

Duncan Riley sells Inquisitr for $330,000  - Finntastic
http://www.startupsmart.com.au/growth/2011-05-20/tech-writer-entrepreneur-duncan-riley-sells-inquisitr-for-$330000.html

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arn
Here's the flippa listing: [https://flippa.com/138899-The-Inquisitr-a-rare-
opp-to-buy-a-...](https://flippa.com/138899-The-Inquisitr-a-rare-opp-to-buy-a-
quality-high-traffic-news-site) 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.

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adario
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.

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

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

~~~
rvanniekerk
No kidding. First thought was, autoblog?

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trevelyan
Sale price equal to 22 months of revenue.

Is that low, high or just about right?

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dangrossman
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...](https://flippa.com/84185-11-000-month-revenue-
no-1-in-market-1500-customers)

~~~
StavrosK
Hah, nice. A long way from RoD :P

~~~
dangrossman
Realms of Despair?

~~~
StavrosK
Yep, I'm Poromenos.

~~~
dangrossman
Awesome, I never realized you made historious.

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DanBlake
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.

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

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boyter
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.

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

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

I hope he got paid in AUD.

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

~~~
jimminy
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.

~~~
jacques_chester
> 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.

~~~
nl
_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.

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

~~~
jacques_chester
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.

~~~
nl
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

