Staska.Net

Sharing my ‘Net life bits

HarpzOn is for sale. Sort Of

with 4 comments

Wow. Mitch from HarpzOn.com just called it quits and is selling off his domain.

Mitch was one of the more interesting new entrants into (pro) blogging advice club with a novel and interesting idea of how to get to the top.

In addition to relying on good content, word of mouth and traditional promotion tactics, he decided to throw a pile of money at the problem, targeting top bloggers in his market segment for paid review of his blog.

Well, unlike many of us, Mitch is already successful online entrepreneur, so he could afford it. And his tactics appeared to be working. He had good content. He’s got a quite a few links from a number of highly respected bloggers.

All of which helped Mitch attract a bunch of subscribers to his feed and mailing list and get to the level of about 1000 visitors per day, in a few weeks. And his became one of more interesting daily feeds in my feedreader.

So it’s a pity to see Mitch go. If he is really going, that is.

Since the way he announced the sale of HarpzOn, looks more like an interesting marketing experiment. And after a month I wouldn’t be surprised to see announcement that due to the lack of bids, overwhelming response from readers, resolved time constraints or something similar, Mitch decided to stay :)

The price that Mitch has set for HarpzOn – starting bid at $5000, is waaaay too high. I can understand the wish to recoup several grand spent on promotion efforts. They might have been even worth it, if Mitch continued with the blog.

But there’s no way current blog metrics (No income, Technorati Rank 17 871, Alexa 65K+, 2160 linkbacks according to Yahoo) can justify the asking price for the blog .

And it gets worse. You aren’t even getting the blog. All you get is a domain HarpzOn.com. Mitch gets to keep his posts, mailing list, e-book and all other goodies.

So you are paying $5000+ for a brand new domain (registered on March 01, 2007) that will stay in Google Sandbox for at least several months, with a linkprofile that one well written and dugg post can achieve.

If you are considering shelling out five grand for such a domain, I have this map for buried treasure that migh be interesting for you too.

Or, I may be able to offer you a blog in the same field as HarpzOn.com, with better Technorati Rank (17 383 vs 17 871) and more backlinks according to Yahoo (3465 vs 2159) for the same price. And you get all the blog posts on this blog, as a bonus.

The name of the blog?

Well, Staska.Net, of course ;)

Written by Staska

April 23rd, 2007 at 8:57 am

Posted in Main page,Misc

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  • http://www.askshane.org/ Shane

    Gotta disagree with you on this one. $5,000 for 30,000 visitors/month is highly reasonable in many cases. Plus, he may have very likely avoided the sandbox. I didn’t think it was possible, but my blog has been around for less than three months now, and I was ranking for lots of things that a new site shouldn’t be able to within just a month or two. Again, I would have argued with you that that simply wasn’t possible.

    I do agree with you on one key point, though: this smells like a evil marketing gimmick straight from John Chow ;) Will be interesting to watch.

  • http://www.miriguy.com Chee Kui

    Hmm. I am not sure if he is really gonna sell his blog. Maybe he is, because he mentioned he is too busy. Or maybe he’s just trying to get more traffic to his blog as part of his marketing strategy for his blog. ;)

  • http://www.staska.net Staska

    Gotta disagree with you on this one. $5,000 for 30,000 visitors/month is highly reasonable in many cases.
    There’s lots of room to argue the traffic/price worth. But that’s not the point here. The thing is Mitch is not selling his blog. He says that he’s gonna keep the posts, subscribers, etc; for himself. All you really get is new domain with some backlinks. How long, do you think, the traffic will stay when all you have left is harpzon.com without any content?

    Plus, he may have very likely avoided the sandbox.

    Yeah. I thought that too until recently. I had a few blogs that were doing quite well. Had lots of backlinks, were ranking for all sorts good things and had decent SE traffic. I thought – there’s no such thing as Google Sandbox.Or at least I’m not in it… Until the traffic on my two blogs more then doubled almost overnight, without me changing a thing.
    Now I’m much more inclined to believe that there is a sandbox.

  • http://www.askshane.org/ Shane

    Oh, there’s definitely a sandbox. Absolutely no question about that. All I’m saying is that some sites manage to avoid it, and his could easily be one of those.