Germany’s no. 1 blogger Robert Basic: “I’m selling my blog!”. After a hundred blog posts, comments, a GPR increase of 2, and extra ad revenue. “Oh, you know what, I love my blog so much. I won’t sell it! Thanks for your support though”.
Whether he’s the Scoble or Arrington of Germany, one thing is for sure. Robert Basic knows how to get attention. After a few years of successful blogging – last month Basic Thinking attracted 85,000 unique visitors and served 254,000 page views -, he decided to put up his blog on eBay (expecting to receive an amount between €10k and €100k). Allegedly because he wants to “start from scratch again”.
Yet some sources believe it’s just another trick from Basic’s sleeve. Linkbaiting so you will. If that really is the case, Basic did a great job. The auction goes on for six more days, he already has coverage from major blogs (including an article from Robin Wauters on TechCrunch).
The question is, can he resist the temptation of just taking the money and run? The score already is €20.150,00. Let’s see what happens!
FYI Ernst – Techcrunch wasn’t the first american blog to report on this – we had it much earlier this week:
http://www.centernetworks.com/german-blog-basic-thinking-ebay-auction
as you note, we’ve heard from several of our german readers that it could be a linkbait scheme.
The link which goes to Robert Basic website is broken…
This looks like Entrecard did once and I wrote about it here: http://thenextweb.com/2008/09/28/entrecardcom-to-sell-or-not-to-sell/ (he didn’t sell in the end, but he got coverage in the online press and generated some buzz).
Exclusive: Robert Basic Instinct on eBay – The Big Sellout http://bit.ly/JiKy