German IT blog for sale (sold) on eBay
Ralf Haller
January 9th, 2009
Ever wondered what a blog in Germany is worth? In a bit less than a week we will know when the auction in eBay closes. Robert Basic, one of Germany’s most read German speaking IT bloggers, is selling his blog site on eBay and currently the highest bid has reached 22,550 EUR. (update: the blog sold now for EUR 46.902,00) The auction is open for another 6 days. Why he is selling the blog site he explains in an interview. I must admit that I have not heard of him before so was reading this interview and he seems to be a nice guy who kept a good amount of modesty and irony both of which typically US tech blogs like Techcrunch have entirely lost - maybe never had. Example: Question: If you could decide what the blog would be worth how much would you say? Robert puts a finger on his lips, smiles an says “One million dollars”. (please click the link)
While even this amount would let the US tech blog community smile and pretend to yawn, I think that they will actually watch this auction quite carefully. Why? Well it is interesting to see what an IT blog sells in Germany as you can then apply (Michael Arrington for sure has an Excel sheet prepared for that 
) factors for viewers, location etc. and can come up with what their blog would be worth.
As it turns out in the interview he is not a friend of Google also because he sells links which is against Google’s policies.
Der Maßstab von Google ist nicht dieser bullshit wie “dont be evil” oder gar der Mensch letztlich, sondern ganz einfach Geld. Was ist das aber für ein Maßstab? Das wäre mir egal, wenn Google nicht zu diesem Infodealer mutiert wäre, dessen Rolle in Zukunft weiter zunehmen wird.
(The measure of Google is not this bullshit “don’t be evil” or even the human being at the end, but simply money. But what measure is this? I would not care if Google had not mutated into this info dealer whose role will increase even more in the future.)
Being asked if he would sell out to Google as well, he smiles and then says: ” That would not work as I sell links, which is against Google’s policies, and they would not break their own policies of course. ” and smiles again.
Tags: Basic Thinking blog, IT blogs, Robert Basic