MSE Discussion: MoneySavingExpert.com to join the MoneySupermarket.com group

c-m

I think the backlash is quite harsh.

This site is and has been nothing more than a high grossing affiliate marketing site.

Grated it's been run extremely ethically, but Martin Himself said he originally created to site to support (finance) other activities.

Finance products pay a awful lot of money to affiliates. I'm purely speculating but this site probably turned over around £10m a year (based on the sale price). It's always been a business, just one that we've been proud to be a part of.

Fair play to Martin. He has become of the Internet's great entrepreneurs.

I guess though with £80m+ in the bank, it's going to be a lot harder to talk about money saving.

D_Dickenson

biglugs wrote: »

Now it turns out that all along Martin was building a massive nest egg by using the input of all his forum members and visitors.

I think this is an important point. A lot of people have spent a hell of a lot of time and effort giving great advice on the forum from which I have benefited from on numerous occasions. Whilst giving £10m to charity is admirable how about giving £1m of it to the forum. It could be split amongst the top 100 or 1000 posters of all time who have high thanks levels too. I would not qualify for this but I can think of several forumites who have helped me and deserve some kind of acknowledgement/reward.

jimexbox

A serious question for Martin which deserves a clear answer.

If you do sell MSE and remain in charge of the site. When you appear on TV as the independent financial expert of MSE, will you preface any advice with the fact MSE is owned by MoneySupermarket? This is a clear conflict of interests if you don't.

GentleGiant_2

he will not be independent from now on - a big sell out and very sad...

in fact companies must now be delighted that he cannot speak with an independent voice.

southernscouser

biglugs wrote: »

What I think people are annoyed about is that some of us have spent many many hours trying to help others with advice, deals, bargains etc. because we thought is was for a greater good. Now that is all likely to fall apart - especially because I for one am not going to give up lots of my time to make the owners of Moneysupermarket more rich (and more annoying) than they already are.

Surely having helped those people is the greater good? I'm eternally grateful to those who helped me at the start and I hope I've passed that on, and some, in return.

Martin was profiting from this and I have no issue with that. He gives us the platform to seek help after all. If MoneySupermarket now give us that platform why shouldn't they profit.

At the end of the day they'd be stupid to throw all their cash away by changing the way this site operates (which we've been assured it won't). The reason this site is so successful is because of its ethos and the way it works. If they change that, not only will people walk, but it'll open the door for someone to copy this current model.

mattytun

GentleGiant wrote: »

he will not be independent from now on - a big sell out and very sad...

in fact companies must now be delighted that he cannot speak with an independent voice.

Second that...........

jd87

Some incredibly childish comments being made here. This site was never "ours", it has always been Martin's, to do with as however he pleases. Some of the people commenting here obviously don't understand how the world of business works.

Did you all just expect him to run the site himself until the day he dies? Every successful start up business has to be sold on at some point if it is to progress. Martin appears to have done this in a way that sticks to his morals as best as possible, and he's obviously not just in it for the money or he wouldn't be giving £10m of it away.

I too worry for the future of the site, but that isn't going to be helped by sore losers taking their ball and going home. As for those saying "One less subscriber to the email here", Oh boo hoo, whatever.

Plushchris

Is there going to be an "Opt out" button on our profiles so that our details arent handed over to Moneysupermarket?

I can imagine they are rubbing their hands together at the thought of all the data this site hold on people...

angry

All good things.

StaffsSW

c-m wrote: »

Finance products pay a awful lot of money to affiliates. I'm purely speculating but this site probably turned over around £10m a year (based on the sale price). It's always been a business,

£15m last year, £12m in 2010... But too many people simply thought of it as a little project free from adverts for the benefit of the consumer, but in reality it was a massive financial product advertising platform, within a niche targeted towards the large portion of financially clueless population.

I agree, fair play to him for creating the illusion of philanthropy, but having been stiffed over by him myself I know he his a ruthless businessman.