Hopefully MoneySupermarket remembered to get cashback through Quidco.
MoneySavingExpert.com founder flogs website for £87m
MoneySavingExpert.com - the advice website for people seeking decent insurance, credit cards and other money deals - is being sold for £87m to MoneySupermarket.com. Personal finance journalist Martin Lewis founded the site in 2003. The proposed deal awaits clearance from shareholders and regulators including the Office of …
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 09:18 GMT Daf L
Still independent
See the above link for the editorial code that is part of the contract of the sale. It's pretty robust. Seeing as moneysavingexpert.com went to great lengths to be independent and up front it seems little point in buying the site if you were planning the opposite. I would expect the real worth for moneysupermarket.com is the visitor tracking data. Where are the visitors going, what are they looking at, what are the trends, who can moneysupermarket persuade to give them higher commision based on it,etc.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 16:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cynical...perhaps
Recently a donation of £2m was given to a local public school (a 'charity') to build a new boat shed on the river. That looks altruistic but was offset against tax. Personally I would prefer that £2m went to help reduce the defecit.
Martin Lewis is not making a charity donation. He is now one of the wealthy and gets to say how money he would otherwise pay in tax is spent.
The irony is that this is Tories tried to cap charity donations to prevent this kind of thing!
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 21:13 GMT Just Thinking
Re: Cynical...perhaps
"Martin Lewis is not making a charity donation. He is now one of the wealthy and gets to say how money he would otherwise pay in tax is spent."
I never really thought of it like that.
Although he has to pay for the privilege by donating a large sum of money to the charity out of his own pocket..
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 22:38 GMT DF118
Re: romanes eunt domus
@Alfred: If you're not actually studying for or teaching a linguistics degree then "grammar" quite conveniently covers just about anything to do with the English language, especially when one is in the business of delivering petty criticism. Only the most tactless of pedants would actually go so far as to point out the error in another's choix des mots when said other is patently cheering you on, regardless of how unskilled or fumbling they may seem. As an inveterate pedant, one must take one's societal affirmation where one can find it.
*flares nostrils*
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Thursday 7th June 2012 15:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Could care less, then/than
Actually these aren't really Americanisms, there are some pretty stupid and annoying bastardisations of the English language that Mr Webster put in place but even he was not so ridiculous as to suggest the above were valid.
These examples are just demonstrations of downright ignorance and appear almost universally.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 16:30 GMT error handler
Re: Bargain
a news letter full of factual content with regular readers numbering in the single digit millions.
... not to mention the (tens of?) millions of pounds in affiliate fees every year, of which well over half come from the company which has just bought the site.
So MoneySupermarket make a huge saving as they no longer have to pay a cut of their profits to MoneySavingExpert, and they get a brand new revenue stream in the form of all the other affiliate cash the site brings in.
Of course the deal will be dwarfed by the one I make in a few years when I sell my next startup, comparethecomparisonsites.com.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 09:15 GMT Andrew James
Re: Independence
According to reports at the time, from Martin Lewis himself, the contract stipulates that moneysupermarket arent allowed to get involved in the editorial process. So should be fine. And for the first 3.5 years Martin Lewis is contracted to be affiliated with the site, but a clause in his own contract states that if editorial is messed with he can walk away - they wont want him not involved in the site as if he goes and sets up another site, the entire user base would go with him.
Staggered though that this has taken the best part of a week to become newsworthy. At the time the news breaks, its either news the readership is interested in, or it isnt. Dont throw us week old leftovers in the hope we wont have read it elsewhere already.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 09:42 GMT HP Cynic
MoneyMakingExpert.com
That's one heck of a sum and I'm glad to see that the money going to charity is a substantial %.
I really hope Martin not only keeps out their interference but himself can care so much about the few pounds we can save with his advice when he himself will be so spectacularly rich.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 12:45 GMT Andrew James
Re: With that much in the bank
He's already said he has never covered anything much to do with investments etc beyond the obvious "dont keep all your cash with one banking institution as its not all insured" type advice. Now he will have to learn more about investments himself, so will pass on what he learns for those who are interested in savings, rather than just saving a few quid on a day at the zoo, etc.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 13:49 GMT Mystic Megabyte
Re: With that much in the bank
"rather than just saving a few quid on a day at the zoo, etc."
To save money at the Zoo:
1) Get your season pass in the name of Dr. <$YourName>
2) Enter Zoo.
3 )Hand your pass to your partner through the fence
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all of your party is inside.
5) Profit!
6) See Penguins.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 14:33 GMT Andrew James
Re: With that much in the bank
Have an annual pass at Chester Zoo.
1. They have your photo on the pass, which is compared to your face, and an on screen picture when they scan it at the gate.
2. I look nothing much like my wife or my 4 year old daughter.
3. They recently redesigned the entrance so you show your pass at a turnstile within the park, tehre is no way to hand the pass back through again - unless you vault over into the elephant enclosure and throw it over the wall ... and then get an elephant to lift you back out again.
Seems a lot of effort. Might be easier to keep an eye on the weekly email for promotional codes.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 13:52 GMT Haku
@Andrew James
You make an interesting and valid point, so far he has been the champion of the consumer as that's what he has been, but now he has some 'real' money he's going to see another side of the banks and investment industry, which hopefully he'll use it to his advantage and do some investigating and reporting.
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Thursday 7th June 2012 16:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Perhaps the benefit was that he helped steer so much money into the Icelandic banks that when they went tits-up the government felt obliged to completely re-write the rule book and refund everyone. 25-ish years ago my wife (before I met her) had put some money in a small bank following a recommendation in Which ... five years later it went tits-up but as it only affected a few thousand people the "standard" compensation applied and she lost the first £2k + 10% of the remainder of her balance.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012 23:29 GMT BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
MSE is useful, but..
money is not everything, and places like moneysupermarket have large flaws. It reminds me a little of Computer Shopper (never mind the quality, feel the width).
The overriding factor is always stated to be price, regardless of customer service. It's all well and good to be blasé about customer service if for example you're looking for a savings account, don't need to withdraw in a hurry and it's protected if something goes wrong, but if it's insurance or similar call me overly cautious but I'd rather spend somewhat more and obtain a policy that's likely to (eventually) pay out.
I also don't trust various comparison sites after selecting the 'do not contact me, just quote me' button and getting called regardless. In the end the only real solution was to read the policies, ring up individual companies, check reviews and make a decision - comparison websites were not particularly useful.
Saving is worthwhile, but only when it wouldn't be more effective to make money.
Don't get me wrong - it's a good site, but only within certain limits.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
