Duff McDonald of Portfolio.com writes a piece on the Valuation of Drudge Report and tries to come up with a valuation based upon three methods (eyeballs, ad value and ‘ask his mother what it’s worth’).
Somewhere between it all they value it at between $10M-$20M.
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from this new and dynamic medium from blogs like Digital Photography School and TwiTip - Twitter Tips.
Back in 2002 I stumbled upon an article about ‘Blogging’. I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life. Since then I've become a full time blogger and have blogged on over 20 blogs and co-founded the b5media blog network.
You can connect with me via social media sites at Facebook - LinkedIn - Twitter - SU - Plurk - FriendFeed - Digg
27 Responses to “Valuing a Blog”
Dave Rigotti
December 19th, 2007 9:18 am
I sold a blog this past summer for $12/post.
Famous Quotes
December 19th, 2007 9:20 am
I am going right now to check out what are they talking about.
John Cow
December 19th, 2007 9:33 am
How much would you personally value your blog on Darren?
The How-To Geek
December 19th, 2007 9:59 am
These valuations bug me…
First, ComScore claims only 1.3 million uniques, but Drudge’s stats show 10milion… ComScore consistently under-guesses the total visitors for sites… because they mostly just take a survey to figure out an audience.
In the age of computers, logfiles, and well… google analytics, it seems like we could do better than a survey to determine the number of visitors a site has. Even if you cut the logfile numbers in half assuming that people browse from work and home, there is still a 4 million visitor difference in those numbers.
Also, more so than almost any other blog… Drudgereport would be worth very little without Drudge himself. People only go to the site for the scoops that they can trust him to dig up from his underworldly sources. Without him, people would not come back… and since it’s a single page, it’s not like he’s getting loads of traffic from a plethora of articles already written.
Darren Rowse
December 19th, 2007 10:06 am
@John - priceless ;-)
Lex G
December 19th, 2007 10:06 am
I don’t really know how they value blogs. I know how they value businesses, based on their balance, goodwill etc….
Is there anything like a standard rule set for valuing sites and so on ?
Mathew Packer dot com
December 19th, 2007 10:42 am
Ouch, that’s a big chunk of dollars right there…..but of course the blog is worthless without the writer seeing as his style of writing and content is what’s keeping the readers coming back..
wild flux
December 19th, 2007 10:57 am
How come I don’t normally see his blog listed in the top blogs articles normally posted on the net? (Especially considering how many hits he gets daily).
wild flux
December 19th, 2007 11:02 am
Herm, the numbers listed in that article are different from his webpage –
VISITS TO DRUDGE 12/19/07
018,768,804 IN PAST 24 HOURS
464,463,701 IN PAST 31 DAYS
5,017,516,023 IN PAST YEAR
The article says –
How many people read Drudge? Internet-traffic measurer ComScore counts 1.33 million unique visitors a month.
So, which one do we go with?
(I’m new to blogging so if this is an obvious questions forgive me!)
Complete Geek
December 19th, 2007 11:37 am
Maybe he would sell it and then stay on as a contributing writer? Isn’t that what most entrepreneurs do, build a brand with customer loyalty and then sell it? My blog is priceless. Heck, who am I kidding. I might give it up for a chicken plate if I were hungry enough.
Donald
December 19th, 2007 11:41 am
I agree with Mathew, blogs have worth but it has to have the writer. It would be like buying an awesome sports team, but loosing the key player/coaches in the process. Is there a way to evaluate the price of a blog without the key writers/contributors?
Josh
December 19th, 2007 12:17 pm
I have a hard time classifying Drudge as a blogger or the Drudge Report as a blog; at least not in the modern sense of the words. There’s very little original material and, when he does write something, it’s on a reusable URL, e.g. flash1.html, flash2html, etc.
What Drudge does, while generating incredible traffic, should not be conflated with blogging.
And, for what it’s worth, I’d trust his self-published numbers over ComScore’s evaluation.
Warren
December 19th, 2007 12:20 pm
Someday my blog will be worth more than a pretty penny!
Max Powers
December 19th, 2007 1:05 pm
For Sale: Combination Blog/Website. Like new. Only used 4 months. Will consider any reasonable offer. Only serious inquires please.
Chris Vincent
December 19th, 2007 1:29 pm
Ever thought of how much value it would hold about a month after a sale? If people can’t see their favourite blogger blogging on their website, why would they come? I wouldn’t be surprised to see it lose at least a third if the same quality of blogging wasn’t met in the eyes of the audience.
Reminds me of how smart the guys whom bought Devlounge were. They bought it with the thought of keeping their logo there whilst the original bloggers just kept strong at what they were doing in the first place.
See, if Darren left, it would need either someone as motivated as he to keep this going, or a team with a combined effort to keep the multiple numbers of blogs coming in every day… mind you i’m sure that many of these blogs are written at least a week beforehand so if needed a day can be taken off, but it’s still impressive from the eyes of his readers…. isn’t it guys? :P
RT the fitness guy
December 19th, 2007 1:48 pm
Darren,
As you know I sold my blog for $20, 000 recently and I was shocked how differently the buyer valued it to me.
I always thought it was a 12 times monthly earnings type of thing but they were MUCH more interested in the brand I’d established and so on.
Interesting.
Pete
December 19th, 2007 1:56 pm
Personally I’d never give up a blog to sell. I like to see my work in my own control and have the ability to command what I started. Just my 2 cents.
Technology Slice
December 19th, 2007 4:14 pm
That figure seems a little inflated.
Shaun Carter
December 19th, 2007 4:55 pm
The funny thing about website valuations is that small websites that are being soled at Digital Point and SitePoint typically sell for 8-12x monthly earnings. But the big sites that get valued or sold in the hundreds of millions or, in the case of Facebook, billions of dollars range are not profitable at all!
I find this paradox very interesting.
Darshana
December 19th, 2007 10:04 pm
What stuck me as the only true valuation is the final analysis about it been worthless without Drudge himself. Something that I believe is true for most great blogs like problogger. Although the visitors add value, without the unique content provided by the particular individual that may disappear in front of your eyes. This is especially true for blogs on personal views.
Girish
December 19th, 2007 11:12 pm
I recently sold a blog at the value of the posts + the theme.
I am not sure whether this means everything though :O
SpicePuppy
December 20th, 2007 1:13 am
What’s the question here? How much is it worth to whom? It’s worth a certain amount to Drudge himself, but for someone else to buy it, they’d have to value it far less because of the risk of losing the key writer.
I don’t know how these things work, but even if Drudge stayed on as a contributing writer, wouldn’t the quality be likely to suffer? And why would he want to sell if he still had to write?
Joe
December 20th, 2007 2:06 am
I’m curious to know that if you were willing to sell a blog, would you still be willing to work on it? I think that I might.. then again I’m not considering selling any of my blogs…
John Frost
December 20th, 2007 3:23 am
To me there are so many factors built up around a blog and what the buyer is interested in using it for you almost have to take it on a case by case basis. Don’t let anyone try to sell you this in a bottle.
Michael Grove
December 20th, 2007 8:19 am
What is eyeballs? Don’t know.
John Hood
December 20th, 2007 10:42 am
Isn’t it somewhat limiting to value a site in purely economic terms? I’d go as far as to say that Darren’s blogs are invaluable…
Mark
December 20th, 2007 6:27 pm
the value of the blogs domain name come into play, and there are so many other things…..but drudgereport, to me, should be worth more than 10 to 20 Million, at least if people are talkin about digg bein’ worth $300M!
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