WebProNews

Monster Worldwide, Inc. announced the purchase of Affinity Labs' year old network of vertical community sites for $61 million cash today.

Affinity Labs is a start-up of Christopher Michel who in 2004 sold community site Military.com to Monster for $40 million. The Military.com community has since exploded in traffic and has been a phenomenal financial success for Monster according to all accounts. Christopher Michel has also partnered with Monster to sell advertising for the Affinity sites.

The sites reportedly receive about 800,000 visitors per month combined.

The sites as listed by Monster are:

-- PoliceLink: www.policelink.com

-- FireLink: www.firelink.com

-- GovCentral: www.govcentral.com

-- NursingLink: www.nursinglink.com

-- ArtBistro: www.artbistro.com

-- TechCommunity: www.techcommunity.com

-- TheApple: www.theapple.com

This makes Alan Meckler's July purchase of vertical jobs oriented community site mediabistro.com for $20 million cash and a $3 million earn-out a significant bargain. Unlike Affinity Labs, Mediabistro is an established web business that was founded in 1997 and had estimated annual revenue of $5-6 million. Affinity's revenue is likely much less and has a business history of only about one year.

Obviously Monster is relying on it inner knowledge of Affinity and its very positive history with the founder.

Vertical communities continue to be red hot acquisition targets!