The Apprentice Blog Fired?

You all know that for five seasons of The Donald, and one season of Martha, I ran TheApprenticeBlog.com.  With a little nudging, a quiz asking Which Apprentice Are You?, and regular commentary about the business lessons and the candidates’ performance, I built a healthy… nay… huge active reader base.  

Then, before Donald could move west and shove his unsuspecting candidates into tents in the backyard, I sold it on eBay.   Since I included all 6 season-specific sites and back content,  Terry, of Superaff.com, was bang on when he/she pointed out that the new owner “just bought themselves a whole bunch of links for peanuts.” 

The new owner introduced himself on the site, and announced his intention to keep the site up and running, so, I’ve been eager to see what he did with the site for the new season. 

After the first episode I popped in to say “hi” and leave a comment or two for continuity.  But the site wasn’t there.  Just a little note from typepad.com that the owner should post something. I was more than a little surprised. But these things happen.  I emailed and offered some help, just in case it was taking a little longer than anticipated to get the changes implemented.  I heard nothing back, and the site is still down after 4 episodes.

Now, sometimes the readers were a little rough when pointing out that the site wasn’t ready in time.  They were an active and vocal bunch, who would pick up the slack when necessary, but I heard about it when I was late posting a preview or episode summary.  Perhaps they pissed the new guy off.

Or maybe, other more profitable opportunities arose that he needed to focus on and this little side project wasn’t really sufficiently engaging to warrant the time and energy required to get things rolling. 

Either way, it seems like a waste. TheApprenticeBlog.com was a reliable, make-money-while-you-sleep property, and there are lots of ways the site could have been monetized quickly and easily.  Worst case, it could have been left up, stagnant, and still make money.  Trust me.

Funnily enough, some of the readers are already suggesting that Stephen from Apprentice Views bought it and pulled it down because it was a competitive property.  Stephen‘s response? “…if i did buy it, i would have kept it and maintained all the strong links to this site… It is weird that someone would pay that price and then do nothing with it.”

Maybe one of this season’s candidates bought it and are just waiting until they get fired/hired to start the conversation. 

Who knows?  It’s just odd to see something that you built just kind of fizzle away.