10.21.05
How Much is Your Blog Worth?
With the recent acquisition of of Weblogs, Inc. by AOL , Time Warner is perhaps establishing a baseline as to the monetary value of blogs and their links.
Two-year old weblogsinc.com, founded by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey, promotes a network of 85 individual blogs that reportedly average 30-million plus page views and 25 million monthy RSS views. Member blog sites such as Engadget, Slashfood and Luxist capture a niche market of passionate followers - an advertiser’s dream.
The deal between Weblogs, Inc. and AOL/Time Warner marks the first major pure content-related company being bought out in the blog/Web 2.0 space of this scale. Interested in establishing a presence in the blogging community, AOL clearly sees the potential to attract advertising dollars and cash in on the blogging phenomenon.
So how much is traditional media willing to pay? The estimated purchase price of the acquisition lies between $25 an $40 million dollars. Business analysists are computing the link to dollar ratio at $500-$900 a link.
Business blogger Dane Carlson, inspired by Tristan Louis’s research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc., has created an applet which will compute and display your blog’s worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal.
Now you too can find out if your blog is worth the time, effort and money.
My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?
Martha said,
October 21, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Hey Lisa! Great to see your blog re-launched. Glad you were able to evict the hackers!
I checked, and my blog isn’t worth a dime
Teresa Coffman said,
October 21, 2005 at 2:05 pm
Interesting, how much is your blog worth. The idea of value - monetary value and blogging. Hmm. What are our words valued at? This is an interesting thought and something to ponder. I have to think about what blogging is exactly? A medium to share ideas and thoughts, a place to explore and question, opportunities to experience bad writing and good writing. A community (if you are lucky) to share ideas and thoughts. A blog is a chance to explore and communicate with a community of readers that view your words as interesting. Hopefully at times they view your words as interesting. What is the value? Interesting.
I can say that I learned an interesting tidbit from your posting and I will visit it often! Thanks for a great contribution to the world of blogging.
lisa said,
October 21, 2005 at 2:57 pm
You’re right on the money (no pun intended). Should the value of a blog be measured by the traffic it generates or is the value simply in the quality of the conversation it creates? Sounds like a good debate between our education and business faculty!
Gardner said,
October 26, 2005 at 1:00 pm
I’m sorry to be coming late to the party, Lisa, but I agree that this is a terrific and thought-provoking post. It makes me think of the issue of branding, one that we heard a presentation on at the Frye Institute this summer. If a blogger creates high quality conversation and becomes known as a source of high quality conversation, then her or his blog acquires a brand identity of sorts whether or not the blogger actively pursues such an identity. It’s interesting to think about branding as a conversational concept (sometimes referred to as “trust” in Web 2.0-talk) as well as a commercial concept.
If you have a debate between education and business (a great idea!), let me know. I’d love to attend.