20 years old.. worth $200,000
If you’ve been a web user since the mid 90s chances you’ve heard of The Well. What exactly is it? It is one of the oldest online communities thats still around today. Right now Salon.com owns it, but they want to sell. My question is, how can a digital property that is over 20 years old only be worth $200,000?
To me, it looks like a clear cut case of the owners failing to innovate while everyone around them was. Behemoths of today might be the money hemorrhaging hot potatoes of tommorow.
One simple pill to kill your future success? Being horrendously search engine unfriendly. Too bad the site’s owner doesn’t read my blog or bothered to invest $79 for Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.
Just like any other business, growth is not guaranteed. Watching your search engine traffic grow as you sit back in your chair can lead to this illusion. The reality is more site owners are learning about search engine optimization every single day. That means you have more competition. You don’t need to watch your stats daily, but you need to monitor your long term trends. If you wait until your uniques start dropping off, it might already be too late!
Whats the site that is 20 years old?
Comment by Michael Gersitz — February 20, 2006 @ 8:42 pm
LOL…I thought this post was going to be about you
Comment by Damien — February 20, 2006 @ 9:36 pm
“Whats the site that is 20 years old?”
www.well.com
Comment by Sean — February 21, 2006 @ 6:52 am
The web isn’t yet 20 years old. So it must have started as something other than a website.
Comment by Chris Beasley — February 21, 2006 @ 9:11 am
I think the domain, well.com would be worth that much at the very least.
Comment by Joe — February 21, 2006 @ 11:34 am
The Well started as a BBS, which was essentially the same thing AOL was in the 80s.
Comment by Andrew — February 21, 2006 @ 3:34 pm
Had the same thought when I saw that (only 200K???)… having recently purchased a number of sites I was really wishing I would have saw that Well offer a year from now…posted it to Threadwatch and I bet it gets bought by a TW member.
Comment by aaron wall — February 22, 2006 @ 12:12 pm
Its fair to point out that $200,000 is the book value. Thanks to the SEO value alone, I’m sure bidders will drive that price up quite a bit more.
Comment by Andrew — February 22, 2006 @ 2:13 pm