Just some additional info, in relation to the sale of this anonymous blog.
A Performancing commenter wonders if this is a hoax. No hoax. Not sure why I’d make up a hoax like this, but I assure you it’s no hoax. I spoke with the owner last night to confirm this. The plan is to accept private bids or negotiations until Friday morning. If no serious offer has come through by then we’ll open it up to a public auction either on Ebay or on SitePoint (I’m leaning towards SitePoint, as I’ve bought and sold dozens of sites there in the past).
Modern Fabulousity feels no blog could be worth 40K. I can appreciate that it might be hard to believe, but valuing a site at 20 times current income (especially when the current income is 2-5 times less than what the site could easily earn with a redesign and some fresh blood) isn’t unusual at all. Of course, the real valuation is in what someone is willing to pay.
Arieanna says I’ve left a fair number of clues about the blog, and is starting a contest. I’ve offered either a 100$ cash prize or 500$ in advertising, as well as a free copy of Blog Marketing to the winner. She’s probably right that I’ve left way too many clues, but then it’s not like this’ll be a secret forever (Monday at the latest).
Finally, I’ve received more than half a dozen serious inquiries. So far, all high quality people (a number are SEO experts, which is nice to see). A couple thought I was talking about a blog like Autoblog or something. It’s not quite that big. It’s big, it’s important in its industry and it’s a great buy, but you aren’t getting a multi-million dollar site for less than 100K after all.
How much are sites like ProBlogger or Scobleizer worth, after all? It’s almost easier to do a valuation on smaller blogs, because you’re just looking at income. When you start getting into the top 100-200 blogs in the world, though, most metrics go out the window.
I’m brokering this deal because it’s one I believe in. If I had the money, I’d likely consider buying it, because I believe it has huge potential. Potential to anchor a network of blogs or sites, potential to earn the owners decent press on a regular basis and potential purely as an investment.
I’m happy to answer any questions folk may have, and for people who get through the preliminaries I’m happy to share what the site is. It’s not some uber secret, we just don’t want it leaking out prematurely 
January 11th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Here’s my thing…. Is a _blog_ really worth anything? Isn’t the value in the blogger? and doesn’t that value go away if you sell the site to a different person?
January 11th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
>and doesn’t that value go away if you sell the site to a different person?
I recently bought a blog that was probably in the top few hundred any way you measure it (Threadwatch). I certainly can’t pretend that it is the same as it was, but I still continue to learn from it. There is some value in that…but any site that is largely built on the personality of one person obviously loses much of its value when sold.
Keep in mind that some people sell sites and continue to write for them and work on them. Danny Sullivan w SearchEngineWatch and Rob Malda of Slashdot are two examples that come to the forefront of my mind. SearchEngineWatch and it’s associated conference were sold recently for about $43 million dollars.
January 11th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Aaron: Threadwatch is a good example. Consider this a similar site in a different industry. Obviously anyone reporting properly on an industry needs personality and authority, but switching the primary blogs isn’t going to kill the site the way it would for a personal site (like Ensight).