Affiliate Review Site Sold For $125Mill !!

FreshCoast

FreshCoast

What Would Hova Do?
Oct 14, 2011
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Martin Lewis sells MoneySavingExpert.com for £87m - Business News - Business - The Independent

"Since founding his website in 2003 he has built a base of 13 million monthly users and seven million email subscribers. The website attracted 39 million unique users in the year 2010/2011."

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LOL not exactly your typical affiliate site. Nice, one day I'll be able to build something like that.
 
Yea deff not really an aff review site, in fact they're pretty harsh on doing affiliate links or anything even close to scammy there.
 
If you're in the UK, that site (mostly the forums) is (was) a gold mine for advice on saving money, practically everyone with a net connection in the UK has visited the site or knows of it, I dont blame him for selling out, but it's a shame as the company that has bought it are sharks and its inevitable the site will go down hill fast after a period of grace.
 
"The website attracted 39 million unique users in the year 2010/2011."
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Calling BS on the user stats. You can't measure "unique users" over an entire year with any semblance of accuracy.

Cookie deletion rates (examples: manually, anti-virus software, and AdBlock) will hyper-inflate that. Even monthly stats tend to be inflated 2-3x based on these factors. Now add multiple browsers and devices to the mix as well.
 
netbert said:
Calling BS on the user stats. You can't measure "unique users" over an entire year with any semblance of accuracy.

Cookie deletion rates (examples: manually, anti-virus software, and AdBlock) will hyper-inflate that. Even monthly stats tend to be inflated 2-3x based on these factors. Now add multiple browsers and devices to the mix as well.
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... "according to Google Analytics".
 
I mean in general, not just that he was specifically fabricating stats.

Accurate user tracking in terms of real uniques is a myth, and yet it's the foundation of the entire industry.
 
Far from an affiliate review site, in fact it had nothing to do with affiliates or reviews.

Martin Lewis (owner) is a journalist and considered a champion of the consumer. The sites initial popularity was built off of his regular appearances on TV explaining how you could save money on everyday regular things. I can believe the user stats very easily.

The relationship between MSE and MoneySupermarket has existed since day one with MoneySupermarket powering their monetization in most areas.

What was interesting about them was their editorial team truly believed in the cause - I'm not even sure they realised it made money (yes its made a shit load prior to sale) and they certainly didn't care about making money.

I set some business up between them and a project I was working on about 4 years ago and the separation between corporate / commercial and editoral was amazing. Down to the point where their commercial management team needed to leave the office to take a phone call with me to discuss business.

That said - anyone who wants to know what adding value, great content and an authority site look like need not look any further, at least until MS spam it.

MS by the way rank number one (more often than not with a double listing) on more or less every finance term in the UK, and surprise surprise buy links at will with no wrath from the Google monster.
 
d_diggler said:
MS by the way rank number one (more often than not with a double listing) on more or less every finance term in the UK, and surprise surprise buy links at will with no wrath from the Google monster.
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And they had no clue what they are doing.. They just believe in quantity I mean, and PR. WHich works of course.. No clue as in efficient use of resource and money..

Back in the day I had made several grands just selling links to them... and they had a few competitor Auto insurance sites who also bought links..

Buy dropped domain
add some half ass content
contact their link buyers..
??
Profit


I had tons of finance and Auto sites just for them lol.. This was how I funded my first private network... lol

Gotta love them.. I sold off my network based in future earnings from them and a couple other big sites just like them..
 
blogspotter said:
And they had no clue what they are doing.. They just believe in quantity I mean, and PR. WHich works of course.. No clue as in efficient use of resource and money..

Back in the day I had made several grands just selling links to them... and they had a few competitor Auto insurance sites who also bought links..

Buy dropped domain
add some half ass content
contact their link buyers..
??
Profit


I had tons of finance and Auto sites just for them lol.. This was how I funded my first private network... lol

Gotta love them.. I sold off my network based in future earnings from them and a couple other big sites just like them..
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You were probably selling to the SEO team that got them penalised by Google that they soon sacked off. The new guys they have approach the game pretty much better than anyone I've seen. Look at their anchor diversity and the spread of links across their pages. Penguin didn't touch them, neither did having a dot com. These are exactly the kind of guys that ppl should be studying for the long-term.
 
Incantation said:
You were probably selling to the SEO team that got them penalised by Google that they soon sacked off. The new guys they have approach the game pretty much better than anyone I've seen. Look at their anchor diversity and the spread of links across their pages. Penguin didn't touch them, neither did having a dot com. These are exactly the kind of guys that ppl should be studying for the long-term.
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I dunno, only last week I was looking at their backlinks, and contacted one of the spammy linkfarm domain owners through the form on the site - it was a pr3 - average mozauth - he wanted $100 for a guest post. (and on a site filled with spammy links to other sites)
 
-joe- said:
I dunno, only last week I was looking at their backlinks, and contacted one of the spammy linkfarm domain owners through the form on the site - it was a pr3 - average mozauth - he wanted $100 for a guest post. (and on a site filled with spammy links to other sites)
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They probably do buy a lot of shit, but the mass diversity and volume swallows it up fella.
 
Incantation said:
You were probably selling to the SEO team that got them penalised by Google that they soon sacked off. The new guys they have approach the game pretty much better than anyone I've seen. Look at their anchor diversity and the spread of links across their pages. Penguin didn't touch them, neither did having a dot com. These are exactly the kind of guys that ppl should be studying for the long-term.
Click to expand...

Could be... It was quite a while back, and I had a lot of different folks from there who were doing the buying.. probably 4-5 different people I dealt witH..Dont remember
 
They've got a lot better. Their link profile is still stuffed with keyword anchored splogs and shit but penguin has only served to solidify their position by knocking of the comp.

They get a pass because Google see's them as a good fit for the SERPs.

Unless they end up with a public relations issue calling them out on their SEO practise the techniques that are penalising some sites are working better than ever for sites like MS.
 
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