Los 25 blogs más valiosos

Hay diferentes estadísticas para medir el número de blogs, pero la más interesante es la de Technorati que asegura que en el mundo se crean dos blogs cada segundo. La cifra ya se empina por sobre los 100 millones de sitios personales, muchos de ellos más populares que el website de Fox (por suerte) y que muchas revistas estadounidenses que tiene más de 50 años de vida. Es evidente que más del 80% de los blogs no son conocidos por nadie más que por una pequeña comunidad que gira en torno al autor, pero hay otros que ha demostrado ser una alternativa para los medios tradicionales. Lamentablemente, el campo de batalla local es bastante diferente. En Chile los blogs no han logrado levantarse más allá de la curiosidad y de las buenas intenciones de los bloggeros. Los que han logrado pasar las 500 mil visitas únicas mensuales son muy pocos y aún no pueden seducir a los avisadores. En el país aún no se da la "locura" que, por ejemplo, le da a Google un valor bursátil diez veces mayor que al Newscorp de Murdoch. Acá aún vivimos atados a un avisaje conservador y poco aventurero. A directrices predecibles y a un nivel de riesgo que sume cero. Mientras el punto de venta siga siendo la neurona principal de las agencias de publicidad y muchos de sus clientes, es poco probable que los blogs se vayan consolidando y seguirán siendo un negocio personal. Acá un artículo que muestra las sorprendentes ganancias de los 25 blogs más rentables de EE.UU.

Artículo 25 blogs

1.The Gawker Properties: $150 million. Gawker, ValleyWag, Gizmodo, Wonkette, and a number of smaller websites. The company claims 30 million monthly unique visitors. According to audience measurement service Quancast, that number is fairly close. Compete shows that traffic to most of the large sites in the group more than doubled from a year ago. If the sites generate one-and a-half page views per unique visitor and the total CPM value of the multiple advertisers on each page is $20, Gawker is an $11 million business which is still growing quickly. The company does not appear to be staff-heavy, so it is imaginable that the margins on the business are 50%. Would the business be worth 15x revenue or 30x operating profits? Could be.

2.MacRumors: $85 million.Blog knows more about Apple than Apple management does. It ranks No. 2,700 in Alexa. Compete shows 544,000 visitors and moving up quickly. Quantcast puts global unique visitors at 5.3 million. Page views at 33 million, which seems a bit high. Advertising looks high-end and solid, probably at least $30 per page CPM. Business should do at least $12 million and have a high margin, estimated at 60%. At a 12x multiple.

3.Huffington Post: $70 million. Several websites commented that HuffPo might be worth $100 million when it raised $5 million late last year. Arianna Huffington said to Portfolio that the business was in the process of becoming profitable. In late 2007 management claimed that the website had 4 million unique visitors per month and would bring in $7.5 million for the year. The website is now in the top 1,000 according to Alexa and its ranking has been climbing, probably due to the election. Compete shows a similar trend with the website reaching over 1.8 million people in February, up 245% from the same month last year. The problem with the business now is that its value has probably peaked. The huge increase in visitors is likely to fall-off once the election is over. HuffPo has tried to building out other content sections, but it is likely that they cannot replace the visits from the core audience which visits the site for political comment. That means that the company will have all of the costs (40 or 50 people) and a falling number of visitors. Revenue should actually begin to fall in 2009. With a business which is likely to shrink next year, it is hard to believe that the company is worth more than 10x revenue.

4.PerezHilton: $48 million. Is No 755 in Alexa. Compete show 1.3 million visitors a month. Quantcast, probably the most reliable of the measurement tools when the sites use its code shows 10.1 million uniques. Quantcast puts month page views at 191 million. That seems high. It would put revenue at $900,000 million a month with a $5 CPM. The site is as much a personality cult as it is a destination. But, it probably runs with margins over 50%. That would put operating profit at $11 million. Founder is central to business. CPMs are low. Give it 8x operating profits