Tag: jason_calacanis

Blogging, Business blogging, Technology

Dot blog bubble

With all the mergers and acquisitions going on at the minute, it is only natural to wonder what the value of your site/blog is. I see Tom Murphy recently mentioned that Boards.ie was offered $750,000 for the site back in the original dot.com bubble but they turned it down. I wonder what it would be worth now that we are in the dot blog bubble.

Well, part of that speculation has been made easier for us by Tristan Louis – he analysed the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal in great detail and came up with a valuation of $564.64 per inward link for a blog. I’m not sure if there is an easy way to tell how many inward links boards.ie has. Google reports 2910 – but that doesn’t account for the deeper links to the various fora and discussions. Still – even this conservative figure values Boards.ie at over $1.6m – nice one guys.

In my own case, Technorati reports 466 links into this site (from 118 sites). So that puts a value of $263,122 on this site! I tell you what, I’ll let it go for an even $250,000 😉

In all seriousness, influential blogger or not, there is no way that this site is worth that much. Valuations like that do nobody any favours (except perhaps Jason Calacanis). We are back in the dot com bubble days all over again. The bubble is going to burst with all the financial losses and pain that brings. Again. And technology is going to get an even worse name than it has had for the last 3-4 years.

How do we avert this second spectacular fall from grace? I have no idea – anyone who has any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

UPDATE:
I see Kevin Burton is thinking along the same lines.

Blogging, Business blogging, Technology

Do Google Ads make cents?

I have finally added Google Ads to this site. Why? Well, when I hear that Jason Calacanis just sold his company for $25-$35m on Google Ad revenues of $1m annually, I decided I need to try doing something similar! So I figure, if I can get $100,000 Google Ad revenue, I’ll be able to sell for $2.5m – Wohooo! I’m gonna be rich, rich I tell ya!

No seriously, I have added the ads to the site to offset some of the hosting costs. The ads themselves I have tried to keep subtle using a 468 x 60 text only banner and I’m keeping the text colour the same as the colour of the posts. This I am doing in order that the ads don’t distract from the posts. However, there is always the view that by doing this, no-one will ever click on the ads because they are too subtle!

Obviously, if you read this site in your rss reader – this is a moot point! Still, I’d like people’s opinions on this, is it better (from an earnings point of view) to have the ads loud, garish and in the readers face (say it ain’t so), or is the muted approach more likely to succeed?

Blogging, Business blogging, Technology

Weblogs Inc to be bought by AOL

I see PaidContent.org and Reuters are reporting that AOL are about to buy Weblogs Inc. network for $25m!

Weblogs Inc was set up by Jason Calacanis two years ago as a network of blogs and includes under its umbrella titles such as Engadget and Autoblog. According to Calacanis, Weblogs Inc earns in excess of $1m annually in Google Adsense revenues.

Congrats to Jason, $25m for two years work is, by any standards, a good return!