Maddies fund

Editor Note: we know that buying online businesses can be a tricky business. As Mark suggests below, make sure you educate yourself and only choose an option that will work for you. While there are a lot of great reasons to buy an online business rather than starting from scratch, there’s always one major objection: buying an established website takes money. And the more established a website is, the more it will cost you. Of course, you can sift through an auction marketplace looking for a bargain deal, but these marketplaces are fraught with fraud and snake-oil salesmen. Plus, many of the websites for sale through marketplaces simply don’t make enough money to justify the time you’ll spend building them. With smaller sites, you’re often better off starting from nothing. So how can you afford to buy an established website? This article will cover 8 of the most common options we see buyers exercise to fund an acquisition. I’ll also review the benefits and … [Read more...] about How to Buy an Online Business: 8 Funding Options

Color me tired. I got a report of a site that reprinted one of our articles without permission. Checking it out, I discovered that miserable combination of someone making money off content they don’t own, paying nothing to host that stolen content on Google’s Blogger service and earning off that content through Google’s AdSense ads. And reporting the infringement is oh so easy. Not. So here’s the fun loving site: The most current article shown comes from Search Engine Land. It’s reprinted in its entirety, without permission. There’s even a credit line shoved in at the end: Newsflash, to anyone who doesn’t get it. You can’t just shove a credit at the end of a story and assume that gives you permission to reprint an entire article. You have to ask the source. No ask; no permission. Sometimes this happens by accident. People just don’t know any better. Usually when it comes to my attention, I track down a contact address or form, … [Read more...] about How Google Hosts & Funds A Copyright-Infringing Web Site

As AllThingsD has confirmed, Pinterest has scored another huge round of funding today — $225 million to be exact. It values the company at $3.8 billion. Pinterest has recently started rolling out a preview of its monetization plans — or at least part of those plans — with the debut of Promoted Pins on both Pinterest.com and its mobile apps. The company also recently announced the commerce-friendly price drop alerts feature that notifies users when pinned items see a price decline. Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann gave this statement on today’s funding to AllThingsD: We hope to be a service that everyone uses to inspire their future, whether that’s dinner tomorrow night, a vacation next summer, or a dream house someday. This new investment enables us to pursue that goal even more aggressively. Pinterest’s most recent funding was a $200 million round back in February that valued the company at $2.5 billion. About The Author Matt McGee is the … [Read more...] about Pinterest Lands Another $225M In Funding, Now Valued At $3.8 Billion

AllThingsD broke the news this afternoon, and received this confirmation statement from Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann: “Our focus is on helping millions of people discover things they loveand get inspiration to go do those things in their life. This investment gives usmore resources to help realize that vision.” Pinterest recently completed its first acquisition with the January purchase of Punchfork, a popular recipe site. That was, no doubt, helped by Pinterest’s previous $100 million funding last May from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten. That funding valued Pinterest at $1.5 billion, which means today’s round represents a 67 percent valuation increase. AllThingsD says this new round was led by Valiant Capital Management with Pinterest’s existing investors also participating. Nielsen recently estimated that Pinterest saw more than a 1,000 percent increase in unique visitors in 2012. About The Author Matt McGee is the Editor-In-Chief of Marketing … [Read more...] about Pinterest Lands Another $200 Million In Funding

Some in the marketing and developer communities are buzzing with the weekend’s news that App.net, a potential Twitter competitor, raised more than $500,000 in funding — not from venture capitalists, but from its new users. With about 12 hours left in its fund raising window, App.net currently says it’s raised $734,850 from 11,205 supporters. App.net is the brainchild of Dalton Caldwell, who founded the now-defunct social/music site imeem in 2003. Caldwell most recently made headlines for a Dear Mark Zuckerberg letter in which he wrote about the frustrations of dealing with Facebook’s merger and acquisitions team. With App.net, Caldwell is building a Twitter-like social site with a couple key differences: Posts can be up to 256 characters long. App.net will be ad-free. Account-holders will pay to use App.net. The base account is $50 for one year, and there are developer and “pro” accounts at $100 and $1,000, respectively. The join/support page … [Read more...] about App.net, A Twitter Competitor, Crowdsources $500,000 In Funding