring to the sale itself, which would be in USD, I believe.

That's a pity. Comes to around $310-312,000 local.

The strong AUD has been great for consumers, but not great for exporters. Duncan was an exporter, the dollar rising was going to hurt him.

Tourism has taken a double-whammy with locals going overseas and foreigners staying away.

As a net consumer I am loving the AUD-USD exchange rate. Mind you it's a historical abnormality; for about 70% of its life as a floating currency the AUD has traded at less than 80c US.

If the AUD falls before oil prices, the current government will be (more) doomed.


If the AUD falls before oil prices, the current government will be (more) doomed.

That's simplistic. If the AUD fell back down to 80c US it's unlikely it would hurt the government, and might even help it. It would depend on other factors...

If the AUD falls then presumably we'll sell even more iron ore.

However, the high exchange rate is one factor in discouraging the RBA from raising interest rates (they don't want to encourage more capital inflows to take advantage of our already high interest rates). At the same time, the increase in the exchange rate has done a lot to combat inflation (imports cost less), but has distorted the price basket somewhat (foodstuffs cost a lot more compared to TVs now, for example). If inflation was higher then interest rate increases would be more likely.

But.. a high exchange rate helps protect the Australian housing market from foreign real-estate speculation, as it is relatively a lot more expensive.

But.. a lower exchange rate would help the tourism industry, which is a big employer of groups of people who have been unable to take advantage of the mining boom.

Conclusion: it's a brave person who predicts the political fortunes of a government based on exchange rate movement.


I think the grandparent may have been referring to the prospect of $2AUD/litre petrol.


This was my precise point. Australians have been buffered from the rising price of oil by the rising price of the AUD, but there's no reason why these two prices should continue in lockstep.

If the AUD goes down, petrol prices in Australia will soar and the government's already dismal ratings will sink. Plus, as was pointed out, a weaker dollar would embolden the RBA to raise interest rates. Two nails, one coffin.

Folk in Australia forget what a minnow this country is. Our mindshare of worldwide attention is utterly disproportionate to our economic status.


Oh, right. Yes I agree with the petrol pricing thing.

I think we are sometimes too eager to class ourselves as a small economy though. In GDP terms, Australia has a bigger economy than South Korea, and is close behind Russia and India - we rank 13th in the world [1]. Far from a big economy, but not a minnow either.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...


Two factors that the government has little or no control over, yet the libs will attempt to heavily capitalise on. Oh how I wish politics focused on the real issues.

Clarification: high fuel prices is an issue, just not a direct one. Rather it is an issue of planning, technology and development. For example, build better rail infrastructure, public transport and plan away the suburban sprawl in the major cities and people will be less concerned with fuel prices as they won't need to drive as much.


> Two factors that the government has little or no control over, yet the libs will attempt to heavily capitalise on.

Sure, but they're the opposition. Blaming the government for factors outside their control is the job of an opposition[1].

Taking credit for factors outside their control is the job of a government.

[1] You may recall the libs copping a beating over rising petrol prices circa early 2001. For a while it looked like it would cost them government.


Blaming the government for factors outside their control is the job of an opposition. Taking credit for factors outside their control is the job of a government.

I love this quote.

It's like the whole "if we achieve a budget surplus it will be made in China" thing being preemptively put around now. These days it is almost impossible to imagine a surplus that isn't made in China. Our economy is so closely tied to China it is good - in a way - to see it acknowledged.


I wasn't claiming Labour are any less opportunistic, though I do seem to remember they went after Howard's policies on boat refugees on humanitarian grounds, rather than a hysterical stop the boats platform. Which makes their attempts to reinstate it all the more despicable.




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