4 Sale: HRMToday.com
Here’s the question that’s been puzzling lots of entrepreneurs? What’s an online community worth? Lance Haun and Laurie Ruettimann, the co-owners of HRMToday.com aim to find out. They’ve .
The two seasoned HR bloggers have hit a fork in the road. New gigs, expanding visibility and pure time management issues drove the pair to talk about closing down their modestly successful community. It was a last minute decision to see what an auction would bring. The move comes almost exactly a year after HRMToday and HRBloggers joined forces.
As the word gets out, attention is starting to focus on the small but energetic community at HRMToday.com. The community is hosted on the Ning Platform (which is home to about 250 HR communities, 600 Recruiting networks, 50 Learning and Development Groups and over 1.5 million varied networks). The site boasts 1,250 Members, over 1,000 blog posts, 350 forum topics, and 29 groups.
Ranked as the 400,699th most trafficked web domain by Quantcast, the site sees about 200 visitors/day, 6,000/month. Compete.com shows similar rankings and traffic.
The sale raises a series of interesting questions about privacy policies, intellectual property ownership, community valuations, the value of traffic and the relative worth of one community versus another.
- Privacy Policies
When members of the community joined HRMToday.com (and many other similar communities and networks), there was no community specific privacy policy. It’s not exactly clear who owns the members’ contact information and demographic data. There is some question about whether or not it’s okay to sell the data.
In this case, possession is 9/10 of the law. - Intellectual Property Ownership
Under Ning’s Privacy Policy, members own their own content. In theory, the users could all ask a new owner to take their material down. In practice, the vast majority of the Blog postings and forum entries will move into the hands of the new owner. - Value of Traffic and Community
The sale of HRMToday is going to be watched very closely by a lot of people. It’s a market making, precedent setting sale. One has to consider that (take a look at the compete.com stats) RecruitingBlogs.com might be worth twice and ERE worth 12 times the sale price. That would be based on traffic alone. Truth is that no one has the slightest idea what a community is worth. The sale price of HRMToday, like a foreclosure in any neighborhood, is likely to exert downward pressure on traffic and community valuations.
The sale of HRMToday.com is going to set a number of precedents. Using eBay as the sales front creates a public and measurable benchmark. Any community valuations in the future are going to be tied to the results of this transaction. If the number is low enough, the effect will be to chill any community investment for a long time.
At this writing, the latest bid is $1,525.
For Posterior’s sake, here’s the text of the basic offering in the ebay auction:
For sale is one of the leading Human Resources blog and social networks, HRMToday.com.
Some site history:
* May 2008 – Site was started as a small blog network with several initial contributors.
* July 2008 – HRM Today and social network HRBloggers.com agree to merge operations
* September 2008 – HRM Today the blog and the social network launches with a new site design
* February 2009 – HRM Today hits 500 blog subscribers
* April 2009 – HRM Today social network hits 1,000 members and 3,500 blog posts
* August 2009 – Site goes for sale on eBay
Here are the specific properties for sale in this auction:
* HRMToday.com domain name along with all associated subdomains (network.hrmtoday.com and blogs.hrmtoday.com). Must have own domain name host to complete transfer.
* Transfer of the Ning based social network and all archived user information subject to Ning’s privacy policy
* Transfer of all hosted blog content (with respects of each individual blog contributor’s revocable content license — plain English: contributors can stop contributing at any time and can ask for their content to be pulled unless the buyer completes a new agreement). Must provide own host (Linux/Windows web host a MySQL database must be available for WordPress installation).
* Transfer of customized software to assist syndication of the participating bloggers. Must provide own host.
* Transfer of syndicated account through FeedBurner.com. Must provide own FeedBurner account.
* Transfer of all social network properties including HRM Today Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page and the LinkedIn group. To transfer Facebook and LinkedIn groups, you must be a member of each respective site.
Transfers of all properties must be completed within 30 days of the end date of the auction.
Ongoing support:
* No matter the final bid price, the seller will provide technical assistance after installation on the buyer’s host to show the buyer how to operate the software on a day to day basis. Any specific customizations or installation issues will not be covered.
* If the final bid price is $10,000 or more, comprehensive support will be given for the first 30 days to assist you in properly transferring all properties, installing the software and help with some basic customizations.
* If the final bid price is $50,000 or more, the seller will do the install on the host of your choice and provide the above support for up to 90 days. In addition to the comprehensive support listed under , the buyer will be able to advertise the site (a 125×125 standard banner advertisement subject to editorial approval) after launch for 90 days on the seller’s sites: YourHRGuy.com and PunkRockHR.com (highly trafficked HR websites).
Why buy the site?
* Targeted base of users – Web savvy and progressive HR and Talent professionals from all over the world
* Instant audience with solid user base and search traffic (see Quantcast for more details or ask for access to Google analytics)
* A thriving community that would continue to grow with additional resources
* A solid base for a vendor that wants to get involved in social networking and blogging.
* Revenue potential has been untapped (taken very few advertisements and only when approached).
* Good base for instant SEO results from months of fresh content constantly being updated.
