Tristan Louis did the numbers on the AOL-WeblogsInc deal. My blog Read/WriteWeb has 1,938 inbound links on Technorati as of today, so according to Tristan’s calculations Read/WriteWeb is worth over $1 million.
OK, so there were other factors that contributed to the weblogsinc deal – the value of network effects etc. But I certainly believe there is value in a quality weblog. I have some other ideas on this too, in regards to networks. But I just wanted to put it out there that I’m open to offers of $1 million or over 🙂
UPDATE: Scott Kidder, who works at weblogsinc competitor Gawker Media, has published some data he compiled on weblogsinc. Out of 75 WIN sites he studied, only 31 are what he classifies as “active”.
To be honest, the figures don’t really interest me. As I commented below, I’m kind of half joking in this post and I don’t fully correlate my blog with any in the WIN network. But there is a serious point to my post: I think there is value in a quality topic-focused blog that has a reasonable readership. The value may be increased by belonging to a network of similarly focused and quality blogs. I think the market for quality networks is under-served. Arguably John Battelle’s FM Publishing will serve this market and 9rules network is on the right track too. But there’s more work to be done.
Also I like to think that it’s not just network owners, like weblogsinc and Gawker, which have something of value. This is perhaps being recognized now that we’re hearing of VC interest in certain blogs. In a network of quality topic-focused blogs, the real value is with the writers – they’re creating the quality. So it’s a different model to the one Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton have been running. Well… Peter Rojas, who is WIN’s main blogger with Engadget, got a pretty good deal. He was mainly responsible for the quality product that is Engadget – and turns out he had equity so he got justly rewarded. But what I’m thinking of is more like small groups of topic-focused blog networks, composed of high quality blogs. This will help each blog get a larger audience, which will lead to better advertising rates, etc. This isn’t a new idea of course (ref FM Publishing, 9rules), but there is much more to be done.
