By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
BANGKOK, Thailand–Filipino blogger Abe Olandres, popularly known as yuga, announced the sale of his homegrown blog ranking service Pinoy Top Blogs to Enthropia Philippines for an undisclosed amount.
“After several months of negotiations, I have finally agreed to sell the Pinoy Top Blogs project. It’s a decision that was very hard to make but I figured that the future of the project will be more secured with the new owners,” he said in a recent entry on his personal blog.
Admitting that the service has been bleeding money, Olandres said he could no longer manage the site because he did not have enough time to review submissions, monitor blogs that violated its policies, and filter spam. “I’m way too far behind the backlogs,” he added.
He also said that numerous problems with the Pinoy Top Blogs server have become more evident because more bloggers were joining the website.
Olandres said he has suspended the service in the past because of recurring server problems.
“I’ve been spending a considerable amount of my personal money to continue running the project. The site has been bleeding close to $200 per month for a year now and has not generated any revenue at all (well, if you can call a few dollars from AdSense enough revenue),” he said.
Enthropia Philippines is a sister company of another group behind evoTopSites, BlogFlux and iBegin.
“They know the system very well and can fast-track its re-development. I am confident that they’d be able to continue running the system in top shape. They were also the ones who donated the current domain/s to me after I transferred it from this site to its own domain,” Olandres said.
He assured existing users that the transfer of ownership to Enthrophia Philippines will ensure privacy of information stored in his current system.
All subscribers will also be informed about the ownership change, and will give them an option to opt out of the free service.
“On a personal note, this is my very first sale of an online real estate and I really didn’t know how to go about it. The sale price is still undisclosed unless Enthropia is willing to disclose it,” Olandres said.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
[...] Oliva writes about a Filipino’s decision to sell his homegrown blog ranking service in Blog [...]