“Hey man, you want to buy a blog”
“Can we do that?”
“Yah, but our girlfriends will kill us…”
And just like that, we began the process that ultimately led to us buying a blog that is pretty cool by any metric (maybe even as cool as this one) – Young and Thrifty. If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s original author is this cool PF chick from British Columbia who wrote all kinds of good stuff about personal finance in general, and plenty of Canadian-specific content. So how does a person come to buy a blog, and why the hell would anyone pay anything for a website you might ask (or at least a lot of our family and friends did)?
Taking Care Of Business…
In truth, we bought the blog because we are confident we can build on the successful momentum created by the original author. In case you weren’t aware, blogs generate income through advertisements and such (or at least they are supposed to… we’re still waiting for it to come flooding in). If all goes according to plan, this blog purchase will pay for itself in roughly a year or so… or 2. In case you just pulled out your calculator… yes that’s a pretty sweet ROI. That being said, it will require a large degree of time and effort, so success will not come without its price.
… and Working Overtime!
We had a couple advantages we thought were pretty key in the acquisition as well. The first consideration is that I have already been writing over there for quite a while now as a staff writer; therefore, I knew the audience, and I know quite a bit about the site. A second factor was the fact that the original is going to stick around and help us out going forward. Basically, I believe she likes writing, but all of the other stuff involved with blogging was starting to burn her out. We were happy to take the baton and are now planning to run like hell with it. Wish us luck as we take some of our first entrepreneurial steps forward into the abyss/promising future. Don’t worry My University Money readers, you’ll always be our first, and we’ll always make time for you (wow… that sounds like a really bad break up line… seriously though, we’re not screwing you over, we’ll still post cool stuff here too).
Here are a few of the sites most popular articles:
- 9 Reasons Why I Deactivated My Facebook Account
- Are Financially Independent Women A Turn On?
- Shoppers Drug Mart/ Pharmaprix Optimum Program Review
- Sites Like Groupon Are Easy To Come By – Living Social, AtCost, Yipit & GoodNews
- How To Get More Money From Your Tax Return
- Cohabitation Agreements
- Variable and Fixed Mortgages
And here are a few of the articles I’ve written for the site over the last year:
- Why Deflation and Falling Home Prices are a Big Deal
- Generation Y and Leadership
- How Your Living Arrangements Affect Your Post-Secondary Experience
- Germany and The Dysfunctional European Family
Congrats on purchasing Young and Thrifty. I’ve been following that blog for a little while now and it is a quality blog. Best of luck building it up even more. I’m sure you’ll do a great job.
Thanks MM, appreciate the shout out!
Congratulations and good luck! I am sure you will make the best of it (it is pretty good anyway) and good luck with your respective girlfriends – I’ll be very sad to loose you.
Nice work – It’s exciting stuff! I am sure you will do well with it. Before long, you will own many more blogs.
Congrats on the purchase! YandT is one of my favourite blogs, so don’t screw it up. :) j/k, i’m sure you guys will do a great job. Good luck!
All the best TM on the new venture ;) Havign met Y&T a few times, I can tell U she is just as cool in real person as she is on her blog! UR wise to have her continue on…
Cheers
I’m sure you guys will get your ROI back within 1 year :) Thanks for grabbing the baton and I look forward to working with you guys!
Pretty soon you’ll own the entire PF blogosphere, who knows? :)
Yayyyyy I’m cool! :)
LOL Vicky that’s so sweet of you to say! :) I’m sure MUM is going to make it infinitely better :)
That is awesome. How did you go about buying the blog? Did you contact multiple blog owners to see if they would sell, or did you buy it through a blog sale site?
We knew the site’s prior owner, and basically negotiated from there. We were lucky to be able to deal with each other in complete good faith, and I’m fairly certain we are all going to be really happy with the deal. Rarely does a good personal finance blog ever get listed on an auction site.
Thanks a ton Young. We appreciate all you’ve done to help us, and build up the blog.
Part of the negotiations was that I buy the first round of drinks when I eventually make my way out to BC, so I’m glad to hear that she’ll be a good drinking partner ;). Thanks for the congrats DN.
We definitely intend to do our best Vicky. It was one of our favourites too, that’s why we bought it!
We’re going to start with one for now Corey! I don’t have the patience to do it your way and build them all from scratch!
Congrats on the purchase! It’s great to see the people I like to read expanding their empire (although this one is net neutral, since I already enjoyed YaT, haha!). Best of luck!
Congrats, guys! Y&T is a great blog, and so is MUM, so I’m sure things will go well.
Thanks Kev, we appreciate it.
Congratulations! You are on the runway and ready for takeoff!
Congrats on your “mogul-dom”! That’s an entrepreneurial mindset I definitely don’t have; I’m the happy staff writer :)
Good to keep in mind Elizabeth, we might be looking for those in the future!
Wow, I go away on vacation and look what happens!!!???
Sorry for the delayed congrats, but congrats! Well done on the acquisition and no doubt Y&T will continue to thrive under “new management”.
Stay in touch often,
Mark
Thanks Mark! Don’t worry, we’ll be bugging you often!